Anthem Essay

Anthem Emma Lee Stanton March 3, 2011 Anthem Essay Lit. Genre In Anthem the leaders start to destroy the minds of the citizens in the society starting at birth and until the day they die. One of which are that they teach everyone within their society that there is no one and that it is wrong to only think about yourself or to want for yourself. The novel Anthem by Ayn Rand shows that if a dictator is to fully control a man then that person must not only enslave the body but destroy the mind as well. The leaders in Anthem seek to accomplish this cruel end in an array of ways. The leaders in anthem seek to destroy the minds of their citizens. At a very young age they are taught that it is wrong to think about one’s self instead of thinking about your fellow brothers and sisters. They are also taught that it is a sin to want for one’s self singularly. This is shown in Anthem. “So we wished to be sent to the Home of the Scholars. We wished it so much that our hands trembled under the blankets in the night, and we bit our arm to stop that other pain which we could not endure. It was evil and we dared not face our brothers in the morning. For men may wish nothing for themselves. And we were punished when the Council of Vocations came to give us our life Mandates which tell those who reach their fifteenth year what their work is to be for the rest of their days”.(24) This shows that they were programmed to believe since birth that they are not to want anything for themselves. They are to want only for the good of their brothers and sisters. The Leaders in Anthem wish to have everyone in the society in their control and to do so they must have full power over the minds and bodies of those they wish to control. They make the rules that no one is to name someone because this way they still think that they are considered a whole instead of a singular person. They also make it so that no one has the power to choose for themselves. All of the