Anthem

Anthem is a short dystropian book by Ayn Rand written in 1937-38, during a break from writing "The Fountainhead", portraits a world so lost into a Collectivist utopia that the world "I" has disappeared from  language.

Probably Rand wrote this book as a warning after seeing the deterioration of the foundation of the American Society (Constitution) after the first term of Franklin Roosevelth. According to Amity Shlaes in her book "The Forgotten Man" in the 20's a group of intellectuals, artists, and businessmen became enchanted by the Soviet Revolution. People like Rex Tugwell, Paul Douglas and Sturart Chase among others who were influential in the conceptualization and execution of "The New Deal". The reelection of Roosevelth and the popular support to his recovery programs seemed to be a trigger for Rand to halt Fountainhead and write Anthem. 

The novel describes a restless hero who slowly has rebelled against a systems that decides everything for the people in the name of the will "of our brothers, The State". Although the description of this world is fiction, it is also a grotesque representation of realities and wishes of actual intellectuals and politicians. In Rand's time it was the Soviets and the Nazis, today we know of countries like North Korea where the State chooses even your hair style. The educational systems in most of the countries serve the needs of society and not the individual. Defenders, such as Free Range Kids, of the right of parents to raise their children against the intervention of the state (i.e. Child Protective Services) We read about philosophers like Adam Swift who advocate for removing children from their parents because parenthood is accidental and children belong to society, or news reporter Melissa Harris-Perry who defended the same idea in public TV.

Overall the hero free himself from the oppression of the system and along his beloved partner start a new settlement that defies the City.

"And the day will come when I shall break all the chains of the earth, and raze the cities of the enslaved, and my home will become the capital of the world where each man will be free to exist for his own sake."

Rand explains how the individual broke the slavery chains from gods, from kings, from race but ended surrendering to the collective, to the WE. Overall all forms of dominance people have suffer are to other people. Defiant contenders overtaking incumbents.

"Freedom he ask, from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else."

Some issues can raise philosophical debate under Rand's Objectivism. For instance the hero reverse engineer a light bulb, isn't it a violation of Intellectual Property that she advocates? The hero builds a new city based on the individual, yet he is the one leading and deciding who comes in and who stays out. His voice is triumphant but also authoritarian. He doesn't address how it would become sustainable, Can such authority based on the I be even more dangerous when people surrender their will to think?

In the age of dystropias like Hunger Games, Gone, The Maze Runner, The Giver, Divergent, etc Anthem can be a quick read for teens and young adults to make them think about how far can collectivist minds can go.

Yet some more "meat" in the novel would have made it more appealing. Despite the 6.2 million sold copies I wonder if a longer more elaborated plot would make it more appealing.

My rating 4 out of 5 stars.