Hyperbole In The Book Anthem

Anthem Ayn Rand’s strong opinion of individualism is exaggerated in a most extreme way in her world famous novel Anthem. Her book focuses on “we” rather than “I,” and about the community rather than the individuals. She magnifies communism to every possible extremity. Though her book may only be an extended hyperbole, Rand’s idea was quite faulty. She should not have distorted reality to that point because it is unreasonable to believe that the world could give up the following essential values in life. Communism could never take away the importance of: having a unique name and family, learning and having individual beliefs, and having friendships. We will never have to recite to ourselves, “We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the greater WE, One indivisible forever,” because we are all unique individuals that can change the world

“Friendships are vital for wellbeing, but they take time to develop and can’t be artificially created”(Collingwood). Consequently, it is critical that we have friends in order to learn to be social and teach us other important values such as: integrity, trust, confidence, accountability, and many more. The characters in Anthem were lacking in several of these categories due to the fact that they were not able to acquire friends. Equality 7-2521 was different, but that didn’t change the fact that he couldn’t have friends. When talking about a fellow Street Sweeper he revealed, “International 4-8818 and we are friends. This is an evil thing to say, for it is a transgression, the great Transgression of Preference, to love any among men better than the others, since we must love all men and all men are our friends”(Anthem 30). Although they may say, “all are their friends,” this is not true because friends are people that will help and support each other. In the book Rand was wrong to disregard the influence of