Anthem
by Ayn Rand, classics jifara, Spectrum Spectrum Classics · first published 1936
46% recommend54% neutral
Why HN recommends it
A short dystopian novella that can be finished in a single sitting. It offers a compact introduction to Rand's ideas and serves as a thought-provoking starting point before her longer works.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Anthem is a tale of a future dark age of the great “we” – a world that deprives individuals of name, independence, and values. He lived in the dark ages of the future. In a loveless world he dared to love the woman of his choice. In an age that had lost all traces of science and civilization he had the courage to seek and find knowledge. But these were not the crimes for which he would be hunted He was marked for death because he had committed the unpardonable sin: He had stood forth from the mindless human herd. He was alone.
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…multiple times. "Real people don't act like that!" I remembered saying. And that was in high school, when I was Libertarian. I still finished the book though. If someone wants to check her out, I think Anthem is the one to read. You get all of her ideas, pretty much, with the bonus of being able to get through it in a few hours. Her other books are way too long-winded. The Fountainhead, despite being infuriating…
on “You’re an Adult. Your Brain, Not So Much” ↗I honestly think it's a terrible book that happened to retain its popularity because it got shoved in as a classic that you need to read. There are works that I genuinely enjoy, like Anthem by Ayn Rand, even though it's moralistic propaganda. I supposed I could reread the work again to see how I feel about it, but there are million of other works I could read.
on “Why Do We Keep Reading the Great Gatsby?” ↗Anthem by Ayn Rand. It’s really short and a tad trite but really made me rethink things. Still the only book I have read in a single sitting. The Art of UNIX Programming. 10 years ago me really could have used…
on “Ask HN: Which books do you wish you'd read earlier in life?” ↗…quite personal to the reader. Where one finds M Banks' Culture series optimistic others find it highly dystopian. I personally find the most uplifting books the ones that are the most "dystopian" such as Anthem by Ayn Rand and 1984 where the underlying message is about hope and our humanity.
on “Writing a better reality: The case for optimistic sci-fi (2022)” ↗…Watson (p:144) Sport: Run or Die by Killian Jornet (p:208); The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton (p:290) +; The Rise of the Ultra Runners by (p:304); Tom Dumoulin by Patrick Bernhart (p:203) Fiction: Anthem by Ayn Rand (p:105); Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (p:704); The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (p:566); Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (p:466); Live and Let die by Ian Fleming (p:229) Classics: A Christmas…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2022 and recommend for 2023” ↗All the Ayn Rand you'll ever need is in Anthem. Much shorter than Atlas Shrugged, and better literature to boot. I'm a long-time fan, after finding one of her books at a flea market when I was a kid (bought it coincidentally at the same time as…
on “Ayn Rand's Literature of Capitalism” ↗…Rand was a philosopher. And like most philosophers, she started out with some good ideas and over applied them to everything in life, which leads to some scary conclusions. My favorite Rand book was Anthem. It was short and therefore didn't have space to extrapolate Rand's ideas to their scary conclusion. I just finished reading Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. It is just as long and pompous as Atlas…
on “What are you reading?” ↗Very nice. Like a combination of Ayn Rand's Anthem and Orwell. Vonnegut rocks.
on “Vonnegut: a society without productivity variation has no Edisons.” ↗…medieval Europe. Both of them also have anime adaptations that are close to its source material in case your kids get bored (although Spice and Wolf's is incomplete). And, while it's not a comic book, Anthem is a novella by Ayn Rand that depicts a world set in the future without the word "I" and how , in spite of this, one man rediscovers individuality. The subject matter for all three of these works is…
on “Ask HN: What are some thought-provoking comics I can read with my kids?” ↗…suggest anyone read Atlas Shrugged, saying this as someone who also read Peikoff's "Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand" Just read The Fountainhead and imagine that with trains and the railroad. "Anthem" is a short read and also pretty solid.
on “The Curse of Ayn Rand's Heir” ↗yea also read Ayn Rand, in particular Anthem & then fountainhead if atlas is too complicated for the brains
on “The best relationships are all-encompassing.” ↗i think that Anthem by Ayn Rand also deserves an honorable mention in this list
on “Languages That Could Change the Way You See the World (2015)” ↗…ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee 1984 by George Orwell ANTHEM by Ayn Rand WE THE LIVING by Ayn Rand MISSION EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard FEAR by L. Ron Hubbard There are still gems in these lists, I'm just surprised that many of these made the list, especially…
on “100 Best English Nonfiction Books of Twentieth Century” ↗…systems keeps the mediocre masses well-fed, just demoralized and without dignity. Combination of Huxleyan with Kafkaesque? The Handmaid's Tale - Orwellian with a pronounced patriarchal-religious emphasis Anthem by Ayn Rand - generic Orwellian with a primitivist/preindustrial Luddite version of Phildickian. (Actually, we run into a convergence there. Isn't Orwellian thought control simply the overt forcible…
on “Four Kinds of Dystopia” ↗Ayn Rand's philosophy is widely criticized for being contradictory. This seems pretty accurate to me. But I don't think modern readers of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem, et al., are listening to her as a preacher, to apply her ideas to the entirety of their lives, but rather as inspiration for their own philosophy. That is, after all, one reason to read literature that…
on “The world is socialist” ↗