Finding Individuality In Ayn Rand's Anthem

Discovering Individuality To think that being stripped of one’s individuality is a possibility can be unfathomable to some. It can even be difficult for people in society to find individuality. If someone loses the right to individuality how could a person have a sense creativity or self worth. Without anything that makes someone an individual what are we? In Ayn Rand's Anthem we find Equality 7-2521 who struggles to find individuality in a society that excludes individualism. Although individuality is excluded from this collectivist society it is Equality’s primary motivation in his experiments. He seeks the knowledge that not even the smartest people in the world know and the feeling of being the only individual to have that knowledge. If everyone was motivated seek their own individuality like equality then, the world would be …show more content…
Equality won’t let that happen so he takes his invention and runs away. He finds himself in the forest, able to wake up when he can and do whatever he pleases. He is soon joined by his love Liberty 5-3000 and they continue to journey through the forest together. They soon stumble upon a house and Equality finds may books and learns many new things and says “Through the years ahead, I shall rebuild the achievements of the past, and open the way to carry them further, the achievements which are open to me, but closed forever to my brothers, for their minds are shackled to the weakest and dullest among them.” (99) Equality also learns that men use to distinguish themselves so he names himself Prometheus and names liberty Gaea. Prometheus also learns that his invention was known to men from the Unmentionable Times. He learns more and more about electricity and light and says that he will use it against his brothers saying “For they have nothing to fight me with, save the brute force of their numbers. I have my