Individualism In Ayn Rand's Anthem

Everyone is told to be themselves. In a society such as our own today, it is easier than ever to be your own person and express yourselves in your own way. Being an individual is something that is very important to people and to society. Although, in a book like Ayn Rand’s Anthem, individualism is taken from everyone and our main character strives for some expression of his own despite it being the greatest sin in his world. With a name like Equality 7-2521 you can tell that he is only being treated as a another collective to all other men. Equality was taller, smarter, and stronger than his fellow men but he was assigned to the lowliest job there is, a street sweeper or in other words a garbage man. Equality wanted to be a scholar and learn …show more content…
“And we learned much from our teachers. We learned that the earth is flat and that the sun revolves around it, which causes the day and the night” (23). But today we know that this is completely false and was something believed in the past before modern science. On the other hand, this society is meant to take place in the future. Why would a society in the future have that kind of information that we have already proven wrong, Well when you think about the other “technology” they have if makes more sense. It tells of how they wear tunics as clothes and use candles for light. But in also tells of how there was a time in the past referred as the “unmentionable times”. “It is only the old ones who whisper about a time before the great rebirth in the evenings. They whisper many strange things of towers which rose to the sky. In those unmentionable times of wagons that moved without horses and lights that burned without flame” (19). Today we know what these things are. We know skyscrapers, cars, and light bulbs. It is clear that something happened in this time of “great rebirth” that technology was completely