Week 4: Part 7 and 8
Anthem was written in 1937 by Ayn Rand. She was born in february 2nd in 1905. She was born a Russian - American and became a novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She supported rational and ethical egoism, and rejected altruism. This meant that Ayn Rand did not have the desire to help others. This plays a huge roll in her making of the book Anthem.
Using this article http://www.atlassociety.org/virtue-selfishness I have discovered many more things about Ayn Rand. In this article it explains how Ayn Rand believed that selfishness is a virtue. Ayn Rand also wrote her exact definition to selfishness "concern with one's own interests". Just like in Anthem Equality 7-2521 is interested in science. He works on things by himself and not with others. He is working on his own interests and not necessarily helping his community. Ayn Rand also thought that selfishness was they way for one to find its own true happiness and protect ones life just like Equality 7-2521 does not care about the consequences for his sins but when he finds out all he has worked for would be destroyed he decided to take charge of his own life and take himself and his box into the wilderness.
(Individualism)
Source 1: http://www.atlassociety.org/virtue-selfishness
Source 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella)
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ReplyDeleteThe world Ayn Rand created is the complete opposite of her beliefs and that of our main character. I think she wrote it this way to help vent her frustrations with the world because often selfishness is shunned upon in our society. So she wrote the book to create a the world she felt she was in and then escape it. This means the book was therapy for her to help her deal with feeling different and have her beliefs shunned upon. If this is true our main character is Ayn Rand, every one else is those who shun her and the golden one is the one person the believes in her.
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ReplyDeleteWhile I read your article I got more interest in why she wrote this book. So I need some research of my own. One site that stood out to me was similar to what you said: http://www.atlassociety.org/ayn-rands-anthem-appreciation.
I believe that her words were mirrors to what she felt.For Ayn Rand, a woman who left her homeland, learned a new language, and suffered years of privation in order to write her thoughts freely, words were always the primary means of understanding both the world and the self. Appropriately, Anthem's story of self-discovery starts (maybe ends?) with the written word. In the beginning, Equality 7-2521 "must" write, even though he believes that writing his own thoughts is sinful, because he wants "to speak for once to no ears but [his] own." By "speaking" to himself by means of the written word, he sees the evidence that he has a self, a self that he can identify, analyze, and name, that he can make fully his own property. His quest for himself concludes when he discovers the ancient word for the self as single, individual, and independent: "the sacred word: EGO."
Moving on, Anthem is a crystallized epic. Shorter than many "short stories," it is nevertheless constructed on an epic frame. The values at stake in Anthem are not merely those of the central character; they are the professed values of an entire civilization—our own. Our civilization is built on a conception of individual rights, and its existence cannot be conceived on any other basis. If you wonder about that, try to imagine what would happen if individualist values were no longer in place. The result would be the world that Equality 7-2521 inhabits. What is at issue in Anthem's opening scenes is not simply the decision of Equality 7-2521 to begin a process of self-discovery and self-fulfillment; it is our own understanding of the difference between a collectivist society and a society that maintains a defining emphasis on the individual self, its rights and powers. Anthem is about us, and about what will happen to us if we do not follow Equality 7-2521 in his rediscovery of the importance of individualism. It feels as if this is a wake up call....