I Am. I Think. I Will. or Do I?

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I Am. I Think. I Will. Or Do I?

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, free will is defined as a voluntary choice or decision. This means that, when applied to life, you have a choice in how you live. You can choose your own destiny and decide which path in life you want to follow. While reading Anthem, Ayn Rand describes a society in which everyone is equal. No one is superior to anyone else. Everyone is treated the same and has the same opportunities as his brother. However, this society comes with a price. No one is able to think or speak for themselves. They are also assigned a job that they will hold until they are not able to work any longer. The society is based on determinism. This is where outside forces, such as the council, determine the behavior of the men in the society. In the book Anthem, no one has the free will to live as they wish.

The description of the way people are bred in the book is a perfect example of how they don't have free will. The men and women go to a place called the Palace of Mating where "each of the men have one of the woman assigned to them by the Council of Eugenics"(Rand 41). This happens every spring and the babies are born every winter. Not only do the women lose their children, the children grow up never knowing their parents. This is an example of determinism because outside forces determine who the men mate with. They are also not able to have their children as their own.

The citizens are not able to speak freely or even think thoughts that are not approved by the council. They dare not speak freely "for they dare not speak the thoughts of their minds. For all must agree with all, and they cannot know if their thoughts are the thoughts of all, and so...

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... all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and the impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree, and to obey?" (Rand 97)

Questions such as these are forbid in the in community. These were questions in which all men pondered, but which no man would dare speak of. The council engraved fear into the minds of their citizens with tails of punishment if any man was to think of such questions. Equality was the one exception to the society. Despite what he was taught throughout his life, he asked the questions and took it upon himself to answer them. I stand by my opinion that there was no free will in the book, despite the deviance of Equality, the rest of the society conformed to the rules and laws set upon them form birth.

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