In the book Anthem by Ayn Rand. The book is about a dude named Equality 7-2521.
He is a street sweeper. His job was chosen by the Council of Vocations.
They have many rules in their city. They must not speak of the word “I”
Their is no crime that leads to death. In the book i'm sure the rules are created to make sure everyone makes sure that every one to treat every same person equally. They are believed to follow every rule every day and not break them. If they do break the rules then they get punished very badly. Including beheading and many more things.. When they say “i” they are interpreting ego. Which know one wants to do in that city they want to be the same person pretty much. Men and women are not supposed to think each other. Men are not
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It's done over with. In my opinion i believe and think that the rules are completely stupid they have no sense to do the rules they make no freaking since! They should have rules that make sense. Like when u kill someone then you go to jail. This book was written in 1937. Equality 7-2521 renames himself Prometheus. Anthem takes place in some unspecified future time and place in which freedom and individual rights have been obliterated equality commits many crimes he falls in love with a girl A woman by the name of Liberty 5-3000, He breaks out of prison. His dream was to be a scholar but he was put to being a sweeper which was wrong (since no one is supposed to care remotely about what they do with the rest of their lives)..... He was punished for dreaming about what he wanted to be so they put him as a street sweeper. They rejected his light bulb invention because they did not like it. Equality finds a lady and thinks of her which is wrong in that time and century or in the book i believe that it is so stupid for how they do that plus they can't find out who or what you're thinking about they should have a mind of their own and not abide by someone else's rules they need
Ayn Rand names Equality 7-2521 Prometheus because they are similar in many ways. When Equality was younger he saw The Transgressor of the Unspeakable Word suffered. He was burned alive because he was one of little that knew what individualism was. Equal...
Equality eventually escapes from the place that never felt like home, and runs off with his love, Liberty 5-300, who he calls the Golden One. After learning about the men from the Unmentionable Times, Equality would agree with Ayn Rand’s words in her short essay, “How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?”, where she not only talks about the importance of having moral judgment, but also about being brainwashed by your leaders and government. Equality can relate because, for his whole life, he was in a society where their version of wrong and right were opposites to what they should have been. Individualism and moral judgement weren't encouraged, they were prevented, and that is where the society became
Ayn Rand’s Anthem is a politically satirical novel set in a future society that is so highly collectivized that the word “I” has been banned. The world is governed by various councils who believe that man’s sole reason for existence is to enforce the Great Truth “that all men are one and that there is no will save the will of all men together” (Rand, 20). Any indication of an individual’s independent spirit is swiftly and brutally put down, with the transgressors being punished with severe prison sentences or even death. It is this dysfunctional world that Equality 7-2521 is born into. The novel begins with Equality 7-2521 alone in a dark tunnel, transcribing his story.
Equality 7-2521 embodies this essential idea throughout the story because of his eternal struggle with not quite being able to conform to society’s expectations. He is physically different from the others (Rand, 1946, p. 2) as well as mentally different as he disagreed with others even as a child (p. 4) and was smarter than the rest (p. 5), and this mental sharpness is carried into adulthood as he is able to discern the feelings of oppression and fear that weigh over all men in this time (Rand, 1946, p. 30). Rather than acting as a machine, he feels preferences and desires within himself. Equality 7-2521 enjoys science, dreams of being a Scholar, likes a pretty girl, and wonders about himself. Since these things are not shared by all, they are forbidden, and despite how simple they may be, they define
“We shall not report our find to the city council. We shall not report it to any men” (Rand #33). This quotation shows that Equality does not want to share it with any others and he wants these findings for himself. This is the first time Equality experience a little taste of individualism. “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 5-3000” (Rand #41). This quotation shows that Equality is not thinking about everyone but one single person. In this society thinking about only one person is a sin and now Equality is starting to show that he doesn't care if he commits a sin. “So long lies before us, and what care we if we must travel it alone” (Rand #54). In this quotation Equality says that he would be fine with living alone and without his
People in every Society are placed in categories according to gender, religion, race, and age from which one of these categories include social class. In the novel Anthem by Ayn Rand, people are placed in social classes according to the government 's liking and instead of race, age, gender etc their social class depends on the job they are given by the government. This was done to treat everyone equally in order to keep peace in the society. However, sometimes equality can cause rebellion and this idea is portrayed through the protagonist of the novel, Equality 7-2521.
Equality 7-2521 struggles in the Home of the Students because he is too intelligent and deft at absorbing information. The ability to think quickly and easily was looked down upon by the teachers and the government. Equality notes, “It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The teachers told us so…” (21). The students are taught that being intelligent is evil and that they cannot be superior in knowledge than the officials in the government. Equality’s intelligence leads to his job as a Street Sweeper because the government wants to suppress radical ideas by assigning him to a socially lower job and authoritative status. As literary critic Tore Boeckmann states about Anthem, “[Equality] belong[s] at the pinnacle of any rational social hierarchy, yet [he is] thrown (at least temporarily) to the very bottom” (135). Overall, the public citizens in Anthem are extremely selfless and lack a sense of self-worth because the government wants them to put the good of the community above the
One of the overarching conflicts in Ayn Rand’s, Anthem, is Collectivism versus the belief in Heresy. Rand is a firm believer in heresy, making her one of history's most notable heretics. In the same way Anthem is bias, so is my ‘Big Idea’ collage. I used propaganda and symbolic images to express the importance and just within heresy. The two silhouettes of a human heads serves the significance of the seemingly everlasting conflict that both groups have. All the images that make up the silhouettes is what the different parties stand for. Equality’s rebellious views and experiments, such as ‘the power of the sky’ and the sacred manuscripts, are enclosed within the traced head on the right side. On the other side, I dissected the authority in
In Anthem, Ayn Rand portrays the idea that risks may be scary and hard, but the risk may lead to an even better outcome.
The society of Equality 7-2521 is dishonest, and everyone knows nothing about the truth of the past. Equality 7-2521’s ego gets in his way of his own judgement. His perspective blurs his vision and makes his decisions selfish. His ways of individuality are better for the people. The brothers in the corrupt society would be better off if they were not in a collective society but if they were in an individual society, and stood as many instead of one.
In the book Anthem by Ayn Rand, there are a bunch of different buildings for different types of people. Like, The City of the Damned, the City Theater, the Home of the scholars, Home of the useless, and more. Each one has its own function that focuses on one specific thing.
In Ayn Rand’s novel, Anthem, a world of rules and lack of individuality is described and shown in full detail. The strict rules and commandments set by that society are there to ensure that no man stand out more than the other. However, in this world some stand against the commandments set and go along with their own rules. The main character of the novel Equality was always driven to learn, and it was viewed as a curse to the society he was born in. Equality fights back his curse for as long as he can, but loses that battle and breaks away from that cursed world. He sees things as his own now and plans on building a new world with commandments of his own. Equality’s world will be entirely different from the one he left, and he will not share any of the rules of that place. Instead of building on every man being the same, his society will be built on the one word “ego” and man can be free to do anything.
We learn not by what people teach but by what we teach ourselves. This is what Ayn Rand was helping the audience understand. Sometimes it does not matter what we are trained to think, it is what we train ourselves to think. This is the theme of the book Anthem. Now we all see this through the main character Equality 7-2521. He was the only one that ever thought of anything outside of his fellowship in this book. That was because it was denoted as a sin to ever think of anything that the government did not put in front of you.
Every individual person must forge their own path to freedom in order to become victorious. In Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem, it is almost impossible to have a personal victory. However, in the collectivist society that Equality lives in, he has a true victory, one that can only be attributed to himself. In Equality’s case, he must break free from the shackles of his oppressive society to achieve his own victory of becoming a free individual.
Many times in life, people are faced with choices that object to their own personal interests. The main character in “Anthem”, Equality, had to struggle with these choices as the story progressed. In the book,”Anthem” by Ayn Rand, the role of the conflicts of conformity and individuality are to make Equality develop as a character during his quest for freedom.