Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in We, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Individuality vs. Collectivism
Alienation
Fear of the Unknown
Repression of Desire
Summary
Analysis
D-503 wakes up feeling good: O-90 will be over tonight. When he gets up to go to work it’s foggy outside and the sky is immensely cloudy and white. He returns home before leaving for his required physical labor session, and I-330 calls him on the phone, insisting that he come to her. D-503 goes to meet her outside so he can reject her and affirm his obligations to the State in person. He thinks about how much he hates her, but when she appears he feels smitten. D-503 tells I-330 he hates the fog and she responds, “That means you love it.”
The clouds and fog in the sky symbolize irrationality, foreshadowing D-503’s illicit sexual encounter with I-330 later that day. D-503 needs to lie to himself that he’s only meeting up with I-330 to reject her advances in order to rationalize his erratic behavior—on some level, he seems to know that he’s only trying to convince himself that he doesn’t want what he indeed wants. When I-330 tells D-503 that hating the fog means he “love[s] it,” she suggests that D-503’s hatred of fog is symptomatic of his repressed love for it.
Themes
D-503 and I-330 walk together to the Bureau of Medicine, where they meet a very thin doctor with scissors-like lips. I-330 convinces the doctor to certify that she and D-503 are both sick. D-503 is now excused from work, so he and I-330 take an aero to the Ancient House. They go back to the apartment and have passionate, pink ticket-less sex. Afterward, D-503 notes “her ever-sharp smile-sting.” D-503 leaves the room so I-330 can change back into her clothes, but when he returns, she is gone. D-503 brushes off his rendezvous with I-330 as a mere “improbable incident,” but also notes how emotionally fulfilled he feels.
There is a threatening connotation to D-503’s description of the thin doctor’s lips as scissors-like, which foreshadows the doctor’s ties to MEPHI. By claiming that his rendezvous with I-330 is nothing more than an “improbable incident,” D-503 diminishes and denies his active involvement in it. The fulfillment D-503 feels when he’s with I-330 illustrates his transformation into an individual.
Themes
