I tried to read this again because I thought it was relevant to something I've been writing but it's just eugh. Pronoun verbed the noun. Noun verbed over there. I wanted nice things but he was a BAD MAN!!! And he said, he said NO NICE THINGS. EVER!! Because I am BAD!!!!!! Repeat.

I guess it is a pretty good oversimplified narrative about what there is to fear about socialism, but the oversimplification creates a deliberate narrow-mindedness that is to the detriment of the book's argument. When he's-wrong-I'm-right dystopias were refreshing and new, I doubt that was the case, but they can't be gotten away with now.

If you are a writer, please do read this, because if you ever think you're clever for devising some four-legs-good piece of dystopia about some big system or perceived societal wrong, guaranteed there are fifty versions already, and they are all heavy-handed terrible garbage—you don't suck for thinking about writing one, just go with your second or third idea instead.

You know that way when you watch a really bad anti-smoking ad that it irritates you with its lack of subtlety hence lack of respect to you as an audience and perversely makes you want to take up smoking (almost)? Very few people know how to debate properly. It doesn't strengthen your argument to say 'The way I do things is correct and his way is stupid', instead of 'I see the advantages and disadvantages of both strategies but prefer my way.' You know? But there's all these videos all over YouTube: why the left/right doesn't work. Uhhh they both work just fine in moderation, in different ways, and without moderation they both suck in different ways. The problem's people, man. So many of them are just the worst!!!

A fascinating little read. The book is an Anthem for Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, which teaches that people should pursue their own happiness, for which they alone are responsible. It is a statement against collectivism (communism, socialism, totalitarian states).
It is also a fascinating little novella in which a man is born into a society which forbids the use of the word “I”. Everyone refers to themselves as “we”. It’s a little confusing at first! It is forbidden to even have thoughts that are not the thoughts of the collective. Of course, the main character has forbidden thoughts of self-determination which lead to a story which I found hard to put down. Well-written, intriguing, and quite pertinent to our time in spite of its surprising age (1937).

39th book of 2023.

1.5. I hate to be so cliche and rate Rand 1-star, but I've finally read a book of hers. Objectivism is something I've read so much about online, and in university, I became aware of Rand through the flippant and damning statements made by professors whenever she somehow happened to come up. And you don't have to look far online to find hatred for Rand and her philosophy. And yet, things we do not agree with tend to be far more interesting than things we do agree with. Anthem was, originally, going to be called Ego, according to my introduction. At one-hundred pages long, this is the bitesize approach to Rand and her belief. The best video I've seen on Rand, and which I've actually watched numerous times, is this. Here we hear Rand saying her philosophy came from her own mind, and partly from Aristotle, the only philosopher, she claims, who ever influenced her. The video essentially sums up the bedrock that lies (barely hidden!) behind this novel and its purpose. That "We" is flawed, and "I" is not. Ego. That communism is bad. '...man will go on. Man, not men.' Rand's philosophy is attacked for being juvenile, flawed, etc., etc., it's certainly born from her own life experiences with communism. Ignoring the philosophy, the book is vapid. The final five pages beats objectivism over the reader's head. Subtlety begone. I'd be interested in reading The Fountainhead, which is apparently better, but I've had a copy of Atlas Shrugged since my university days and never so much as opened it.

Ayn Rand is I think deserving of the appellation "an odd duck". One of her dearest ideas (and I would suppose ideals) is the the right, willingness and ability to think for one's self. But she functioned in her life with the approach, "my way or the high-way".

This book is worth reading and I think there are valuable things to take away from this little novella. But you need to be able to think. Ms. Rand is a classic case of "throwing the baby out with the bath water." I'd say, read and learn, but don't be guilty of the simply absorbing and following...think for yourself.

Any more on this and I'll have to go into my own ideas and thoughts. Happy to talk about them, but I won't foist them on you in the review.

This marvellous piece of dystopian fiction was written by a Russian lady & first published in Britain way back in 1938.
Set in a world where it is a crime to be an individual it is hard to believe this story wasn't written yesterday. I wonder how many people have been influenced by this work. I imagine the list is endless, as I can see in just the first few chapters future echoes of George Orwell's 1984 & Patrick McGoohan's classic TV series The Prisoner.
The story ends much sooner than I would have liked, which in these days of overlong novels does make a pleasant change.

As far as dysopian literature goes; this does not convince. We do not just uninvent technology; Orwell and Huxley understood that; Rand obviously did not. The collecivist future just does not convince because human beings are not like that and would not conform in the way described. Men and women do not behave in the way the characters in the book present themselves.

Published in 1938, this is a classic dystopian. Even if well intended, the overcorrection of a society, leads to more destruction than the original problem.

It is not a love story, but it does contain love. As someone who enjoys a good dystopian/apocalyptic story, it is easy to see how this book paved the way for stories from authors like Lowry, Orwell, and Bradbury.

Give a listen to the Rush 2112 album.

And the meek shall inherit the earth

We've taken care of everything
The words you read
The songs you sing
The pictures that give pleasure
To your eye
It's one for all and all for one
We work together
Common sons
Never need to wonder
How or why

I read this short book in one night after a friend lent it as a curiosity. He is reading Ayn Rand's novels and thought I'd find "Anthem" intellectually stimulating, as it is one of the super-famous Rand's first works and lays the foundation for her later writings on her philosophy of Objectivism. For a brief explanation of Objectivism by Rand herself, check out this link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukJiBZ8_4k

I had never read a word Rand wrote (and didn't know much about her, either) until plowing through "Anthem." I expected Rand's atheism, embrace of reason, and exaltation of individualism over collectivism would make her appealing to me. But, as we say, the devil is in the details. Philosophies in the abstract make for good debates and make us feel good about believing in some enlightened principles, but philosophies don't always go down so smoothly when they have to be applied to the real world or -- even worse -- applied to ourselves. Rand, who called programs like Social Security "evil," collected Social Security benefits. Digression over. Now to "Anthem."

As a novel, "Anthem" is mediocre. It is set in a nondescript, future world where individualism has been eliminated from every aspect of society as well as from the collective memory of the population. In its place, people live in a collectivist society where all men work for the whole. An individual refers to himself as "we." If someone utters the word "I," he has his tongue cut out and is burned at the stake. No one has a real name; instead they have names like Equality 7-2521, to use the moniker of Rand's protagonist. Children are herded into schools where they are taught a bland curriculum. At age 15 the students go before a council that decides which job each person will have for the rest of their life; Equality 7-2521 is sent off to be a street sweeper. All workers get up at the exact same time every day to the ring of a bell, work all day for the supposed benefit of all no matter how mundane their "profession," and then are marched into their nightly entertainment that amounts to nothing more than indoctrination in collectivist ideology. There are no mirrors, preventing people from seeing themselves as individual beings; they only exist as part of a whole. Society is ruled by collectivist councils, i.e. World Council and Council of Scholars, where the few make incontrovertible judgments that affect the masses. The Councils have ruled since the Great Rebirth. No one can really remember what life was like before.

If all this sounds like an allegorical broadside against the Soviet Union and Stalinism, you are correct. However, Rand said that she did not write "Anthem" to repudiate her homeland's tragic descent into totalitarianism, although she did despise communism. Written in 1937 (Stalin's era), "Anthem" is an attack on all collective thinking. It is an exaltation of the self and the ego.

So Equality 7-2521 does the forbidden: he thinks independently. He manages to discover electricity. When he presents his discovery to a council, Equality 7-2521 is horrified that they reject his work solely because it does not conform. It was a product of his individual thinking, thus forbidden. He worked on it alone, thus a crime. And his discovery will ruin the central plan to produce so many candles, simultaneously ruining the "careers" of all the candle makers. Equality 7-2521 escapes and eventually finds hidden deep in a forbidden forest a home that predates the Great Rebirth. In the home he finds books that were written before society sank into collectivist hell. And for the first time Equality 7-2521 sees the word "I." "Anthem" ends as Equality 7-2521 discovers the beauty of the self. This takes about 100 pages to accomplish so you can see why I read this in one night.

In her preface, Ayn Rand says the "greatest guilt today is that of people who accept collectivism by moral default; the people who seek protection from the necessity of taking a stand, by refusing to admit to themselves the nature of that which they are accepting..."

She continues: "Those who want slavery should have the grace to name it by its proper name. They must face... the full, exact meaning of collectivism, of its logical implications, and... the ultimate consequences to which these principles will lead." In Rand's view, the horror of Communism is one end.

But one wonders whether Rand seriously considered whether her own vision of an absolute meritocracy, a world without charity or altruism, a world where ANY government action is condemned as a step toward slavery and totalitarianism, would also lead to destructive results.

Moreover, my fear of becoming a victim of collectivism on par with Rand's ominous vision is tempered by what my eyes have shown me in "individualist" America, the greed-driven, to-hell-with-the-consequences financial practices that brought the economy to near collapse -- if not for the aggressive intervention of the government, which Rand's disciples refer to as "socialism."

Should we be free to destroy ourselves?

This is short and blunt and to that end I'll be short and blunt. Anthem has many of the elements one would expect dystopian fiction. But an utter lack of a devolved storyline. There's a story here but it moves very fast and is told past tense. The last bit is just a series of statements on how the narrator plans to live or his "anthem". major theme is coming from a restricting society of "we" to the superior induvial "I" this would be a good introduction to the dystopian genre but to someone who has read all the great work i the field like A brave new world, we, and 1984 I'd rather like those more comprehensive stories!

After decades of studiously avoiding book clubs, I joined one recently because of who invited me to join. I expected that I would be forced out of my comfort zone and it turns out that I was right. I wouldn’t have read Ayn Rand otherwise.

I had read her more monumental works in middle school, not really figured them, and got back to reading Alistair Maclean and Robert Ludlum. Later, I would find that when a cretin wanted to show off, he (as it happened, it was always a he) would often carry one of those monumental books to impress people.

I started reading Anthem – as mentioned above, the book club’s choice – with the intent that I would read without any prejudice, and use the experience, if nothing else, as an exercise in learning more about writing.

I am not sure that was a feasible aim and I have to confess prejudice is not easy to overcome. I did get to the end of the book. There is perhaps one passage, where the narrator falls in love, that was passably readable. Otherwise, this is a book that would appeal to morons. Of course that is a large market in these times when major democracies are led by crackpots whose popularity increases as they exhibit more evil intent. I understand one of those crackpots is an admirer of this work.

The plot is flimsy. A man who has been shunted to a mediocre livelihood in a totalitarian society kind of gets lucky and discovers electricity. He builds an electric light. He gets beaten up, but that’s no problem for him. Soon after being flogged, he carries the light into a hall full of scholars who, instead of treating him like the hero he should be, say that he has violated the laws of the land and his assigned station in life. Our hero smashes a glass window with his hand and jumps out of the hall. Oh, he’s carrying the light at the time. He escapes into a forest. The woman he loves, and who loves him, follows him there. He builds a bow and arrows (it’s likely that the light helps him, but we are told about it) and they get by. They discover a nice house. She gets pregnant. They live happily ever after, equipped with the knowledge that to be selfish is good. I forgot what happens to the electric light.

Oh, the woman is suitably subservient to him. She kneels before him to accept him as her master. And in the end, he chooses names for himself and for his wife. I’m sure that delights Ms Rand’s fans, of whom there seem to be many.

6/10

Me: Mom, can I have We?
Mom: no, we have We at home.
We at home:

Jokes aside it’s a decent variation on the themes We discussed about two decades prior.

Of all the dystopian novels I have read, this one felt like one of the least inspired. The characters are one-dimensional, the story lacks context altogether, and is entirely made to support Rand's liberal philosophies. Sure, it's really short--so is Animal Farm, but that is a story with depth. Ironically, they both claim to be about Soviet Russia--or at least the author's experience with such. I hope I can claim that my reasoning for disliking this book has more to do with its content, and less to do with the Ayn Rand's complete and utter ignorance.