Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
The Primacy of the Individual
Equality 7-2521 realizes the significance
of his existence only when he comes to understand that one is the
center of one’s universe, and that one’s perception gives the world
its meaning. He struggles throughout Anthem with
his growing desire to spend time alone, to write for his own benefit
only, and to create at his own leisure and for his own purposes.
Only after his break with society, however, does Equality 7-2521 feel
his own strength and ability. Alone, Equality 7-2521 thrives,
even in the forest, where he initially expects to be destroyed by
beasts. In society, all the brothers are drained of their energy
and sapped of their creativity until they become shapeless, faceless
blobs made inarticulate by fear of rejection by the group. By contrast,
those characters capable of thinking on their own exhibit strength,
fearlessness, and self-assurance. In his final epiphany, Equality 7-2521 declares
his will the only edict he will obey and his happiness his only
goal.
Rand writes Anthem as a warning to those
who believe that collectivist societies, like the one whose birth
she witnessed in Russia early in the twentieth century, can ever
be successful. She warns that losing sight of the individual and
his or her needs will lead to the destruction of all progress and
all forward movement. Nevertheless, she believes that the individual
can never really be dominated—he or she will always resurface because
freedom is part of the human makeup. Rand believes that no matter
how hard society tries and how many people it kills in the name
of collectivism, the individual will still rise up and declare him-
or herself his or her own purpose.
The Value of Martyrdom
Martyrdom sets Equality 7-2521 apart
from the rest of society because, in Rand’s view, the willingness
to die for an ideal marks a hero and distinguishes him or her from
the rest of society. Indeed, when society martyrs a hero, the hero
feels nothing but joy at the discovery of his or her ideal. Thus,
when he is burned at the stake in front of Equality 7-2521,
the Transgressor of the Unspeakable Word shows no fear or pain,
only tremendous elation in his knowledge of the word that the rest
of society has forgotten. Likewise, when Equality 7-2521 is
beaten in the Palace of Corrective Detention for refusing to tell
his Home Council where he has been, he feels no pain, only joy that
he has not revealed the secret of the lightbulb. He even consents
to stay locked in his cell until it is time to break out and go
to the World Council of Scholars. In both cases, what matters to
the martyr is not the pain but the ideal, and the ideal is worth dying
for, as Equality 7-2521 observes in his meditations
in Chapter XII.
The Impotence of the Collective
The World Council of Scholars embodies one of the chief
evils of collectivism—the inability of a collective government to
come to a conclusion and take action on behalf of the society it
governs. Because consensus is impossible and individual thinking
forbidden, the council falls into inaction; since the council is
the ruling body of the society, society stops advancing. The World
Council of Scholars exemplifies the fear that controls group thinking.
Because the council members cannot all agree on technological advances,
even a simple innovation such as the candle takes a huge amount
of time and haggling to gain approval. Moreover, because consensus-building
is difficult and dangerous in a society in which discord is viewed
as a sin, the individuals on the council begin to fear any change
as a threat to themselves. For this reason, the council recoils
from Equality 7-2521’s lightbulb. Rand shows
that when absolute agreement is necessary for change, progress is
all but impossible.
Original Creation as a Component of Identity
For Rand, a man’s value rests in the originality of his
mind as expressed in his work, and the value of his work resides
in his personal investment in it, as in Equality 7-2521’s
invention of the lightbulb. Equality 7-2521 discovers
in his tunnel that the work of an individual’s hands is an extension
of the individual’s very self, and that the value of the product
of this work lies not in the product’s benefit for society but in
its own existence as the fruit of the individual’s imagination.
For this reason, Equality 7-2521 prefers
to be beaten into unconsciousness and then nearly starved to death
than to reveal the light he has invented. Furthermore, when the
World Council of Scholars rejects his light as useless, he tells
the council members to do what they will with his body, if only
they will accept the light. Last, when Equality 7-2521 and
the Golden One finally reach the house, his proprietary sense over
the building, which he refashions into a home for him and the Golden
One, is so strong that he is willing to defend it even to the death.
In each of these cases, Equality 7-2521 defends
his work and his property as extensions of himself because they
spring from him.
