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Anthem

Anthem

List Price: $22.95
Your Price: $22.95
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A great love story
Review: I know many say this was Ayn Rand's comment on communism, and the prevail of individualsm. that may be, but I translated this story as being about the strength of love, and in that way it really touched me.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Ayn Rand lovers, back off of Orwell
Review: Orwell wasn't a "once socialist". He was always a socialist. And I'm most definitely not a "USA educated Hollywood kid" or whatever you want to conveniently label me as. My father grew up in the USSR and my grand father was killed in a gulag. Yet, they were not so ignorant as to believe that socialism was the same as the horrors of the Soviet Union. Ayn Rand makes the mistake of equating collectivisation of resources with the horrors of state repression and tyrrany. They are not one and the same. So please, before you read this book and mindlessly take to heart everything that she says, please remember that the horrors she describes are not necessarily connected with socialist or socialistic economics. If you want to see the very real sufferings caused by unrestrained capitalism, just look at the global south, the working poor in america, the indigenous populations of South America, why hasn't Ayn Rand written about this kind of oppression?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Preamble for The Fountainhead
Review: As a story, Anthem is not in the same league as Brave New World. However, much like Roark's Temple for the worship of Man, it is admirable and inspiring. Ayn Rand has a way of making you believe in things the way only religion is usually successful in. Anthem is a response to a philosophical threat, not a concrete one. It is important to its time and the Socialist Craze of Ayn Rand's era. Please read this first if you intend to read The Fountainhead. If nothing else, Ayn Rand inspires - to think , to do, to become happy. She offers solutions to problems that don't seem to have any. She does her part to create goals in life. Do you?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A modern classic
Review: From the first line "It is a sin to write this", this book is impossible to put down. It's not filled with explosive action. It's not a tense thriller. It's just filled with amazingly powereful prose and a great story that may be closer to the truth than we would like to think. Ayn Rand's use of the english language is brilliant. Imagine a society so devoid of individuality that words like I and me and my no longer exist. This is the world Ayn Rand puts us in from the point of view of one man who craves his own individuality, but doesn't realize it because he doesn't have any concept of the idea. His slow realization and and awakening are the heart of this story. I highly recommend it to all free thinkers.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: No need to back off of Orwell...
Review: Great introduction to Rand for kids, many of whom will have been abused by the sort of recent MadeForTV version of Orwell's 1984, in which they fundamentally change Orwell's ending/conclusion. Like Rand, you can't mistake Orwell's meaning. So, that is why I found it so jarring when the recent 1984 film so clearly changed the ending! Even my 13 year old noticed it. "Hey---why did they change the book's ending?" Orwell's can't mistake it conclusion in 1984; the inevitable conclusion to this pudding headed slop is ruin; no hope for a rosy future is offered on Orwell's final page; no bright new hoof&horn flag rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of the trash heap of history. In the recent madeforTV remake? They jarringly add some nonsense about, grab your tissues, "Next time, we'll get it right," complete with puppy chasing after bright, new shiny family in American convertible pulling up to the ruins of Manor Farm, if you missed the point. None of that pouty nonsense in Orwell's original masterpiece. I asked my son, "Why do YOU think they so obviously changed the ending?" At first, he gave them the benefit of the doubt, and said , "They just wanted to end with a 'happy' Hollywood ending, instead of the hopelessness at the end of the novel." Then I asked, why did he think Orwell left out the happy ending, and he understood; that was a fundamental, 180 degree change in what is considered to be a literary classic. So, when it comes to 'backing off of Orwell,' I think I'll go with the original. Orwell, like Rand, was a first-hand witness to the consequences of this slop, so, who should I believe? Orwell, the dissillusioned once socialist and his ending, Rand, the Soviet emigre, and her point of view expressed in her works, or some USA educated Hollywood kids, with or without with cams, many fresh from their clueless indoctrination at some socialist-chic Ivy league playground, where they sat up and rolled over for their trainers and learned to demonize the Daddy who sent them to college for being such a capitalist rat bastard? Oh, yeah, that's the kind of clueless S4Bs I want rewriting and reinterpreting literary classics for me, all in the name of "Next time, in America, we will finally get this utopic sham right." Right.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: What if individuality were banned by law?
Review: Just in case you thought the Borg were entirely original to Star Trek Next Generation, you should read Anthem. Ayn Rand's vision of a futuristic society has eliminated individuals by thought and deed.

This is a starkly told tale of a member of a future society, one Equality 7-2521. He is raised in a communal nursery. He knows no parents, no individuality. The word WE applies to one and all.

He is assigned to street sweeper by the mysterious council that runs this totalitarian nightmare. (Why shouldn't he be? All work, all individuals are equal, even though Equality 7-2521 would like to be assigned to the Scholars.) His unquenchable thirst for freedom and thought leads him to a monumental and dangerous discovery; the word "I". From this word, all things become possible.

The prose in this book is stark and simple, compared to the other long novels Rand wrote. This creates the atmosphere for a society so bereft of freedom and dignity that even the most basic ideas of society and individual meaning are lost. This is 100 pages worth reading.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sums the Situation quite Nicely
Review: Anthem demonstrates Rand's views on progress and the nature of society in light of that progress. Further, it demonstrates the effects on individual initiative and progress, which she thought was based on such, in socialist societies.

1984 (by Orwell, who was originally a socialist, then realized in the Soviet Union its ultimate end), which was written after Rand's first two books, is quite like both of them in their basic political respects and says basically the same thing about altruistic systems and their ultimate results.

Personally, I found this book a nice easy read, and as a regular member of the Politics and Current Affairs board, intellectually stimulating. I thought that the end to 1984 was slightly more fitting, but that does not defer from the political points involved. I think that there is one basic difference between the two. Orwell sought to demonstrate the systems that are created, Rand (in this book) sought to examine that specifically happens to the thought of people (however Orwell did some of this).

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Dreadful
Review: I can't believe I wasted my time and money on this book.

Ayn Rand is simply an apologist for the exploitation of man by his fellow man, of capitalism. She, or should I say her readers, too often confuse socialism and Soviet style Communism as one and the same. She lacks any insightful or coherent critical analysis and her views are disgustingly misinformed.

Sure Soviet style Communism was horrible and repressive. But to claim that unrestricted capitalism is the best system for individual freedom to flourish is pure garbage. Tell that to my factory worker friends who can barely make enough money to feed their families. Tell that to the millions who are being exploited around the world. Capitalism's bottom line is PROFIT. There is no regard for the freedom, and well-being of humanity. Just look at the destruction of our environment at the hands of large corporations.

Read George Orwell if you want an intelligent critique of Soviet politics. And all of you trying to compare him to Ayn Rand, BACK OFF. George Orwell was a socialist. He is quoted as saying that the whole purpose of his writing was to try and promote a form of democratic socialism. He fought in a socialist militia during the Spanish Civil War! So all of you people who like Ayn Rand, if you like George Orwell, you are a hypocrite. George Orwell spent his life trying to fight people like Ayn Rand. George Orwell fought for justice, Ayn Rand merely served the interests of big business fat cats.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Story of Creation and Self-Discovery
Review: I first read this book while I was in high school, and have come back to it several times since. It's the story of a young man who learns the joy of invention and creation, and the struggle that unravels in a society that loathes self-assertion and innovation. There are many interesting turns in the story.

I would recommend this story to anyone who seeks to create and invent. You may find it prophetic of the battle you are up against.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Rand's Objectivism
Review: Ayn Rand's novela is inspiring because she sets a story/poem in the upper dark age without using the word "I" for first-person narration until the last two chapters. That is what I find to be impressive. This book is so anti-collectivist that it strikes much pathos. While the book was impressive, it wasn't an action-based plot and appeared to be a statement of facts. However, the true appeal to the story was the theme of ego and the individual vs. group relationship. I liked it. It was to the point.


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