G-Dubs
1-2-13
Equality
Good and the bad.
Do you know what happens when equality gets throw into the picture of our lives? You get the good, but then again you also get the bad. The affects that equality can have on a society are huge. Some of you may think that it is a “good” thing, but in reality the “bad” always seems to take over.
You will begin to see how, in the comparison of these two stories.
In the book The Giver, by Lois Lowry. There is a young boy named Jonas. He is the main character. He is a resident in a community, where everybody, and everything is exactly the same. The people who, I guess you can say made the community, made it to where the people who lived there, knew of nothing else. So it was basically that the only way to live was their way. That wasn’t the truth. Nobody ever doubted it, until Jonas, and the ceremony of the twelve’s came into the picture. About a week before the ceremony, jonas started seeing things “change”, little did he know, he had the ability to, “See beyond”. that’s basically what they consider to be a special gift. Jonas had been Chosen. His world, and everything he knew was about to be turned upside down.
It was only a short time, during his training to become a giver, did jonas realize what he had to do. If Jonas didn’t escape, he would be stuck here forever. He didn’t want that, but he dint want the community to know what else was out there either. Because it would be to hard for them to cope with. It was the givers idea to have Jonas leave. “and, after we eat.” he went on, “We’ll make a plan.” ( Lowry 154). Jonas was confused, but he knew it was what he had to do. Because the bad, took over what he had always knew to be life. Nobody could handle that lifestyle, if they knew what Jonas knew.
The next book, that falls into the same thing this does, is called Anthem, by Ayn Rand. Anthem is about another young boy, who doesn’t even have the privilege of having a normal name, he gets to be Equality 7-2521. I believe the community he is in, is like 10 times worse than the one Jonas was stuck in. In This community, the people can not even speak the word “I”, because no person is their own. If they were, not everybody could have been equal. Equality is smart, smarter than most people in this community. He pushes himself away from everybody, to invent one specific thing, a light bulb. When he succeeded he tried to take it to the board of scholars, but they freak. At first I dint really understand why it was taken so harshly, but then I realized why. It was because the board of scholars created the community, so they didn’t ant people to know there was other things out there, including the light bulb. If they showed the people what Equality 7-2521 It would have given the people of the community ideas, leading them to think of things beyond what they knew. When equality had run away, it was then that he realized there was more to the world, then he had been taught. The one he loved followed him. But since they knew not what love meant, he just knew he felt something different for her. She was named, Liberty 5-3000. But since they were no longer trapped, there were no rules, so he called her The golden one. They eventually realized that there was more to the world than they knew, so they made there knew world to each his own. With no equality, so no “bad” of society.
While reading these two books, I put myself in their shoes, each and every day. Thinking how would I feel, if I was in the position they are. Asking myself these questions, What would I have done? How would I react? And so on. It made me think about how the world is now, and how eventually people could try to make us like this. To me that is just scary, I don’t want to be like that. Too many people in this world rebel, so it could go one of both ways. Everybody would completely change, and go with the new ways our the world, or everybody would think that this person, whoever he/she is; has completely lost their freaking minds, and put them away. Forever.
So in conclusion, I think that societies like the ones that Equality 7-2521, and Jonas had lived in, have both good, and bad things about them. But even in a world such as ours, we have the bad and good. But we all know that the bad can take over. In a society where equality is present, the bad is defiantly going to over flow, and drown everybody. Which leads to nothing, but death.
