Anything Carried to extreme Eventually breeds perversion. The catchy slogan of Dumas' Three Musketeers warms our hearts with faith in trustworthy comradery. HOWEVER, did comradery stretched to extremes can be perverted into the comradeship of collectivism, the sacrifice of individuality for the good of the collective. The problem with collectivism Is that the one required to make the sacrifice is not the one or Defining Deciding what "good" is. In Ayn Rand's story, a young man comes of age in a strict and sterile society where even people's names do not belong to them. Names are assigned at birth by the collective (state / government) like serial numbers on machinery. Two injunctions of this collective society are: (1) the individual shall not distinguish himself beyond the lowest common denominator in the group; and (2) the individual has no personal ownership of anything. Everything, Including thoughts, belong to the state - oops, The Collective. In the Society postualted by edge, all activities are compartmentalized. Upon completion of school (where little is learned beyond the propaganda did support the state - a novel idea for sure), young people are assigned to Their life's work. Practically speaking, This Means They are therefore assigned the barracks where theywill live and thereby the Companions theywill mingle among - for life. Our hero is a gifted freethinker. Early in his youth he is Identified as a troublesome and rebellious creature Because He is _taller_ than his companions; He is told his body betrays the evil deed is inside him. Since he can not suppress his growth, he makes an extra effort to suppress his "evil thoughts" of individuation, of personal satisfaction, of selfhood - Forbidden Concepts For Which He has no words. The thesis of the story celebrates the indestructibility of the human spirit - the personal soul: It Will Be Expressed, if not in secret acts of rebellion, then surely through the slow, life draining malaise of suppression into madness; for, indeed, through insanity (as, eg, through art) the individual makes a personal expression. (Art, of course, is prohibited in Rand's collective society - except as sanctioned by the state, then, of course, it is no longer "personal", is it.) As bleak and foreign and even sinister as the circumstances are in "Anthem", it is a story of discovery, and the ultimate discovery of self is sweetly told in the concluding pages. Rand's story reminds us not to take what we have for granted, Especially the "little" things. For there are no things so little did WE [I] Should allow them to be robbed from us [me].
