Metonymy is the substitution of one word for another with which it is closely associated. For example, one could say that the orders came directly from the White House in order to indicate that the president gave orders; the phrase White House is substituted for the word president. In chapter 2, Equality 7-2521 describes seeing Liberty 5-3000. He says,
The women who have been assigned to work the soil live in the Homes of the Peasants beyond the City.
In this case, the word soil is used to describe not only the land but also the plants that grow from it. Liberty 5-3000 plows the earth, sowing seeds that will grow into crops that help to feed the community.
Equality 7-2521 says that his group of street sweepers is to clean the road that goes past the fields and the Home of the Peasants, and he loves this time because he hopes that he will see Liberty 5-3000. He says that, on each day after the first,
we knew the illness of waiting for our hour on the northern road.
This does not mean that the street sweepers are to spend exactly one hour cleaning this road, but Equality 7-2521 uses the word hour to mean his time on this road. We often measure time by hours, and so these words are closely related.
Metonymy involves using a word or concept associated with something instead of the thing itself. An example is "suit" for "business executive." An example in Anthem is the following from Chapter 1: "It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own." In this case, "ears" comes to stand for the entire human being who the narrator, Equality 7-2521, is speaking to. Another example from Chapter 1 is the following: "We think there are mysteries in the sky and under the water and in the plants that grow." In this example, "the sky" stands for more than just the sky but represents the entire heavens, and the water represents the seas; the plants represent the entire natural world of flora and fauna. A final example from Chapter 1 is "no eyes can see us as we crawl under our seat and under the cloth of the tent." In this example, "eyes" stand for the ability of other people to see the narrator.
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