The only good Ayn Rand book, mostly because it's over so quickly.

When dystopian novels - or any science fiction novels - are useful, it's not because they predict the future in any exact way. It's fun when they happen to get it right, but it's beside the point. They're not about the future; they're about now. So Zamyatin's We (1921) shows a future in which individuality has been willfully destroyed in order to point out the shortcomings of the post-revolution Soviet state. Huxley's Brave New World (1931) takes Henry Ford's philosophy to its logical extreme not because he thinks we might end up there precisely, but to criticize what it's up to right now.

Dystopia in the hands of a good writer is an elaborate way of saying, "Chill, dude." In the hands of a nutjob, it's Anthem.

Like Huxley before her, Rand rips off We blatantly. The generic names assigned to people and the annihilation of the individual; the impersonal mating system; the illegality of being alone; the shutting-out of nature; the mythical past war that destroyed civilization; the banning of literature; most obviously, the very word "We," which is used elegantly in Zamyatin's masterpiece and like a fucking jackhammer in Anthem (1937).

But at its core, Anthem is about something different. It uses its extreme vision of the future to propound an equally extreme philosophy for today, and that's why it's crazy talk.

The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it...the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong...

What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it?

This is a sophomoric thing to say. When you take collective living to its grotesque extreme, it doesn't mean that any collective thinking at all is terrible. It means that you shouldn't take it to its grotesque extreme. Zamyatin knew this. It doesn't take a genius, but it's still beyond Ayn Rand. Anthem is an overreaction. It's loony, extremist, fanatic. It's stupid.

And this book is terrible. It's amateurishly written, as all her books are. Its characters are ludicrously one-dimensional - particularly its lone woman - as all her characters are. It steals its setting wholesale from We, and then drives it pell-mell over the edge of a cliff: Rand's plagiarized We without understanding it. It's poorly written and poorly thought, and it's a crap book.

Literature is never dangerous. To read literature is just to have someone else's idea. And ideas are never dangerous. I have all kinds of ideas: good ones, bad ones, silly ones. The dangerous thing is bad judgment: when you're wrong about which ideas are good, and which are bad. Go ahead and read Anthem, but don't be mistaken: it's a bad idea.

This book really helped me get my self esteem back together. This was my mantra going into college.... I think it got me through a lot of BS. It is not bad to remind yourself of the following things every once in a while.....

"I am. I think. I will.

My hands . . . My spirit . . . My sky . . . My forest . . . This earth of mine. . . . What must I say besides? These are the words. This is the answer.

I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.

It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth. It is my ears which hear, and the hearing of my ears gives its song to the world. It is my mind which thinks, and the judgement of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth. It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect.

Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: "I will it!"

Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me; the guiding star and the loadstone which point the way. They point in but one direction. They point to me.

I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars.

I am a man. This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before!

I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them. The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.

I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.

I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned."

n  Mocking, Childish Reviewn

The ending, with the Statue of Liberty emerging from the beach, was a nice twist. "You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!" As it turns out, it was Earth all along.

And, yes, for those keeping score at home, I do intend to use this exact same review for every dystopian novel I read. At least I amuse myself and, really, isn't that what matters most?

n  Slightly Less Childish Reviewn

Look, I fully appreciate how Ayn Rand and her family suffered at the hands of the Soviets before she fled for America in the 1920s, and I understand how that would lead her to develop her virulently anti-socialist philosophy and write novels decrying the most dehumanizing aspects of communism. But, as with most propaganda -- and I don't use that word pejoratively, but simply to mean literature used to promote a cause -- it's got an expiration date. It's been two decades since the Berlin Wall fell, and for the vast majority of the world, communism isn't much of a threat anymore. So, aside from studying the history of communism, is there much reason to read such propaganda at this point, especially propaganda as lacking in literary value as "Anthem" and Rand's other books?

I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.

I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned.

Aside from plus-sized, pain-killer-addicted Republican talk-radio hosts and octogenarian former Federal Reserve chairmen, who takes this horseshit seriously at this late date?

OK, in addition to the aforementioned, I guess there's one other group of readers for Rand's novels even in the 21st century: self-centered, bookish teenagers seeking affirmation for their assumptions that they alone are individuals, they alone have it all figured out, they alone understand how the world really works, and everyone else is a mindless conformist. Stupid sheep! Then, at some point, Lord willing, those readers grow the hell up, realize that no man is an island after all, and switch to reading real literature. (If not, they become the voice of the GOP, I guess.)

As for the rest of us? Readers wanting to reacquaint themselves with Rand's writing -- especially given the two new biographies out, and much media attention being paid lately to both Rand herself and her ongoing influence on the Republican Party -- can knock off "Anthem" in less than an hour, and not have to waste their time with the brick-sized "Atlas Shrugged" or "The Fountainhead." So "Anthem" gets an extra star for being mercifully short, I guess, and available for free on the Internet. And it's a slightly better book for teenagers than "Twilight," I suppose, with a marginally better message. Marginally.

Definitely the only book by Ayn Rand I will ever need to read, unless I happen to be reincarnated as an asshole. When people start modeling their book covers after Mussolini-era Italian architecture, worry.

I’d like to preface this saying I’m reviewing this based on the novel itself rather than the political sphere it encompasses. I loved it - I think it’s a wholly human and simple novella that has importance. Hence the four stars.

However- if taken for the philosophical and political work it had been intended I would suggest other sources. I myself lean towards principals of socialism and found the arguments Rand conceived within this to be incredibly thought-provoking, but alas a complete misunderstanding of what I believe socialism to be. Which isn’t a negation of individuality but a celebration of individuality through a society that can collectively support and uplift one another.
Heck yes, it’s utopian but someone’s got to have harsh ideals in this current climate.

Despite my obvious reasons to dislike this novel - it was brilliant. One of the best dystopian novels I've read.

Possibly the most pretentious writing I've ever experienced.

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.

Alright. If, for some reason, the values of individuality or independence are completely alien to you, you should read this book. Everyone else is better off skipping it. It has nothing else to offer and it's got a good chance of convincing that you're smarter or more enlightened than you actually are.

Granted, I was a bit biased against Ayn Rand while reading this. But before reading this I had that sort of play-aversion that you carry around because it's fun to make fun of famous dead people. After reading this my contempt for her has become deep and far-reaching.

The setting is simplistic and nonsensical. Unlike other dystopias such as 1984 or Brave New World, it's not portrait of a functioning oppressive society or a sad commentary on human nature as much as it is a vague, untenable strawman. Other dystopias are written with an awareness or sensitivity towards the human condition. 1984 dealt with our willingness to circumvent logic for a comfortable, patriotic lie. Brave New World dealt with our willingness to completely ignore issues and problems as long as we're entertained. Anthem on the other hand, deals with our willingness to sacrifice logic, comfort, entertainment, and freedom for the good of our neighbors.

Oh wait... that doesn't make sense. In fact it flies in the face of the oldest, and most confounding problem in the social sciences, The Tragedy of the Commons. Biology and psychology have also found that self-sacrifice without compensation is an exceedingly rare phenomenon, and that animals (including humans) are ,as a general rule, selfish. Even the Soviet Union, a major influence behind this book, was only maintained by the general acceptance of the communist ideal for a short time before it was replaced with the KGB and the threat of the gulags. Considering how easy it was for Equality to escape from confinement, I'm comfortable saying that critical element was absent. This might be more excusable if it was meant to be a highly stylized hyperbole like The Giver, but Rand says herself in the introduction that this is not only the inevitable sum of collectivism, but what all socialists and collectivists secretly WANT.

All this leads me to believe that a person who could seriously believe, much less write, this would have to be someone who saw their self-interest as unique, and imagined the majority of humanity a swathe of ambitionless drones. That, or a reader who's mouth salivates at the word "individuality" and who, when it comes to the affairs of the world, automatically equates cynicism to realism because it makes them look clever and critical.

The writing's painfully overwrought as well. You have to understand this book is listed as half-read because despite my several attempts I can't finish it. I either get tired of self-indulgent prose and put it down or I start reading it out loud and I can't take it seriously (a friend and I did this to pass the time while waiting for a bus once.) The character thinks in short, declarative sentences that seem to rely on the reader seeing his struggle as novel and impactful. If you don't do this automatically there's nothing really there to MAKE you. The struggle in question, is a one-dimensional tug of war between We and I without the complexity or variability seen in actual human thought.

Even the treatment of individuality once it's "achieved" is trite. After you figure out the "I" and the "ego" you're pretty much scott-free. You don't have any uncertainty about what you want to do or who you want to be, and you don't have to worry about things like self-deception, insecurity or over-confidence to mess with you. Congratulations, you are one of an elite few! Rand's portrayal of selfishness and independence as some miracle cure is sophomoric and overly simplistic, and it gets hammered into you from the beginning. It's not even as if calls to challenge, question, and break social oppression or embrace your individuality are hard to find, even in Rand's time, and a lot of these calls don't have to resort to strawmen or heady promises of perfection. Read Ender's Game, The Giver, My Side of the Mountain or any other young adult novel. Even song lyrics (Tilly and the Wall, Say Anything, Incubus) treat the topic of self-definition and social constraints with more intelligence. This book might have been revolutionary for its time, but we've moved on as a culture. We've gotten over the novelty of selfishness being a virtue and social control being a bad thing, and we've managed to produce far more intelligent treatments of the subject.

We are not allowed to have our own thoughts. We are not allowed to dream, we are not allowed to BE. At age 15 we are told what we will be doing every day until we are 40, when we will enter the Home of The Useless. We are not allowed to think about anything other than what we are told to think. We ourselves are not important, the great collective WE is all that matters.

But not all of us are content to be simply part of the herd. Some of us think for ourselves even though we know it is a sin which could put our lives in danger. We find a way to nurture ourselves within that great WE and we survive. But surviving is not enough: how do we learn to Live?

I was intrigued by this book and I think it is even more relevant in our day than when it was written. I look around and see people being molded into a great herd that follows orders: Buy this, Drink that, Eat here, Do this, Don't say that, You need this, You cannot do that. Is it possible that in a few more generations society will be just as Rand describes it? Or are there enough people left with minds of their own to avoid that scenario?

Society has to have rules, but there needs to be a balance between that collective WE and the individual that makes up the WE. Too much of one and you get a cold distopian world like that in Anthem. Too much of the other and you have no civilization at all.

This was the first work by Ayn Rand for me. I tried to read Atlas Shrugged once and could not get past the first few pages, and after that I was too intimidated to even open The Fountainhead. But now I want to see what else Rand had to say.

Witless, styleless, and self-righteous. "1984" and "A Brave New World" are far more effective books. Although I can't say I agree that individualism is more important than collectivism, especially when people come together as a whole to do things positive in this world.

I was probably 13 when my aunt gave this to me to read during my summer break. I think I was having existential angst and wondering why I was the oddball and never the normal one and why other kids had it so easy/were so boring.

I'm assuming my aunt gave this to me in order to show me that individuality is a blessing, that if we were all the same, we'd be little better than robots, that our lives would be pointless. And I understood that message but that's not what made its impact on my tender little brain.
Instead, this scared me like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" scared me, like The Handmaid's Tale would scare me about five years later.

I didn't internalize the pep talk of "See? You should be proud of having a sense of self, of being your own person" but, instead, grew terrified of other people trying to control me, trying to make me do what they wanted me to do, trying to make me behave in a fashion best suited to their needs, not mine.
Which is also a fairly standard reaction to this book, I am sure. However, maybe I shouldn't have read this at 13. I probably would have been better prepared to deal with my freak-out and subsequent paranoia, which would have led to a much better teenage rebellion (mine involved sitting alone in my room, blasting Enya on the record player - my step-dad still hates Enya to this day. Yes, Enya - and reading fantasy novels. My mom practically begged me to sneak out of the house, drink, smoke, get stoned and have sex because she was not comfortable with my slinking, sullen, withdrawn, fantasy-addled, smart-mouthed, overly-sensible self) had I read this in high school. Yeah, 13-year-old me figured the best way to keep from being taken over by anyone was to hide, hide, hide. So I hid, hid, hid. And this did me no favors whatsoever and I didn't actually learn to grow up until I was well into my 20's.

On the plus side, though, I don't have a criminal record, I do have a good education, I'm the least worried about fitting in and being normal, and I'm probably the happiest member in my family so...maybe being scared of assimilation at age 13 actually worked for me and I just didn't realize it until right this very minute.