Anthem By Lois Lowry: Equality's True Motive

Megan Morecraft

Honors English II

Mrs. Drake

September 28, 2016

Equality’s True Motive

Similar to The Giver by Lois Lowry, the society (in The Giver) is built upon rules that restrict the motives and individualities of the people that live within the community. For example, in The Giver the Elders of the society took away the ability to see color and feel love for one another by making the people resort to sameness. The protagonist, Jonas, was special like Equality in Anthem, because both of the characters figured out the problems of their society and rebelled. In the novella, Anthem, Ayn Rand creates a character named Equality, also known as Prometheus, who conducts secret experiments that are genuinely motivated by the desire to prove self-worth

The real motive that Equality possesses is the aspiration to prove self-worth to the character himself and to the community. In the text, Equality states, “No single one can possess greater wisdom than the many Scholars who are elected by all men for their wisdom. Yet we can. We do. We have fought against saying it, but now it is said.”(54) By Equality boasting that he has greater wisdom than any of the Scholars, it shows the interior motives that drives the passion and determination of his success and why Equality is so anxious to prove to the Council that the “box of light” would help all of mankind. It seems to be the act of proving himself worthy as a person to the community and not just an ignorant old street

Everyone would feel obliged to be better than the next person in order to keep themselves content. If one would result in being the “best”, then dictatorship might arise like in the text, “And the roads of the world will become as veins which will carry the best of the world’s blood to my threshold. And all my brothers, and the Councils of my brothers, will hear of it, but they will be impotent against me.” (104) As a result, people would become negative and believe that they would never be more successful than the next person. In the world today, more often than not, couples tend to marry someone who is the total opposite to them because there isn’t competition within the household. In the end, people thrive on the simple individualities that differ from their own self.

As a final thought, Equality can be thought of as selfish, but every person has the ambition to prove themselves to the world and to his or herself. People should always follow their heart, but at the same time realize there are limits set to protect them and that they need to respect the boundaries. Overall, if more people in the world were motivated in the same as Equality, the world would have its ups and downs, but it depends on how far the individuals are