Anthem

Ayn Rand’s Anthem is a story about a dystopian society in which the government has total control and people are not given individual names, but are part of the “we” society. This story is based around Equality and Liberty and their attempt to fight against the idea of a collective society and to advance the idea of the individual. Almost all forms of individuality have been purposefully erased or forgotten. Despite everything, a man name Equality 7-2521 begins to read, experiment, and learn by himself. Ayn Rand wrote this story to warn the world of communist control. In order to write the Anthem, Ayn Rand used symbolism in characters names, allusions to famous works of mythology, and implied comparisons of the society of Anthem to that of her childhood.
The title Anthem has multiple meanings; the word anthem gives the impression of allegiance, whereas it also signifies a call to a cause. On one side of the spectrum it relates to the general populace, while on the other side, it is relevant to the main character. Anthem is fitting to describe this novel because it does not only tackle a certain individual named Equality but also takes on the society he is in.
An Anthem is a sacred composition set to words from the Bible. This may have significance with the title that Ayn Rand has given the novel by parallelling the story of Prometheus and Gaea to that of Adam and Eve. In the Bible, Adam and Eve were given everything that they needed by God with the one exception of not eating from a specific tree. They were told by the Devil that this tree was the tree of knowledge and to eat from it would give them knowledge equal to God’s. In Anthem, Prometheus and Gaea are told that they have everything that they will ever need or desire by the council. They are forbidden to gain knowledge that is not permitted by the council but only to do as they are told.
Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the pursuit of knowledge and ate of the tree in order to gain equality to God. When...