Ayn Rand's Anthem REVISED
Uploaded by littleindian on Apr 13, 2007
***1970+ words last time I checked.
***Notes: The topic is how collectivism influenced the meaning of the book. Now this paper has a provable thesis and flows much more logically than before.
International Baccalaureate English 11 Period 1
13 April 2007
The Effect the Rise of Collectivism in the Early 1900's Had on Anthem
The meaning of Ayn Rand’s literary work Anthem is the how the individual could be lost in a collectivist society and the negative effect it creates (Gladstein.) The negative effect Rand addresses is that without the individual, all progress stops. In the simplest of terms, collectivism is an economy owned and controlled by a centralized government (Rand, xv). Anthem was written in 1937, a time period which saw the rise of collectivism in many Eastern European countries and the short breakdown of American capitalism (Gordon). These historical events influenced the novel by affecting the setting and the language used (Berliner, Gordon). The plot of Anthem is centered around a young man who realizes his society is fatally flawed through the discovery of elements from the old world.
Anthem is told in the first person through a journal kept by the young man over the course of several months. Here he, Equality-72521, explains how he has come to distrust his society. For his entire life, he was raised on the belief that anything that is not made or agreed upon by everyone is wrong. One day, he finds an old subway tunnel and finds old documents describing the technologies of the time before the collectivist society came into power. He does several experiments with the items he finds in the tunnel and ultimately discovers electricity and the light bulb. He believes this discovery is important because it will allow his society to work longer hours by replacing the candle, the most advanced technology available. When he presents his discovery to the World Council, a body of elders who make decisions, they disagree with him saying his invention is evil because it was not created by all man and things done by an individual are evil. After seeing this, Equality-7-2521 realizes that his society is fatally flawed in the respect progress cannot be made because a discovery cannot be discovered by a whole. At this point he removes himself from the society completely and runs away into the forest, outside the...