Prometheus In Ayn Rand's Anthem Analysis

Throughout the novella Anthem the society disregards citizens having thoughts of their own. Prometheus, who has always been a free thinker, has always felt out of place in this society. As the novel progresses Prometheus comes to appreciate his trait of independent thinking. At the ending of the novella Prometheus comes to understand that what society sees as unethical is actually a valuable trait to have.

Imagine living in a world where everybody's lives are completely mapped out by the government. Where every decision is made without the input of the citizens it affects. In the novella Anthem, Ayn Rand depicts a completely collectivist society, where every idea, action, and invention is purely for the benefit of society as a whole. Everything is done with the entire population in mind, and individuality is extremely frowned upon. However, when the story's protagonist, Equality, makes a huge scientific discovery, his intentions are more selfish than that.

In the book “Anthem” by Ayn Rand, the main character, Equality 7-2521, changed significantly. At first, he believed in staying true to the society, but this later changed when he began to have his own ideas and thoughts. He began to see the world through his own eyes, instead of looking through the tainted eyes that the leaders of his society had given him. Throughout the book Equality 7-2521 discovered many new and different feelings. He began to fall in love with The Golden One, even though it was forbidden. He refused to give up the light that he discovered, because he knew the leaders of the society would destroy it, and his view of the leaders in the society changed as he began learning about the outside world. The more he learned about that world, the more he realized how limited and unfair the society he lived in truly was.

Ego is currently thought of as a cruel trait to have in a person, but is it really as demonic as people make it out to be. The novel Anthem by Ayn Rand contains the character ,Prometheus, who has been debated as whether he is an egoist or not, but is he evil for it. Ego can be a complicated friend. On one side of the scale it can be a great ally or a cruel enemy.

“The great corrupter of public man is the ego. Looking at the mirror distracts ones attention from the problem” (Dean Acheson). Anthem by (Ayn Rand) illustrates that people, in general, are egoistic, she demonstrates this through the book Anthem. Near the End of the book Equality uses a new set of rules for him and the Golden One, they just got away from a controlling gov’t, but Equality is now controlling the Golden One. What the Council doesn’t understand is that everyone has a personality, and they often have very different personalities, a few characters stand out, their ego is very large, the world council and Equality.

Why is being your self harder in the community where government establishes a set of rules? In the novel, the main character discovers something new and the government rejects it thinking it is an unacceptable idea. Anthem was first written in 1937, and published in 1938. Ayn Rand, who is a Russian-American novelist and philosopher, wrote it. Anthem takes place in a dystopian society in where the main character seeks for individuality, which is rejected in their community. Equality 7-2125 and The Golden One struggle against the world searching for ego. One of the most important themes in Anthem is ego because in their society, everyone follows a set of rules, and at the end Equality 7-2125 and The Golden One find freedom, and their true meaning.

Chapter two in the textbook Reflect & Relate an Introduction to Interpersonal Communication by Steven McCornack talks all about what “self” is and how to achieve complete fulfillment for one’s self which is also known as self-actualization. The components of self, as described in the book are, “ . . . self-awareness, self-concept, and self-esteem” (McCornack 39). Self-awareness is the idea in which one can take a moment to move feelings, beliefs, and other external influences aside and just evaluate oneself in a holistic perspective that is not skewed by opinions of others, etc. Having the ability to actually think about who one is brings a lot of power and mental stability in such a way that allows for improvement. For example,

There have been numerous studies of the factors that can affect a person’s personality. Typically, these studies always reflected on what role a child’s early life played in their adult personalities. The character of Howard Hughes from the movie The Aviator was a fitting example of the many effective factors (Scorsese, 2004). This paper’s purpose is to examine and describe theories such as the psychoanalysis perspective, physiological perspective, and biological perspective of personality traits.

Ethical egoism is a moral theory focused on improving a person’s well-being. There are many arguments for ethical egoism such as the Self-Reliance Argument and the Best Argument for Ethical Egoism, both presented by Shafer-Landau in The Fundamentals of Ethics. However, in this paper I will discuss how objections presented by Shafer-Landau and Dr. Thomas Carson are fatal to ethical egoism, while keeping in mind arguments for this moral theory. I will discuss objections such as ethical egoism permitting or sometimes requiring murder, theft, or rape, in order to promote oneself’s well-being, egoists subconscious belief of their lives being more important than others, and an argument presented in class that if egoists must do what is best for their

The act of saving someone can be defined as heroic and selfless. In the case of Cameron Hollopeter, who had experienced a seizure and fell onto the track of an approaching train, and Wesley Autrey, the father who saved Hollopeter, the actions were compared to psychological egoism. This was detailed in whether Autrey, having almost sacrificed his life to save Hollopeter, was done out of pure altruism or selfish desires.

Psychological egoism is the doctrine that everyone only can desire for his own self-interest ultimately. Psychological egoism (PE) have three main points. First, PE define helping other as a mean to seek for one’s own self-interest, which means there is no pure altruism. eg: people make a donation in order to gain a favorable reputation. Second, it is “can” instead of “ought” in the definition (different from ”ethical egoism”), which implies that PE is a matter of fact that people always desire for self-interest, and they cannot desire for anything else, for it is human’s natural to do so. Third, PE focus on “what I desire”. Different versions of PE use different word to call it ; And the most common version (psychological egoism hedonism) use “pleasure”.

The Bernie Madoff case had several red flags. Mr. Madoff wife Ruth Madoff was the biggest red flag of them all. It’s amazing to me how she was not aware of the Ponzi scheme that was being committed by her husband every day. Something of this magnitude would be very difficult to hide. Mr. Madoff already had a legal investment business. The business was buying and selling over the counter stock that was not listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). These were traded over the telephone not with the automated system.

Ethical egoism is a normative theory that states an individual 's actions should be accomplished from the perspective to maximize one’s self-interest. Ethical egoism requires that people give themselves special treatment and that they have a task to fill their self-interest. Ethical egoism says that a person should only act when the action benefits themself, and they should, therefore, avoid actions when the act they are trying to fulfill provides no benefits for the individual. When an action that one performs is wrong it seems the opposite of the action performed would seem to be correct. If helping a person would prevent your own self-interest, this would seem to make it morally permissible for a person to perform harm to others in situations where their self-interest would benefit from the action. But, an egoistic must act with one’s own eternal self-interest, therefore they are not just individuals who believe that they should always do what they like when they like because acting in accordance with this would not necessarily benefit the person in the long term. When we say that a person should do something, we are also implying is that they are capable of doing the action, but we cannot expect people to do things that they cannot do. Ethical egoism comes in two forms and they are act-egoism and rule-egoism. Act-egoism is the

In Lesson two the author discusses ideas and theories of morality from a comprehensive perspective. This chapter addresses consequentialist, which is those who are concerned with consequences, and non-consequentialist which are those that have no regard to consequences which are major viewpoints when it comes to ethics. How a person views possible consequences helps them decide what actions to take. Keeping this in mind people regardless make moral decisions based off their own personal interests whether it be for benefit of oneself or benefit for all. The two ideas from this chapter that caught my interest are the relationship between Ethical egoism and utilitarianism.

Boredom is a kind of suffering that man can experience if there is a satisfied desire. And such satisfaction is a new starting point of a new striving. As quoted above, temporal satisfaction of desire has no good results for as our desires are satisfied. It is quite boring so that the willwill continue to seek for another satisfaction. ‘For many desires will arise in the place of one that is satisfied, as new limbs spring out when bough is cut’. As Thomas Hobbes said in his Leviathan, ‘the cause, whereof is, that the object of man’s desires is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time; but to assure forever, the way of his future desire’. It is therefore shows the infinity if man desires, hence, striving. Because the will is aimless, since willing seems to be an endless