Sunday, February 8, 2015

Stefano Delmanto, Question Commander Anthem

Stefano Delmanto
Mr. Beck
3.8
Feb.8.15

Question Commander

Question 1:
Why are the citizens from the city called by names such as equality, liberty?

In my opinion, there are many reasons that the government. But from I understood from the text about the government wanting to keep everything fair etc... It makes me think that the government wants the people to remind themselves about some core-values such as equality and liberty. Which in my opinion is ridiculous. This adding to the fact that the parents of the kids don't even get to see or name their own children!
Until this part of the book I can clearly see that the government of this society is trying to create a utopia. But they don't realize that people need to have the ability of choosing! Freedom? A basic of any society independent of their goals is to have freedom. It is wrong for the government to put two people together to have kids agains their will!
Now that I am writing these thoughts down I realized that this book reminds me of a book that I read in 7th grade called Uglies. In this book, The city is separates Uglies and Pretties. Basically, Tally Youngblood wants to have the surgery that will make her pretty; but then she gets caught up in a rebellion against society and comes to appreciate a world where not everyone is pretty.The book does not give people freedom and they have to live separately so there're no comparisons between them.

This is the book Uglies by Scott Westerfeld


Question 2:
Who takes care of children once they are born?

Since parents don't see their children when or even after they are born who takes care of them? This is completely wrong. To begin with, they should not have that mating age. People should love people that they actually like. It is morally wrong in many senses to be forced to love someone. Anyways, moving on; wouldn't it be good for the children to al least see their parents for a while so they passed on some hints to their children. Place your-self having a child and not being able to take care of them, It is just horrible!

People are not free to love!
This is what I feel like the book expresses to the reader.


Question 3:
Why is it wrong to be different?

To be honest I need help answering this question? Why is it wrong?
Why can't people love?
While reading I noticed that the goal the government is to  have everybody treaded equal. No love, no ideas, no thinking. In my opinion, the government is manipulating the people by forbidding things and adding laws that if broken will cause severe consequences such as being  burned, chop of your tongue etc...

This image expresses that people try not to be different, in other words no freedom.
As we can see, one person stands out in the image and in the context of the book Anthem this person is Equality.

4 comments:

  1. I found the post had interesting questions which had many different ideas. For the first question, I think that people are being called Equality and Liberty because of the passed dark age. Since there was this dark age, to keep order, probably each person was prohibited to be themselves, or have singularity. For the second question, I think that the children who are born they are isolated, because I think that people don't have time to take care of babies, so the babies grow isolated and are given to people once they are at an older age. The third question, I think that the thing about being different, is that it generates different opinions , and if there are different opinions or ideas, then there will be conflict, because if you can think for yourself, then there will be different ideas, and so the leaders don't want people to have their own ideas.

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  2. Stefano,

    Good post. You made questions that take some time in reflecting, which makes it really good.

    Now, going into analysis, the question that caught my attention was the third one. You answered it by saying that it is incorrect that everyone is the same, and that the government was turning everyone alike, and in my opinion, I strongly agree with you. To begin my explanation, the book states, "They called the Students' names, and when the Students stepped before them, one after another, the Council said: 'Carpenter' or 'Doctor' or 'Cook' or 'Leader.'" This quote is extremely important since it actually shows the people being controlled by the Council as the Council is choosing the profession for each and every child. Furthermore, when you read the next sentence after this quote, each ad everyone of the children are forced to accept their fate, and it can't be changed. Because of this happenings, we can clearly see that the people are being controlled by the authorities so that all citizens look alike and act similar. Now, like you said on your post, I disagree with this idea. The reason being is because each person has his strong and weak points. To enhance the idea, some people can be good at soccer but horrible at tennis, and others can be good at tennis but horrible at soccer. Now, because the authorities established laws that made the whole population act similar, no one has strong or weak points as everyone is be forced to be good on what the authorities require you to be good at, making no one to be amazing at anything since everyone will be the same. This is the reason I disagree with the authorities.

    Next, my question to you is, "Did this question help enhance your idea?" The reason I ask this is because we both agree that the authorities in the book are incorrect, and I wanted to see if our answers were similar.

    Daniel

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  3. Stefano,
    I thought your three questions were really good. For the first question, opinion. I think they are called Equality 7-2521 and Liberty 5-3000 because " equality " and " liberty " are life values that are very important for life. I think that the government is giving them the right to be equal and have liberty as long as they don't do anything wrong. Answering your second question, I also have my doubts on who takes care of the children. I also think it is not fair to not be able to take care of your own children. Answering your last question, I think the government doesn't want anybody to be different because than that means not everybody is equal. The goal of this community is for everybody to be equal. Great Post !

    - Juan Carlos

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  4. Hey Stefano,
    I liked your post. The answers were kind of broad which gives the readers some space to think, instead of having everything dictated to them in the text. moving on to the questions. Your first question I found kind of interesting. I think that the system of these names and kids not being with their parents comes from the fact that the government doesn't want any confusion among its citizens with the names and other things like that. But on the contrary to what you thought, This book reminded me of the Giver. In the giver, only the giver and the elders knew all of the things from the past like war, oceans, elephants, animals, etc. And they chose to remove the past and freedom of choice from its citizens like in Anthem. And in the end of the giver, Jonas escapes and goes to live somewhere else, just like Equality did at the end of anthem.

    Your second question I also liked, and thought it was intriguing, but I think that with a little thought, it becomes self explanatory. The fact that they are not allowed to be with their parents is probably to avoid conflict with other people. Say for example, that one kid had extremely loving parents, and another had really mean parents. If these kids knew each other, the kid with mean parents would become jealous of the other kid, and he would want parents like his. Except that wanting things is a sin in their society, and so this scenario could contain itself and not be problematic, or it could snowball and go completely out of control. So this system is awful, nonetheless, but it help maintain order, since when the kid is born, the parents don't feel the same love for hem like our parents do for us.

    Your third question I think is a little obvious. If everybody is different, that means they are treated differently, which is not equality, just as you said that it is the objective of this government, they want everybody as equals. Just consider this. You have an excellent student, like Equality, who learns really fast, and then you have an average student who learns at the same speed as everyone else. That does not lead to equal treatment, because it is trouble for the teacher in that society to have to grade work by Equality which is much better in quality and more complex than that of the others. e

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