The novella, “Anthem,” by Ayn Rand is an interesting attempt to make capitalism and socialism known. It’s short and sweet, but confusing and a little pathetic. Due to it being short, it cuts off so much potential to an actual good story, even though it isn’t meant for pure fun but learning. It makes readers want more of the actual story and not so much of the main lesson. It is unique though with the plots and events that occur.
The book starts off confusingly since it’s written in first person, but the main character uses the pronouns “we” to refer to just himself. It’s also extremely boring at the beginning, but gets better after a couple pages. The whole book is about a man named “Equality 7-2521” and how he wants to be a scholar but he can’t be, despite being smarter than everyone else. It takes place in a primitive dark age in which scientific knowledge and technological progress are nonexistent. The book portrays Equality as a spoiled brat, since he throws a huge fit and runs away after being told when he presents his ideas to “The Council” and that he broke the laws of the society even though he did. He also meets a girl he calls the “Golden One,” because she’s blonde and he likes her. She later followed him when he ran away into the unknown land, a huge forest. There’s a group that represents the government called “The Council.” Equality wants to become a scholar but “The Council” sends him to be a street sweeper because he is so smart, which is confusing since the whole point of being a scholar is that you are smart. This leads to the beginning of his villain arc, which doesn’t last too long.
In the book there’s a thing called “the unspeakable word” and it talks about how people who said it would get killed, but they never even disclose what the word is. After Equality escapes the council which were trying to kill him in a house on a hill, he reads a book of the past and he learns the pronoun ‘I’ and then starts using it instead of ‘we,’ so we are left to think that the letter ‘I’ could be the unspeakable word, but it is not disclosed.
Equality and the Golden One end up learning how the past was before it got corrupted and ruined, which is a nice, happy ending. Although Equality is a little far-fetched thinking that with the knowledge he has now, he’s going to go off and save the world. It’s almost impossible to do so since everyone in his world strictly believes in “The Council” and that Equality was insane, so he would get nowhere trying to convince them. Even though “Anthem” ruined a good story and had an annoying ending, it does deliver a good message about society and how America’s society could be heading in that direction.
