In Ayn Rand's story Anthem, the protagonist Equality 7-2521 has a power unlike no other within their collectivist society. One day when Equality was working as a street sweeper, he finds an old abandoned underground railroad tunnel from the Unmentionable Times long ago. This is where he conducts his experiments that fill him with pride and joy. Equality dreams how his new invention that he brought into existence can change the world, but helping mankind is not his true motivation behind his passion to create. Throughout the story, Equality's true motivation is him trying to find his inner self and his identity as an individual.
Unlike during the Unmentionable Times, when men created “towers [that] rose to the sky,” it is an affliction to be born with powerful intellectual capacity and ambition in Ayn Rand’s apocalyptic, nameless society in Anthem. Collectivism is ostensibly the moral guidepost for humanity, and any perceived threat to the inflexible, authoritarian regime is met with severe punishment. The attack on mankind’s free will and reason is most evident in the cold marble engraving in the Palace of the World Council: “We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the great WE, One, indivisible and forever” (6). Societal norms force homogeneity and sacrifice among all people.
The book “Anthem” by Ayn Rand is revealed as an equal society where individuality has been isolated. It introduces the community and the power the World Council has over everyone. They seem to think that they were born with a curse. They thought this because Equality 7-2521 had been thinking forbidden thoughts for most of his life and he can’t resist them. This is bad because the World Council must strive to keep everyone in the community alike.
In Ayn Rand 's novelette, "Anthem," in a society that is controlled and everyone is equal, there is a man that is brilliant name Equality 7-2521, he is very different from the other people there, he discovers the power of the sky and is punish but he escapes to the forest to make his own society that is all the people will be unique. Our society is made out of different kind of people,independent thinkers, daring innovators and successful entrepreneurs. They think different and have different perspectives on the world. These independent thinkers,daring innovators and successful entrepreneurs are outstanding but sometimes there accepted or turned down. But without these outstanding people where would the world, the technology that has advance.
The rules that Equality 7-2521 first lives by are extremely regulating and forceful. Throughout the novella, the reader is introduced the government orientated society where the ideals of the whole are far more important than the ideas of the individual. There is a law against personal preferences including subjects in school and people. The laws control the ideas of the population, and that all their ideas must be shared, and they are put there to restrict the people.
Equality finds a tunnel that he thinks is from the “unmentionable times” is his society while he was street sweeping. He goes down in it and finds smooth hard surfaces which I inferred to be glass, in Anthem all objects are raw materials so it is not possible for there to be glass unless the council was hiding the tunnel so no one could find it. He returns to the house of street sweepers late and the council asks where he has been. He refuses to tell them so he gets taken somewhere by the council and they try to whip the information out of him. “ A grill, a grill, a grill” Equality says.
In our society, people are motivated in lots of different ways. This can create both positives, such as putting a man on the moon, and negatives, such as war and starving people. Anthem is a story about a man who is going against his collectivist society in his search for individuality. Equality’s main motivation is to discover new things and new ideas in the world around him, as well as to try to figure out who he is as an individual. His motivation is correct because he enables the thought of free will, and the world could become a better place if everyone was motivated like Equality.
He discovers that the principles of his society hides the secrets of the world that are meant to be revealed and shared within the people. Equality then finds his true purpose in his society is to share this awareness but is faced with many obstacles and rejections. In Anthem, Ayn Rand
There's so much emphasis on putting others before oneself that people often forget to look out for their own needs, as shown in this book. Ayn Rand successfully captures the negatives of an overrated ideology and presents an unorthodox perspective on the matter. In conclusion, Equality's true motives behind his work are much more selfish than they first appear to be. Equality strives to fulfil his own personal desire rather than contribute everything to society, and this isn't necessarily a negative thing.
¨We do not wonder at this new sin of ours. It is our second transgression of Preference, for we do not think of all our brothers, as we must, but only of one, and their name is Liberty 5-300. We do not know why we think of them” (Rand 41). In Ayn Randś dystopian novel, Anthem, the citizens are forced to think that they cannot have any preference, this includes liking someone more than others. Randś protagonist, Equality 7-2521, started the book falling in love with the Golden One, but as he moves toward individuality he begins to be in “love” less as he realizes there’s more than just being in a group.
The people of the United States fight and strive for an absolute “equal” society, but is it what’s really wanted? “Harrison Bergeron,” a short story written by Kurt Vonnegut, uses satire to describe the deficiency in our idea of a truly “equal” society. Throughout the story, Vonnegut describes the torture and discomfort the government administers among the people, and though they were “equal,” they were not balanced. Vonnegut uses characterization and word choice to warn his readers of the potential drawbacks of a truly “equal” society. He warns normalcy would become the base of thought, and people would become incapable of emotion.
Their main goal is to work together to build a better society. The government in the book of Anthem cares more about the society than about the people and their own individuality, and even goes so far to ban the word “I” so everyone has to refer to each other as “we” or “they,” This leads Equality to start to rebel against the government by breaking laws. Equality starts to care less about the government and more about individuality, and being his own person. This brings me to my point about how individuality is shown through Equality’s experiences. In all reality, everyone is individual in their own way.
“Harrison Bergeron” shows total equality in an extreme way that catches attention, to show there are consequences to this often sought after way of life. The author uses the extreme ways the government forces equality to demonstrate how equality actually degrades society as a whole. The story showed how forced equality can make people have unrealistic and absurd world views, and how important jobs in society are left to people who are incompetent and unfit for the job. All of these consequences are easily paralleled in society today, and, unless people recognize the danger, could quickly become a serious
In the history of humanity there have been no perfect relationships, and the same thing could be said about Equality and Liberty in Ayn Rand book Anthem. In Anthem the main character, Equality, is struggling to understand and accept the rule of a completely equal society. He pushes rules to the edge when he meets a girl named Liberty and they run from the equal society to make a completely free society in the uncharted forest. The relationship between Equality and Liberty changes drastically from in the beginning to the end as Liberty goes from strong and empowered to submissive and praising while equality is shy and curious to strong and godlike.
Equality or Not…. What would our society be like if we had rules that forced everyone to be equal? Ayn Rand illustrates this in Anthem. The society is overrun by rules that control the citizens lives. The rules are supposed to be there to make everyone equal, but in reality they are making everything exponentially unequal.
