Friday, March 27, 2009

Anthem..& Then We Wrote

Life expectancy of people in Equality of Anthem's world is extremely low. Most people only lived to be about forty. I could not even imagine that, but many reasons suggested why this was true for them. Their appearance, work, and everyday lifestyles had a lot to do with why they could not live very long. Here is an excerpt from my essay on why their lifestyles effect their life expectancy:


"Mostly, the lifestyles of Equality 7-2521’s people pushed them to live a shorter life because of the obvious unhappiness and despair. The people had no freedom. The way they lived and what they did when they lived was all chosen for them throughout their lives. They had no preferences in their life. They could not chose what they wanted to learn, what job they wanted, who they wanted to be with, or anything else in their lives. Because of the fear of breaking a rule and being punished, people would not even speak what was on their mind. The people could have little to no fun. Throughout their lives, the days were very repetitive making them very boring. People went through the same schedule everyday of their lives, and only three hours of their day were for recreation. People need choice, diversity, and fun in their lifestyles in order to survive very long. Since Equality 7-2521’s people had none of this, they were unhappy and had no hope, so they only survived a very short time."

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

To Perfect My World...

Much of our world could use perfecting. Because humans effect the world a lot, most of the perfecting could be done starting with the humans who live on our world.

Men and women could be more civil. In our world, too much fighting and war takes place. War destroys our world and tears the people of our world apart. Many people are killed, and in no cases is killing perfect.

People could get along and accept everyone for who they are. They could celebrate the diversity of the world rather than shunning the diversity. Today, people are too busy judging others and not worrying enough about how they are effecting the world.

People are not informed enough about our world. Many do not know what is even going on in the world today. Therefore, the people do not know what they can do to help perfect our world.

Because so many actions can be taken to perfect our world, the land is far from perfection. People will probably never want to take the actions to perfect our world because they are too busy trying to keep others from being perfect. But...hope is always there! :)

Saturday, March 7, 2009

#6-Anthem

Perfect World. Can perfect and world really be used together? Is the phrase just an oxymoron? Ayn Rand's Anthem hooked me with a story of a perfect world.

The setting was, of course, a perfect world. Everyone was happy. Everyone was as one. Everyone was "WE". No one disobeyed the course of the world. People were not assigned names, but they were assigned more of what could be said as labels. From children to adults, they were told how to live their lives, and their whole life was planned for them. Different "Homes" housed people of different "trades". People died at the age of 45. That was how life was. But was this necessarily the "perfect world"?

The main character Equality 7-2521 was cursed. He was guilty many times of the "Transgression of Preference". This was looked down upon by the people of the world. People were not allowed to express their opinions on what they wanted to do or what they wanted to be. Equality 7-2521 disobeyed the ways of his land many times. When he was assigned as "Street Sweeper" as his work for the rest of his days, he took the job with pride although he wanted to be something else, a "Transgression of Preference". While on the job one day, he finds a passage which lead to the "Unmentionable Times" of his world. He does not want to give the place up, so he keeps his place a secret. In his place, he is guilty disobeying many rules of his world.

The theme of this book is a world is never perfect. Always, someone will not be happy with the way the world is, just as Equality 7-2521 was. No one can make everyone happy at once, so someone is always going to try to break free and be a rebel to their world. Never will there be a "perfect world".

To me, this book was only fairly interesting. The book ended well, and I was happy about that. I would not necessarily recommend Anthem to everyone, but I know many people out there that would probably enjoy reading the story.