We

“She took her seat; she began to play something wild, convulsive, loud, like all their life then, —not a shadow of rational mechanism.”

As part of a state lecture on music, D-503 watches I-330 play the “ancient instrument” of the piano. This is supposed to demonstrate the inferiority of pre-One State music of the 20th century to the formally perfect music produced by the One State’s “musicometer”. Yet, despite himself, D-503 sees in this music and its performance a freedom and vitality lacking in One State music. It is this vitality that D-503 starts to associate with I-330 and forms the basis of his growing infatuation with her.

“[T]he source of innumerable stupid tragedies has been converted in our time into an harmonious, agreeable and useful function of the organism.”

D-503 explains the way the One State transformed sexual relationships. By regulating sex via an examination and then a process of applications for partners, the One State transformed sex from a source of discontent due to envy into a harmonious part of an optimally happy life. As D-503 later finds, it is this very disruptive, “tragic” element of sexual relationships that lends them an intensity that the One State’s utilitarian approach to sex lacks.

“Suddenly it lifted the brass eyelids and sap began to flow from it.”

D-503 describes part of a dream that he has after visiting the Ancient House with I-330. In it, objects from the house, such as a brass Buddha and the yellow dress worn by I-330, start to bleed with sap, as does D-503 himself. This dream represents the breakdown of the binaries between reason and unreason, wild and domesticated, which have dominated his life up to then, and which the encounter with I-330 and the past is starting to threaten.

“And then nothing, just a pool of chemically pure water.”

When the Benefactor pulls the lever on the execution machine, an electric ray reduces the condemned man to a pool of liquid. On one level this execution, and the form it takes, is intended to show the power of the One State and to terrify citizens into obedience. On a symbolic level though the method of execution represents the ability of the One State to dissolve, and make useful, any possible dissidence. It also signifies the impossibility of dissidence tarnishing or disrupting the perfection of the One State.

“This was a thousand times worse than if she had not been dressed at all.”

When D-503 visits I-330’s apartment for the first time, she changes into a dress from the twentieth century. D-503 finds this dress is more alluring than if she were naked since the dress suggests sexuality without entirely revealing or allowing it. In this sense, the sexuality represented by the dress stands in stark contrast to the banally accessible sexuality D-503 is used to in the One State. And it is this play of revelation and concealment which D-503 finds intoxicating, and which leads him to defy the One State for I-330.

“Yes, we helped god definitively and finally to defeat the devil…We returned to the simple-mindedness and innocence of Adam and Eve.”

R-13 describes to D-503 the poem he is writing for the Integral. It is both a summary and glorification of the One State philosophy and founding ideal. As R-13 explains, the poem suggests that the One State returned humans to their prelapsarian happiness by eliminating the freedom that God gave to Adam. However, the poem, due to this biblical parallel, has a subversive subtext, which is that citizens like D-503 may always be tempted to taste the forbidden fruit of freedom.

“The gigantic, magnificent power of the artistic word was spent by them in vain.”

D-503 discusses the limitations of pre-One State poetry and its use of creative language. Such poetry, he argues, was wasted because it did not explicitly serve any social function. In contrast, One State poetry is harnessed for the cohesion and glory of the state. For example, it is used to celebrate state institutions and rules. Despite this view, D-503 finds through his journaling that writing always contains an irreducible and subversive element.

“Well, my fallen angel…you have perished just now, do you know that?”

This is what I-330 says to D-503 after she has sex with him for the first time in the Ancient House. I-330’s remark is a joking allusion to the story of Satan, who was expelled from heaven by God for rebelling against him. This parallel suggests that D-503 has now set himself irrevocably at odds with the One State by having sex outside state regulations, thereby breaking one of the state’s most sacred rules. At the same time, like Satan, he has “perished” with this act because the possibility of returning to his old, “good” self is now gone forever.

“I shall probably never again be able to fuse myself into this mechanical rhythm, nor to float over this mirror-like, untroubled sea.”

At work on the Integral, after his primal sin with I-330, D-503 observes the machine-like harmony of the other workers with each other and their tasks. D-503 now realizes that such unproblematic absorption in work and the community of the One State is now lost to him. However, with this alienation comes the possibility of a new sense of individuality and freedom.

“Around me, —a desert made of glass.”

Wracked with doubt about his new outsider status and his uncertain relationship with I-330, D-503 starts to see the architecture of the One State in a new way. Instead of viewing the glass of the One State with reverence, he now sees it as fundamentally sterile and oppressive. This perception ties into his subsequent discovery that he has a “soul,” which is defined precisely in opposition to the features of glass. His new soul absorbs and retains experiences, which allows for the development of emotional and spiritual depths.

“[F]rom the infinite ocean of green there rose toward me an immense wave of roots, branches, flowers, leaves…But fortunately there was the Green Wall between me and that wild green sea.”

On the orders of a doctor, D-503 walks to the Ancient House and sees the edge of the Green Wall separating the One State from the world of nature beyond. When he sees this, D-503 suddenly feels overwhelmed by the fecundity and wildness of that world outside, only then to feel relieved that the Green Wall is protecting him from it. This experience reflects D-503’s conflicted relationship both to nature and rebellion in the One State, against which the wall stands sentinel. On the one hand, D-503 is exhilarated by the new sense of freedom he associates with this rebellion, but he is also terrified by it and longs to return to the safety of the One State.

“A thought awoke in me ‘what if that yellow-eyed one, sitting there…is happier than I.’”

The superfluity of the trees and plants on his walk by the Green Wall overwhelms D-503. He notices a small animal looking at him from beyond the Wall. He looks into the creature’s eyes and thinks that perhaps the creature is happier than he is. Such an unbidden thought cuts right to the heart of the One State’s claims about itself, which D-503 dutifully believed. The One State convinced citizens the key to happiness lay in conformity to the “higher” human functions of reason and logic. This sudden moment of doubt for D-503 prefigures his encounter with the Mephi, who advocate for a return to and union with nature.

“If boots are not a sickness, why should the ‘soul’ be one?”

After a dream in which D-503 sees I-330 in a closet, D-503 starts to question the distinction between dreams and reality and presence and absence. He reasons that if the boots in his closet are real even when he cannot see them, then other things he cannot directly see can also be real, such as a soul. Such reasoning signifies a further collapse in D-503’s belief in the tenets of the One State. It signifies a further disintegration of his belief in the One State’s scientific and materialistic ideology which holds that only what is observable is real.

“A dozen numbers represent hardly one hundred millionth part of the One State.”

D-503 reflects on an incident at work, where an explosion killed several Numbers and the other workers instantly and seamlessly returned to their tasks. D-503 suggests this heartless response is entirely justified and rational. As his comment implies, the dead Numbers were only an infinitesimal fraction of the whole. This observation indicates that D-503 is still conflicted about his relationship with the One State, still agreeing with some of its values. The incident also showcases the brutal utilitarian logic of the One State, where individuals are interchangeable and replaceable, and only the collective matters.

“The greatness of the ‘Church of the United Flock’ was known to them.”

On a state-mandated walk, where millions of Numbers are moving in unison, D-503 comments on the similarities between the Christian church and the One State. Although the One State is atheist in belief, it carries forward what it sees as the rational core of religion with its focus on the superiority and unity of the group. In public events and walks, like in religious ceremonies, this collective will and identity is both revealed and reinforced.

“All that I wrote about Unanimity is of no value.”

As he waxes lyrical in his journal about the “Day of Unanimity” when One State citizens unanimously re-elect the Benefactor as their leader, D-503 is suddenly struck by a sense of futility. Without I-330 by his side, he feels nothing can have any real meaning or joy for him. This moment and realization is significant because it represents the total transference of D-503’s love from the One State to I-330. In turn, such a transference prefigures D-503’s literal defection from the One State and his joining the Mephi plot against it.

“And you know also that the day has come for us to destroy that Wall and all other walls, so that the green wind may blow all over the earth.”

This quote is the climax of the speech I-330 gives to the Mephi, which D-503 hears when he travels beyond the Green Wall via the tunnels of the Ancient House. I-330 designed the speech to inspire those beyond the Wall to rise against the One State and to convince D-503 to help them seize the Integral. I-330’s speech is persuasive because it depicts the One State as a culture of “walls” separating humans from each other and from nature. However, as D-503 finds at the novel’s end when the Green Wall is partly destroyed, walls also serve to keep in check violent and dangerous aspects of human nature.

“Very low and slowly a bird was moving. I saw it was living, like me.”

After hearing I-330’s speech, D-503 ingests a psychotropic substance which causes him to feel and experience oneness with nature and the world. This reaches a climax when he feels a deep affinity with a bird that he sees, which he realizes is just as alive as he is. Such an experience seems to undercut the rigid distinctions between human and non-human life maintained by the One State and lays the basis for D-503 to help the Mephi’s insurrection. Ironically, the experience that convinces him to fight the One State is one of connection to a deeper unity and collective.

“With you it was worse…numbers crawled over you like lice.”

Before the Mephi attempt seizure of the Integral, I-330 explains to D-503 who the people are that D-503 sees beyond the Green Wall. They are humans who refused to join the cities after the land’s defeat in the Two Hundred Years War, fleeing instead to live in the woods. I-330 suggests that these people, who became the Mephi, maintained a vital connection with themselves and with all living things. In contrast, those who joined the One State allowed the rules of the One State to drain them of all true life and feeling; they subordinated themselves to mathematical reason.

“The word ‘people’ is not the right one. These were heavy wheeled automatons bound in iron.”

Following the disruption at the Day of Unanimity, the One State reveals its operation to excise the imaginations of its citizens. Before having it done himself, D-503 sees people who had the operation. This sight reveals the true horror of the operation, as it reduces people to mindless automatons with no will, in thrall to an external force. As such, this sight shows that far from freeing citizens as the One State claims, the operation leads them into a more abject and irreversible state of servitude.

“Satiated, you will slumber peacefully.”

After the failure of the Mephi’s plot to seize the Integral, and D-503’s failed part in it, D-503 considers going to get the operation. Another citizen tries to sell D-503 on the benefits of the operation, as he says it will allow D-503 to be free of doubt and unrequited desire. As such the operation will operate as an anesthetic, dulling or eliminating the pain of existence. For D-503, this prospect will seem appealing when he later comes to believe that I-330 never loved him and was just using him.

“You whose lot it was to become the greatest of all conquistadores!”

This is what the Benefactor says to D-503 by way of reproach when he summons D-503 to see him. In one sense, the Benefactor is right that D-503, by becoming involved with the Mephi, spurned the opportunity to become a famous colonizer of other planets. However, by opposing the One State, D-503 becomes a conquistador of the human spirit, charting the world of pain, love, and loss lying beyond the One State’s proscribed happiness.

“All this is doomed; all this will be covered with grass, some day; only myths will remain.”

This is D-503’s final thought recorded in his journal before he submits to the operation. He realizes that his existing self and his journal will soon come to an end. He reflects on the consequences of the mayhem that engulfs the One State after the Mephi breach the wall. D-503 now grasps that the One State, despite its claims to immortality, is, like the self, transient. Like all cultures and living things, it will one day perish. However, the One State may live on in a way through “myths” about life there, to which writing like D-503’s journal will contribute. Strangely, D-503 sees his journal as a kind of immortality for both the One State and himself.