We-Patterns

In Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, there is the obvious pattern of geometric descriptions of everything in D-503's world. D-503 even describes sounds as having shapes in "He looked at me, laughed sharply, javelinishly" (Zamyatin 80). This pattern is used to exaggerate the dependence the society has on math, so much of one that even abstract ideas or non-tangible items must be condensed into an easily understood, definite, mathematical idea. If this mathematical need wasn't there, D-503 would not have been able to describe it as "javelinishly," giving it a definite shape, but instead could have said something such as, "it pierced me" with it still having the sharp connotation, but remaining abstract.