Anthem: A Novel by Ayn Rand (Essay Sample)

Anthem: A Novel by Ayn Rand
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Ayn Rand's philosophy expressed in the novella “Anthem” (1937) was a reaction against the Soviet system and world socialist movement, which she experienced personally and rejected critically for a more conservative return to natural law and Enlightenment values. Rand’s experience as a youth of witnessing directly the Russian Socialist Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin, the turmoil that she experienced in being accused as a bourgeoisie reactionary in her university days, and her exile or immigration to the West all undoubtedly left a defining mark upon the development of her personality. Rand embraced the values of the West and America in the days before World War II when the industrial era and modernism was rising in alignment with capitalist modes of progress, and her philosophy of “objectivism” distinctly elevates the individual to the highest position of esteem in her personal hierarchy or cosmology of being. Rand also exalts selfishness, egoism, and superiority as the highest expressions of individualism, and in “Anthem” she defines these views through irony, parody, and dystopian structures which exaggerate the effects of “collectivism”. When she was writing “Anthem,” the Communist Party was still a vital force in Western Europe and other places around the world, aligned broadly with the Soviet experiment. Leading intellectuals, dissidents, labor leaders, and other members of society organized at this time around the Marxist principles of communism and socialism, in hopes that the Soviet model might be established worldwide. “Anthem” is a broad parody and dismissal of the communist, socialist, and Marxist principles of this era which Rand had experienced in the turmoil of the Russian Revolution and rejected. While historically the Soviet experiment failed, in Rand’s era and when “Anthem” was written in 1937, many feared that the entire edifice of Western civilization could teeter and fall at any time according to the will of the proletarian masses rising up and implementing a social movement in the Russian example. Thus, “Anthem” exaggerates these fears of a worldwide communist revolution, and Rand’s views were embraced especially in America by intellectuals of the capitalist establishment as her ideals of objectivism provided a romantic bulwark against Marxist theory and interpretation.
1:33 - “…visiting Leaders mount the pulpit and they read to us the speeches which were made in the City Council that day, for the City Council represents all men and all men must know. Then we sing hymns, the Hymn of Brotherhood, and the Hymn of Equality, and the Hymn of the Collective Spirit. The sky is a soggy purple when we return to the Home.” (Rand, 1937)This passage makes the allegory to the Soviet Union clear, but Rand also believed that all socialist, communist, or Marxist societies were bound to operate on similar principles of organization, dictated from the center by leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc. hypocritically and deceitfully.The “hymns” Rand describes in this section is an allusion to the use of revolutionary songs praising the workers, proletariat, and Marxist ideals in the Soviet system.
1.35 - “Such would have been our life, had we not committed our crime which changed all things for us. And it was our curse which drove us to our crime.” (Rand, 1937)Rand identifies clearly the way the Soviet leadership will develop the police state, gulag, and security apparatus (KGB) in order to monitor and control the population in Russia according to “collectivist” ideology. Under this system, the free thinking of individuals is the greatest threat to the State, and it is attacked and punished ruthlessly.Rand apparently underestimates the ability of the State in the West to develop the same authoritarian and police state values in 1937, as this was before the McCarthy era, the Cold War, Vietnam anti-war protests, and the later developments of American history. In 1937, Rand’s experience as an immigrant to America and her negative experience in Russia led her to over-identify and exaggerate the values of both systems in “Anthem”.
2.49 – “We have heard the legends of the great fighting, in which many men fought on one side and only a few on the other. These few were the Evil Ones and they were conquered. Then great fires raged over the land. And in these fires the Evil Ones were burned. And the fire which is called the Dawn of the Great Rebirth, was the Script Fire where all the scripts of the Evil Ones were burned, and with them all the words of the Evil Ones.” (Rand, 1937)Rand makes a clear allegory in “Anthem” to the archetypal revolution of the Marxists, communists, and socialists, which are all generalized under a “collectivist” label. Marx posited the revolution would be led by the masses of the proletariat against the minority interests of the bourgeoisie who were related to the rich ownership class of corrupt capitalists in the social hierarchy.In this parody of Marxist theory and practice, the “Great Rebirth” is a symbol of the Russian Revolution, but also any communist or socialist revolution which sought to seize control of power in a society. One of the most important acts of the ruling party or leadership after the revolution is that the books of the old regime, here symbolizing the natural law tradition and Enlightenment thought of Western Europe, must be burnt or destroyed to prevent the people from entertaining free judgment in ideas or political theory.
6.7 – “Take our brother Equality 7-2521 to the Palace of Corrective Detention. Lash them until they tell.” (Rand, 1937)This passage is an allusion to the way that the secret police operated in the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin. Political dissidents wo...