Review: Anthem by Ayn Rand
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By Mark Traphagen on September 1, 2009
My rating on Goodreads.com: 2 of 5 stars
This is not so much a novel as it is a sermon. It starts out looking like there will be an interesting story, but ends up being just a vehicle for Rand to preach her individualist gospel.
Anthem is set in a distant future when only the dimmest memories of our “Unmentionable Times” remain. All traces of individuality have been stamped out. Everyone has a number instead of a name and speaks of themselves and others in a collective plural (“we” never “I” and “they” never “him/her”). The main character discovers remnants of the science of the Unmentionable Times, and his knowledge leads him to rebel against the authorities of his world.
I think I might have enjoyed this book more if I had thought of it as a poem or parable, rather than as a novel. The characters were flat and lifeless who only speak to each other in speeches instead of real dialog.
Stylistic considerations aside, this book’s usefulness is as a rather brief introduction to the radical individualism that was Ayn Rand‘s gospel.
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Mark Traphagen (aka Foolish Sage) is a lover of dark beers and darker music, of things that are but are not as they seem, of contexts taken out of context to become new contexts, of stories that point to a bigger Story. Mark lives in Durham, NC, with his wife and pet Macbook Pro. He has two married daughters and six grandchildren, and works by day for
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