Fear. Its in all the peoples minds and hearts in Ayn Rand's Anthem. It is a fear like the kind that lots of slaves kept by a single master have, or the millions of people in concentration camps that were maintained by a measly hundred or thousand. It is the fear to rebel against an already accepted fate. Once this fear is accepted, it condemns generation after generation, and until it is stopped, it will be accepted as the only way to live. The good thing is when along comes an exception. Great thinkers that under certain pressures or the right circumstances, could when allowed grow and reach stuff like the great minds we know today; Albert Einstein, Plato, Malcolm X, Mahatma Ghandi. While reading about Equality in Anthem, many and lots of questions are repeatedly presented. How does the collectivist society keep its control over its people? Where does Equality's drive, his urge, to free himself from the collectivism come from? What makes it so easy for him to accept that they are wrong and to do

so? The appeal in a collectivist society lies in its small, almost harmless outer beauty, or shell. Ideas like having respect for fellow humans are stressed intensely, thus creating mass appeal. Once this appeal is instilled, it literally destroys or deteriorates a society, which then is left dragging its weak and repressing its strong. The strong or intelligent are shunned, and repressed, and then forced to lower themselves, including their self-esteem in order to fit in with their brothers. It is clear that the society is maintained by fear and ignorance. The people in the novel don't know any other way of life. The existence of individual thoughts and ideas has disappeared from their society. The people, who at times and through most of the story, act like mindless zombies, and only are certain that it is evil to think or be alone. Even Equality, the most rare individual in the dark times, believes it is a sin to be alone until the very end of the novel. Ignorance and fear shut down the minds of the people in the book and enables them to only think collectively, but only very little still see the importance of individuality. The battle Equality faces is for the most part, an internal one.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Equality Anthem, Ayn Rand, Rand's Anthem, Anthem Fear, Mahatma Ghandi, anthem fear, fear ignorance, words ego, ayn rand, collectivist society, equality 7-2521,
Approximate Word count = 956
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)