Anthem

Anthem is a dystopian novella written by Ayn Rand and first published in 1938.

Set in a future collectivist society, the novella follows Equality 7-2521, a 21-year-old street sweeper. People are assigned identifying numbers, occupations, and prescribed lives, while individual choice and even the word “I” have been erased. The society has regressed technologically since an event called the Great Rebirth.

Equality secretly records his thoughts by candlelight in an underground tunnel. As he conducts forbidden experiments and rediscovers electricity, his hunger for knowledge leads him to challenge the authority of the World Council.

Anthem examines autonomy, identity, and freedom, presenting early fictional expressions of the individualism Rand developed in her later novels.

"It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone."

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was legally published within the United States before 1964, and copyright was not renewed.