Monday, April 13, 2015

Gabe.Anthem week 1#

Anthem
Ayn-Rand
Connection Captain
Gabriel Yamada

The names of the characters reminded me of two things first prison and second what the army does to their soldiers.
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First of, the reason I believe that the names reminded me of the army because in prison they give you a number and call you by that number, not your name. This is really shocking because this really dehumanizes the prisoners by taking away what truly defines them, their name. By doing this they remove the pride of the prisoners and the individual achievements they have made and strip away that feeling, taking away the I, the ego, the personality of the person, and implanting the WE, the ideas of the people, the basics of communism. This is why I believe that each person is name Equality 7-2521 and Collective 0-0009, to take away the self pride of the person, the honor, and replace it with the incentive to help the majority.

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Second I believe that the reason that their names remind me of the army, is because the army use to encourage the idea of self sacrifice for the majority. This can be seen in many movies such as star wars in which the commander calls for soldier 3-0956 or someone else. But this idea of self sacrifice for the safety of the rest is present in every soldier or war movie be it from Star Wars to Captain America. The army tries to stamp out every idea of individualism, because that is what hinders it from accomplishing it's goal of collaborating to succeed.

3 comments:

  1. Gabe,
    Your post really helped to push my thinking forward. First, you gave me something really important to think about. You said that during prison they give you a call number and use it instead of your name. You also said that they would do that to take their pride away. I strongly agree with you, they give them these names to take ego and pride away. Pushing your thinking forward, I think that they have this word in the beggining of their names, not to define them but to remember 'core values'.

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  2. Hi, Gabe,

    Nice post! I can definitely see a correlation between the names in _Anthem_ and prison and army names. One question worth considering, however, is the ultimate effectivity of this system: Equality, for one, often remarks about how he feels that he alone is born with a "curse" that allows him to think freely. Do you think that free thought also exists within everybody else—but no one is able to admit it?

    Leo

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    Replies
    1. Yes, probably everyone has this urge, this "curse" but some have suppressed it at different levels of success. Some like Equality are not able to control this urge while others in the community can and have silenced it at different times. I believe they are afraid of admitting because they don't think there are others like them.

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