Theme Of Individuality In Ayn Rand's Anthem

The world described in Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem is technologically primitive, which Equality 7-2521 attributes to mankind’s absence of individuality. Instead, men believe that “‘We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the great WE,’” which displays the extent to which men have lost their individuality. Equality 7-2521 blames this “worship of the word ‘We’” as the reason that “all thought, all science, all wisdom perish[ed] on earth.” This phenomenon of submission to the will of mankind is achieved through the brainwashing of individuals as children and through the strong grip of the totalitarian government. Individuals are raised in a strict, stable environment from the day that they are born in which “The sleeping …show more content…
A quote from Plato’s Republic was believed to be the inspiration of the English proverb, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Without an individual’s ability to feel that something is necessary and the inability to expand on any ideas that they may have, the problems that they face remain unsolved. The solutions to the few problems which were solved remained unchallenged in their effectiveness, such as how the society of Anthem still learned how to “bleed men to cure them of all ailments.”
The absence of technological and scientific advancements in Anthem was due to a lack of ability of people to want to advance because they had accepted to submit to anything which the totalitarian government had enacted. The people tolerated this submission because they were conditioned to live under the illusion that the government was just and “the body of truth.” The people accepted the doctrine that men as a collective unit were great, as they submitted to the worship of the idea of the word,

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