He had wished to find a warrant for being, but now understands that he needs neither warrant nor sanction. He is the warrant and sanction of his existence. He is overcome with the emotional experience of his intellectual realization: he has a right to his own life.
He is not a mere appendage of a group. He can choose his own path in life — his own interests, his own profession, his own wife, his own home. He is a free man, able to choose his goals, and then work strenuously to achieve them.
Related to this is his realization that no individual — neither himself nor any other human being — is a tool to be employed by others for some end they seek to accomplish. Humans are not servants, he claims, to bow and scrape before society, to render obedient service. An individual is "not a sacrifice on their altars. Equality realizes, after studying the books of the Unmentionable Times, what the proper relation is between individuals.
He owes no unchosen obligations to his brothers and sisters, nor do they owe him such. He states that he is neither a friend nor a foe to others, "but such as each of them shall deserve. Equality will choose friends from among his fellow humans, but neither masters nor servants.
He says that he will love and respect his friends, but neither command nor obey them. And when humans come together in friendship and in love, they will join hands only beyond each one's "holy threshold," and each will respect the personal boundaries of the other. Looking back on his past life in the city — and thinking sorrowfully of those innocent people still trapped there — he realizes that the horrors of his former society are the result of destroying the personal boundaries that each individual properly claims as their own.
Equality proclaims that he is forever done with the code of "we," with this creed of evil and destruction. He sees clearly the beneficent consequences that can result — as they did in the past — when society recognizes the sacred rights of individuals to mind, soul, values, and life.
He observes the face of a god, the god sought by humans since the inception of the world, the god who will grant joy and peace and pride. Equality has learned more than the word "I" from studying the texts of the Unmentionable Times. He has begun to understand the individualistic philosophy that underlies the meaning and value of this word. Equality had always understood this philosophy implicitly — he had felt that it was true and had lived it in action.
But prior to the events of this chapter, he had not the conceptual understanding of such a philosophy; he lacked the vocabulary — the very words — necessary to think about it. In reading the lost books, he discovers the words and the thoughts that explain and validate what he has always felt. At the emotional level, he had always believed an individual has the right to his own life.
Now, for the first time, he knows this is true, understanding it as an explicit, fully articulated intellectual theory. The emotional power of this chapter must be noted. Leading to this point in the story have been pages of unrelenting collectivism. The reader has been immersed in a world in which all shreds of individuality have been ruthlessly extirpated, in which the word "we" is the only form of first-person reference known, and in which the group holds unquestioned dominion over an individual's life.
Now, as Equality opens the chapter with the words, "I am, I think, I will," the impact of those words is profound. Equality needs no reason or "warrant" to be. He is his own reason for being. His own will is the only thing he needs to obey. Equality has realized his own happiness is his highest end.
He needs no higher end to justify it, because it's the purpose of his life. He does not need to justify his life by serving others.
In fact, Equality doesn't owe anything to anyone. He is vain and self-centered, strong, beautiful, and intelligent. When he and Equality find the secret tunnel, International pledges not to turn in Equality even though he is supposed to. Equality Prometheus The hero of the story.
He is a man of unbending independence living in a dark age of a future totalitarian state. The state commands him to be a Street Sweeper, but he is fascinated by science and secretly performs research on his own. By Ayn Rand. Lesson Summary She has named him the Unconquered in her mind. Equality is born into a society in which individuality is a crime.
To his societal disadvantage, Equality is gifted with a great intelligence and a burning curiosity to understand. It is for this reason that the Council of Vocations assigns him to life as a Street Sweeper. What other transgressions does Equality commit? He has stolen candles, flints, knives, and paper from the Home of the Street Sweepers.
Themes Motifs Symbols. Book Full Book Quiz. Mini Essays Suggested Essay Topics. Summary Chapters X—XI. Page 1 Page 2. Summary: Chapter X Equality and the Golden One climb up into the mountains so that no one can follow them. I think. I will. Popular pages: Anthem.
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