Rating: 
Summary: Anthem
Review: This book was a little hard to understand especially when it only using "we" and "us" and "our" instead of the "I" and "my" and "mine". But never the less I read this book in only one day; a few hours actually. I had to read it for school, otherwise I would've never heard of it or read it. I like how this is a story that takes place in the far future. If you like this, I also recommend The Giver by Lois Lowry because it is very similar, but I think it was easier to understand than Anthem. This is a very good book.
Rating:
Summary: Rand's Best
Review: This is in my opinion, Ayn Rand's best book. There are a number of reasons for this, but I think most important is that unlike "The Fountainhead" or "Atlas Shrugged", she wrote a succinct piece, and didn't allow herself to ramble. Anyone wanting an introduction to Rand should start here, it won't take you long to get through, the writing is pretty good, and it lacks the convoluted plots and characters of her longer pieces. In a strange way it is at times quite moving, and also lacks some of the more objectionable statements that can be found in Rand's other pieces, bordering on racism & fascism at times... this is a classic struggle for Individualism against a smothering regime, but not a struggle putting down other people's individualism.I suggest that any person coming to "Anthem" should read "WE" by Yevgeny Zamyatin first. It was written in 1920, only a few years after the Russian Revolution. Russian was Ayn Rand's native language and she would have been able to read this book in the original, in fact she left Russia six years after "We" was published. "Anthem" was written seventeen years after "We". Various features of "Anthem" seem to have been taken from "We" (Brave New World and 1984 were also influenced by it, but not to the same extent). The most obvious similarity is that the characters have numbers, not names, and don't think of themselves as "I" but "We" and there's also the diary format in common. A major difference is that in "Anthem", the society has regressed technologically. Although this particular Hive/Ultra-Communist set up has been much copied since in fiction, it was not so common when Zamyatin was writing. I believe that Rand was heavily influenced by "We", and of course had a shared Russian background with Zamyatin... even if you don't agree with me, "We" is well worth a read in its own right for fans of "Anthem". Trivia - "2112" by Rush is said to have been inspired by "Anthem", although the two stories only have basic similarities!
Rating: 
Summary: Hauntingly beautiful and deeply thought provoking
Review: I listened to Anthem through the audio download of Audible.com. Chris Lane was masterful in his narration, and magnified the feel and message of the book. I highly recommend experiencing Anthem through the Audible edition.
Rating:
Summary: I would have given it a 10/10
Review: The summer's finally set in here in India and its awesome. I already have got a nice nice tan - the weather is jusst right - I plan to go to Goa for a nice beach vacation with the awesome hunks out there in the raw and with the books by my side....with my normal gin n tonic - life couldnt get better.... I kicked off this month with a re-read - a book that I had forgotten for quite sometime now till I remembered and I am glad I did. If any of you are planning to start reading Ayn Rand for the first time I would suggest start with this one as it is the most simplest and basic of the theory of individualism. For that
matter if there would be a quartet of Ayn Rand it would go in this order: Anthem, We the Living, The Fountainhead and then Atlas Shrugged. Anthem is a tale - a sci-fi if you can call it that - set in futuristic era - the so called dark ages where the only word that exists is "we" and nothing more than that. Where people are not allowed to think for themselves...There is a collectiveness govt at play where everything is all rolled into one collective
pronoun. Till one fine day a man questions, he questions and discovers individualism. Discovers the joy of being alone and thinking - of not other people taking credit for all one person does..Discovers "Ego". A must read for those who've read Ayn Rand and not think much of her and those who've not read Ayn rand and still think of reading her somewhere down the line....
Rating:
Summary: "I" write this review free of government intervention
Review: Anthem by Ayn Rand truly is a, if not subjectively sugested, wonderful piece of literature. As previous reviews have suggested should not be the first piece of Rand to be studied. I personally take no stance of this because it was the first text of Rand's that I have studied. I loved the essay/novel in all entirety because of its naration that immediately involves the reader into the background and plot to the story. I stongly suggest this text to any person, even if they are only remotely interested in the ideals of Ayn Rand, indefinately. I read the text out of curiousity, and was stunned at the depth it invoked thoughts. Its a short text that is affective in promoting an idea and sufficiantly, not over done, explaining and it allows the reader to run off in all directions with the thought as they read.
Rating:
Summary: Bad Ending
Review: With a small glimmer of hope from a revel in an opressive society, Anthem's fortunate end promises change to come. This optomistic ending is unfitting to a story with such a gloomy outlook of the furture. It contradicts the style, message and theme of the book. While all the text preceding the conclusion acts as a warning, a sinister prediction of the future, its impact is severly lessened by a happy resolution. A pretty little house in the country, flowers, perfume, and romance destroy the message's power. With a swerve and a complete change of direction, the book leaves the reader not with a concern of the changing world, but with a happy smile reflecting upon the bless of love-stricken Prometheus and Gaea. Yes, it is quite possible that the author intended an ending such as Anthem's as proof that man can overcome challenges placed upon him by society, but then she should have written a novel about communism or poverty or war. Anthem is a display of the "utopian" world, its flaws, and the fate which will overcome our world. The eighty pages before the conclustion are not a romance, nor a happy plot -- they are eighty desolate and bleak pages predicting a cold future. Her conclusion does not agree. Instead, her end (two non-contormists searching for themselves) is a joyful bliss (a convinient house in a beautiful forest) filled with love (and gender stereotypes) and endless happiness. A too perfect world, too extreme contrast, the author's message is gone with her lost direction. From a perspective meant to bring fear into the reader's mind to a worriless world of knowledge and contentment, her theme is now: "Watch out, civilization is going to fall, individuality will be lost, government will control our lives, wait, never mind, we'll come back eventually." The reader isn't fearful of the future and wary of the world to come, and the story is not half as meaningful as if could have been.
Rating: 
Summary: Does this book really exist?
Review: In Ayn Rand's later work Atlas Shrugged (which I recently finished), she argues that existance exists. In Anthem, however, nothing exists. There is no plot. There are no characters, not even the narrator. At least Atlas Shrugged had two characters inhabiting dozens of bodies each. There are no ideas except that collectivism bad, individuality good. In fact, Anthem is just one idea, spread out over a hundred pages. Ayn Rand seemed convinced that the entire world was just itching to turn itself communist and that people were lined up by the millions waiting to volunteer. Anthem is just one of her earlier works. She didn't really have any ideas at the time, so she wrote a hundred or so pages when she could have just said "I fear that we're all becoming collectivized and it will make life really really dull." She didn't need to go beyond that. Since I read Anthem years ago (I should have stopped there with Ayn Rand books), the sparse events that make up its so called storyline have faded in my mind. What remains is the recollection that Anthem had nothing. It was just a dry polemic concocted by a paranoid woman with an axe to grind. If you absolutely must read Ayn Rand, Anthem is a good choice because it is so short, but it's really not worth the time. Even if you want to learn about Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy, Anthem has little to offer. As a novel, Anthem is just plain empty.
Rating:
Summary: Classic for All Ages
Review: This book can be read at many levels by any audience. It is powerful and beautiful. Written years before Orwell's 1984 or Animal Farm, this book also shows that one of real outcomes of dictatorship (ultimately, any dictatorship) is savage primitivism, akin to the Taliban or the Middle Ages. This book is unlike anything you have ever read!!
Rating:
Summary: The only book I've ever read more than once
Review: Anthem was a stepping stone for me up to some of Rand's larger works. I love the style of this book because it kept me absorbed in the plot and immersed in the setting. There are so many invaluable themes presented in this tiny composition, and presented well! Anthem has the kind of open ending that leaves the reader deep in thought while still satisfied. The wording is ultimately necessary to the book's overall effect and should not be confusing when read with a sense of the world in which this novelette takes place. Like so much of Rand's other writing, this book is not about the people and events in it, but the concepts that they illustrate.
Rating:
Summary: Reactionary Nonsense Calling itself Philosophy and Fiction.
Review: The influence of pre-World War II Communism on the authoress is a banshee screaming and drooling from every inkblot in this "novella". Her reactionary approach to writing literature is hideous and disgusting and bad. I don't care if her ideas are good or not. All I care about is the blatant, zealously political method she uses to convey her point. Bad writing, folks. It's as if the word subtlety is further lost upon her universe than the word Ego.
The bottom line on Ayn Rand: if you agree with her, and have little to no aesthetic sensibility, you will enjoy this very much. However, if you know the difference between good and bad writing, and/or you do not believe that every word Ayn Rand wrote down was a pure jewel of inspired genius, then you shouldn't waste your money on this or any other book by her. At the very least, however, if you want to grasp her ideas for an insistent significant other without grappling a thick, monstrous load of crud like her other two famous "novels", then you can get it all in one unpleasent sitting. I recommend taking two stiff shots of your preferred headache medicine before opening the book.
Oh, take a look at the production of the book, current owners. Notice how it is actually just a big, thick political pamphlet for the Objectivists? I prefer my religio-political iconoclasting from my mother for free, thanks.
|
