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Meaning In Ayn Rand's Anthem

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In the novella Anthem by Ayn Rand, there are many quotes that have a very significant meaning in the story, as well as in the real world. Equality lives in a society where everyone does, says, and thinks what they’re told to, having no sense of being their own person. Equality eventually gets tired of all of these rules, spoken and unspoken, and decides to defy his society. Throughout the novel, Equality was able to find who he was and what his purpose was by challenging his society, and it’s rules. One of the first quotes that has a more significant meaning is when Equality says, “The word ‘We’... crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the gray of it” (97). Once Equality discovers the word …show more content…

My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end” (95). Towards the end of the story, Equality realizes that he is free to feel any emotion he wants, and however extreme he wants to. He doesn’t need to have some reason to be happy, or some reason to not be happy, he can just be. Being happy without a reason isn’t a crime in the real world, but in Equality’s world, it was. You had to have a reason to be happy, to feel any emotion. But once Equality ran away and was free, he experienced a happiness he’d never felt before. Perhaps the most important quote of the whole story is when Equality declares “I am. I think. I will.” (94). This is the turning point when Equality finally learns he is his own person, who doesn’t have to be oppressed by his society. He learns can think for himself, and he can do what he wills himself to do. No one in his society was able to claim theirself as an ‘I’. They were all we. In our society, we are our own person, going by ‘I’, not ‘we’. We are able to think for ourselves, and we are able to be unique. These were just three quotes that had major significance in and out of Anthem. Throughout the novel, Equality was able to find who he was and what his purpose was by challenging his society, and it’s rules. He also discovers that there’s nothing more important than the pursuit of true happiness and

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