Anthem Essay Topic 1 Ayn Rand's Anthem depicts a collectivist society where each person is stripped of his/her individuality and forced to do only things that work to better society. The protagonist, Equality 7-2521, has just invented some sort of lighting creation similar to the common lightbulb. Equality knows that his new invention may have a huge, and positive, impact on mankind. However, his knowledge of the prosperity that his creation could have on society is not what causes him to experience feelings of satisfaction and pride while constructing it. Equality's main source of motivation for creating the lightbox is to feel like he has something all to himself that another person is yet to have, and to experience a sense of accomplishment. Equality is right to be motivated in this way in the context of Anthem. If each individual on Earth were to be motivated in this way, the world would be extremely chaotic. It is …show more content…
His reason for doing so is simple, he just doesn't care about what he could do for the society. He even states "We have fought against saying it, but now it is said. We do not care" (54). This shows that Equality is tired of trying to do what is best for society and is ready to do something for himself. Equality's other main motivation for conducting his experiences is that he wants to finally be in control of something that is his very own. The idea of little to no individualism is a very common theme throughout dystopian works of literature. While Equality is explaining his thoughts on his new- found knowledge he exclaims, "So much is still to be learned! So long a road lies before us, and what care we if we must travel it alone!" (54). It is easy to see from the change in Equality's tone that he is very passionate about learning new information on his own for himself and for himself