The novel Anthem by Ayn Rand tells the story of Equality 7-2521, an individual living in a communal society devoid of human individuality. Equality 7-2521 began his life in the Home of Infants and was educated in the Home of Students. He had a keen mind and excelled at his school work; however, he was punished for his achievements because to be in any way superior to others was considered evil. Equality’s hope was to be made a Scholar by the Council of Vocations, but when he reached the age of fifteen, the council assigned him the profession of Street Sweeper. Equality accepted this as his punishment for desiring one profession over another.
Equality worked with the street sweepers until, while working one day, he found an underground tunnel. He spent large amounts of time in his tunnel studying stolen manuscripts and learning about an individualistic society that had obviously disappeared.
Perhaps prompted by these new ideas, Equality violated the conventions of his culture and fell in love with Liberty 5-3000. To show preference for one person over another was a grave transgression, for only those ideas, values, and feelings held by everyone were valid.
When Equality took his discoveries to the World Council of Scholars, the Scholars rejected them because they had not been generated by the group. Equality fled and ran into the Uncharted Forest. Liberty 5-3000 found him in the forest, and together they found a house in the forest and settled there. Through reading books he found in the house, Equality rediscovered a great lost word: I. With their new found individuality, Equality and Liberty took the names Prometheus and Gaea and settled in the house to provide a home for others who might one day follow them.
In Equality’s world, the individual has been destroyed, leaving only the lumbering “group.” Throughout the book, the reader becomes aware of the striking absence of 1st-person pronouns– everything is “we” and “our” instead of “I” and “my”. Individuals are even stripped of personal names and left with the gift of common names followed by numbers (Equality 7-2521, International 4-8818, Union 5-3992, Solidarity 9-6347, Liberty 5-3000). Once Equality -sheds this “nameber” and chooses his own name (read, his own identity), Prometheus, he has become an individual, thus breaking away from the oppressive group.
The common names, incidentally, are another jab at communal societies. “Equality” implies that all men in the group-centered society are equal; if this is true, then why is Equality sweeping the streets at the direction of a handful of his “equals?” “International” implies the cooperation of many different groups of people, when, in the reality Rand presents, all people (regardless of ability) are lumped together and are drawn upon (seemingly) at random.
In addition to non-personal nomenclature, repercussions of communal living are also seen in other areas of society. In Anthem, education promotes, not excellence, but mediocrity. If a student falls behind, that student is worked with in order to bring him/her up to the other students’ level. However, should a student begin to excel (as Equality did), that student is harshly disciplined. Equality was taught that to be different from one’s peers was bad, but to be superior was a sin. Rand makes a statement about the dangers of communal education. Teachers have no incentive to challenge the faster children, or are so busy catering to the class’s slow-learners, that the more intelligent students can left in the cold.
In Anthem, though, this is as much to perpetuate the ruling class (assigning free-thinkers to sweep streets pretty much takes away the danger of revolution) as it is to reinforce the group-centered belief of “no one is more equal than everyone else.” With the decline in education and the practice of seemingly random job-assignments especially to that of “scholar” position), technology has stagnated, and much of it has been lost. Fundamentally, this goes to prove that, without the creativity and innovation of individuals, nothing will ever improve. Once again, this is exemplified by Equality’s re-discovery of electricity and the rather militant reaction incurred therein by the ruling class. Through this, Rand is conveying the message that, in a group-oriented society, there is no motivation to innovate, to create, to improve —- only to BE and do what is expected (after all, one would not want to be better than one’s brother …)
There were some positive repercussions of a group-oriented society (beyond that the streets were oh-so-spotless). With the decline of technology, nature had reclaimed much of the Earth. Forests and mountains were wild, mysterious places humans actually feared to tread, which caused many plants and animals to re-thrive. Also, social ills such as crime, war and poverty were eliminated. Rand, however, obviously sees group-oriented living as stealing one’s identity, as regressive in terms of human development, and as constricting one’s thoughts and mind.
Through her exploration of Equality’s world in Anthem, Rand criticizes and comments upon many social issues. Such commentary may relate to the occurrences in the late Twentieth Century. The apparent theme of individuality within Anthem applies itself naturally to a number of issues, with a direct example involving contemporary education. While in the Home of the Students, Equality’s direct statement that ‘We…were not happy in those years [because] the learning was too easy” casts a negative light upon the educational system of Rand’s time, as well as the current educational system. Additionally, the clause, “This is a great sin, to be born with a head that is too quick” illustrates the idea that the school systems, by placing too heavy of a focus upon those needing assistance, inevitably draw down those with a higher intelligence because of negligence.
In contemporary time, this particular Rand criticism best falls upon schools operating along strict grade levels with few programs for advancement. Consequently, “average,” lowest-common-denominator schools produce a crop of students who generally hover around the average achievement levels, as well as a minority of gifted students who do not achieve their potential. One may understand the retarding nature of this educational process in Rand’s description of Equality’s life in the tunnel, as he “in…two years of reading scholarly manuscripts has learned more than he had learned in the ten years of the Home of the Students.”
A secondary criticism of Rand’s writing centers around the status of her perception of civil government. First, one may apply Rand’s description of the Council of Vocations and its means of choosing citizens’ occupations to critique the process of government in the contemporary American system. Equality relates the process of occupation choice, as he notes that “if the Council [says] “‘Cook,'” the Students so assigned go to work….” However, in the event that the Council chooses someone as a Leader, those students live in the Home of the Leaders, wherein the citizens study to “become candidates and be elected to the City, State, and World Council.” Such a means of choosing candidates and eventual representatives of the government may constitute an oligarchic structure that effectively restricts those who may operate the governmental structures.
In the American socio-political culture, such a criticism may hit hardest upon party selection and occupational representation. With minor exceptions in 1992 and 1968, the Republican and Democratic party selections have dominated the electoral results in Presidential and Congressional contests. As a consequence, a favorable comparison may exist between the Council’s choices and each of the two parties’ nominees. Additionally, a certain limiting factor with regards to electoral victors has existed in the occupational realm, as lawyers have significantly comprised the population of both Houses and the Presidency.
Second, one may utilize Rand’s description of the encounter between Equality and the Council of Scholars to hurl critical analyses at the concept of cultural and religious traditions. As Rand makes clear throughout the work, each person undertakes his action for the purpose of serving the common good, with the World Council representing such utmost good. Through the decrees of the World Council, society holds such scientific beliefs as “the earth is flat and that the sun revolves around it” and that one bleeds a man to cure his ailments. Because of such Medieval beliefs, Equality’s discovery of electricity becomes a revolutionary concept in his and the Council of Scholars’ minds.
As Equality describes his discovery to the Scholars, one of them remarks that “‘What is not thought by all men cannot be true,” while another states that “What is not done collectively cannot be good.” Such a practice of relying upon a set doctrine naturally inhibits the society’s growth of technology to the point that all of those within the society, including Equality, fear a simple “Uncharted Forest”. From the context of the past, Rand appears to compare the experiences of Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church to the experiences of Equality. Within a more contemporary context, one may visualize such reliance upon a specific doctrine impeding the growth of technology in the issues of cloning, the RU-487 capsule, and the medical use of marijuana. In each case, the traditional mainstays of the society affect the growth of a possibly beneficial development.
Overall, Ayn Rand’s Anthem is a short and rather simple introductory exploration of the theme of communal living versus individualism. While her narrative only briefly scratches the surface of this and other social themes, it is a good starting point for a consideration of the role of man in society.