There are restrictions on almost everything in society such as how much you can learn, what you can do, and what job you want are all decided by the councils. Although certain people do not agree with their leaders and fellow “brothers” such as Equality and Liberty, and they are also the ones that wish to learn more about the world.
In this society everybody says “we” instead of “I.” They don't allow anything to be done alone. The people are very uneducated and society limits them to education. It took many people and 20 years to invent the candle in the novel.
Equality discovered an old sewer from the “unmentionable times.” He learns quite a bit about the past there and does many different experiments there. He is allowed to explore what he wants in his sewer because the government does not restrict him there because they don't know about it. Although he gets caught going to the sewer he breaks out of the correction facility that they were holding him in quite easily. After he gets out he goes to his sewer and gathers up his things and his glass box, and flees to the uncharted forest.
When Equality enters the forest he does not think of what he is doing and he doesn't care all to much at the time. He finds himself deep in the forest, and he is hungry so he finds a stone and kills a bird with it, and then he makes a fire and cooks it. This brings him a great sense of accomplishment because it was something that he did on his own. Later on when he is walking he finds out that Liberty “The Golden One” is following him and that she wants him to be her leader because she agrees with how he thinks. So they start traveling together and end up finding a house with many books that were printed and they discover that the house was made for two. This was very surprising to them because in there town the only writing they had was hand written and was only available in the home of scholars. The fact that it was made for two was also surprising because in their city everyone lived together in one big home (depending on their profession) which usually consisted of one hundred per house.
This novel shows very well how our future may be able to turn out if a dramatic event happens. It also shows some of the horrors of communism. In the darkness of all these events there will always be somebody that will have to lead the way like Equality.
