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.

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!

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.

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.

ridiculous

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!

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.

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.

Anthem, Ayn Rand

Anthem is a dystopian fiction novella, by: Ayn Rand, written in 1937 and first published in 1938 in the United Kingdom. The story takes place at an unspecified future date, when mankind has entered another Dark Age. Technological advancement is now carefully planned and the concept of individuality has been eliminated. A young man known as Equality 7-2521 rebels by doing secret scientific research. When his activity is discovered, he flees into the wilderness with the girl he loves. Together they plan to establish a new society based on rediscovered individualism.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هشتم ماه آگوست سال2011میلادی

عنوان: جمع خوانی، نویسنده: آین رند؛ برگردان نغمه رضایی؛ نشر تهران، نغمه زندگی، سال‏1389، در‏‫‏104ص، شابک9789642882656؛ موضوع: داستان‌های نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م

معمار جوانی، که برای اندیشیدن می‌جنگد، فردیت خویش را نمی‌بازد؛ سرزمین داستان نقطه‌ ای کور، و گمشده در تاریخ و جغرافیاست؛ این داستان در آینده ی تاریخ، زمانیکه انسان وارد عصر تاریکی دیگری میشود، رخ میدهد؛ آنچه از بشریت باقیمانده، تنها یک مرد بود، که توان اندیشیدن، جستجو و عشق را داشت؛ او در دوران تاریک آینده زندگی میکرد؛ در دنیایی بی عشق، او جرأت کرد زن دلخواه خود را دوست داشته باشد؛ در عصری که اثری از علم و تمدن نبود، او شهامت جستجو و راه یافتن دانش ده مغزش را داشت؛ اما اینها جنایاتی نبودند که او برای آنها شکار شود؛ او برای مرگ مشخص شد، زیرا او مرتکب گناه نابخشودنی شده بود: او از گله ی انسانهای بی فکر بیرون آمده بود؛ او مردی تنها بود

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 05/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 13/02/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

اگر به رمان های دیستوپیایی علاقه دارید بخونیدش حجمش کمه میشه تو چند ساعت خوند. امتیاز من ۳/۵

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.

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?