Communism and Collectivism
Anthem depicts a dystopian collectivist society. The society is ruled by a world council that uses the concept of equality as an excuse to oppress the people. They do this by taking the idea of equality and turning it against itself. The concept of equality is perverted by using ideals nearly identical to those used in the speech “the soul of the collectivist” in a different Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead. In the speech Ellsworth M. Toohey an architectural critic confesses his plan to make a society similar to the one in the book Anthem. The speech is about how he plans to create it. He says that he was doing this by perverting the soul of man. In the speech he tells Peter another architect that the trick to creating the society is to destroy the very concept of greatness and enshrine …show more content…
Those who are curious and intelligent are put in the house of chimney sweepers while the slower people were promoted to leadership roles. The rulers in Anthem created the society through use of the ideas in heart of the collectivist speech. The rulers of the society decide that everyone has to learn at the exact same speed and no one can introduce a new technology without the support of the majority of humans in the world. Because of their rules on technology advancing as a civilization is next to impossible and most ideas of advancements in technology will never be implemented. This coupled with the civilization as a whole going back to the 1800s technologically meant that the world was stuck in a kind of limbo with weak technology and almost no advancements. Life today and life in the novel by Ayn Rand and today are extremely different except for a few small similarities. Both in the book and today there is a lot of emphasis on equality but there are a more differences between the U.S. and the society in the book. There are however a lot of similarities between the society in Anthem and communist societies such as China
Anthem depicts a dystopian collectivist society. The society is ruled by a world council that uses the concept of equality as an excuse to oppress the people. They do this by taking the idea of equality and turning it against itself. The concept of equality is perverted by using ideals nearly identical to those used in the speech “the soul of the collectivist” in a different Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead. In the speech Ellsworth M. Toohey an architectural critic confesses his plan to make a society similar to the one in the book Anthem. The speech is about how he plans to create it. He says that he was doing this by perverting the soul of man. In the speech he tells Peter another architect that the trick to creating the society is to destroy the very concept of greatness and enshrine …show more content…
Those who are curious and intelligent are put in the house of chimney sweepers while the slower people were promoted to leadership roles. The rulers in Anthem created the society through use of the ideas in heart of the collectivist speech. The rulers of the society decide that everyone has to learn at the exact same speed and no one can introduce a new technology without the support of the majority of humans in the world. Because of their rules on technology advancing as a civilization is next to impossible and most ideas of advancements in technology will never be implemented. This coupled with the civilization as a whole going back to the 1800s technologically meant that the world was stuck in a kind of limbo with weak technology and almost no advancements. Life today and life in the novel by Ayn Rand and today are extremely different except for a few small similarities. Both in the book and today there is a lot of emphasis on equality but there are a more differences between the U.S. and the society in the book. There are however a lot of similarities between the society in Anthem and communist societies such as China