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Just A Street Sweeper In Anthem By Ayn Rand

755 Words4 Pages

Just a Street Sweeper
Imagine waking up every morning just to go sweep the same old boring street over and over again. It would feel depressing or distressing. These emotions describe the exact feelings Equality 7-2521 felt everyday. He was just a street sweeper who was not allowed to unleash his curiosity because of his dull and lifeless vocation. Equality was looked down upon all because of his simple little job. In Anthem, Ayn Rand uses the characters’ vocations to form a social class system in their society; by giving certain houses more value, by putting people with differences in the same house, and having the World Council look down upon houses such as the Street Sweepers.
The society in Anthem designates some houses/vocations to be more appealing and more prestigious, making people feel their value and worth are less if they are not in a noteworthy vocation. The Home of the Leaders was seen as the foremost vocation that everyone wanted to have, as explained in this quote: “Home of the Leaders, which is the greatest house in the city” (Rand 25). The Home of the Leaders is where possible members of the World Council reside, therefore everyone strives …show more content…

When Equality tried to show them his invention they said “You should be a street sweeper, how dare you think that you could be of greater use to men than in sweeping the streets?” (Rand 72). Since Equality was a street sweeper they did not allow him to make inventions. They used his vocation as a form of discrimination, they would not let him pitch ideas/inventions all because he was a street sweeper. They also made fun of him by saying things like “How dare you, gutter cleaner” (Rand 72). They insulted him using his vocation. The World Council would decrease some vocations “rank” by simply always making fun of them and limiting their options in

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Equality 7-2521 doesn’t like what the council of vocations assigned his job for the rest of his life. He was always different from his brothers and people look at him like. Equality 7-2521 always wanted to be apart of the home of the scholars and learn more things. While doing his job equality sees an a dark tunnel that lead to thing from the unmentionable. He sneaks off to the tunnel to mess with this box that he found while roaming the tunnels one night.

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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.

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The council did everything to make him less of a danger to their society, such as leaving him Street Sweeper that requires no knowledge. As a Street Sweeper, Equality 7-2521 is restricted the resources needed in order to reach his goal of learning. The council also turned away Equality’s glass box because it is “dangerous” to the society. The council is Equality 7-2521’s biggest nemesis resorting in him escaping the

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In Ayn Rand's Dystopian/Philosophical novel “Anthem” we are given the chance to witness Equality 7-2521 flourish and bloom as a character in the first chapter alone. Despite living in a society where his rights as a human being are overly oppressed, Equality began to bring forth his uncoerced mind by the end of chapter 1 through his desire to know more about himself and the world around him. At the beginning of the story Ayn Rand portrays Equality 7-2521 as a defiant yet compliant person, Accordingly Equality states that “... there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone … The laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations bid them so. May we be forgiven!”(Rand 3).

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Equality 7-2521 is very pleased with his performance and is very confident that the Council would also be as pleased as he did. Equality 7-2521 then goes back to the society and gets caught by the Council because he has been missing. The Council then is more curious on where he’s been but he refuses to tell them because he knows what he did was against the rules. He is then beat so that he would tell the truth of where he was. Equality 7-2521 then escapes from the Palace of Corrective Detention by doing things by himself, as an individual.

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In Ayn Rand’s novella, Anthem, mankind is a philanthropic machine. The brotherhood nobly works together to achieve a common goal. In doing so, each man is asked to disregard his own personal means and goals. For every decision must be a collective thought and every advancement, a joint action. However, one man in this machine malfunctions.

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In Anthem the society did not have any opinion on anything or how their life would go. In the book the author explains how they couldn’t decide for themselves, “This is the only thing that moved, for the lips of the oldest did not move as they said: Street Sweeper.”(26) as portrayed in the book, the people did not decide where they wanted to be sent to work for the rest of their lives. The man in the book was the smartest person in his school and he still got street sweeper, while it took 50 years for the scholars to fully discover a candle. The people couldn’t even choose when they went to bed, “In the home of the students we arose when the big bell rang in the tower and we went to our beds when it rang again. ”(21)

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Which in turn shows even if people and Equality know this is breaking rules it shows how prejudiced society is because you can not always control how you feel about someone, something, or a topic. Since this society is so prejudiced, it leads to many issues and fingers pointed at Equality and his fellow street sweepers. With prejudice being thrown at these characters just for their looks or action, it shows similarity to racial prejudice because the characters can be bullied just for a more tan skin or a lighter skin. In the end, Equality 7-2521 is just purely prejudice given to him for how he is and what he can not

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