Morality In Ayn Rand's Anthem

Ayn Rand’s Anthem portrays a scared world with a homogenous culture and mindset, imprisoning its citizens with their thoughts. This imprisoned mindset caused a regression of technology out of fear of being different and the consequences that came with that. When an individual is erased to be a part of a whole and they are not allowed to question what is “known” nothing new can come about without retaliation, which is depicted in Equality’s story of the society he lived in. Equality 7-2521, a street sweeper, is about to challenge the morality and ethics of his society. In Anthem the rules and restrictions of the society stifled the questioning of established “norms,” showing that to progress, people must be allowed to be individuals, people must be allowed to question, and they must not be afraid to stand alone.

“It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them”(21)
Equality had been different from his brothers since birth physically and mentally. This was a great sin in this society and Equality thought of it as a curse because uniformity was hailed. They were all supposed to think and be the same with nothing to differentiate them from each other. They were not allowed a name for this reason, so when Equality discovered the answer to the nagging sensation he felt of missing something, he gave himself the name Prometheus. He realized that for things to ever change he had to escape the homogenous mindset that drained the happiness and quality of life of his fellow brothers. Prometheus
One must yearn to know more, to question and find answers because without that you can never change what is already there. Lastly one must have the courage to stand by their ideas, go against majority, and believe that they can change what already exists. Prometheus believed he could and he did what no one else