The exact year in which the story takes place is never specifically determined, but it is quite obviously some time in the distant future. The story seems to revolve around the concept of Communism, and in a way, explains the belief that Individuals are unimportant, and all that matters is the whole. The main character is a man named Equality 7-2521. Yeah, people�s names are numbers. Trippy, neh?
The entire story is spoken from Equality 7-2521�s viewpoint, as though he were telling the story. Which he does. Over the course of the story, our lovable and confused protagonist is given two more names � The Unconquered, and Prometheus. To make things easy, I call him Timmy.
In the world of Anthem, everything is very uniform. Very structured. Structure and Control are the entire basis, which once again goes back to the communism standpoint. Everyone has an assigned task which they must fulfill for the rest of their life. Timmy is assigned to be a street sweeper, even though he wants to be a Scholar. He is introduced as being taller, smarter, and stronger than all the other characters in the book, and overall he�s very likable. A bit crazy, but everyone in this story is. Everyone constantly refers to themselves as, �We�, but then again, they�ve been conditioned to believe that individuality is a sin.
Eventually, Timmy breaks the chains of structure and does the unthinkable, by� well, thinking. Timmy goes underground and makes himself a light bulb, which baffles and confuses everybody because technology really doesn�t exist. Fire is now the dominant light source, and electricity is a thing of the past. No one really knows about it though, because nobody is allowed to talk about the past. All they are really told is that everything from �before� was evil. Honestly, the characters in this book remind me of little children, believing whatever you tell them. It�s actually quite cute.
Timmy is arrested for his insistence on thinking, and after some profuse beating, escapes from prison, which isn�t very difficult at all since there are no guards and no locks on the door. You�d have to read it to understand.
I won�t spoil the ending for you, aside from saying that Timmy hooks up with a cute blonde chick and runs off into the woods. I think they were naked too. I�m not sure.
All in all, Anthem gets four out of five Koopas for originality and for being an intelligently written peice. Definitely worth a read if you�ve got the time. Which you do, because I�m a slow reader and I read it in two hours. The entire story only equates to a hundred and five pages, and their small pages at that. Check it out, I can almost guarantee you won�t be disappointed.
This review was written by Jimi