894 Rand, Ayn
“little nucleus” is governed by shallow social rules
that reinforce false feelings of social superiority. In
particular, Mme. Verdurin is prone to social jeal-
ousy and does not wish to acknowledge that there
are “people in the world who ‘mattered more’ than
herself.” Fittingly, the Verdurins turn against Swann
because he refuses to wholly adopt their social “dog-
mas” and because they gradually discover his “bril-
liant position in society.” In contrast to Legrandin
and the Verdurins, Swann is free “from all taint of
snobbishness” precisely because he finds high society
and social standing “unimportant.” This underscores
his inherent nobility of character (rather than rank),
but it also highlights the enormous social changes
taking place at the beginning of the 20th century.
While the social structure of the narrator’s child-
hood no longer exists by the time he writes down
his memories, it is not entirely inaccessible. When
he was a child, his family went for walks in two
“diametrically opposed” directions, the Guermantes
way and Swann’s way, each representing a competing
social world. To the boy, the Guermantes way was
“ideal rather than real.” The narrator understood
that the Duc and Duchesse of Guermantes were
“real personages who did actually exist,” but because
the aristocratic world they represented was out of
bounds for people of his social standing, he could
not conceive of them as anything other than imagi-
nary. He pictured them “in tapestry” or in “chang-
ing, rainbow colours,” “wrapped in . . . mystery.”
Although social castes become less sharply defined
over time, and the narrator, like Swann, “was to
know [Guermantes] well enough one day,” by the
time of writing, the old world of the narrator’s youth
belongs to the realm of memory. Both “ways,” and
indeed the entire social structure of his childhood,
have assumed the status of fiction and are now only
accessible through the act of remembering, a fact
that makes social ambitions doubly futile.
Katherine Ashley
raND, ayN Anthem (1938)
Anthem is a science fiction novella by the author
of The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged
(1957) and contains much of the controversial ideas
embodied in those two novels. Ayn Rand (1905–82)
believed that an individual’s pursuit of his own
rational self-interest and happiness is life’s highest
moral purpose. Anthem delineates a dystopia located
in an unspecified future dark age in which society
has complete control over the lives of its citizens.
The children are brought up by the state, identified
by numbers and subsequently classified and assigned
suitable vocations in the interest of the state. The
first-person singular I is forbidden in the City.
Individuals have no right to “think” for themselves,
nurture innate tendencies, or make choices.
Equality 7-2521, the protagonist, describes the
dystopian society in which he lives in a secret diary.
He discovers the remnants of an “individualistic”
society from Unmentionable Times and seeks to
interest the Collective Council of the City in the
scientific achievements of the forgotten past upon
which he stumbles. The insistent attempt on the
part of Equality 7-2521 to “think” and “question”
results in severe punishment for him. He escapes,
and Liberty-5-3000, a woman he has fallen in love
with and calls “The Golden One,” throws her lot
with him. The two discover a house in the moun-
tains preserved by impenetrable overgrowth and live
there. In the house, they find much to read to learn
the values of individualistic society, and they hope
and plan to achieve a new future to regain total
freedom for the individual. The title, Anthem, with
its quasi-religious meaning of a hymn to what is
praise-worthy, celebrates individualism, which Rand
considered human beings’ most valuable attribute.
Gulshan TanejaHeroISm in Anthem
The concept of heroism portrayed in Anthem has an
interesting dimension to it. The protagonist in Ayn
Rand’s novella stands apart from the mere “others” by
virtue of being able to think, reflect, and gain or cre-
ate knowledge. The burden of knowledge is as hard
to bear as the burden of physical strength and moral
excellence historically associated with a hero, and
thus it is similarly equally laudable. Some believe the
basic sense of “hero” is “one who safeguards” or “pro-
tector.” Equality 7-2521 not only gains knowledge,
he seeks to nurture, safeguard, and protect it.
It is this ability to perceive, extract, and appro-
priate knowledge that distinguishes Equality. It