Anthem By Ayn Rand: Literary Analysis

“...For I have lived in the city of the damned, and I know what horror men permitted to be brought upon them.” (103) In the novel “Anthem” by Ayn Rand, Equality 7-2521 has been raised in a totalitarian world. Everyone thinks of the whole, never themselves. It is forbidden to do otherwise. Equality has always struggled with fitting in. He’s always been different. He’s tried to go along with it all. Yet in the end he winds up leaving, and discovering a new way to live, the old ways. How people lived in the “unmentionable” times. He tells how the leaders are wrong, and how people shouldn’t have to live the way they do. That it is wrong. That the word “we” is the route of all evil. By discovering the ways of the “unmentionable” times, Equality has

Though throughout his whole life he has been treated differently because he is in fact different. He is taller, stronger, smarter, etc. Even though they have always held him back he still wished to fit in. Now he has just found out that the society in which he always wished to fit into, is not what he has always thought it to be. That the society in which he was raised is wrong. Equality sees this now, and knows that it should not be this way. That that is not a way to live. Ayn Rand has a very similar idea, which she displays in her short essay “How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?”. You can infer from her essay that she does not agree with this lifestyle. In her essay she states, “Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man’s character as thoroughly as does the precept of moral agnosticism, the idea that one must never pass moral judgement on others, that one must be morally tolerant of anything, that the good consists of never distinguishing good from evil.” This is in fact a true statement. By becoming morally agnostic its like you don't care. you in other words have no morals. Ayn Rand seems to agree that this is a bad