I think no matter what Ayn Rand book you pick up, you’re either going to love it or hate it. After having read Atlas Shrugged, it would be doing a disservice if I gave her something the middle of the range, like three stars, so I think the 1 star is merited. The book demands of the reader either full commitment to the ideas or none at all, and though I find some merits on the values of objectivism, sometimes it is more the tone of the book more than the content that either makes you love the book or really hate it. I thought Atlas Shrugged was one of the most pretentious books ever written.
Anthem thankfully, is more palatable. The “We” and “They” pronouns used as first-person singular and third-person singular was really offputting at first but complements the theme of the book: that in a truly collectivist society, there is no such thing as individual ideas, or actions, or persons. This is a world where our contemporary times is dead and only known as the “Unmentionable Times”. The dystopia of Anthem is a primitive collectivist society similar to the predetermination of Brave New World. In Anthem, careers are assigned at the age of fifteen and it is impossible to change your vocation until the day you die.
It is also super low-tech. Inventions such as candles were known as the zenith of technology. It is a society without a name, just as its residents were named as the protagonist, “Equality 7–2521”. How these names were assigned and indexed, I have no idea. Once a person’s career is decided, then they will move to their section where they have little interactions with others aside from singing “anthems” together. Oh yes, it is a crime to sing because you can’t be happy, because happiness can only be derived from serving others. Reproduction is also regimented, where during the mating season, males and females are assigned a room to just go at it.
In the midst of all this, there are men who cry in their sleep, and supremely depressed without knowing why. Equality 7–2521, who has aspirations to be a scholar, was assigned the supreme honour of being a street sweeper. Obviously, he’s none too happy about it. One day he stumbled on a passage which led to the extinct Unmentionable Time, buried in obscurity underneath his own world. He was soon addicted and spends three hours a day alone and discovering “new” things from the old civilisation, including electricity and light bulb.
He goes through an existential crisis whether to reveal his findings or keep it hidden and soon found that some knowledge is best kept hidden, or not. Sometimes it is best to break away from society altogether to cultivate your own individualism. The Anthem of the book only appears in the final two chapters, as Equality 7–2521 discovered the word “I”. It is almost Nietzschean, to break away from the existing reality, that one MUST create his or her own reality.
Rand wrote the book at the same time she wrote The Fountainhead (which I haven’t read and not looking forward to reading). Anthem was a side project for distraction. In the end, Rand admitted that it is more of a poem than a novel. Forms aside, it doesn’t really matter because you would probably like it if you were already a fan of Ayn Rand, and has a membership in her foundation. You’d probably have read it anyway. For the rest of us, perhaps the book is too short to be memorable, and though I wouldn’t say that it’s a bad read, it still reeks of the stench of Rand’s idealism which is present in her every work.
