In part one and two of the book Anthem I saw a strong resemblance to Amish beliefs and the Councils beliefs. The main connector was the fact that both believe that electrical lights are not to be used. As About.com mention, the Amish do not use electrical lights because they believe it takes away form the family structure. The council often speaks of the unmentionable times as evil and everything they knew was “lost”. Meaning that they step backwards losing electrical lights because it was deemed evil. Although it is unclear the reason for the councils hatred of electrical light the Amish and the Council have that in common. Another connector is the sense of family. About.com states In amish country it is common to have large families and the children all do chores to ensure that the family survives. In the Anthem in many cases Brother is used to speak of men around you. What I understand from this is that the Council wants you to feel as if you are a family and you do jobs to ensure that the family survives. As you can see they are also similar in this way, they both value family and dependency on others in the family to survive. As a final connector they both clearly believe that the technology in the past is much better than that of today. The Amish believe in simpler form of tech excluding electricity same with the Council. The council believes in simpler technology. This is clearly showcased in their use in candles and the hatred of the unmentionable times which I believe had electricity.
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This book has also connected to Uglies because both play with the idea of a Utopia. In Uglies you are an ugly until you are given surgery at 16 and you become pretty, This in theory gets rid of the problem of people judging each other upon appearance. In Anthem people are given jobs and have a low level of technology. This means that people are given jobs ensure that everyone has the “correct” job for them and the low level of technology is maintained because it is believed to be beneficial to humans and create a “perfect world”. As you can see both books have showcased that they are attempting to create utopias connecting these two book in that way. Also both books seem to have main characters who a have trouble following the rules of the Utopia. In Uglies the main character escapes the Utopia. In Anthem our main character often has thoughts that contradicted the Utopias rules. As you can see both are have or are having trouble conforming to the utopia rules and I predict that Equality 7-2521(our main character) will run away from the Utopia as the main character in Uglies did. What do you think?
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Written by Cian M.
Cian,
ReplyDeleteI found your connections very interesting and they really made me think deeply about the book in a way that I would not have done on my own. However, I am not quite sure that I agree with you that the Council beliefs and the Amish beliefs are the same. In Anthem the council has no idea why the things like electrical lights got destroyed and they assume that they are bad but, at least in my opinion, have nothing to really base that assumption on. All they really know is that the world as they knew it basically ended and they no longer had these luxuries that we have so there must have been something wrong with them otherwise they would still exist. The Amish want a nice sense of family and they dislike electrical lights for that reason. To wrap everything up, I guess that I am trying to say that I can see these similarities but I think that they came about for different reasons and, at least in my mind, that makes all the difference.
Katie
Cian, I really liked the way you connected different types of media to the book that we are reading now. I also really liked the way you questioned us without ever putting a question mark in your paragraphs. However, I don't agree with you when you say that the main character depends on family, (because he has none,and also that everyone views him as different) I think that of all the people in his society he is one of the most distant from others unity.
ReplyDeleteIt's true, both Uglies and Anthem have people who don't follow the rules in their community. In Anthem, Equality 7-2521 what they are doing is a sin, (by stealing things from others jobs, having their secret hole, talking to Liberty 5-3000.) However, I don't believe that they will run away because they wanted to or hate where they live. Uglies knew that there was another city. They knew there was more to the world to see. In Anthem with what we learned, so far there isn't anything beyond, only that it was destroyed. You might be right in some ways, but then they might find a secret passage through their black hole ( Like City of Ember) or just show the world there new discoveries and how to improve their lives. Moving on your connection with the Amish made me realize how important the information of no technology was to the book. I knew that they used candles, but I didn't really connect with it. Amish and Anthem hardly used technology. Is this bad or good for the community in your opinion? Following Amish and Anthem had different views on how not using technology helps. Amish people want the sense of family and without the electronic devices it brings them closer together. But in Anthem the council has no idea why the things like electrical light go destroyed, so they assume it's dangerous and don't use it. I hope you understand my point of view.
ReplyDeleteCian,
ReplyDeleteAs Katie mentioned before, I really liked the way you connected this book with Uglies, and it really helps me understand even more about the situation. In fact, the book that came into my mind wasn't Uglies, but actually The City of Ember. However, I disagree with a certain line you stated on your post: "As you can see both are have or are having trouble conforming to the utopia rules and I predict that Equality 7-2521(our main character) will run away from the Utopia as the main character in Uglies did." I do not believe that our main character, Equality 7-2521, will not escape from the Utopia-like city. Not going to lie, Equality 7-2521 had thoughts contradicting thoughts about the Utopia. But if you don't know what's out there, it's hard to identify what your striving for. Kind of like The Giver. Jonas escaped with his younger brother, Gabriel, to somewhere he didn't even know. They just needed to get out of the Utopia. And I believe that Equality 7-2521 will not make the mistake Jonas did in "The Giver".
Mathaus Silva
Cian, Really good post! Since I also did connection captain, so this was a really interesting post. The thing I most agree is with the Uglies part. I think our main character will do something that contradicts to his/her utopia. I also had not thought of how this could connect to the Amish, and it really does. I really like this connection because it is of the real world, and it is not made up like these Utopia's. Great post!
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