Prometheus In Ayn Rand's Anthem

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Anthem is a gem of it’s time. It discusses many ideas of Collectivism in a way that is accessible and comprehensible for a very wide spectrum of people. In this book, our main character lives in a society, in which everyone’s life has been predetermined by a government. In this society the word I is no longer used, being replaced by plural pronouns such as we and they, however our main character realises there is more to life than what has been planned for him, so he begins to sneak off at certain points everyday and learn and discover new things. This is not an easy task as he does eventually get caught, and for this, jailed and tortured. However he does not give up, instead he brings his discoveries to the house of scholars, a council of …show more content…
Prometheus is a smart character as show by his actions and thoughts, “Tonight, after more days and trials than we can count, we finished building a strange thing, from the remains of the unmentionable times,” page 59. He studied the things he found, and eventually fixed a machine he had never seen nor heard of. This truly shows some ingenuity as an individual. Prometheus seems to have many similar characteristics to “the creator” from an excerpt titled “The soul of a individualist”. Ayn says many things in this excerpt that hold ties to his character, namely being his want to learn no matter what the others say. In the excerpt Ayn also states, “ that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated and self-generated.” paragraph 6. This quote reminds me of Prometheus when he first finds the caves of the unmentionable times, he keeps going back, because he wants to learn its secrets to satisfy his curiosity. He is self-motivated. This is seemingly the most important factor to Prometheus being …show more content…
Ego is also a recurring word in the excerpt, “To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.” paragraph 5. By this definition it makes a lot of sense for ego to be forbidden in a collectivist society, but Prometheus had ego without even knowing it. Since these two pieces were written by the same person it is safe to say that the beliefs about ego are the same between the two. Ego seems to be a large factor to how Prometheus escaped the society. Lastly, even though Prometheus was a creator and an egoist, he still grew up in the society, so he still has that codependency. He mat a woman named liberty 5-3000, later named Gaea, who he fell for. Even after his feelings grew for Gaea, he still decided to run away with his creation. Yet eventually she also leaves the society she was raised in to pursue a life with him. He seemingly unknowingly leads he to rebel against this collectivist society, leading Gaea and International 4-8818, to their own lives. He has some support which, even for individualists is very
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