Relationship Between Equality And Liberty In Ayn Rand's Anthem

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In the history of humanity there have been no perfect relationships, and the same thing could be said about Equality and Liberty in Ayn Rand book Anthem. In Anthem the main character, Equality, is struggling to understand and accept the rule of a completely equal society. He pushes rules to the edge when he meets a girl named Liberty and they run from the equal society to make a completely free society in the uncharted forest. The relationship between Equality and Liberty changes drastically from in the beginning to the end as Liberty goes from strong and empowered to submissive and praising while equality is shy and curious to strong and godlike. At the beginning of the book Equality is still unaware of Liberty’s existence while Liberty was …show more content…

The book now sends the relationship in the direction of an extremely stereotypical way. Liberty changes as soon as she sees the clothes from the unspeakable times when Equality says “We found garments, and the Golden One gasped at the sight of them” (Rand 91). The stereotype that all women love clothes in exercised in the extreme here because Liberty has seen nothing except the white tunics they wear. So when she sees the clothes she should have been curious to know what they were, but instead she went off like a teenage girl. But we haven’t seen the changes for Equality who’s supposed to be the strong man who protects his family and do all the work. Until he says “We did this work alone, for no words of ours could take the Golden One away from the big glass which is not glass” (Rand 92). This is not only showing Equality’s change, of doing all the hard work and all the hunting, but also another snapshot at the “new” Liberty and how she loves looking at herself in the mirror. ( conclusion sentence ) In the beginning the relationship was still unknown and Liberty and Equality had just met. As the book moves on Liberty is more submissive, and Equality became stronger and more selfish. Finally their relationship becomes some what normal as they become equals, the stereotypes of men