Point of View

We is narrated in the first-person by a philosopher-mathematician who has had pretensions of becoming a poet in the past. He alternates present and past tense as he explains his situation or various cultural items to his imagined readers and actual events that have befallen him in the period between diary entries. The purpose of the diary is to help denizens of other planets to accept allegiance to the United State and adopt its uniform way of life.

This 36-year-old narrator, D-503, begins as an enthusiastic and convinced patriot, modest about his scientific accomplishments, and content with his way of life. He cannot conceive how the ancients, to whom he constantly refers (generally meaning people of the 20th century), could live in a chaotic state of freedom. Much of the information in the novel owes its inclusion to D-503's meticulous scholarly nature. First, he is...