An Analysis Of Ayn Rand's Anthem

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Aaron Sartain Honors English 10 Mrs. Abate 11 March 2015 Anthem Essay People living in this collectivist society have been indoctrinated into believing in, and only in the power of “we”. Ayn Rand communicates in the novella Anthem, that despite the indoctrination process, individualism will break through the chains of collectivism. Rand uses alliteration, tone, and irony to convey the need for an escape from the grasp of the government provided persona. Before the escape from The Palace of Corrective Detention, Equality still has the need to fit in with the rest of the fold, only for self-gain. He says, “Our blessing upon you, our brothers! Tomorrow, you will take us back into your fold and we shall be an outcast no longer. Tomorrow we shall be one of you …show more content…

Here Equality is shown wanting to fit in, this represents the internal conflict inside Equality. He later makes his decision to not fit in and to be an individual by escaping. This is ironic considering in this excerpt, he wants to be one with his brethren but later, he yearns for his own presence and not the government’s. When he is escaping the Palace of Corrective Detention, he exemplifies his own character, not the provided one. He executes, “We swung our fist through the windowpane, and we leapt out in a ringing rain of glass”(Rand 75). Escaping the government would be escaping the identity dispensed to him, he shows who he really is, representing that human nature by instinct wants to innovate and be free. The excerpt has a rebellious tone towards the government and therefore his rigged form of self-worth. Words such as “swung” and “leapt” arm the literature with a feature or tone of great strength and rebellion. These words coincide with the phrase “ringing rain”. The use of alliteration here enlightens the reader to the contumacious tone. The choice to put this

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