Equality In Ayn Rand's Anthem

“All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual”(Albert Einstein). In Ayn Rand’s Anthem, all that is valuable in human society is gone. What is left is a collectivist society that justifies, and keeps their power in dominating ways. With the overwhelming weight of this system, it is hard to imagine how the protagonist, Equality 7-2521, finds an out and a different way of living. Anthem shows a collectivist society that expresses only that and discrimination towards the individual.
Anthem’s society leaders justifies their system with the past. The Old Ones talk about a time where there was a very different system. The time where there was cars, light bulbs, and individuality. This time is called The Unmentionable Times; the collectivist society uses this as justification by calling these times evil and wrong. In Equality 7-2521’s first entry, he talks about the history of the collectivist society and explains “And those times passed away, when men saw the Great Truth which is this: that all men are one and that there is no will save the will of all mean together”(20). This quote talks about the Unmentionable Times ending with the discovery of the Great Truth. The …show more content…
Threats to the society are placed in the lowest jobs. Equality 7-2521 is a smart man, it is shown when he talks about his schooling years, but he is given the job of Street Sweeper. This job would supposedly keep him busy, and unable to disrupt the peace. When Equality 7-2521 is retelling his ordeal in the Palace of Corrective Detention he says “There is no reason to have guards, for men have never defied the councils so far as to escape from whatever place they were ordered to be”(66-67). The leaders don’t need locks and guards because they have instilled that the whole is greater than one. Without the feeling of being a part of the system, one would desire to be a part of it