Anthem Themes

When she wrote Anthem, Ayn Rand hadn't yet fully developed the distinctive philosophy of Objectivism for which she later became known. Many of the essentials, however, are already at play in the no...

Ayn Rand believed a high degree of freedom to be utterly necessary for any individual who wanted to be genuinely happy, and considered the defense of individual freedom morally essential. She also...

In the world Ayn Rand depicts in Anthem, individuals have no identity of their own. They exist only for the sake of the community. There is no "I" (the word literally doesn't exist), but only "the...

Anthem takes the classic idea of the clash between an individual and his society to a new extreme. The society in this novella controls every aspect of its members' lives, from their daily schedule...

According to Ayn Rand, individual happiness is the highest good in life. No individual has any higher – or more moral – reason for living than their own happiness. The plot of Anthem fo...

The main character of Anthem, Equality 7-2521 is a scientist by nature – a scientific genius. More than anything else, he wants to learn about the way the world is, and believes knowledge to...

In the controlled society depicted in Anthem, love between two people is illegal. Two people in love are tempted to care more for their lover than they are for their "fellow man." When the main cha...

In Anthem, every member of society is expected to live and work only for the "great WE," the brotherhood of all men. Every person is supposed to be equally important. No one is allowed to commit th...

You'll notice something about almost all of the admirable characters in Anthem: they're young, beautiful, brave, strong, smart, and capable. The descriptions of their bodies are practically interch...