Anthem's Society: Equality As A Dystopian Society
1714 Words7 Pages
Anthem’s society is dystopian world where all human advancements and technology are absent. Individualism is seen as a sin and is shunned by the citizens. The citizens have been stripped of any solitary rights and only live to serve their brothers around them. Equality was a City Street Sweepers that had always been told that he was different from his brothers; both mentally and physically. Nevertheless, he still worshiped the principles of his world like the people around him. He discovers and reconstructs a lightbulb, thinking that this could be a step forward in the society. So he brings it to the Council of Scholars, who reject his idea and want to destroy it. Equality leaves him home with Liberty, someone who he holds dearly, and discovers a house deep in the Uncharted Forest full of stories from the past. That is when he discovers the truth about his life. He takes on the name Prometheus and gives Liberty the name Gaea. By the end of the novel Equality is the epitome of individualism, the ideals that directly interfere with the community that has (seemingly) been set in stone for thousands of years. After he escapes his society, he vows to return and change the lives of his chosen friends and to create a new race of people who live the individualist way. Though he says this to himself and presumably Gaea, he will never actually change the society that he came from. In the beginning of the novel Equality is timid and punishes and despises himself if he does anything