Anthem

I'm back! I'm sure you didn't think I would remember to blog again, but I did. So for my blog I am reviewing one of the first books I read in freshman year English called "Anthem", written by Ayn Rand in 1937. Here we go!

Characters: Equality 7-2521: main hero of the story/ wants to be a scholar/ discovers electricity
Liberty 5-3000: Equality's love interest/ follows Equality out of the city/ is named the "Golden One" by Equality
*These are honestly the only two characters worth mentioning, for reasons that will become clear later*

The Plot: Equality lives in a world completely different from our own. The World Council, created in a time years in the future from ours, forces people to remove all of their individualism and conform with the rest of society. People are assigned a name and a number, and everything is decided for them. Their jobs, their "mates", and what they do during their day-to-day lives. However, Equality is not like the rest of society. He questions, he discovers and he wants to learn. When he is passed over for the chance to be a Scholar, Equality spends his time conducting his own experiments and trying to rediscover the secrets of the past. Throughout the novel, Equality goes on a journey of self-discovery to not only uncover the things the World Council has hidden from the world, but also what it means to be human.

What I liked: This was a very different book. I haven't read anything like Anthem to this day. To my surprise, I actually really enjoyed the premise of the story and how the author, Ayn Rand, executed the story. Equality's society is focused on a collective unity, not individualistic tendencies. This means that when we read Equality's account of events, he uses words like "we", and "us" to describe what he does, even if he is the only one doing something. The word "I" was not to be used, and if you were caught using the word "I" you would be burned at the stake. Rand created a world that was not only oppressive, but ruthless as well. The set up was completely believable because she put in details of the everyday oppression that Equality and the others went through. I haven't read 1984, but from what I have heard, I feel like this was written in a sort of similar way. With "Anthem" I felt like Rand was less concerned with the details of what the landscape of Equality's world looked like, as opposed to the emotional turmoil that went on inside Equality. He feels guilty for wanting to discover and learn because he was taught that that means he was "going against the state". He and another talented man named International 4-8818 (who is a brilliant artist) are assigned the most mundane of jobs, trash collection. This job shows how these repressed men try and let their talent shine (Equality through secret experimentation in tunnels and International with secret drawings) yet still feel as if they are betraying the state. Until the end, Equality couldn't even comprehend that the government wasn't acting in their best interests. I enjoyed that this was written as a sort of journal or diary. I felt like it matched the tone of the story: not filled with overarching metaphors (until the end at least), just hard and to the point, reflecting the hard and mundane life of the people in Anthem. The end had a bit of fun symbolism I enjoyed. Just to prevent any spoilers, I'll just say that Equality and Liberty reference a bit of Greek mythology to finish off the story.

What I didn't like: To be honest, I wasn't a huge fan of Liberty. Maybe it was just because she wasn't really involved in the story enough at the beginning for me to really "get" her. I just didn't feel any sort of connection with her at all. I think what might have been cool is if Ayn Rand did alternating chapters between Liberty and Equality. I think it would have been interesting to have a male and female side of the society the two lived in. But that's just the reader in me wanting to know even more about the world a story is set in.

Overall: 9 out of 10. Didn't give it full marks only because I didn't really connect with Liberty as a character.