Anthem Analysis

Anthem has this mythic and ancient feel about it, and at times it even reads as if it were a work of scripture. A large part of that is because of the style in which it's written. (See "Writing Sty...

Anthem is set in a dystopian society: a society that's the opposite of a utopia (an ideal society). More specifically, it's set in and around a City (everything in this world starts with a capital...

This may be the only book you'll ever read mostly narrated in the first-person plural (with "we" instead of "I"). The narrator, Equality 7-2521, never learned how to say "I," because the word was f...

Anthem is definitely a piece of dystopian literature: it's all about the nightmarish society where essentially everything is bad. Like the other classics of the genre (such as 1984, Brave New World...

Equality 7-2521, our narrator, initially speaks to us in a very confessional kind of way. He's revealing secrets about himself to us, secrets which nobody else should know. They're secrets about wh...

Rand's writing in Anthem has a uniquely primitive feel. It reads more like some ancient text than it does a mass-market paperback. In part, that's because of how simple and bare it is. There are ve...

An anthem is a poem or a song that celebrates or sings the praises of something. Think of "national anthems," for instance which celebrate a particular nation. "Anthem" also sometimes has a specifi...

The last two chapters of Anthem are, arguably, the most important of the book. Equality 7-2521 opens Chapter 11 with a veritable trumpet blast of first person pronouns making us aware that he's fin...

Ayn Rand deliberately wrote Anthem in a simple style, which makes it a breeze to read. The only difficulty you'll have is adjusting to the characters' total inability to use the first-person ("I")...

Hello, our name is Equality 7-2521! Whoops, we really shouldn't have told you that…In the opening pages of Anthem, Equality 7-2521 introduces himself, tells us about his past, and gives us th...

Equality 7-2521 is born with a curse: he wants to know…Equality 7-2521 has been born with a curse that sets him off from everyone else: he's smart, and he has a genuine desire to know things....

We meet Equality 7-2521, who tells us about his sins against society and about how he found the tunnel where he secretly hangs out. Equality 7-2521 meets the Golden One (Liberty 5-3000) and chases...

Anthem was the inspiration for an epic sci-fi "rock opera" song, "2112," the title track of an album by the same name, performed by the Canadian rock band Rush. (It's even acknowledged in the liner...

There's sexual tension to burn between Equality 7-2521 and Liberty 5-3000. It's obvious that they are attracted to each other, and we see them share one passionate kiss shortly before they discover...