Dystopian Symbolism In Anthem

Anthem is an anti-dystopian fictional novella by author Ayn Rand, written in 1937 and first published during 1938 in England and later published in America during 1946. Set in the distant future in a collectivist society; where words like I, me, and mine have been eradicated from their vocabulary and instead use “we”, “our”, and “they” to refer to themselves as a whole. Councils dictate all life in the society through the Council of the Home, Council of Scholars, etc. A young man named Equality 7-2521 had dreamed of becoming a Scholar, but was instead assigned to be a street sweeper by the Council of Vocations, where he will continue to search for knowledge. The definition of dystopian literature is a state in which the conditions of life are extremely bad. Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem uses symbolism to distinguish her piece as true

Firstly, the absence of first person singular pronoun phrasing is one of Ayn Rand’s heart meanings of Anthem. The rulers of Equality’s society seek to discourage any realization of individuality by eradicating any form of self-importance or ego, which is Latin for “I” and happens to be the “Unspeakable Word”. Equality 7-2521 shares “The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory.”

Ayn Rand was driven to write Anthem as a way to expose her idea of how she had thought of communism when she had lived in Soviet Russia when her father’s business had been confiscated, leaving her family displaced when she was just a teenager. Symbolism in Anthem distinguished mainly through names colors and speech to represent an anti-dystopian piece. As these elements are used throughout the novella, it paints a clearer and clearer picture of Rand’s idea of a