Written with all the power and conviction that made THE FOUNTAINHEAD a classic of American letters, Ayn Rand's ANTHEM is a hymn to man's independent spirit and to the highest word in the human language - "Ego."
Signet
March 1996
On Sale: March 4, 1996
272 pages ISBN: 0451191137 EAN: 9780451191137 Paperback (reprint) Add to Wish List
First written in 1937, ANTHEM was published in England, but
was refused in publication in America, for reason which the
reader might discover by reading it for himself. In 1946, it
appeared as a pamphlet, issued by Pamphleteers, Inc., of Los
Angeles. This is its first American publication in regular
book form.
ANTHEM is one of the most beautiful prose poems ever
written. Ruth Alexander, the great Libertarian lecturer and
columnist, has said in her column that ANTHEM is "tender and
terrific - the greatest novel I have ever read, and I have
covered the literary water front in seven languages. You
will think - you will weep - you will be inspired to new
determination not to let the creeping evil of collectivism
happen here." It is written with such power and sincerity
and beauty that every thinking American should read it.
ANTHEM tells the story of a man who rediscovers the
individualism and his own "I" - in a world of absolute
collectivization, a world where sightless, joyless, selfless
men exist for the sake of serving the State; where their
work, their food and their mating are prescribed to them by
order of the Collective's rulers in the name of society's
welfare - a world which has lost all the achievements of
science and civilization, when it lost their root, the
independent mind, and has reverted to primitive savagery - a
world where language contains no singular pronouns, where
the "We" has replaced the "I," and where men are put to
death for the crime of discovering and speaking the
"unspeakable word."
The story tells of one man who rebelled, of his struggle and
his victory. Assigned to the life work of street sweeper by
the rulers who resented his brilliant, questioning,
unsubmissive mind - he becomes a scientist, secretly,
risking his life for the sake of his quest for knowledge. In
the midst of collective stagnation, where men toil at manual
labor by the light of candles - he discovers electricity. In
the midst of eugenic planning and State-controlled Palaces
of Mating - he discovers a personal love and a woman of his
own choice. In the midst of brutal morality which proclaims
that man is only a sacrificial animal to the needs of others
- he discovers that man's greatest moral duty is the pursuit
of his own happiness. He endures danger, denunciation,
imprisonment, torture - but he breaks the chains of the
Collective, he escapes with the woman he loves, to start a
new life in an uncharted wilderness, and he reaches the day
when he is able to predict that "my home will! become the
capital of a world where each man will be free to exist for
his own sake."
ANTHEM presents not merely a frightening projection of
existing trends, but, more importantly, a positive answer to
those trends and a weapon against them, a key to the world's
moral crisis and to a new morality of individualism - a
morality which, if accepted today, will save us from a
future such as the one presented in this story.
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