Anthem 895projects him as a hero with unique abilities which
he can exercise for the benefit of mankind. For
Equality, this battle is not easily won. The very first
sentence in the novella reads:
It is sin to write this [the account of the long
lost forgotten civilization when men were
free]. It is a sin to think words no others
think and to put them down upon paper no
others are to see. It is base and evil. . . . And
we know well that there is no transgression
blacker than to do or think alone.Equality 7-2521, we are told, was raised, like all
other children, away from his biological parents in
the Home of the Infants. He was educated in the
Home of the Students. Later he realized that he
was born with a “curse”: He is eager to think and
keen to question. Even though he excelled in math
and science and dreamed of becoming a Scholar, the
Council of Vocations assigned him to the Home of
the Street Sweepers. Equality accepts his profession
willingly in order to repent for his transgression, of
which his desire to learn is considered tantamount.
Equality’s curiosity will not go away, how-
ever, and he remains inquisitive. One day he finds
the entrance to a subway tunnel left over from
the Unmentionable Times before the creation of
Anthem’s society, and he explores it. Equality surrep-
titiously enters the tunnel and regularly undertakes
scientific experiments. He rediscovers electricity and
the light bulb. He decides to take his inventions
to the World Council of Scholars so that they will
recognize his talent and allow him to work with
them. But he is arrested for performing unauthor-
ized actions. He escapes into the mountains. If a
readiness for self-sacrifice is a characteristic of a
hero, Equality is willing to risk his life for what he
considers a worthy cause.
Along with the Golden One, who had followed
him into the forest, Equality lives in the house hid-
den in the forest away from the world of Anthem.
“We shall never leave this house . . . nor let it be
taken from us,” they resolve. “This is our home and
the end of the journey.” As they discover the glorious
past of humanity, Equality wonders: “And now we
look upon the earth and sky. This spread of naked
earth rock and peaks and moonlight is like a world
ready to be born, a world that waits. . . . It seems to
say it has great gifts to lay before us.” He reflects:
“May knowledge come to us.” The last two chapters
sum up Rand’s fundamental beliefs in the supremacy
of the individual. Equality, who has renamed himself
Prometheus, is shown determined to resurrect the
vision of a forgotten world.
Rand uses the concept of the hero skillfully to
let her protagonist be the embodiment as well as the
carrier of knowledge on which the future of man
and his happiness depends. Despite the emotional
and dramatic tone of the last soliloquy on the part
of the protagonist, there is an erudite and dry, objec-
tive ring to the thoughts he expresses. The triumph
of individualism, self-centeredness, and ego is pro-
claimed, even though apparently an illusion of virtue
and sense of the “general” good is allowed to guide
him. It is fascinating to observe how deftly Rand
allows the protagonist to proclaim the triumph of
the individual while at once subjugating himself to
let humanity share the rewards of his triumph.
Gulshan TanejaIndIvIduaL and SocIety in Anthem
Ayn Rand greatly admired Nietzsche for his belief in
human potential. In an appendix to Atlas Shrugged,
Rand states: “My philosophy, in essence, is the con-
cept of man as a heroic being, with his own happi-
ness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive
achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his
only absolute.”
In Anthem, which embodies a dystopian vision
of a futuristic society where collectivism has tri-
umphed at the cost of the individual, the protagonist
expresses his sense of discovery of the significance of
the “individual”:This—my body and spirit—this is the end
of the quest. I wished to know the mean-
ing of things. I am the meaning. I wished to
find a warrant for being. I need no warrant
for being, and no word of sanction upon my
being. I am the warrant and the sanction. . . .
My happiness is not the means to any end.
It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own
purpose.