Similarities Between "Anthem" and the Creation Story

Perhaps the most well known story of the Holy Bible is that of the creation story. In this story, God creates the earth in six days and rests on the seventh, after creating light, dark, oceans, and animals of all types. When he feels that there should be creatures other than animals, he creates man, in His image. He names this man Adam, and then creates a counterpart for his new creation, Eve. Adam and Eve lived together in harmony with God and all the other animals in the Garden of Eden, a paradise where evil did not exist, and their only rule was to not eat from the tree of Knowledge. However, Adam and Eve, under the temptation of the serpent, showed greed, and wanted to be more like God, so they ate the fruit, in order to become like God. When compared in depth, the protagonist of the creation story, Adam, and the street sweeper, Equality 7-2521, of Ayn Rand’s Anthem are condemned men, whose stories are very similar, save one key difference. These two men were condemned for the exact same reason: they let their greed overpower every other feeling they had. ““You will certainly not die,” the serpent said to the woman “For God knows that when you eat from it (the tree of knowledge) your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5). While it was not Adam who though of eating from the tree, he did make the conscious decision to fall victim to the inescapable greed that all humans are plagued with. Equality 7-2521 fell to the same greed that Adam had, but towards another party, himself. In the society that Equality 7-2521 lives, there is no singular “I”, there is only “we”. In fact, the punishment for the denial of the belief that they have adopted, “What is not done collectively cannot be good” (Rand 73), is death. When Equality 7-2521 discovers a hole that leads down to a railway station from the “Unspeakable Times”, he finds himself drawn to it. Equality 7-2521 enjoyed being alone in the dark of the station, and in doing

Cited: The Holy Bible: New International Version : Containing the Old Testament and the New Testament. Colorado Springs, CO: International Bible Society, 1984. Print. Rand, Ayn. Anthem. New York: Dutton, 1995. Print.