Yevgeny Zamyatin — We [449]

What’s the matter with me? I have lost the rudder. The motor roars, the aero quivers and rushes at full speed, but there is no rudder, no controls, and I don’t know where I’m flying: down-to crash into the ground in a moment, or up-into the sun, into the flames… — Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, 449

Note

The vehicle of the closing metaphor turns the abstract loss of ideological certainty into a physical vertigo of flight without controls.