Throughout history humans have looked upon light as a symbol of truth and their source of hope and strength. Ayn Rand uses the light as a symbol of truth in her book Anthem. The main character, Equality lives in a dark society where he symbolizes the light. His rebellious nature and discovery of the electric lightbulb makes him an outcast which leads to his discovery of egoism, an idea that had become extinct and outlawed. Ayn Rand uses Equality’s discovery of light and his relationship with the rest of society to help readers infer the light’s symbolic meaning as the truth of egoism, a truth that cannot be destroyed.
In Anthem society has sunk into a dark age. The people are all living dark stale lives were any creative or individual thought is outlawed. As a result all the citizens are sickly creatures living in constant fear. “we look upon our brothers and we wonder. The heads of our brothers are bowed. The eyes of our brothers are dull, and never do they look one another in the eyes. The shoulders of our brothers are hunched, and their muscles are drawn, as if their bodies were shrinking and wished to shrink out of sight. And a word steals into our mind, as we look upon our brothers, and that word is fear.” Equality is one of the few exceptions. Unlike his “brothers” he is proud, curious,
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In Equality’s time the light bulb had died out with the things of the unmentionable times but Equality was able to find parts that had survived and rebuild. It hadn’t been destroyed, only hidden for a time. “We made it. We created it. We brought it forth from the night of the ages.” Equality later discovers the word “I” and realizes that it is like his light a truth that cannot be destroyed. “The word which will not die, should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the