Equality 7-2521 As Portrayed In Anthem, By Ayn Rand

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In Anthem, Ayn Rand depicts Equality 7-2521 as a man whose intelligence surpasses that of his brothers. In the Home of the Students, Equality’s performance portrays a significant difference from his brothers’ learning capabilities. However, Equality lives in a collective society in which the Council of Vocations forbids one to have a higher level of intelligence than his brothers, for it is a sin to be intellectually superior to them. “It was not that the learning was too hard for us,” Equality explains. “It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick…The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked upon us” (21). The society finds Equality’s outstanding academic performance to …show more content…

Equality writes, “[T]he Scholars must study the earth and learn from the rivers, from the sands, from the winds and the rocks. And if we went to the Home of the Scholars, we could learn from these also. We could ask questions of these, for they do not forbid questions” (23). Equality’s aspirations of becoming a Scholar originate from the freedom of a Scholar to investigate and explore the Science of Things, for only a position of that caliber may do so. By obtaining acceptance into the Home of the Scholars, Equality can question the natures of the earth to no limit and further aim towards his greater ambition of uncovering mysteries that no other man on earth has ever discovered …show more content…

But Equality does not let this obstacle push aside his desire to learn and discover. He decides to study in a tunnel he suddenly stumbled upon one day and secretly experiment with materials from the Home of the Scholars. Night after night, Equality secretly comes to this tunnel to study alone, even though it is a transgression to work alone. Eventually, he invents a glass box that lights up by utilizing its wires to produce electrical energy, which then converts into light. “We created it,” Equality writes triumphantly. “We brought it forth from the night of the ages. We alone. Our hands. Our mind. Ours alone and only… Tonight, after more days and trials than we can count, we finished building a strange thing, from the remains of the Unmentionable Times, a box of glass, devised to give forth the power of the sky…” (59). Equality expresses great happiness toward the fruits of his research—an invention similar to a light bulb that was once utilized before the formation of a collectivist society, during the “Unmentionable Times.” He emphasizes how he created this great power solely from his own hands, revealing his satisfaction and pride regarding the amount of work to which he alone had been

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