Anthem by Ayn Rand An Overview Essay

Anthem Essay Anthem by Ayn Rand is a most interesting novel filled with many different emotions, but one emotion Prometheus failed to encounter until later on in life was free will. He eventually learns the true meaning of freedom and how to cope with his stern intolerable society. Even though he is reprimanded unfairly for what is the best in him, Prometheus still has faith for what he is doing is right. Also change and progression might be an unnerving thing to the world council, but that won’t stop Prometheus from saving what’s left of his worlds past. Living and growing up in such a collectivist society, Prometheus never knew what it meant to truly feel free. Never knowing that his whole society had been deceived and doomed to corruption was a major disadvantage for Prometheus, but through it all he followed his heart and pulled through. He came to realize that he is free in almost all ways possible. Free to think, say, and feel what ever and whenever he wants. Ayn Rand writes â€Å"And we heard suddenly that we were laughing, laughing aloud, laughing as if there were no power left in us save laughter. † The theme in this quote is free will. Prometheus experiences free will after escaping to the uncharted forest, away from his unforgiving, unprogressive collectivist society. In this amazingly unique story Anthem a young man named Equality 7-2521, later known as Prometheus, has been neglected of the knowledge of his past and now lives in a never changing collectivist society in which he feels he does not belong. Being born too tall and too smart was no accident of fate, Equality I believe was born for a much bigger purpose. That purpose being to bring change to not just his small city but to the world, to bring something new into the spectrum of life. Equality believed he was cursed with having a mind much quicker than all his brothers and was reprimanded by his teachers for his actions. Rand says â€Å"It is not good to be different from out brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. † Equality comes to learn that his transgression was really no transgression at all, but rather human nature, his way of freedom, and hos character. The one thing the world council fears the most is change and progression and this is exactly what Prometheus puts into play. All he wasn’t is to bring light to the world with his new invention, but the council fears what might happen if they let this change occur. The council can only see the bad in what he has done even though there is a profuse more amount of good in it. Fearing the suggestions of being lashed and burned until nothing was left; Prometheus runs to the uncharted forest for the council misread his good intentions as greed. Rand writes â€Å"How dare you think that your mind held greater wisdom than the minds of your brothers? † Prometheus only wants to better mankind and save it from its future corruption. Objectivism is the inimitable philosophic meaning of Ayn Rand in this novel. Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, and aesthetics are the five predominant aspects to objectivism. Each and every one of these aspects was acknowledged in almost every chapter of this book. Rand writes â€Å"Man is a rational being. Reason, as man’s only means of knowledge, is his basic means of survival. † This quote is coming from the aspect of human nature and is explicating that what a man truly knows is his life and what he will come to be. As you can see Anthem is a very compelling story with ethics, reason, romance, and so much more. Prometheus now recognizes how wrong his society had been in depriving himself and his brothers of the knowledge of their past. Also Prometheus comes to conceive why the best in him had been deemed as his sins and his transgression. Though through the hard times in his society Prometheus was different he could never just simply follow the crowd, in the end his dissimilarity could be the one thing his society needs to redeem their own transgressions.