Anthem (Ayn Rand's Objectivist Manifesto)

I'm going to be a little bit controversial here, but do you think it's possible to take the story at face value?

One of my great gripes with the reading of literature is that there is often an assumption that any 'Great Author' (TM) must have a behind-the-scenes commentary on the political state of the world, or environmentalism, or the evils of technology or whatever, and this is why we read things like 1984 in school and then have to write essays about it in the Leaving. (What was the commentary in 'Pride and Prejudice', then?).

Surely the other thing which makes a 'Great Author' (TM) is that they enjoy writing. Even if occasionally they do write allegories and commentaries, is it not possible for one to simply sit down and write a story for the enjoyment of others? I have read many dystopian stories, as a bit of an SF fan, and cannot believe that every one of them is a political statement shrouded as a work of fiction. Yet many of these authors are not as celebrated as Rand is. Is the implication that Rand is not as capable as these 'lesser authors' of simply sitting down, using her imagination, and just writing a story?

If so, then maybe that's why there is dispute over just what she had in mind when she wrote the story: People, using their own individual opinions, feel compelled to assign a deep meaning to something which originally had none.

NTM

Blue_Lagoon wrote: »

To what extent does Ayn Rand's short fictional novel Anthem (1938) address the fundamental philosophical problems that pertain to existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, language, gender, and social organisation, as well as the dynamics that may exist between individuality and society?

Thanks for the heads-up on this last week and apologies that it took so long to struggle to the end of such a short piece! At least I now have the honor, if that’s the right word, of being able to say that that I’ve made it to the end of something she wrote.

The brief answer is that Rand addresses none of these questions, at least not in any meaningful way. At a certain point, and a good distance before the start of Rand's story, unreality tends to become indistinguishable from self-parody. And by anchoring the story so far from the human experience of her readers and the political systems under which they live, she makes it impossible for her to deal with the problems she pretends to address, or for her readers to sympathize with the bizarre society she proposes and the wooden characters which lumber predictably about her stage.

Rand herself was, no doubt, reacting to the violent consequences of the communist revolution she and her family had experienced during her teenage years in St Petersburg. And, in 1937, while its residents were enduring the height of Stalin's terror and genuine artists like Shostakovich were producing works his deliciously counter-revolutionary Fifth Symphony, Rand was living in safety and comfort in the USA, producing her own response in a foreign language for people who, like her, failed to understand what her birth-city and -country were enduring, nor the more basic nature and psychology of totalitarianism.

Anthem's baddies -- the portentous and pretentious Councils of Whatever – gave their ideology no name and instead practice the most extreme version of the collectivism proclaimed by the Communists. But this collectivism was not, as the Communists claimed, the aim of the society, rather it was the Noble Lie they used to assert their own political and cultural supremacy. In taking the Communists at their word she failed to appreciate, or even seemingly notice, the distinction between the practice and the preaching of totalitarianism and by so doing, Rand displays the same bland naiveté as her protagonist, Equality 7-2521, the light and gift-giving hero whom she believed herself to be.

The scenes and characters Rand uses to deliver her Truth are preposterous: a prison without guards and with doors one can push open (must be a first for a totalitarian society, that one), a society which honors the development of the candle “only a hundred years ago” and which claims “fifty years” were required to gain administrative approval for it (yeah, right); the Uncharted Forest (be careful, you might be eaten by a grue!); the scholars who ran away when they saw something go red (did they never study their candles?); And so on and on to the point that it's actually quite funny in places. This really does go past the piece being a simple case of ham-fisted writing, but a full-on descent to the Bulwer–Lytton level.

Towards the end of the piece, she delivers two chapters of the most splendidly orgasmic overstatement – Rand places her Prometheus on top of his mountain, arms no doubt outstretched, eyes closed, hair whipped majestically by the wind, jaw jutting out, delivering to the passing clouds, a remarkably pompous homily on his own perfection: how he’s neither friend nor foe to his brothers (whatever happened the wimmins?), but still fired with the desire to destroy his former society; how he believes that “To be free, a man must be free of his brothers”, but still wanting to build his own little fortressed commune, united beneath his own banner, rather than somebody else’s (at this, one can’t help but think of Libertas, Declan Ganley’s weird attempt to convince the nationalists of many countries to speak with a single voice); how he’ll neither command nor obey, but still somehow manage to deliver his Teaching.

But to return to the OP. No, the piece answers no questions, because it fails to ask any hnoestly. It’s a flop on so many levels simultaneously, that it’s difficult to see how anybody could take it seriously, or even want to. The one and only conclusion to be drawn from the piece is that Ms Rand really does seem to believe that the best of all possible worlds is one filled with people like her, all

EGOMANIACS