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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: THIS LITERALLY SINGS OFF THE PAGES...
Review: Ayn Rand wrote this little masterpiece and I don't believe that it ever got the credit it deserved. After all, "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" have gotten most of the attention and of course, they are fabulous.

"Anthem" really has just two primary characters, a man and a woman who have live in a society where the individual has become meaningless and everything is geared toward the collective. The book starts out with the description of a dreary, socialist-communist society where there is no more "I", only "We". As the plot moves forward we find the hero of the story becoming more and more interested in his own "personal find" buried deep in the bowels of what used to be a thriving, capatilistic society. He also meets a woman whom he is attracted to-one like him with the seeds of individualism inside her. They begin a long and wonderful process of getting to know themselves and each other.

This is another story of man as an heroic being who rises above the group to claim his own selfhood a bestows the greatest gift he can to another: his love and his deeply held belief in the right of a man (or woman) to exist for their own sake. You will love this book.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Ayn Rand in a nutshell
Review: 'Anthem' is a special little book, for it is a really compact reflection of Ayn Rand's ideas, but not only that. It is, more importantly, the very first of its kind. Ayn Rand used the prospective future in which collectivism has assumed world domination as the ideal launchpad for her ideas of objectivism. The world she creates isn't as important as the ideas she expresses, and it is therefore that this book is really short. It serves its purpose and that's it, unlike another of Ayn Rand's works, like 'The Fountainhead', in which she, with the help of a great cast of characters, tells a massive story on an epic scale to make clear her objectivist plans.

Sadly Mrs. Rand didn't (or didn't want to) realise she had gold in her hands with the society she depicted, as writers such as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Ira Levin later used (or borrowed?) elements of 'Anthem' in their respective masterpieces '1984','Brave New world' and 'A Perfect Day'. Please note that, unlike other reviewers have said, 'Anthem' OUTDATES all three of these mentioned books.

A missed chance? I couldn't say. Fact is that 'Anthem' bridges the gap between two of my favourite books, George Orwell's '1984' and Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead'.

You don't have to agree 100% with Ayn Rand's ideas to like her work. I, for one, don't. In the case of 'Anthem' a reader can appreciate this novelette for its simpleness and clear storytelling qualities. If you like '1984'-type books, this, in any case is a funny, yet worthwhile addition to your collection.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A good introduction to Rand
Review: If you are new to the works of Ayn Rand, I recommend reading Anthem first. It displays some of her philosophy, and is the most readable of her fictional works, mostly because of its brevity.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: My thoughts
Review: The philosophies of Ayn Rand are the weakest defenses of capitalism I have ever read. Her insistence on the right of every man to his own mind and body are easily flipped against her. Under capitalism, all working people are tools. Their work(which takes up most of their life, and therefore their mind and body), is only a means to advance the profits of their employers. Her insistence on the domination of reason, fails to recognize the inherent prejudices and flaws of Socratic "reason."

Her faith in reason is devastated in the works of Sigmund freud and Frederich Nietzche. Her and her followers merely are repelled by the perversions of collectivism in Russia and are drawn to the romantic heroes of her work

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The best Ayn Rand novel that I've read so far
Review: I've also read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Those novels tend to be convoluted in parts, too lengthy to maximize the impact of the plot, and have characters so shallow that they can be comic book fixtures. Anthem avoids these shortcomings. It is really just a novellette that maintains the focus of the reader, and the shallowness of the lead characters is palatible because they are explained away as being institutionalized creatures. I also like that the vitriol in Anthem is slightly less blatant since the communistic backdrop is futuristic. Vitriol is a sore spot in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Finally, I like Anthem's ending better. It is not quite as Hollywood in that the oppressed lead characters do not eventually dominate their oppressors in a totally predictable pattern that leads to an ultimate moralization.

Rand writes about what she thinks humans are capable of and what is heroic about them. I wouldn't recommend people who have read this book to bother reading Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead unless they are ultra- right wing, libertarian utopianists, or have some other axe to grind. Her message is apparently the same in all of her works.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A very small book
Review: What an amazingly tiny book! It's very small, and not very large at all. It's so diminutive that it's all but minuscule; many books that are almost this small aren't quite. There may be smaller books but I haven't seen them. This one gets my vote for smallest book!

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: 1984 Revisted
Review: I really enjoyed this book but too much of it was taken from 1984. Usually I don't mind if an author takes ideas from another, but if this is done then I feel those idea's should be improved upon.
Another problem with this book is Rand's ideology. It is true that collectivism (better known as Multiculturalism)is a threat to thinking individuals but she over simplifies matters and confuses self interest with selfishness.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The future is now
Review: Anthem, unlike the other fiction by Ayn Rand, is really an accident of time. The relatively short book, focuses on the banishment of individuality and the dominance of group thinking to the detriment of "I". The book has no plot, climax, cause or effect. Rather it serves as a long stream of consciousness of the main character who becomes aware because he is a "super" man.
Written as a filler (until Rand's next major work), Anthem resonates with us today for the constant erosion of our privacy and the compliant approval that the majority accords it.
In this sense, Rand is on the money and Anthem garners my high mark.
Having said that her extreme fanaticism with the cult of ego - awakened through her early brush with totalitarian socialism- quickly wears thin.
Read Anthem for its implications for modern society. Beware of Rand for her fanatical one-sided approach to everything else that is virtuous in common.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: "Anthem"
Review: I liked it a lot more when it was called "1984."

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Is everybody else even reading the same book I am?
Review: So you're looking for a modern-day classic parable about a future society that exerts a stranglehold-like power over its citizens, where individuality is lost and subverted to the will of one? If so, head out now and pick up "1984" by George Orwell. "Anthem" is an inferior example of dsytopian literature.

First of all, Ayn Rand was so eager to integrate her Objectivist philosophy that the novel suffers greatly. For instance, she places "Anthem"'s society in a Dark Ages-type world where electricity doesn't even exist. Rand was so eager to demonstrate the backwardsness of a collectivist viewpoint that she missed out on an incredibly effective plot device later exploited by Orwell and Huxley. Also, she's given plenty of pages at the end to drop all pretense of a story and turn philosophical - which is fine for a manifesto but really hurts the fiction. Finally (I could go on and on), the ending is truly anticlimatic and ineffective - much like the novel itself.

The plot problems only serve to exacerbate what is a fundamentally poor novel. Rand's writing style is stilted and uninspiring. I was never once made to feel any empathy for the characters. For that matter, the entire novel feels emotionless. I got the impression that all the characters only existed to drive home Rand's philosophy with all the subtlety of a bright neon sign flashing "GOVERNMENT BAD" over and over. And this is even if you like the philosophy (which I don't - I consider it narcissistic).

I won't comment on a comparison with "Atlas Shrugged" or "The Fountainhead", as I haven't read them. I'll simply say that "Anthem" is a decent premise that is buried in cheap plot devices and uninspiring writing. Don't bother.


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