Anthem (book review)

Anthem by Ayan Rand

(May contain Spoilers)

Summary:

This book takes place in the future where the government has a full control of people, they label every individual with a name and number, no one has a real name or identity, they all have to attend school till they reach the age of 15 and then the government decides where the people shall work for the rest of their lives. As for Equality 7-2521 he was different, he was smarter than most of the people in the school and that what made all his teachers and colleagues fear him. He thought that he was cursed because he thinks of things he should not be thinking and that is because the government taught everyone to be equal, no one is superior to anyone at anything. Equality wanted to be a Scholar but the government decided to make him a street sweeper. 

While he was sweeping the street he was designed to work on, he met a girl named Liberty 5-3000 who he soon fell in love with her which is a sin because love was forbidden and people only get to reproduce under the supervision of the government, the babies were taken from the mother's after birth and sent to special house, no one in this society knows who their parents are. 

One day while Equality 7-2521 was sweeping with his friend International 4-8818 they encountered a tunnel that lead to an outer world that belonged to the unmentionable times that the government do not speak of. 

Equality went inside the tunnel under the protest of International but he promised that he will never speak of him to anyone. Equality began to write his journals and make experiments inside the tunnel. One Day Equality loses sense of time in the tunnel and when he got back the government caught him and decided to punish him the next day, Equality knew that the scholars will held a meeting and wanted to go there to show them his discovery thinking that they will accept him as a fellow scholar and will wash all his sins away. Equality escaped from the prison easily because they were no guards, no one ever dared to escape from the prison before. When he got to the meeting of the scholars and introduced his experiment to everyone one, they feared him as he discovered something that the government had forbidden. Equality ran away and went to find Liberty and the both fled to the forest where no one goes, the places of the unmentionable times. 

They both lived in one of the houses and chose names from themselves from the books they read in the library of the house and they both lived in peace and on their free will not controlled by anyone. 

My review: 

Books like Anthem makes me fear the future and what it holds for us as a population, will we be divided in sections or groups for our rest of our lives? Or will we live in harmony with each other after we all cease the differences between us that make us want to fight each other?

Anthem is about standing your grounds and fighting for your passion and for your freedom and even if you thought that you will be stuck doing the same thing over and over for the rest of your life, it does not mean that you have to give up and just surrender to your fate, you have to look for alternative ways to change your destiny if you don't like it even though if everyone else told you not to. This is your life you are currently living and not theirs and no one should ever control you.

I liked Anthem because it made me think of the destiny of the world in the future and how it so important to be taught in schools because everyone must learn to live in harmony with each other to not get into consequences that will make us divided and controlled by others.

Over all, the book is good, I liked it and it is recommended if you are into old American literature.