Okay. Time to post again. Right now my life is totally under stress because I have to deal with a bunch of school project crap and he like. But that is not the point of this post, is it?
This time I'll be posting something different. This post is about a book called Anthem, but it's not really about Anthem. Since I can't use this book for a reading log post, I'll be talking about allegories and that stuff. Allegories, for those of you who have never bothered to look it up in the dictionary, are stories that have a hidden meaning, and oftern use sybolism to get the point across. Some of these stories we read in class were Plato's cave (good allegory), The Story of Icarus (also really good), and Plato's Chariot (not really a story, but a good allegory) and of course, Anthem. In the stories Anthem, Plato's Cave, and the Story of Icarus, they all use symbolism to talk about knowledge, whether it was helpful or not; for a good example of these differences, take Plato's Cave and the Story of Icarus. In Plato's cave, the prisoner who has been kept from all knowledge her whole life is motivated through the light (the symbol for knowledge in the story) to help others and bring them into the realm of knowing. On the other hand, in the Story of Icarus, the knowledge given to Icarus is useful (to not fly too close to the sun, but to not fly too close to the ground), but he does not heed this knowledge until it is far too late; his ignorance led him to his death. In Anthem, the protagonist Equlity 7-2521 is a 'cursed' being that has a craving for knowledge. He is eventually sent away from the society he lives in and is forced to wander the land unknown to his people. He creates sort of light-box, much like the light bulbs we have today. This is the symbol for knowledge in his story. All three stories have something to do with knowledge.
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