Social Blindness In Anthem By Ayrn Rand

Brainwashing can be in anything to a Dictatorship to a Republic, also in Totalitarian states

The word contentious means tending to argue or strife; quarrelsome. This connects to what the chapter is portrayed in many ways. In this chapter, Equality 7-2521/ Prometheus go to the council to discuss the light box and all of their discretions. I think that this chapter title is exactly what is going on in this chapter because they spend most of the chapter arguing with Equality. On the second page, Equality tells the council that they are street sweepers.

“We, Equality 7-2521, have discovered a new power,” (Rand 52). Ayn Rand’s dystopian novel, Anthem, the society in the book is taught from birth to think only in plural which has gone so far that the words such as “I” was abolished and anyone who would say or do anything alone would be punished/ burned. The main character, Equality 7-2521, discovers light for the first time. Equalities discoveries and experiments helped him first start to question his existence. After the discovery of light and electricity he brings it to the house of scholars where it gets turned down which sends him on a path of running away and a steep slope to selfishness.

Dependency. This word is straight from Hades according to Ayn Rand. She believes very strongly in ethical egoism, which is the ideal that people need to look out for themselves and not depend on the government or anyone else for help. She very clearly portrays this warning in being dependent on the government and others in her book Anthem and in her interview with Mike Wallace. Her views on helping the less fortunate through the government and other organizations are no exception to these ideals.

Technology usage rates in today’s world are immense, Pew Research Center says that about 85% of American adults use technology on a daily basis. In Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, the rate of usage is significantly higher. The novel’s futuristic society has outlawed all books, forcing citizens such as Mildred and her friends to turn to technology for knowledge instead. As a result, a majority of the civilization possesses such a low mental capacity that there is rarely a reaction to the constant threat of nuclear war, or any event leading to the development of the society. Bradbury uses Mildred and her friends’ poor mental capacity to demonstrate both how reliance on technology damages one’s ability to think for oneself, and

The word “I” has a significant impact on our society. Its absence gradually lowers our society to have unjust expectations of people, and allow those expectations to influence our government. The book Anthem, by Ayn Rand, is an example of this occurrence. There is no use of the word “I”, “my”, or any word that implies individuality, as it has been prohibited by the government.

Individuality is defined as the quality that makes one person or thing different from all others. However, individuality does not exist in all societies. Anthem by Ayn Rand, is set in a dystopian society where collectivism is believed to be supreme, and individuality is considered taboo. Equality 7-2521 is a Street Sweeper who questions the collectivist society that he lives in. Equality 7-2521 is a gifted individual who is different from his peers in the fact that he has personal interests.

Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise. In a society that functions by this proverb, wisdom is hard to come by. However, for a being longing for this wisdom, with a natural urge of curiosity, this “bliss” is hell. Equality, a being longing for the validation of his differences in a society of group mentality, is spare of individual morality. He accepts the ignorance of total equality that is forced on him, but is contrastingly different from the image of a part of a communal whole.

Anthem is a novel that was written in 1937 by Ayn Rand, about a dystopian society that only believes in the word, “We”, and its only most exciting resource is a candle. To this society they have no clue what it means to be an individual because their leaders take away their individuality whether that is by, eliminating the way they allow their citizens to communicate with each other or even by not evolving the society from using candles to using lights. In this novel the protagonist, Prometheus is a rare citizen because he has a sense of individuality and he is able to realize heta his community is doing is not right. As the novel goes on the reader is able to see that Prometheus becomes an individual as he falls in love for a girl, Gaea that he met while working. This girl helped Prometheus become an individual because believed in his creation and that belief pushed Prometheus to show his invention to the world council.

In Ayn Rand’s novel Anthem, social class was shown to be destructive. In the novel, there was a time period called “ The Unmentionable Times” where men had social classes and they took advantage it. This ruined the community and destroyed it. However Ayn Rand wrote this novel to showcase that it is important to have social class because if we were all equal then our government would take away from a people’s individual rights. In the novel, the council was shown to have all the power by enforcing fear in their people.

"We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the great WE, One, indivisible and forever’”(Rand 19). In Ayn Rand’s dystopian novel, Anthem, the citizens are trained from birth to think only in the plural, to the point where they cannot even conceive of individuals, but only see each other as part of the whole group. Rand’s protagonist, Equality 72521, begins the novel as a street-sweeper who is devoted to the group, but begins to move towards individuality as he progresses towards pure selfishness, as Rand believes we all should. Rand uses the words “we” and “I” to represent Equality’s journey from being dependent on the group, to being utterly independent of everyone.

Another instance of brainwashing is “The pencil felt thick and awkward in his fingers. He began to write down the thoughts that came into his head. He wrote first in large clumsy capitals: FREEDOM IS SLAVERY Then almost without a pause he wrote beneath it: TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE”(Orwell 160) Winston Has been brainwashed into thinking these

Peer pressure is a very disturbing thing in our culture today. In the book ScrewTape Letters, ScrewTape informs Wormwood about peer pressure. Of how this pressure can lead one astray for going into the wrong crowd. People change people. It is easier to pull someone off a chair than to pull someone up onto the chair.

Technological advances in Fahrenheit 451 and in modern daily life affect communication skills. In the novel, technology has replaced their books, their imagination, and even their face-to-face conversations. It has taken away people’s thirst for knowledge and impacted the way individuals think. People have become comfortable with “the dependence of technology, the 24/7 availability of the Internet, and our constant use of devices makes us all behave as if we had ADHD” (Rosen).

Indirect peer pressure is said to be more common than direct peer pressure as we may not even realise that we gave into peer