Space, place, and identity in Yevgeny Zamyatin's We and J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World

Intimate spaces play a key role in the development of human identity, constructing identity through an internalized experience of the house itself. Building on Bachelard's theories in The Poetics of Space, I argue that characters in Yevgeny Zamyatin's We and J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World gain a new awareness of self after experiencing nature as a substitute for the house. The emergence of a new identity occurs because nature offers protection from the forces that inhibit both D-503 and Keran's individual growth ; it offers the safety of the house that neither character is allowed in a private home : D-503 because of the panoptic space of the One state and Kerans due to the nature of the changing circumstances of the environment and his own biology that force him to accept his role as a "new" human and the jungle as "home".