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Why Totalitarian Dictators Separate Children from Their Families

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Why Totalitarian Dictators Separate Children from Their Families
Ayn Rand’s novella, Anthem, depicts a totalitarian society that oppresses the ideology of individualism. Within these societies children live apart from their families and grow up without any inherited characteristics of being an individual. Anthem is an example of this kind of society because it showcases the link between a totalitarian dictator’s power to the oppression of individualism found in a children that live apart from their families. Totalitarian Dictators enforce the arrangement of children living separate from their families because it oppresses individualism and allows for a better grasp of beneficial control over a society.

Dictators enforce children living separate from their families because without the family setting individualism is not supported. This occurs because many individualistic characteristics are inherited from the family setting. Controlling the setting in which a child grows up can alter the ideological views an individual has and can be used to promote other ideologies such as collectivism like that which was found in Anthem. Totalitarian dictators enforce this living arrangement in order to oppress individualistic ideas therefore, limiting the power an individual has. In Anthem, Rand uses this strategy by separating kids from their families in order to censor content that might encourages individualistic qualities and to promote collective thinking in order to provide more power to a dictator. As a child, Equality 7-2521 is sent to the Home of the Students where his individualistic thoughts were discouraged and were restrained by the knowledge his group members possessed (Rand 20). By eliminating the family setting, individualistic thinking has no framework or promoted thoughts. It would benefit dictatorial leaders to minimize the family setting because it allows for individualism and therefore limiting the family setting limits the possibility of individual mind sets (Rand 1). Dictators use the

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