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Anthem

ayn rand leonard peikoff

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Anthem is Ayn Rand's classic tale of a dystopian future of the great "We"—a world that deprives individuals of a name or independence—that anticipates her later masterpieces, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

They existed only to serve the state. They were conceived in controlled Palaces of Mating. They died in the Home of the Useless. From cradle to grave, the crowd was one—the great WE.

In all that was left of humanity, there was only one man who dared to think, seek, and love. He lived in the dark ages of the future. In a loveless world, he dared to love the woman of his choice. In an age that had lost all trace of science and civilization, he had the courage to seek and find knowledge. But these were not the crimes for which he would be hunted. He was marked for death because he had committed the unpardonable sin: He had stood forth from the mindless human herd. He was a man alone. He had rediscovered the lost and holy word—I.

"I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities."
 —Ayn Rand

105 pages, Paperback

First published May 1,1938
Literary awards
prometheus hall of fame award, retro hugo award, 

This edition

Format
105 pages, Paperback
Published
December 1, 1999 by NAL
ISBN
9780452281257
ASIN
0452281253
Language
English
Characters More characters

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About the author

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ayn rand

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Polemical novels, such as The Fountainhead (1943), of primarily known Russian-American writer Ayn Rand, originally Alisa Rosenbaum, espouse the doctrines of objectivism and political libertarianism.

Fiction of this better author and philosopher developed a system that she named. Educated, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early initially duds and two Broadway plays, Rand achieved fame. In 1957, she published Atlas Shrugged, her best-selling work.

Rand advocated reason and rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism as opposed to altruism. She condemned the immoral initiation of force and supported laissez-faire capitalism, which she defined as the system, based on recognizing individual rights, including private property. Often associated with the modern movement in the United States, Rand opposed and viewed anarchism. In art, she promoted romantic realism. She sharply criticized most philosophers and their traditions with few exceptions.

Books of Rand sold more than 37 million copies. From literary critics, her fiction received mixed reviews with more negative reviews for her later work. Afterward, she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, published her own periodicals, and released several collections of essays until her death in 1982.

After her death, her ideas interested academics, but philosophers generally ignored or rejected her and argued that her approach and work lack methodological rigor. She influenced some right conservatives. The movement circulates her ideas to the public and in academic settings.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 99 votes)
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99 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
E-Lias
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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A truly interesting read, Ayn Rand's book holds a captivating narrative. But as I watched the character swerve from the absolute collective to an absolute, egocentric conclusion, I ended up pitying the hero and his hapless companion for stumbling upon the wrong conclusion upon which they would base the rest of their existence. And what happened to "The Golden One" (his much less assertive true love)? All I could see was that for all the hero's self realization, his mate was merely a follower and a worshiper of his fantastic, glowing sacred "I". I am sorry to say Ayn Rand started with a great idea of individualism and ended in the trainwreck of selfish isolation.
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officialniccage
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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Communism is bad. Ego is good, Communism is bad. Ego is good......

Please keep beating me with a hammer.

Communism is bad, Ego is good...

The good news is that this novel is available on the Goodreads page as a free Ebook. So you can get pummeled for free!
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RESTITVTOR_ORBIS
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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Read 2016

I've been thinking for a while if I would ever like to read an Ayn Rand book. As both her main literary achievements are a bit intimidating in size and controversy I was undecided and confused whether I would enjoy her work. An article came to my help where I was recommended to start with Anthem in order to get a basic understanding of her ideology. At 100 pages or so, Anthem seemed the perfect place to start and I thought after reading it I will have a better idea if I want to more of Rand.

Well, tough luck because I still do not know if I want to read anything else by the author. I liked some of the ideas in the book, I can understand where she's coming from, taking in consideration her background but I also believe her individualism is a bit extreme. Although the 'I' is very important in a person's life, I do not think it is everything. Thinking only about oneself will not necessary make a person happy and fulfilled. Sometimes happiness comes from seeing that the people you love are also happy, which does not seem to matter in Rand's philosophy.

I though that in the end the main male character changed into a selfish prick especially in the way he treated the Golden One, his "true love". He proved bossy when he chose the new name for her. He talks about the power of the "I" and making individual choices but does not allow her the option to chose her own name. Hmmm.

I thought it was a bit like the Reader but maybe for a more grown-up audience.
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JordonDummy
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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Luddite Borg control the future, but one man is prepared to take down this socialist dystopia by wielding his strongest weapons: his fearless individuality and the ability to recognise what a good idea a light bulb is. Tedium ensues.

You can usually depend on Rand for some funny strawman daftness, but this poorly written tosh is just dull, beyond dull, an unforgiving vacuum of flat characters in a flat world.
It could be a thought provoking read for solipstic narcissists who believe CEOs are the most oppressed minority, but it's an ideal bird cage lining for everyone else.
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dlonc
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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Futuristic society that doesn't recognize individuals -- everyone's name is "Equality" followed by a number. Cute, huh? One day, Equality-some-number-or-another stumbles across a cave with books in it and discovers the word "I" and immediately realizes what it means even though his cultural and linguistic backgrounds have in no way equipped him to understand but whatever, it's a novella and Rand doesn't have time. Anyway, now Equality-### has an "I" and so he lives in the cave forever and is free. The end.

This book is really, really stupid. Everything subtle and interesting about Rand's ideas is stripped away to get at the crux, which is a really boring crux. Soviet Communism sucked, in extremely general ways! Individuals! Are awesome! Rah!
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StateDeparting
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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Ayn Rand is a point of fascination for me. On a completely selfish level her philosophy, Objectivism, makes perfect sense. But then, in the words of another great philosopher George Carlin, I do this stupid thing called 'thinking'. I start thinking about how, like or hate it (and I hate it), humanity either stands together or falls apart (oh look, something resembling a pun). And the ones, the supposed 'true' individuals are either all facade (surrounded by coruscating hypocrisies such as supportive family and friends, good jobs, no real actual problems to individuate themselves against) or, the other 'true' individuals who care nothing for nobody and anything save themselves....what's that word for those people? Sociopaths.

Look, Rand. Morality's a bugaboo, I hear you, really I do. And (organized) religion and factory style spiritualism (pumped out by a funny hat leader of your preference or obligation) have made the curse of it worse. But without connectivity, without interactivity, without our fellow men (and women, if I can reference Batman Returns in a very overly circuitous way) our only alternative is either suicide (hey, Camus), sociopathy (too many to list) or such an intense solitude (ala Gogol and his straw eating self) that you render yourself God unto yourself (narcissism supreme) or simply hide yourself into complete irrelevance. I enjoy Objectivism (as shown in Anthem and in my continued laborious scaling of The Fountainhead) but merely as an extended thought experiment. Nothing more.

And don't even ask me about the Libertarians.
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syaowee
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
March 26,2025
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With the subtlety of a falling safe, Ayn Rand delivers this short treatise on the subject of egotism masquerading as science fiction with only the barest rudiments of a setting, story and plot set out for the reader to classify it as a "novel".

Anthem is set in a world where individualism is dead and collectivism is the only way to live; a complete social, cultural and industrial overhaul has been conducted, and the word "I" has been eradicated from vocabulary. The story is narrated by Equality 7-2521, a 21 old man who writes it in a journal while hiding in a cave under the earth. He explains his life, background, the society around him, his actions, and finally his goal. Believe it or not, there is even a romance subplot, which is not really a surprise as Rand was once a screenwriter for Hollywood.

There is not much of a real story to speak about, as the whole novel functions as a vehicle for Rand's message. The only virtue of Anthem is that it's mercifully short; as a work of fiction it's painfully simple and transparent, the plot is predictable, weakly imagined and heavy handed. Nothing is realized, everything is forced. The same theme has been done earlier and better by another Russian writer, the relatively little known Yevgeny Zamyatin in his 1921 novel We. Read that one instead to experience a literary work which has influenced both Huxley and Orwell. Of all the dystopian novels that are out there Anthem has to be the one of the least inspired and most unimaginative, the least effective and the easiest to forget.
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