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Anthem

Anthem

List Price: $24.00
Your Price: $24.00
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "It is a sin to write this...." I still get goose bumps
Review: I love this book. I usually read it every couple of years, and I still sob in some parts.

Rand distills relativism to it's essential element: Cyanide of the mind.

The hero of this novelette resolves to risk life and limb to see his curiosities through, to "know," and thus discovers the antidote to a cultural poison injected long before he was born and far outside of his control to change.

Indeed, even he wonders if his struggles to understand the natural world around him isn't some unspeakable crime. But he cannot stop his mind from thinking, from "connecting." The results are more than implied to be the salvation for mankind, with a "And you were there!" kind of feel about it. As with all of Rand's novels, her impassioned reverence to the greatness of the human mind has me thrilled to be alive with a quiet whisper, "yes."

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: How important is individualism?
Review: Ayn Rand's book Anthem makes a person think critically. In a society where people are equal and no man stands greater than his brothers Equality 7-2521 takes a risk. People have doubts about their society but dare not speak them. The book is similar to The Giver in some ways. Anthem is based on individualism. "I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loath humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities..." Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was able to bring and present her believes to the world in her words from the book. I enjoyed reading Anthem because it puts a person in an ackward possition. Imagining being in a similar society is scary. I was impressed by the way the Ayn Rand thought that the thoughts of a man were more powerful than the thought of no one. I say no one because if the people from this society were not able to express and share their thoughts then their view of life came from who? Not everyone thinks the same. Overall I agree with with Ayn Rand. This book interested me because of the discovery of the word "I". This was the most interesting part of the book. The loss of the word "I" was replaced by the word "we". The word "we" was not strong or capable enough of discribing the thoughts of the characters from the book. I neglected in realizing how important individualism is. When a person reads Anthem they will start thinking about how life would be without individualism. This makes a person realize how strong and powerful their own ego is.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good, but...
Review: Rand's "philosophy" and it's obvious contradictions and circular reasonings aside, this is an interesting little book that can be read in an afternoon. The plural speech used throughout most of the book ("we", "us") reminds me a bit of Gollum's style of speech in J.R.R. Tolkien's books and makes me wonder if _Anthem_ might have been an influence on Tolkien in that respect. The dystopian setting of the novel resembles that of Orwell's _1984_. This book was also allegedly the inspiration for Rush's album, "2112".

Now for the bad news. Rand intended this to be an indictment of "collectivism", but she makes no effort to differentiate between statist and libertarian forms of collectivism; to her, all collectivism is a simplistic caricature of _1984_-style totalitarianism. Also, this book could just as easily read as an indictment of the herd/sheep mentality that capitalism is based on (and requires in order to keep functioning), but this obviously was not Rand's intent and this fact is ignored by her followers. There are other contradictions as well: For example, Rand seems here to be bashing environmentalism (or at least bashing the question-technology wing of it) yet at the same time promoting a "flee the cities and get back to nature" viewpoint of the sort that was advocated by the environmental movement in the late 1960's and the 1970's. The effect being that a radical ecologist and a radical anti-ecologist could both read this book and get the impression that it supports their position. I hope the obvious contradictions and problems with the philosophy will not prevent you from enjoying what is, on it's own level, a good and satisfying book.

Read this book, yes, but after you have read it I would recommend you skip the rest of Rand's work and instead pick up _The Right to Be Greedy_, written by the pseudonymous "For Ourselves" and published by Loompanics, which presents a convincing argument that egoism, reason, and individual liberty, if they are to be fully realized, will of necessity require voluntary, libertarian forms of collectivism, and that capitalism violates some of Rand's own principles of egoism. After that I would point you in the direction of the writings of Noam Chomsky, Peter Kropotkin, and Rudolph Rocker.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Weird. Tough to grasp.
Review: This book was hard to understand at first and was confusing. But it has a great message, and could serve as a warning to beware of the future.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: i thought it was good
Review: i like how she used The collectiveism is inherently stronger than the individual. The idea that people should have individual freedom is damaging to the collective of the people of the world. It was not the individual who built the pyramids, modern industrial societies need specialisation of its labour force and an individual is only a part of a large collective working for the good of the people within that society. The party therefore rejects the idea of liberalism and individualism and the party advocates collectivism.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: It was pretty good
Review: This book was just like the book the giver, which is my all time favorite book. It shows how we need to express ourselves as individules, make our own choices, be our own person. This is the importance of why we are all different!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Book For All Time
Review: This book is a classic. It tells the tale of a world in which individuality does not exist, until ONE man rediscovers the word forbidden to the masses.

Anthem should be required reading for everyone.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Rand's fable of the true result of Collectivism.
Review: This short, to the point, book is written as a fable. It describes the discovery of an individual's self as an autonomous entity separate from the collective (communist) society in which he grew up. It also paints a very accurate picture of the ultimate purpose of communism and shows that it is not a "moral ideal" unattainable by selfish humans, but the most destructive and immoral concept ever developed by a human mind. Rand is very creative in writing from the point of view of an individual who has never known of the concept of self. Once free from the collective, the hero learns what it means to say the word "I".

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Equality explains it all!
Review: I had to read this book for school last year in English class, and my friend told me it was good. Another told me that it was terrible (even though that wasn't her exact words). I liked it though. It the only book I read last year in English class that I actually liked. It's in a way a romantic love story between two rebelious citizens who live in a grey world, but Equality is the one who tells the story. Our hero, Equality, and his girl, Liberty, take us on a wild adventure in the dull Anthem society and try to find that golden world by the end. What a GREAT book! One of the best books I've ever read!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Terse Masterpiece
Review: This is a startling condemnation of the collectivist state. It portrays the result of today's popular doctrines strictly enforced. One of the most interesting aspects of it is the fact that technology has gone backwards. Overall, it is a wonderful introduction to Ayn Rand's philosophy.


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