Book Review: Anthem by Ayn Rand

[cjbanning]

Anthem by Ayn Rand

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Rand's description of a socialist/communist dystopia and the story of a man and a woman who somehow manage to regain their individuality within it nonetheless. Is it fair to Marxism? Probably not, but it's true that the theory's weakest point is the vagueness of its eschatological vision, and so I can well believe that this is what Rand took away as believing the "collectivists" were arguing for.

Politics aside, the problem is that as a writer, the premise doesn't really allow her to shine: her best books, like Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are ones where the focus is on characters which, if not quite fully realized and three-dimensional, are at least fun to read about, like Dagny Taggert and Dominique Francon. Watching these characters debate philosophy while running around like Nietzschean ubermenschen and living larger-than-life lives can be entertaining even if one doesn't agree with the position she is pushing, but here there really isn't anything left but the didacticism.

Rand's misogyny and anti-feminism are in full presence here as elsewhere in Rand's work. The story is told from the male's perspective, with the female character being silent throughut the work, denied a voice of her own. While one of the male's most triumphant moments is when he gives himself a name, this is denied to the female; he names her too. Maybe these are the kinds of things Rand herself looked forward to and saw as providing hope that utopia would rise from dystopia, but I don't think most women would find them so.



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