Mathematics in Zamyatin's "We"

The society in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian novel We is driven by the world of mathematics.  The protagonist, D-503, describes the mission of OneState as attempting to “… integrate completely the colossal equation of the universe. Yes: to unbend the wild curve, to straighten it tangentially, asymptotically, to flatten it to an undeviating line. Because the line of OneState is a straight line.  The great, divine, precise, wise straight line…” (Zamyatin 4).  However, while D-503 claims that OneState is a “mathematically perfect” society, it is clear that a vital element is missing in this world, and its absence cannot be resolved by an equation.
 
To D-503, all aspects of mathematics are beautiful and simple except for one- the irrational root.  This concept troubles D-503, “That irrational root grew in me like some alien thing, strange and terrifying, and it was eating me, and you couldn’t make any sense of it or neutralize it because it was completely beyond ratio” (39).  The irrational root’s existence demonstrates to D-503 that not everything in mathematics, and correspondingly the world, can be calculated with proportions or expressions; it indicates that not everything makes sense in his terms.  His struggles with this notion intensify throughout the novel, “For irrational formulas, for my √-1, we know of no corresponding solids, we’ve never seen them…. But that’s just the whole horror—that these solids, invisible, exist.  They absolutely inescapably must exist” (98).  After all, if D-503 cannot accept that √-1 is a value, then how will he possibly comprehend something as abstract, as absurd as a soul?

While mathematics is a very structured discipline, and is referred to often as a thing of beauty and necessity in We, mathematics ultimately fails to explain to D-503 his purpose and the answer as to why he loves I-330, the personification of the irrational root.  With this, Zamyatin is displaying the idea that life cannot be systematically consolidated into a set of numbers and symbols that definitively determine its meaning- there will always be irrational root preventing this.