What Are The Rules In Anthem By Ayn Rand

The City in Ayn Rand’s dystopian novella Anthem imposes many strict regulations in regard to what its citizens are permitted to do. In the City, none may stand against the crowd or show any differences. Rules to keep everyone in place and to keep the system running regulate the citizens from birth until death and every interaction that will fall between. They can’t express themselves in any way that separates them or shows a uniqueness. They are one and must always remain as such, but when an individual diverges and shows individuality, chaos ensues and the rules are broken leaving room for a new and different society to emerge.
The rules and controls are strict and unheard of in our society. The first of these sort of laws is the law regarding

All men must be one and cannot refer to themselves as anything but one body and one mind. The men and women of this society adhere to these rules in place to unify them to near-brainwashing. They cannot use the word “I” to describe themselves, only “we,” the collective word. “And [ego] is the Unspeakable Word, which no men may speak or hear...But when they speak it they are put to death. There is no crime punished by death in this world, save this one crime of speaking the Unspeakable Word” (49). To be an individual and to diverge from society is to be a transgressor, a sinner, and the society did all in its power to prevent this from occurring. The members of the society aren’t permitted to have a sense of person and being, allowing the Leaders to stay in

“The laws say that none among men may be alone, ever and at any time, for this is the great transgression and the root of all evil” (17). The citizens were forbidden from ever being alone or in peace and quiet. Infants were raised together up until the age of five in the Home of Infants, they then went to school together for ten years in the Home of the Students, they then were assigned jobs to work until they were forty, where they were with the same people at all times, and then they were sent to the Home of the Useless until their untimely death (20, 28). Forced to be together, all they know their entire lives is collectivism. They are one and they will always be one, until their