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Individualism Versus Collectivism
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Alice Rosenbaum, better known as Ayn Rand, was born in Petersburg, Russia in 1905. This inspired woman who loved Western films and plays was never thought of as a world-renowned author, but shortly formed into one. At a very young age, Ayn taught herself to read and soon after decided to make fiction writing her career. She was introduced to American history during high school and upon graduating she enrolled in her first University. At this same time, her family fled from their home town to Crimea, to escape the revolution. Years later upon receiving her first job as a script reader and stage extra, Rand published her first novel, We the Living, based on her years under Soviet tyranny. The novel took a turn for the worst when it was rejected …show more content…
In Anthem, there is an obvious message that the people there don’t know anything else but what society has taught them. Every day, people are given a routine of things to do, and these activities never change. For example, jobs. When the Council assigns you to a job, your life task is to work in that field every day of your life until you die and nothing will ever be changed. “Now if the Council has said “Carpenter” or “Cook,” the Students so assigned go to work and they do not study and further.” (25) Through this quote from Equality 7-2521, it is shown that he and all around him know exactly what their daily schedule will look like. The topic of individualism is not something that is mentioned often in the book, but Equality seeks to find it. You will find that within their society, people like Equality 7-2125, Liberty 5-3000, International 4-8818, and Union 5-3992 refer to themselves in the first person; i.e. “we” and “us.” The reason for this is because the nation they live in is only based on the point that everyone is the same. “We are six feet tall, and this is a burden, for there are not many men who are six feet tall. Ever have the Teachers and Leaders pointed to is and frowned…” (18) This means that all people are treated equally for which their traits decide, they have the same daily routines, speak in the same type of language form, and follow the same orders that those of …show more content…
He bears a jealous attitude, but is curious and mildly independent. Towards the beginning of Anthem, Equality was unsure of what society had offered to him. In this he meant he wasn’t too accepting of the rules and schedules each person must follow. Living in a world of collectivism, he never felt as if he was given the same opportunities as others. “We were born with a curse. It has always driven us to thoughts which are forbidden. It has always given us wishes which men many not wish. We know that we are evil, but there is no will in us and no power to resist it.” (18) Because Equality is 6 feet tall, he is placed in an area with those of equal traits as him, whether he agrees to it or not. Equality also portrays a curious personality. He is interested in most everything he comes across, such as places, vocations, and the opposite gender. One day Equality comes across Liberty 5-3000, a young lady whom he seeks interest in. Curiously examining her as he often tends to do, he names her the Golden One. “Yet we call them the Golden One, for they are not like the others. The Golden One are not like the others.” (41) Equality’s curiosity is what drives him into the world of individualism. If it weren’t for his analytical demeanor, he would have never broken the walls of collectivism from his society. This leads to him being
“‘Her name was Gaea. Let this be your name my Golden One, for you are to be the mother of a new kind of gods.’ ‘It shall be my name,’ said the Golden One”(Rand 99). In Ayn Rand’s futuristic novel, Anthem, the people are taught that everyone is part of a whole group. At the point where no one can even think of being an individual, they only see themselves as part of a whole group. Equality 72521 is elected the job of the street sweepers, through his job he begins to have a relationship with Liberty 53000(the Golden One), but through this relationship he begins to move towards individuality and selfishness, as the author Ayn Rand thinks we should.The Golden One and Equality 7-2521(Equality) evolving relationship throughout the book illustrates the theme that you can only be one and you are the only person that matters is yourself evidenced by Equality loving everything about the Golden One in the beginning, then he become less involved with the Golden One and it only helps if he looks at her for a while in between, and at the end the Golden One doesn’t matter to him any more and she is only for making babies and trying on pretty things.
In the world of Anthem there is no I, there is only We. “We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the great We, one indivisible and forever” (Rand, 19). Everyone is part of a collective and must be completely selfless, this is shown when they are all together, they know they must work as a whole and they immediately accept each other as they are all taught that they must. They must not be boastful or proud as they are taught that they cannot amount to anything on their own. They are taught that to think of themselves would be selfish and if something would not benefit all the brothers it was wrong. The people are numbered to highlight even more that they are nothing on their own. By stripping humans of their identity they turned them into a society that was co-dependent; each individual thinking they need the others to survive and that life as a group is the only option. By having made the world’s population dependent on each other, it ensured that people wouldn’t leave or disobey, as being shunned by the others would be an unbearable punishment. In stripping the people of their own identit...
Anthem is written in first person plural: the concept of self is rendered void. Collectivism is the belief that the group has a higher priority than each individual. The protagonist says “there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.” Everyone is expected to be uniform in mind and body. This idea is etched into the soul of every young child. In primary school, children are reprimanded by their teachers if they are in any way different from their peers. For example, the differences could be height or intelligence. In this environment, many scientific developments and new technologies are developed by the Home of the Scholars. The evidence can be seen by the following quote “All the great modern inventions come from the Home of Scholars.” (Rand 23) For example, scholars study the earth to invent the candle, glass, and string. However, the speed of scientific development is slow. And many scholars seem inept at
In the story Anthem by Ayn Rand the story takes place during a time when everything is technologically primal. It's a primitive society that takes place after modern times. The book doesn't say directly, but it suggest that something bad happened and now they have a society where everyone has had their freedom and individualism taken
In the book Anthem the society has numerous rules put in place in the name of their safety. They are taught from birth that the rules exist to protect them and ensure sure they live for each other and not for themselves. However, the purpose of these rules is to oppress their individuality. The rules remove what makes them who they are. It is easier to control people that have nothing to fight for than it is to control those who have even the slightest reason to fight. These rules are unsuccessful with Equality. He finds his individuality and becomes his own man. Equality decides to build his own society and this time he gets to decide the rules.
First of all, everyone has freedom. In this society you have to be what the government wants you to be. You have to know what they want you to know. Which is the opposite of freedom. But Equality is able to break away from the government. He runs into the uncharted forest and finds a house full of books and learns the words he was never supposed to know. Then he says “I am, I think, I will, my hands, my spirit, my sky, my forest, this earth of mine. Equality completely ignored the government and said what he felt. He showed the freedom has.
¨My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose¨ (95). Prometheus is a person who likes to do things for himself. His mind is metaphysical. Egoism states that each man's primary moral obligation is to achieve his own welfare, which is what an egoist does. Prometheus is an individualist in a collectivist society. He does not follow or care for the society's rules. He plays by his own, which leads me to understand what an egoist is. In Anthem by Ayn Rand, the term ego is used to represent Prometheus´ desire to become an individualist.
He wanted to know more and explore. Equality was all about knowledge and wanting to know more. In his society is was shamed upon someone to think for anyone other than his brothers. The excerpt from Fountainhead tells about someone standing up and telling how it really is. Showing that knowing yourself and believing in yourself is not bad. Being selfish was seen as a bad thing in the collectivism because it showed that one person cared more about themselves then the group as a whole. Growing up with his mind, Equality tried his hardest to fit in. As an adult, Equality was sentence to the lowest in society, street sweeper. Through all of that he still wanted to learn more. Being from his society, he was ashamed of having those thoughts. “The laws say that none among men may be alone, ever and at any time, for this is the greatest transgression and the root of all evil,”(17) even still when Equality has found his tunnel, he was still by himself and was happy having a place for himself to explore and learn
Alyssa Robinchaud, later known as Ayn Rand, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2nd, 1905 as a Jew. Raised with her two younger siblings, Natasha and Nora, she grimly witnessed severe poverty, the Russian Revolution, and Communists seize her father’s shop, forcing her mother to begin teaching. Dissatisfied with life in St. Petersburg under the control of a few money-grabbing tyrants, Alyssa Robinchaud left Soviet Russia. She reassured them that the trip to America would be brief, but she had no intentions on returning. Intrigued with the beauty of America, she became a citizen in 1931. Arriving in New York in the February of 1926, Alyssa Robinchaud changed her name to Ayn Rand, protecting herself and her family’s identity since most members stayed in Russia. The New York Evening Post written in 1936 concluded that her last name was the abbreviation of her Russian family name. Her first name, Ayn, was the Finnish name, “Ina” without the extra ‘I’ at the end so the articulation was the letter ‘I’ with an additional ‘n’ following it. !!!! Several people pronounced it while remembering that it rhymes with ‘mine’. !!!!
We all want to have friends who like who we are as individuals. This is the good side of equality because it teaches us and shows us what love is. The bad side to it is when we come to love the idea of being liked by people to the point where we change ourselves so much, just to fit in, that we are no longer an individual at all. In a book called Anthem, by Ayn Rand, the main character struggles with the concepts of the collective ideas of these societies. At the end of the book he comes to this exact realization. He says, “What brought it to pass? What disaster took their reason away from men? What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The worship of the word ‘We.’” In the story Anthem there was a falling out between the people and government, and by some means, somebody was able to gain enough power to create a utopian society from the ruins of the destroyed society based upon the idea of equality. It was the only way that they thought that all people could co-exist and have mutual freedom and respect for everyone, but it definitely isn’t the only
Anthem, by Ayn Rand, is a very unique novel. It encircles individualism and makes the reader think of how people can conform to society and do as they are told without knowing the consequences and results of their decisions. Also, it teaches the importance of self expression and the freedom that comes along with being your own person and having the power to choose what path to take in life. Figurative language is used often in this book and in a variety of quotes that have great importance to the theme, plot, and conflict of the novel.
Alissa Rosenbaum (Ayn Rand) was born February 2, 1905 is St. Petersburg, Russia. She was the oldest of three sisters and her father, Zinovy Rosenbaum was a successful pharmacist and businessman who owned his own pharmacy, Ayn and her family lived a wealthy life. Early in life, Ayn found school to be unchallenging and found refuge in writing screenplays at the age of six and novels at the age of eight. At a young age Ayn also took to politics as she supported republican ideas. In 1917, at the age of 12 she witnessed first hand the initial shots of the Russian Revolution from her balcony. It was overnight that her family was suppressed to poverty as communist thugs confiscated her father’s pharmacy. This disrupted the comfortable life that her family enjoyed and she and her family were forced to flea St. Petersburg’s to Crimean Peninsula, which was initially under the control of the White Army during the Civil War. While she attended high school she became an atheist, as she valued reason above anything else because the revolution and the fact that she and her family was suppressed as individuals. The fact that she witnessed this brutal civil war shaped her beliefs as she realized that the government was taking away her right to think and be an individual.
She was a precocious child who loved to read heroic aspects of literature.1 As a child, she always knew she was going to be a writer. At the age twelve, the Bolshevik Revolution began and her family had to move away from the violence, so they found a new home in Ukraine.1 Alyssa and her family suffered in the hands of the communists, and the pharmacy that they owned was confiscated and left them penniless.1 Eventually, they moved to Crimea and she graduated from the local high school. Later she moved and attended Petrograd State University.1 There she studied philosophy and became infatuated with the free life that the United States had.1 Later she managed to get a visa at the age of twenty and came to America on a pretext of visiting some family.1 She changed her name to Ayn Rand and began a journey that would change her life forever.1 She had already given herself a name for screen writing in the State Institution for Cinema Arts in Petrograd. She was given an opportunity to meet a film director by the name of Cecil B. Mille in Chicago where she lived with family. Soon after, she became a script reader, a wardrobe attendant and a screen
The idea of individualism has been a main part of Ayn Rand’s life because she accomplished so many things during her childhood. She grew up in a time when russia was beginning to control what their people did. The government would choose what jobs they would have and what food that they would eat. Ayn Rand realized that this was wrong and separated herself from the group and tried to convince others that this was the wrong thing to be doing. In her book “Anthem”, it takes place in an undated era where the concept of individualism has no place and is almost forgotten. Man and Woman do not have names, instead they have numbers to identify themselves. In this world the common people have no power in what they do or influence. Although this book
Ayn Rand was born on February 2nd, 1905 as Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum to a Russian Jewish family in St. Petersburg, Russia (http://aynrandlexicon.com/about-ayn-rand/bio.html). As a child, Rand was always a person of character (http://aynrandlexicon.com/about-ayn-rand/bio.html). When she was two, she taught herself how to read, and by the time she was nine, she decided that she wanted to become a fictional writer (Hall 450-455). Even though she had aspiring dreams, Rand’s life was not so great. At twelve, she witnessed the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Bolsheviks (http://aynrandlexicon.com/about-ayn-rand/bio.html). She and her family were forced to get rid of her their pharmacy and sought refuge in the Crimea Peninsula (http://aynrandlexicon.com/about-ayn-rand/bio.html). However, through all of the turmoil that happened in her life, Rand was able to find love. On April 15th, 1929 she married actor Frank O’Connor (http://aynrandlexicon.com/about-ayn-rand/bio.html). The following year Rand became a citizen of the United States of America (http://aynrandlexicon.com/about-ayn-rand/bio.html). While Rand was in America, she faced lung cancer in 1974 because she smoked heavily (http://aynrandlexicon.com/about-ayn-rand/bio.html). Sadly, Ayn Rand died on March 6th, 1982 in New York City, New York at 77 years old due to heart failure (http://aynrandlexicon.com/about-ayn-rand/bio.html). Rand lived through some terrible times, but that does not mean that she did not live her life to the fullest in any way she possibly could.