Anthem By Ayn Rand: A Literary Analysis

Have you ever looked up to someone for motivation like a family member/loved one and wondered what qualities make them who they are? These are qualities like Dedication is what makes a person who they are. For example, like in “Anthem,” a story written by Ayn Rand, shows a lifelong struggle of a character to learn more about his world and the constraints to prevent him from doing so. Equality no matter what the society has on him, he let his individualistic views into effect like learning even when it was forbidden. Everyone in his society has been bred to only say specific words and Equality longs to know more than what's on the top of the barrel. He wants to know more than just the collectivist idea of sharing everything with one another

The similarities seen throughout the text like that everyone in the society uses the pronoun “we.” Also, the slogan that the society uses is, “We are one in all and all in one. There are no men, but only the great WE, one indivisible and forever,” (Rand, 19). As we can see from the quote, we can see that the society is using certain words when dealing with the people. The society takes out words from the population, giving them a sense of collectivism, which is what rulers use to control the citizens by deleting words. In this case, the word they took and stripped away was the word “I.” Equality rises above these laws which is seen as he wants to know the forbidden word which other people don’t think about. He strives for a word that is almost in his grasp, but still needs dedication to find it. Another reference in this case, is with the character is when Equality ran away from the jail, “There is no reason to have guards, for men have never deified the councils so far as to escape from whatever place they ordered to be,” (Rand, 66-67). As we have heard from above, the society has never prepared for a person to run away from the place from like that. They have never prepared for a person to run away from that since there is no security guards. Which the reader can make an inference from the way he explained it that no one has ever broken the law the way he had and not even a teaspoon as high is this has ever been