We, Us, Ourselves

In this idealistic society of Anthem, readers are met with chains of surprises. For example, from the very first paragraph, the readers were able to recognize that I nor me nor myself exists but only we, us and ourselves. The men are taught to degrade themselves for their "brothers" and are trained to say things such as: "We are nothing. Mankind is all. By the grace of our brothers are we allowed our lives. We exist though, by and for our brothers who are the State. Amen.", every night before they go to sleep.
At first, I thought Rand was referring to multiple people when she mentioned we, us and ourselves but as I read on, it was clear that it was an individual that she referred to.


The gap between the society of anthem and the reality was so spacious because in reality, people only look after themselves and barely work to help others from the goodness of their heart. This contrast also made me think about the idea of communism, where everybody is equal and no individual is above one another unless they're a government official. Also, I realized that these men are not even given a real name but identities, which in reality, a robot would most likely have. For example, the characters included Equality 7-252, Internation 4-8818 and etc. As I was reading the book, I came to a conclusion that Rand's purpose of doing this is to backup the "live for our brothers" idea.


Lastly, the last surprise that I found as a reader is on page 21. It states that "It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy...tried not to understand what the teachers taught but we always understood beforethe teachers had spoken." In this society, the level of kids had to be the same and consistent which meant that the kids who were more developed than the others had to try to forget the lessons and not understand the material. In reality, this never happens, in fact the school board's goal is to get kids to overachieve and win. They lead students into entering competitions where we can compete and fight for the higher place. Therefore these three factors of the society of Anthem coincides with the idea of communism and contrasts with the reality in which I live in right now.

Collectivism v. Individualism

 V.



The Councils of the world, state and city seem to have a big role in making the society fall into collectivism. The Council took of everything in this society and men are told to obey the Council from the day they are born. However, because of this idea of collectivism and one Council controlling everybody, this society lacks huge development.

Furthermore, any change in the society, the Councils saw as a threat which was why it was such a big deal trying to steal candles. Even a small invention of lighting a candle was a change in the society and it took forever for the Councils to agree upon letting the men use candles. Another reason why it took forever for intelligent men to come up with such simple innovation was because it was forbidden to think about anything else other than what individuals could do for the brothers altogether.

In contrast to the reality, the councils don't expect any rebellions nor threats in this idealistic society. For example, when Equality 7-2521 was locked in jail for not speaking of where he had been at night, it was very easy for him to break out because there weren't any guards nor a strong lock on the chains. This was because there was never a revolt against the government system before. Everybody listened to the government and never complained. The society was completely under the hands of the councils and therefore the society never advanced from collectivism.