Anthem Chapter 1
Chapter 1 of ‘Anthem’ by Ayn Rand begins with the narrator, Equality 7-2521, introducing himself and the world in which he lives. He describes a dystopian world in which there is no concept of an individual, but only a collective people. The People are expected to act according to the will of the community and the government without ever questioning them or expressing innate desire. They are not allowed to think or act for themselves.
Equality 7-2521 is a twenty-one-year-old boy with an unusual height of six feet. He usually addresses himself as ‘we’ and considers his writing sinful because no one else can interpret it. He writes for himself. The Great Council, the body of all truth, doesn't permit thinking or writing alone. The writer claims to have committed a greater unnamed crime for which no law exists. He sits alone in a dark tunnel to write under a candle that he has stolen from the Street Sweepers. The walls of the tunnel are cracked, and water runs through them like blood. The writer fears that if he gets caught, he will be sentenced to ten years in the corrective detention center. He often fails at expressing his feelings because the laws forbid thinking.
People of this society wear bracelets on their left hand with their name inscriptions. Equality 7-2521 is considered abnormal and evil by his teachers because he is smarter than his peers and bigger. He mentions the taboo on conversation about the period before the Great Rebirth, and the punishment for such conversation is at least three years of imprisonment. The old people of their society are said to whisper about it in the Home of the Useless. It is said that in the time before the rebirth, there were several strange things like massive towers touching the sky, a wagon without horses, and flameless lights. However, people in that period did not abide by the Great Truth that all men are one and alike, which is why they perished.
Equality 7-2521 distinguishes himself from his brothers, who are good and wise as they do not commit the crime of hiding alone under the tunnel. He reminisces about the Home of the Infants, where he lived with other children till he was five. The sleeping halls were lined with a hundred beds. After five years, he was sent to the Home of the Students, where he studied for ten years. He curses himself for being intelligent enough to comprehend everything quickly, as superiority is considered evil and differentiates him from his brethren. So, he tried to pretend to be dull. So, Equality 7-2521 tried to follow and copy Union 5-3992, a pale and soft boy who he believed possessed half a brain. The teachers, however, saw through his farce and punished him even when he pretended to be slow like his peers.
The Teachers used to warn the students to set aside any feeling of preference for a vocation since the Council would decide their future when they reached the age of fifteen. Equality 7-2521 prefers some works over others and is curious about the science of things as he feels drawn to the mysteries of the phenomena that surround him. The Council of Scholars, who claim to know everything, denies the existence of any mysteries due to their perfect knowledge of the world. He learned the subject with eagerness and learned diligently all about the earth's shape, the sun's revolution, seasons, and wind directions. He used to wake up in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep to wish to be sent to the Home of Scholars as it had great inventors, like the man who had invented the Candle. Citizens of society worked in their assigned vocation until the age of forty, which is when they are considered to be too old for work. They are then sent to their next destination the, Home of the useless, where older people live idle lives awaiting death.
Equality 7-2521 turned fifteen and appeared before the Council of Vocations, which would give the students their life mandates and tell them what work they should do for the remaining days. The Council called the names of the students one by one and met each of them alone. The students assigned the job of a carpenter, or a cook had to retire from their studies and begin working on their craft. On the other hand, students appointed as leaders would be educated further in the prestigious House of the Leaders. Members of this house study hard to be elected to the state and city council by vote. However, Equality 7-2521 had just one wish, and that was to be a scholar. Equality 7-2521 is called upon and is given the lowly job of a Street Sweeper. Upset, he accepts the job as an atonement for his sins against his brothers, that of having a preference for the scholars. He moves to the grey house of the sweepers, which is located on a narrow street. Each day, the head rings a bell to signal everyone to wake up, get ready, and leave for work with their brooms. They return home for midday meals after five hours and then return to the street for work. The dinner is followed by a social meeting where men from different homes assemble to discuss everyone’s duties and the matters that had been discussed by the councils.
Equality 7-2521 worked as a Street Sweeper for four years until he committed a terrible crime. He worked as a sweeper with Union 5-3992, the half-brain, and International 4-8818, a strong and cheerful sweeper. International 4-8818 loved to draw pictures that made men laugh, but the law forbade him from drawing and smiling. Equality 7-2521 considers International 4-8818 his friend, but friendship is also a transgression since it's an act of preference. They would have lived in the Home of the Useless under the state's care, but the crime changed everything. He blames the curse, i.e., the curious human nature, for the crime, as this trait makes him gather all the waste discarded by the scholars and study it for himself.
Equality 7-2521 joins International 4-8818 to complete the sweeping work of an area with a clear view of the Uncharted Forest. They come across an old rusted iron bar covered with weeds. They pull at it and discover a tunnel with rings for stairs. Equality 7-2521 argues that it can’t be unlawful to enter the tunnel as the Council isn’t aware of its existence. He descends into the dark tunnel and finds metal and glass tracks on the ground. Equality 7-2521 suddenly realizes the association of the Unmentionable Times with the tunnel. The tunnel appears to him as a passage to discover their lost secrets. As he resurfaces, International 4-8818 suggests reporting the discovery to the Council, but Equality 7-2521 convinces him not to reveal the place to anyone as they would be put to death for having gone into the site. They decide to protect the place’s secrecy for themselves. From that day onwards, Equality 7-2521 sneaks into his hiding tunnel during the mandatory three-hour entertainment session. He crawls into the tunnel without anyone noticing him and hides the secret place with stones so that no men see it. Equality 7-2521 steals candles, powders, and acids from the Street Sweepers and the House of the Scholars. Every night he melts metals, mixes acids, and cuts loose animal bodies recovered from the Cesspool. He builds an oven of bricks to burn wood and even steals the Scribe’s precious manuscripts from the Home of the Clerks, which are especially valuable. Two years have passed since that discovery, and the writer has gathered knowledge worth more than ten years he spent in the Home of the Students. He has explored new and learned things which even scholars are unaware of. The writer finds peace in his hiding, and this offense has granted him peace for the first time in his life.
Analysis
Anthem can be viewed as Rand’s manifesto that expounds on her philosophy of Objectivism. Ayn Rand witnessed firsthand the atrocities visited in the soviet union in the name of collectivism. These experiences drove her to develop the concept of Objectivism, which postulates that an individual’s value is innate and unrelated to how the individual contributes to society. In this way, Equality 7-2521, acts as a prophet similar to the religious Judaeo-Christian prophets. He bears a message about the value of the individual to a collectivist society that has utterly suppressed all its people. He is unaffected by the disapproval of society as he believes his message to be more important than anything else. People around him find themselves to be drawn to be him, despite his lowly position in society, and break the law for his sake without truly understanding why. This is exemplified in International 4-8818, who decides to defy the council for Equality 7-2521 out of an unexplainable sense of loyalty. The author indicates the importance of this interaction between the two friends through the use of dialogue, a rare feature in this novella. However, unlike the religious prophets from a holy book, Equality 7-2521 does not claim the authority or even the existence of a higher power than the individual. He derives all of his authority from himself.
Certain features of the setting can be said to reflect the Soviet Union, but the author intended the novella to be more than just a condemnation of the Communist Soviet Union. This is why the world of novella could be seen to be any part of the world where the collectivist authority had reached its final and undeniable end.
