Individualism, Modern Capitalism, and Dystopian Visions

Read the excerpt from Anthem. Perhaps they cried out in protest and in warning. But men paid no heed to their warning. And they, these few, fought a hopeless battle, and they perished with their banners smeared by their own blood. And they chose to perish, for they knew. To them, I send my salute across the centuries, and my pity. The imagery of "a hopeless battle" helps to develop the theme that group thinking limits man's potential because it

depicts the collective society as a destructive force that represses the independent thinker.

Read the excerpt from Anthem, by Ayn Rand. I AM. I THINK. I WILL. My hands . . . My spirit . . . My sky . . . My forest . . . This earth of mine . . . What must I say besides? These are the words. This is the answer. Which best describes the narrator's point of view?

His use of the first-person singular pronoun "I" shows that he feels empowered and free.

Read the excerpt from Anthem. Here, on this mountain, I and my sons and my chosen friends shall build our new land and our fort. And it will become as the heart of the earth, lost and hidden at first, but beating, beating louder each day. And word of it will reach every corner of the earth. And the roads of the world will become as veins which will carry the best of the world's blood to my threshold. And all my brothers, and the Councils of my brothers, will hear of it, but they will be impotent against me. The imagery of "the heart" suggests what relationship between the society the narrator plans to build on the mountain and the outside world?

News of the new society on the mountain will gradually spread to the outside world, and the independent thinkers will come to it.

Read the excerpt from Anthem. Those men who survived—those eager to obey, eager to live for one another, since they had nothing else to vindicate them—those men could neither carry on, nor preserve what they had received. Thus did all thought, all science, all wisdom perish on earth. Thus did men—men with nothing to offer save their great number—lose the steel towers, the flying ships, the power wires, all the things they had not created and could never keep. What connection does the narrator make between collectivism and human invention?

People who prefer collective thought are unable to contribute new ideas to mankind's progress.

Read the excerpt from Anthem. The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. Which best states the effect of the imagery in the excerpt?

The comparison of the word "We" to limestone helps to develop the theme that a collective society destroys humankind's potential.

Read the excerpt from Anthem, by Ayn Rand. I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them. The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. The imagery of treasure and fortune helps to establish which theme?

The most valuable human possessions are individuality and independence.

Read the excerpt from Anthem. But what is freedom? Freedom 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. This and nothing else. Based on the philosophical concepts expressed in the excerpt, the narrator would most likely support a government that

allows man to make his own decisions and live with the consequences.

In Anthem, the narrator's name, Equality 7-2521, helps to develop a theme that

individuality is lost in a collective society.

Read the excerpt from Anthem. But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice, to their fate. I wonder, for it is hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word "I," could give it up and not know what they lost. Based on the excerpt, it can be inferred that the narrator believes that

men surrendered to conformity and gave up their own freedom.

Read the excerpt from Anthem. I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. The excerpt supports the theme of

reflective connections

Read the excerpt from Anthem. For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie. The words "the root of man's torture by men" develop the excerpt's theme by

reinforcing individualism since the individual "man" is oppressed by the collective "men."

According to the themes in Anthem, which word is the most destructive to human progress?

we