The Anthem
When born into the world, people are sheltered and nourished. When the appropriate age is reached they begin your schooling. Once their education is complete they are employed and work with complete safety in their occupation. At sixty years of age they retire and spend the rest of their days with their friends and family, with everything else provided for them.
That is as long as you learn at the same pace as everyone else. If you're too bright you will be punished. And as long as you don't ask too many questions you'll be fine, because the overly inquisitive are beaten. As long as you don't prefer another, because we know what is best for you. And as long as you don't believe you are any different or any better than anyone else is, because that will cost you your life. You aren't given a name or an identity or a life. There are no individuals. This is the world of Anthem. Ayn Rand explores the reality of finding yourself trapped in this world of illusions.
Equality 7-2521 finds that everything is being chosen for him, his name, job, and mate just to name a few. But the strange thing is that no one else has realized how unfair it is, for them this is the normal. Equality 7-2521 knows that this isn't right, and he finds that somehow he got caught up in a journey full of questions and answers.
In this deformed world there are things called Councils "and [these] Councils are the voice of all men"(Rand 22). The Councils are the people who control everything there is to control. They choose there subordinates life based on how well that one follows the rules. Equality 7-2521 did not follow the rules as well as he was told he should. He was overly inquisitive and skeptical, for those reasons he was made into a street sweeper. The council has a tendency of being scared of the unknown, so when you look further into that subject you see that the council believes "that [they] know things which exist and therefore things [they] do not know do not exist" (Rand 52). That shows how the council is so scared of things unknown they are convinced it doesn't even exist. That is one of the main illusions in this world.
The definition of thoughts isThe act or process of having a certain thing as the subject of one's mind." People may think thoughts without even realizing it. If you have a certain bench, or a wall, or even a person on your mind you are thinking thoughts. The Council believes "[some] thoughts are forbidden"(Rand 56), for example thinking about someone more highly that another one, when all should be the same. Its human nature to prefer people and it is something you can not control. The Council tries to tell them that what they are thinking is incorrect and they should stop immediately or suffer the consequences, but the Council is thinking these thoughts too. How else would they decide who got what job. Equality 7-2521 only thinks about The Golden One therefore he was breaking the earlier rule. In his mind he knew it was wrong, but he also doubted the Council itself so he wasnt intimidated. This shows signs of Equality 7-2521 breaking free from the jail that keeps him trapped in these illusions.
Equality 7-2521 eventually breaks free from his engraved ways of thinking and, with the Golden one, they escape into the Uncharted Forest. Where they come upon a house from the Unmentionable Times. Equality 7-2521 from there on takes on a new name and identity, Prometheus. Prometheus has said I am done with the monster of we (Rand). This shows Prometheus has totally given up on the previous way of thinking and had finally faced reality. This Reality may seem too good to be true at first for Prometheus but once he realizes how much freedom people had before, he will not be afraid. There is no reason to be afraid of individuality.
Anthem is a world of illusions that begs for the reality to be found within it. The reality Prometheus found showed how the council had been somewhat like a dictatorship. The Council was the voice of all men, it claimed things unknown did not exist, and it tried to control their subordinates thoughts. That is not the way to rule a society when you are unsure of your surroundings. The Councils view is not to be blamed although, they only did what they were told to do by former Council members. The Council tried to protect their citizens, and when one citizen rebels against them they do not want the rest to follow so the best thing to do is call then one of The Damned and move on with their lives. At the end of your life it is said you see your whole life pass you by, but really when you die you dont see your whole life pass by, normally you only see the happy things. Once you take that into consideration, no matter how controlled your life was or how easygoing it was, you will always see the joy that had taken place in your timeframe. That shows as different as those two lives sound, they do have similarities.
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