Looking Backward By Ayn Rand: A Literary Analysis

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1. Ayn Rand’s quote is one that comes from life and not from theory or hopes. Rand clearly stresses that men work mainly for their own gain. It is true, that a man’s surplus can motivate him to create progress. However, it very rarely comes with the society in mind. The Communist Manifesto states that if we abolish classes, then the idea of working for own gain will also disappear. Unfortunately, men, as thousands of years of history have shown, are quite selfish. As good as the idea of everyone working for the prosperity of society sounds, it is close to impossible because of laziness and selfishness. There is always a person who is lazy or selfish in a larger group of people. Here we are talking about a whole society working together for common prospect, which means that everyone would have to work equally to their maximum potential. In a perfect world, this would be a scenario for a perfect society to exist, where everyone would be happy and no problems would occur.…show more content…
It describes a perfect society in which everyone works together for the prosperity of the society that they live in. However, “Looking Backward” takes it a step further and explains the way jobs and training of future laborers would be structured. Those with hard jobs would work fewer hours and those with easier jobs would work more hours, but at the end of the week everyone would be paid and treated equally. Furthermore, Edward Bellamy envisions that before a young laborer steps into the workforce, he or she would take part in experiencing all the nasty and gruesome jobs that most of the people today dislike doing. Those include garbage disposal, lavatory cleaning and much more jobs related to keeping the society clean and healthy. However, as good as this vision or plan sounds, I think we will never achieve such a balance within a society, let alone a country or
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