Anthem (1938). Content and Description

Published in England in 1938, Anthem did not find an American publisher until Pamphleteers, Inc., picked it up in 1946. As Leonard Read explained in the publisher’s foreword: “We had not intended to publish novels. But the purpose of our publishing venture is to further the cause of freedom and individualism. So we decided to offer you this novel.”

Rand’s novella, Anthem, shows us a bleak world in which the struggle between the individual and society has been settled in society’s favor. This dystopian vision of the future can also be found in examples of speculative fiction such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962). Simply put, this genre contradicts the traditional 19th-century utopian tradition in which collectivism is posited as something that could work. While a utopian novel portrays the “best of all possible worlds,” a future in which all conflict is settled and all live in harmony, a dystopian (or dystopic) novel portrays the “worst of all possible worlds,” usually one in which individuals have lost all power of self-determination.

In fact, Anthem’s world is one in which all individuality has been suppressed to the point where the word I has been lost altogether and “alone time” forbidden. “It is a sin to write this,” the novel begins. “It is a sin to think words no others think,” it continues, “and to put them down upon paper no others are to see.” “Our name,” the protagonist tells us, “is Equality 7-2521,” a name that is written on his copy of the iron identity bracelet everyone wears. The tale of this society after its “Great Rebirth” is told in the simple language of a parable and largely in flashback.

The “Unmentionable Times” have passed away, and all live now with the “Great Truth” that “all men are one and that there is no will save the will of all men together.” Equality 7-2521 is alone in a dark tunnel because he has escaped the collectivist oppression of his society, but he did so not just to save himself but also to save his great invention, condemned by the stagnant authority of the World Council of Scholars.

An exceptional man in a society that abhors exceptional men, Equality had been condemned to live his life as a street sweeper, a fate he accepted as his just punishment for the sin of pride, the “Transgression of Preference.” He had imagined that the Council of Vocations might, if he wished it hard enough in the dark privacy of his own mind while his peers slept, send him to the collective Home of the Scholars when it was time for him to leave the Council of Students. He accepts their judgment with a fervent wish that it will help him work to atone for his sin of pride against his brothers.

Try as he might to avoid it, however, Equality 7-2521 seems destined to live out the same struggle against conformity and oppression that all of Rand’s exceptional heroes do. Working one day with the feeble-minded Union 5-3992 and the tall, strong International 4-8818 (his friend, although such a label is forbidden), Equality stumbles upon an artifact from the dark, distant Unmentionable Times. He descends into what turns out to be an old subway entrance, arguing that it cannot be forbidden since the council does not know about it. By accident, he rediscovers that most forbidden of all pleasures, a private place.

Predictably, he begins to invent opportunities to sneak away to work privately on all the mysteries he finds there, expanding upon the limited knowledge written in the manuscripts he has stolen. He uses the wiring and “globes of glass” he finds in his tunnel to reinvent the lightbulb. Thinking what an advance the creation of light without burning wax candles would be, Equality determines to confess his crime so that he may offer his invention for the benefit of all.

In the meantime, he has met another who attracts his forbidden attention, a woman named Liberty 5-3000, whom he renames, for himself only, the Golden One. They have been communicating privately, since their conversations demonstrate a further Transgression of Preference (selecting appropriate mates is another function of the state, this one administered by the Council of Eugenics).

Despite his best efforts, Equality cannot convince the Council of Scholars that his lightbulb would be anything more than a fearful disruption of the established routines and settled lives of the collective and the Department of Candles, especially. So mired in a nearly medieval stagnation that they cannot allow so much progress, they condemn Equality to death and his invention to destruction. He escapes from the city into the Uncharted Forest to save his invention and await the “certain fate” of being torn asunder by wild animals.

Showing her own courage and initiative, Liberty 5-3000 tracks him through the forest until she catches up with him. Together, as Adam and Eve after their expulsion from Eden, Equality and Liberty find themselves with the world all before them and, in the process of exploring the forest, find a house filled with all the abandoned wonders of our modern age. For Equality and Liberty the first and most obvious wonder of this house, however, is its size. Accustomed to living communally and sleeping in enormous halls, they are stunned by the wonder of a house so small that it can hold so few. Having lost the concept of the nuclear family, they are staggered to discover a bedroom with only one bed in it.

The greatest glory of this house, however, is its library, filled with books wherein the couple rediscovers the word I, among other lost wonders. Thereafter, they rename each other Gaia, for the ancient Greek earth mother, and Prometheus, for the benefactor who stole fire from the gods as a gift for all mankind. Soon, they vow, they will return to the gray collective city to rescue those few among their “brothers,” such as International 4-8818, whom they need to re-create a world where the recovery of the ego and individualism will establish a new age of progress for the human race.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. Compare Anthem to other dystopian novels such as George Orwell’s 1984. After looking up the meaning of determinism, in both a philosophical and a literary sense, consider how this concept might explain why Anthem ends happily while 1984 does not.

2. Other collective dystopias, such as Orwell’s 1984, show tyrants using advanced technology to enforce their tyranny, while technology in Rand’s Anthem has all but vanished. How would you account for this difference?

3. On a much smaller scale, Anthem traces the same postapocalyptic scenario as does Rand’s last novel, Atlas Shrugged. In other words, it belongs to the genre of literature in which a new “race of men” emerges as the world’s true leaders after its present leaders have made a thorough mess of things. Research this genre and consider how both Anthem and Atlas Shrugged fit this genre.