In Ayn Rand’s novella ​
Anthem,​
the protagonist, Equality 7‐2521, progresses from viewing his divergent behavior as evil and sinful to becoming highly critical of the leaders of his society. Rand appears to want the readers to see the journey of Equality 7‐2521 as an allegory for the escape of the common people from the grip of totalitarian governments as they learn the truth of their situation and judge more clearly. Indeed, Rand creates deliberate comparisons with the “totalitarian dictatorships” who give their people “no means of protest or defense” (“How Does”). In her other writings, Rand holds up as an ideal the freedoms available in the United States, as opposed to Soviet Russia, from which she had fled (“How Does”; ​
Anthem ​
ix). In America, the right to criticize our leaders and hold them accountable is sacred; indeed, the First Amendment to the Constitution declares, “Congress shall make no law [. . .] abridging [. . .] the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Equality 7‐2521 comes to realize that the leaders of his society are wrong and oppressive, but they give him no means to appeal for a better way. We first see his condemnation of his society as he celebrates the sacrifice of the condemned Transgressors of the Unspeakable Word, whom he renamed the Saint of the Pyre. He looked into the martyr’s eyes and reported, “There was only joy in them, and pride, a pride holier than it is fit for human pride to be” (51). He recognizes here a positive quality in defiance against the government. Then on the next page, though significant time passes in the story, Equality 7‐2521 rises to a new level of defiance. As he discover electricity, he calls the Council of Scholars “blind” (52). Equality 7‐2521 here openly criticizes his leaders for the first time. It will certainly not be the last, for when the World Council rejects his invented light bulb, he rails at them, “You thrice‐damned fools!” (75). Such language is a great leap beyond the mild accusation of blindness. However, at this point Equality 7‐2521 has already passed through a torturous ordeal that reveals to him the cruelty of his supposedly equal society. The cruel torture to which Equality 7‐2521 is subjected did not originate with Rand. Renowned among the practices of the totalitarian dictators is harshly punishing all who disagree with them publicly. One such dictator was Getulio Vargas, who ruled in Brazil from 1930‐1945 (Rohter 22‐23). Once in power, Vargas “ruled as a dictator, shuttering Congress, censoring the press, and jailing and torturing his opponents or driving them into exile” (Rohter 23). However, Vargas was extremely popular with the poor of his country (Rohter 23). Vargas forced out the country’s most outspoken and prominent writers (Rohter 131). This kind of behavior is representative of dictators everywhere. When Equality 7‐2521 defies the laws of his society by hiding and studying, his captors beat him mercilessly to extort a confession from him (Rand, Anthem ​
64‐66). When he attempts to reason with the World Council, they threaten him and attempt to destroy his work (Rand, ​
Anthem ​
71‐74). Although the World Council is a group of people, rather than a single dictator, their actions to keep their society pure mirror the actions of dictators like Vargas. It seems that Rand, always aware of her world, has built into the world of her story a dictatorship of the many. In her essay “How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?” Rand herself establishes a standard by which we can examine the judgments of Equality 7‐2521. She says that “a man is to be judged by the judgments he pronounces.” Throughout the essay she implies that a rational person must always embrace good and denounce evil. Therefore, if a person defends the good and attacks the evil, that one must be good and rational. We can apply that standard to Equality 7‐2521 as he attacks the leaders of his society. When he admires the Saint of the Pyre, he calls the pride in his eyes “holy” (51). The use of holy clearly implies a moral judgment, that he decides the individual pride is a good thing. Thus early in the novel Equality 7‐2521 has recognized individuality as good, particularly in reaction to the evil of collectivism. When he first judges the pride of the Saint of the Pyre to be holy (51), he identifies individualism to be good‐‐a choice that inherently makes collectivism evil. His ecstasy at the the novel’s climax makes reveals his final judgment of the evil of his society: “I am done with the monster of ‘We,’ the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood, and shame” (97). Equality 7‐2521 has named his former brothers, who suffer under the oppressive collectivist system, as serfs‐‐slaves in fact, though not called so. He has accused their leaders of plundering from them their identity and consigning them to misery, falsehood, and shame. This is his final moral assessment of the government in the story: that they are evil for oppressing their fellow human beings. It is this judgment that Rand wants the readers to see as the rational choice. Yet there are two problems with accepting the view of Equality 7‐2521 that Rand promotes by making him a rational judge. First, Rand is wrong to claim that making good judgments makes a person inherently good. Goodness can only be measured by living up to the standard of moral judgments, and every judge stands in danger of the hypocrisy of condemning those who are no better than himself. It is there that we see the second problem with accepting Equality 7‐2521 as a rational judge. Once he reaches his house at the end of the journey, Equality 7‐2521 becomes cruel. He becomes narcissistic (95), a characteristic that some scholars claim he shares with Getulio Vargas (Evans 632). Even on his journey, he makes failed and flawed judgments. In his sojourn in the forest, Equality 7‐2521 shrinks back from the passion he expressed at his audience before the World Council. He encourages Liberty 5‐3000 to “forget their good and our evil” (83). His relapse indicates that his judgment cannot implicitly be trusted. His worst low point, however, comes as he takes the name Prometheus and reveals his plans for the house. He plans to recruit to his new army those of his former brothers he trusts, and raise his sons in his new image (104)‐‐just as Vargas used music education to indoctrinate the children of his realm (Ferraz 162). In his rage against the regime he fled, Prometheus plans to reclaim the gift of electricity he once wanted to offer to mankind (67) and use it to build an electrified fence to keep them all out (100). Thus in the end, Equality 7‐2521 as Prometheus ends up at least as bad a dictator as the government he fled. Works Cited Evans, Robert Dervel. “Getulio Vargas of Brazil, 1883‐1954.” International Affairs 51 (2001): 631‐32. EBSCO. Web. 15 December 2015. Ferraz, Gabriel. “Heitor Villa‐Lobos e Getulio Vargas: Doutrinando Crianças por Meio da Educação Musical.” ​
Latin American Music Review ​
34 (2013): 162‐95. EBSCO. Web. 15 December 2015. Rand, Ayn. ​
Anthem.​
1938. Ed. Leonard Peikoff. New York: Signet, 1995. Print. ‐‐‐. “How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?” ​
Objectivist Newsletter,​
April 1962. AynRand.org.​
Ayn Rand Institute, 7 December 2015. Web. 9 December 2015. Rohter, Larry. ​
Brazil on the Rise: The Story of a Country Transformed.​
New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010. Print. "U.S. Constitutional Amendments ‐ FindLaw." ​
Findlaw.​
Thomson Reuters, 2015. Web. 15 Dec. 2015.