Anthem

Summary

Anthem is a short dystopian novel set in a future collective society that has lost electricity, science and even the word "I". People are known by names such as Equality 7-2521 and refer to themselves only as "we". Councils assign every person's work, forbid preferences and friendships, and treat any thought or act done alone as the gravest sin. The story is told as the secret journal of Equality 7-2521, written by candlelight in a forgotten tunnel. Equality 7-2521 is taller and quicker of mind than his brothers and longs to be a Scholar, but the Council of Vocations makes him a Street Sweeper. Clearing ground near the edge of the city, he and his friend International 4-8818 discover a tunnel from the Unmentionable Times, the era before the collective. There Equality conducts experiments in secret and rediscovers electric light. He also falls in love with Liberty 5-3000, a young woman working in the fields, whom he calls the Golden One, though such preferences are forbidden. Believing his discovery will be welcomed, Equality takes his glass box of light to the World Council of Scholars. The Scholars are horrified that one man has thought alone, and they threaten to destroy the invention. He seizes it and flees into the Uncharted Forest, where exiles are expected to die. Instead he finds that he can live by his own effort. The Golden One follows him. The two discover a house from the Unmentionable Times, filled with books, and in them Equality finds the word he has been missing: "I". In the closing chapters the narrator takes the name Prometheus and names the Golden One Gaea. He resolves to build a home for those who will follow and to restore the knowledge of the past, and the book ends with the word he calls sacred: "EGO". Rand wrote Anthem in 1937, and it was first published in England in 1938. She revised the text for the American edition of 1946, and the Project Gutenberg text used here reflects that later version. The novella introduces themes that dominate Rand's later novels, the creative individual against the collective and the identification of the self as the source of value, in the form of a brief fable that many schools teach.

Plot or Argument

• Parts One–Four: The journal and the tunnel

  Equality 7-2521 begins his forbidden journal. He recalls his assignment as Street Sweeper, the discovery of the tunnel with International 4-8818, his secret experiments, and his love for Liberty 5-3000, the Golden One.

• Parts Five–Seven: The light and the Council

  He rediscovers electric light. Imprisoned and flogged for missing a curfew, he escapes and presents the light to the World Council of Scholars, who condemn it. He flees with his box into the Uncharted Forest.

• Parts Eight–Ten: The forest

  He learns to live alone in the forest. The Golden One follows him, and they find a house from the Unmentionable Times.

• Parts Eleven–Twelve: The word

  In the house's books he discovers the word "I". He takes the name Prometheus, names the Golden One Gaea, and resolves to found a new society of free individuals.

Characters

• Equality 7-2521 (Prometheus), protagonist

  Gifted Street Sweeper and narrator who rediscovers electricity and the individual self.

• Liberty 5-3000 (the Golden One, Gaea), major

  Young field worker who loves Equality and follows him into the forest.

• International 4-8818, minor

  Equality's friend and fellow Street Sweeper, who shares the secret of the tunnel.

• The World Council of Scholars, antagonist

  The governing scholars who reject Equality's discovery because it was made alone.

• Collective 0-0009, minor

  Eldest of the Scholars, who leads the condemnation of the light.

Lessons

• Language shapes thought

  In Anthem the loss of the word "I" makes it hard even to think of oneself as an individual. Rand uses the device to dramatize her claim that the self is the foundation of value.

  • How does the narrator's use of "we" change the way you read the first chapters?
  • Are there words whose loss would change how people think?

• Discovery and authority

  The Scholars reject electric light because it was found without their permission. The novella asks what happens to knowledge when it must be approved by consensus.

  • Why are the Scholars more troubled by how the light was found than by what it is?
  • Can you think of real discoveries that were resisted at first?

• Rand's individualism

  The ending states Rand's view that a person's own happiness is the purpose of his life and that no one exists to serve others. Students can examine the argument carefully and test it against other ethical traditions.

  • What does the narrator mean when he calls the word EGO sacred?
  • What would a critic of individualism say about the ending?

Context

Rand wrote Anthem in 1937 after growing up in revolutionary and early Soviet Russia, where she had seen collectivism promoted as a moral ideal. It belongs to the same generation of dystopias as Zamyatin's We and Huxley's Brave New World and anticipates Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Composition

Rand wrote the novella in 1937 while working on The Fountainhead. Finding no American publisher, she published it with Cassell in London in 1938. She revised it for the 1946 American edition published by Pamphleteers, Inc.

Reception

Little noticed in 1938, the 1946 edition circulated widely in libertarian circles. Anthem is now one of Rand's most taught works because of its length, and it is regularly compared with We and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Comparisons

• We

  Zamyatin's 1920s dystopia also features numbered citizens, a collective 'we' and a narrator awakened by love and individual desire; scholars often compare the two.

• The Fountainhead

  Written alongside Anthem, Rand's novel develops the same individualism through an architect's career.

• Atlas Shrugged

  Rand's last novel expands Anthem's fable into a full political and economic argument.

• Freedom and the Law

  Leoni's critique of centralized legislation offers a political-theory lens on Anthem's councils, which govern every detail of life.

• The Republic

  Plato's guardians assign each citizen a function; Anthem imagines that principle carried to its extreme and rejects it.

• Nineteen Eighty-Four

  Orwell's novel, like Rand's, shows a collectivist state that controls language and punishes private love and individual thought.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The narrator's pronouns, and the moment they change.
• Light, darkness and the glass box as symbols.
• Names: what the numbered names say about the society, and the new names at the end.
• What the Council forbids, and why.

Key terms and names

Dystopia

An imagined society, usually in the future, that is presented as deeply undesirable.

Collectivism

The view that the group, not the individual, is the primary unit of moral and political value.

Unmentionable Times

The novella's name for the forgotten age before the collective, when people knew the word "I".

Prometheus

In Greek myth, the Titan who stole fire from the gods for humanity; the name the narrator chooses for himself.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why is Equality 7-2521 made a Street Sweeper rather than a Scholar?
2. Comprehension What does Equality find in the tunnel, and what does he discover there?
3. Interpretation Why does Rand tell the story as a secret journal?
4. Interpretation Why does the Council treat preference and friendship as crimes?
5. Big Question Can a society be good if it forbids individual choice of work?
6. Big Question Is the self the source of all value, as the ending claims?

Faith Connections

• Genesis 11:1-9 (Scripture)

  The Tower of Babel is another story about a society united by one will and one speech; its moral, in which humility before God is at stake, contrasts with Anthem's.

• Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (Great Conversation)

  The narrator's chosen name recalls the Titan punished for giving fire to humanity, a figure of defiance that Rand adopts for her hero.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: If a society forbids the individual to think and act alone, it destroys the source of discovery and happiness, so the individual mind and its own happiness must be the foundation of a good life.

Rhetorical device: symbolism. Electric light, discovered alone in a dark tunnel and rejected by the Council, stands for knowledge and the individual mind.

Debate: Resolved: Equality 7-2521 was right to leave his society rather than try to change it.

Memory Work

I am. I think. I will.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Trace the narrator's use of pronouns through the book and explain how Rand uses grammar to show his transformation.

Comparison with We: Compare the narrators of Anthem and We: how does each come to see himself as an individual, and how does each story end?

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write a page of a journal by International 4-8818 describing the day Equality disappeared, using only "we" and "they".

• Essay

  Compare Anthem with another dystopia you have read: what does each society take away from its citizens, and why?

• Classroom

  Rewrite a short school rule in the language of the Council, then discuss how the wording changes its meaning.

Further Reading

• We, Yevgeny Zamyatin

• The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

• Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, Jennifer Burns