Anthem Essay

When Equality and Liberty escape from their society, they begin to learn more about what it means to be an individual like in the Unmentionable Times. In the house in the mountains, they discover many things from the Unmentionable Times, including books. From these books, Equality discovers the word “I.” He realizes that each of them has the freedom to think and choose for themselves and they did not have to think the same as other men. Not only does he discover “I”, Equality finds that in the Unmentionable Times, each man had his own name that was to identify one person from another. In Chapter 12, Equality tells Liberty about the names: “My dearest one, it is not proper for men to be without names. There was a time when each man had a name of his own to distinguish him from all other men. So let us choose our names…” (98). Equality chooses the name Prometheus. In Greek mythology, Prometheus was the son of the Titan Iapetus and Clymene. Although Prometheus is technically not a god, he is considered as the god of forethought and craftiness. In the myth, Prometheus was trusted to mold mankind out of clay; however, his attempts to better the lives of mankind made Zeus angry. Prometheus then tricked Zeus into taking a lesser sacrifice from the people. Zeus became very angry and decided to hide fire from the humans as a punishment. In return, Prometheus stole the fire from the gods to give to the humans. Zeus created Pandora, the first woman, to deliver misfortune to mankind. As punishment to Prometheus, he was tied to a rock on a mountain and given a curse that said that every day, an eagle would come and eat his liver. Ayn Rand chose the name Prometheus for Equality because he was the one who tried to bring light to man and make their quality of life better. There are many comparisons between Prometheus’ story and Equality’s story. Zeus is comparable to the government in Equality’s society. When Equality tried to better the lives of men, the government