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The Significance Of The Path Of Water In Anthem By Ayn Rand

519 Words3 Pages

Water spans over approximately seventy-one percent of the Earth’s surface. It is vital to the survival of every species, and serves as a passage way between societies. Likewise, “The Path of Water”, in the novel, The Seven Paths, can meaningfully connect to other texts, today’s world, and my life. For instance, this passage can correlate to the community within Anthem. The narrator of The Seven Paths hunts for water. He describes the horrendous sensation of being without water for too long. “I know the feeling of walking of walking too long without water. I have felt the thirsty fingers of death constricting around my soul” (The Seven 37). He comprehends that water is vial and that he is deprived of it. In Anthem, Equality 7-2521 is also denied …show more content…

Equality 7-2521 declares, “We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those years in the Home of the Students. It wasn’t that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy… We wished to know. We wished to know about all the things which makes the world around us. We asked so many questions that the Teachers forbade it” (Rand 8-9). Equality 7-2521 wishes to learn, but is restricted because of his teachers. While his intelligence transcends those of his peers, he is frowned upon. This behavior would normally be considered meritorious, but Anthem’s society discourages differences among citizens. His superior intellect brands him as atypical. However, both characters fulfill their needs. The narrator of The Seven Paths finds water during the Great Storm while Equality 7-2521 discovers knowledge when he began to study in the sewer. In addition, “The Path of Water” relates to today’s world. On page thirty-eight, the narrator states, “The deserts and lush forests around us mirror the deserts and lush forests within” (The Seven). In society, we view civilization as we visualize ourselves. Our perceptions change as we mature and

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In the opening pages of Anthem, Equality 7-2521 gives much background knowledge of the society he lives and the horrible details of the laws and regulations they have created. Along with that he explains that he has committed a grave sin already which is writing and that in doing so it doesn’t allow him to live, tagged with other misdeeds in which is labeled as “transgressions.” Being categorized as a Street Sweeper he has unwinded the discovery of a hidden tunnel that once existed during the Unmentionable Times.   "Since the Council does not know of this hole, there can be no law permitting to enter it.

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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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Anthem is a novel about a man, Equality 7-2521, who has been different from everyone else ever since he was a child. Equality has more ambition than the other people and he also breaks some of the laws. such as using the word "I" and keeping secrets from the council. But, his collectivist society taught him that being different is a sin so, he tries hard to suppress his curiosity and his desire of wanting another job than what the council assigned him. One day, as equality is working , he sees the beautiful Liberty 5-3000 among the peasants.

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Prompt: Explain the following quote: “To be free, a man must be free of his brothers.” How does this quote exemplify a theme of Anthem? In the novel “Anthem” by Ayn Rand, the main character Equality 7-2521 expresses his own individuality. Through the challenges that he was faced with, he learned many way to express himself differently.

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(Rand 98). Equality realizes what he has not had, what he has been kept from. And that is when he knows that, “There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom.

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As a result this quote exemplifies the fact that Equality 7-2521 is burgeoning as a person, and starting to show his humanity and how he would have come about if not coerced by this despotic society. This aforementioned desire to defend and protect the place even at the cost of his own life is a major transmutation from the beginning of the story where he was willing to ask for forgiveness contrasted to now where he would rather die. Moreover, Equality 7-2521 developed even further after his discovery of the tunnel. Soon afterward Equality’s discovery of the tunnel, he magnified his already knowledgeable mind additionally and committed more and more transgressions as time progressed “We are defying the will of our councils. We alone, of the thousands who walk this earth, we alone in this hour are doing a work which has no purpose save that we wish to do

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Intelligence. Something that Equality 7-2521 has a great deal of. Ayn Rand, the author of Anthem, suggests that Equality 7-2521 knows that he is too intelligent to be a street sweeper, and he tries to prove his intelligence through his experiments so he can be “willed” into the Home of the Scholars. She shows this through his time in the Home of the Students when Equality is punished for his quick head, his love for learning, and the idea of learning, and when he escapes to the tunnel to work on his invention. Equality knows he is intelligent when he is punished in the Home of the Students because of his quick head.

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He is catching the reader up with what has happened in his life to get to the point is his now. At the age of 21, Equality received the job ‘Street Sweeper’ and his duty was to clean the city’s streets. While sweeping the streets, Equality found this tunnel near the theater. He would go illegally to this tunnel while his “brothers” watched a play that took three hours. During these three hours, he would work on science experiences creating new things and study the manuscripts he stole from the Scholars.

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Running into a problem he soon finds himself in the Uncharted Forest, unsure of what to do while alone. During his time of exploring he is found by the Golden One Equality learns to explore the greater things and be an independent person. First, Equality 7-2521 introduces himself, explaining his sins and the possible punishments he could get for it. The Teacher’s would constantly remind him of how the evil was in him, all for being taller than his brothers. When you would think badly you were forced to repeat “We are one in all and all in one.

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This made Equality find out who he is and gave him the chance to be an individual. Equality’s views and mindset changes through out the book. He was born in a society where people are named by numbers. A world where people are used as machines. In this world the word “I” is out of existence.

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At the beginning, he reveals the unique features that make him an outlier in society and how these features and thoughts are not accepted. Equality 7-2521 begins by talking about how in his society, “it is a sin to think words no others think,” in addition to how it is not allowed to “put them down upon a paper no others are to see” (Rand 2). Equality 7-2521 reveals how the society he is living in has no freedom or individualism for people, and they must abide by society’s rules, or otherwise, they are punished. Equality also shows how society believes in conformity rather than individuality, and has taken freedom away from the individuals living in society, brainwashing them into society’s values. Later on, in Anthem, Equality brings a new concept to the World Council of Scholars, which is against the law but uses society’s ideas to brainwash them into listening to him plead for acceptance.

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"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.

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“It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy” (21). But throughout the novel Equality realizes he isn’t afraid of life and is glad to be living. Glad to be alive “ But we, Equality 7-2521 are glad to be living” (47). Equality realizes that there is hope, for him to be an individual not just to be a part of a collectivism.

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