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Essay Themes in Ayn Rand's Anthem

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Anthem Themes “My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose” (Rand, 95). Anthem is written by American author Ayn Rand about Equality 7-2521 on his quest for happiness. The novel is set in an unspecified time and place in the future. Years after human civilization has gone through a deconstruction in which all knowledge was lost and a new society established with no concept of the individual. “The novel describes the efforts of the main character, Equality 7-2521, to reestablish a sense of personal identity and restore the knowledge of the past by objective scientific inquiry. In doing so, he must face many dangers and privations” (Anthem). Anthem is a dairy of the Equality …show more content…

Each person is on a certain schedule that they have to follow religiously. They live the life that the Council wants them to live not the life they want to live. “Our name is Equality 7-2521, as it is written on the iron bracelet which all men wear on their left wrists with their names upon it. We are twenty-one years old. We are six feet tall, and this is a burden, for there are not many men who are six feet tall. Ever have the Teachers and the Leaders pointed to us and frowned and said: "There is evil in your bones, Equality 7-2521, for your body has grown beyond the bodies of your brothers." But we cannot change our bones nor our body” (Rand 18). He is also called The Unconquered One by The Golden One, Liberty 5-3000, and eventually renames himself Prometheus after the gods. Equality 7-2521 is intellectually gifted although he is assigned to a lifetime of labor as a street sweeper. The Council tells him what is right and wrong but Equality 7-2521 knows there is something more and he wants to find that out. Equality 7-2521 finds a secret tunnel with metal tracks, most likely an old mine shaft. He sneaks away every night to the tunnel where he researches and conducts scientific experiments, reading manuscripts, and writing in his dairy which is all forbidden. What he discovers is unknown to the Council. Equality 7-2521 works next to the fields as a street sweeper. The women work in the House of Peasants managing the

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