Equality, the man of many names. The novella “Anthem” by Ayn Rand is about a character which is not like the rest and is trapped in a deranged, collectivist society, where everyone is ONE. The council selects who mates with who, which job each citizen receives and how they are educated. No One is allowed to prefer one person over another or have a personal life. Equality flees this society by escaping to the Uncharted Forest where he finds a home and stays there with Liberty 5-3000, a woman who Equality falls in love with. Throughout “Anthem” by Ayn Rand, the character Equality 7-2521 receives several different names which ultimately leads him into finding his true self. He is a dynamic character which is a character who undergoes an important inner change, as a change in personality or attitude. Leaving a collectivist …show more content…
He decides that his new name is will be Prometheus. Prometheus is a Greek god that brought fire to citizens but, it was against the god’s wishes and was punished as a result. Equality worked to create electricity and attempted to bring it to the council of scholars in hopes of one day becoming a scholar. But, they present his invention and as a result Equality flees the city to the Uncharted forest where he finds a home. There he discovers books and wants to better educate himself the moment he discovers the word “I”. As the novella progresses Equality transforms into an individual who isn’t afraid to flaunt his individuality. “When I shall have read all the books and learned my new way, when my home will be ready and my earth tilled, I shall steal one day, for the last time into the cursed City of my birth.” (Rand 101). Thus doing so Equality wants to educate himself and bring the others to his new home in order to create his own society where people are free to be themselves. There he and the others will embrace the word “I” and be free to become
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
Anthem is a good book about the future and their own versions of a Utopian society. This novel is all about independence and how options are limited. The question asked is if you think Equality’s eventual assessment of his sins is correct. My answer to this question is, he felt as if his sins taught him more.
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.
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 book Anthem by Ayn Rand is a very interesting book. At first it is confusing to the reader because of the use of the words we and us instead of I. The main character, Equality 7-2521 introduces himself in the plural form. The reader takes a while to figure this out. The era that Equality is in, is after the Great Rebirth.
From Equality’s point of view, his desires and fulfillment are of more importance than the society’s excessive restrictions. Individuality, Rand claims, is necessary for one’s contentment; thus, the individual must always weigh themselves greater than all else. By emphasizing his independent priorities, Equality is able to rebel against the regulations he believes are
Throughout all of his life, everything Equality did was ruled over by a controlling government, until he managed to escape. Once Equality enters the forbidden forest, his motivations are clearly revealed to the reader. Once Equality enters the forest, he truly begins to discover parts of himself he never knew existed, “We could also rise, or run, or leap, or fall down again. We were thinking that these were thoughts without sense, but before we knew it our body had risen in one leap”(78). There are many moments similar to this once Equality enters the forest, and once he is reunited with Liberty, he is the happiest he had ever been before.
Equality lives in a collectivist society, which is a society that believes, “that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called “the common good.” Therefore, Equality being the person he is, struggles with being an individual. He knows it is against the law but he enjoys knowledge so much, it confuses him. He states, “And in our heart-strange are the ways of evil! - and in our heart there is the first peace we have known in 20 years.”
Equality 7-2521 can free himself from collectivism because he was independent. In the novel Anthem Ayn Rand makes us comprehend that Equality had and inner struggle and
In the final chapters of the book, after Equality and The Golden One have discovered their new house and proposed to build a new life, they read books in its intact library and so discover the forbidden word, “I” (94). This discovery prompts Equality to radically overhaul his entire way of going through life, aligning it to Rand’s Objectivist philosophy. His focus on himself, illustrated through his obsession with the word I is show in the last two chapters of the book, where he latches on to the idea that devoting one’s life to only oneself is the only appropriate way to live life. Rand shows this with statements from Equality such as, “I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them”(96). Equality is proclaiming that his life will be best lived in a purely selfish manner, where he will not take care of anyone else, but will not ask anyone to take care of him either.
Individuality allows every person to be themselves and be different from each other. However, In Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem, Rand describes a society where the people were not allowed to openly be themselves, or else they would be punished for being different. The main character, Equality, notices he is different slowly throughout the novella, but kept continuing to be like everyone else for awhile. These rules exist in this society to strip human individuality in order to achieve total equality.
Dystopian literature Is it not common for people to be controlled by others? For freedom to be taken away from their lives and not giving them the rights they deserve? The book Anthem and the film the Hunger Games are known as dystopian novels. Ayn Rand, the author of Anthem writes stories like these to catch the young audience's attention. Suzanne Collins, the author of The Hunger Games as another dystopian novel where people are not granted their freedom either.
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.
However, since the council fails to recognize this idea, Equality has two options: either face imminent execution or flee. By choosing the latter and fleeing into the Uncharted Forest, Equality finally is, in a physical sense, free from the rule of collectivist society. Now he is alone in the forest, alone with his thoughts. He decides where he goes, when he sleeps, what he eats. However, he is still not fully
Equality has changed from a collective to an individual having the knowledge of realizing what he can do to change himself in the environment. Anthem has shown how the society works. The main character Equality has proven the allegory when he realizes there's more than just a collectivism society. From start of the novel Equality has been able to grow from a part of a collectivism to learning about individualism to becoming an individual. Equality conquers the battle of collectivism and individualism for