“Many men in the Homes of the Scholars
have had strange new ideas in the past . . . but when the majority of
their brother Scholars voted against them, they abandoned their
ideas, as all men must.”
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Summary
Equality 7-2521 writes from the
forest to which he has fled that he has abandoned hope and believes
he will sleep on the grass for a few days until the beasts come
to eat his body. He feels that he has aged a lifetime in this day.
He recounts the events of the day: he is able to walk right into
the meeting of the World Council of Scholars because there are no
guards to stop him. The first thing he notices is the sky shining
in the windows and a painting on the wall, depicting the twenty
men who invented the candle. The shapeless forms of the scholars
are huddled around a long table. As he enters, the scholars turn
to him, but they do not know what to think. He addresses them in
a loud voice and in greeting.
Collective 0-0009, the oldest and
wisest of the scholars, asks Equality 7-2521 who
he is, and Equality 7-2521 gives him his
name and tells him he is a street sweeper. The scholars are angry
and scared that a street sweeper should have interrupted their meeting. Equality 7-2521 stops
their murmurs by telling them he has brought them the greatest gift
ever presented to mankind, and they listen to him while he tells
them the story of the invention of the lightbulb, the tunnel, and
his incarceration in the Palace of Corrective Detention. The scholars
hear out his story, but when he lights the lightbulb, they become
terrified and huddle against the walls, trembling together. Equality 7-2521 laughs
at them and tells them that he has tamed the sky for them and has
presented to them the key of the earth.
Collective 0-0009 lambasts Equality 7-2521 for
breaking all the laws of their society and even boasting of doing
so. The other scholars begin slinging insults and threats at Equality 7-2521,
telling him they will have him burned at the stake or lashed to
death. Equality 7-2521 tells them he does
not care what they do with his body but that he wants them only
to protect the light. The scholars tell him that what is not achieved
collectively cannot be good and what is not thought by all men cannot
be true. They tell him that there have often been scholars who thought
they had brilliants ideas, but when their brothers voted against
them, they abandoned their work. They worry that the light will
ruin the Department of Candles, which was only recently established
and took great labor to be ratified, and that it will ruin the plans
of the World Council, without which not even the sun can rise. One
scholar concludes that if the light lightens the toil of men, it
is evil because toil is the end for which men exist. The scholars
conclude that the light will be destroyed.
Equality 7-2521 cannot abide the
destruction of the lightbulb, so he grabs his invention and flees
the council. He runs blindly until he collapses and discovers he
is in the Uncharted Forest, where he supposes he will die alone.
He realizes, however, that he had been lying to himself, that he
did not create the light for his brothers but rather for its own
sake. He does not regret building the light and pursuing his scientific
discoveries, though he wishes he could see the Golden One again.
“[I]f this should lighten the toil of
men . . . then it is a great evil, for men have no cause to exist
save in toiling for other men.”
See Important Quotations Explained
Analysis
In Collective 0-0009, Rand exposes
the mastermind behind the demise of the old world. Until we meet
Collective 0-0009, we might suppose that
the failings of Equality 7-2521’s society
are grounded in the failings of individuals who do not realize their
potential or are stupid, weak, and helpless. Rand’s view of the
collectivist society, however, holds that it systematically rejects
progress and perpetuates hurtful cycles of working for others. Thus
the failure of technology stems not from the failure of scientists
to develop technologies or the failure of the average citizen to
take advantage of those technologies, but rather the failure of
the World Council of Scholars to come to a consensus about how to
utilize the new technologies. Additionally, the Council is afraid
of the lightbulb, even though Equality 7-2521 promises
to harness its power for them. Their ingrained fear of new things
becomes public policy and makes a system of the repression of progress.
This distinction—that society at large rather than certain
individuals are holding humankind back—is very important to the political
criticism that Anthem makes. Rand is arguing against
a position that holds that socialism and collectivism are fundamentally
useful and good propositions but were simply executed poorly in
Russia. This position holds that Communism in Russia was a failure
in large part because of the corruption, vanity, and cruelty of men
like Josef Stalin, who lined their own pockets and carried out personal
vendettas rather than truly pursue the good of the people. Rand,
on the other hand, believes that collectivism is evil and doomed
to fail no matter how it is executed, and the individual who fights
for his own well-being over that of his brothers is the only effective
solution to the problems inherent in collectivism.
