The Dehumanization Of Invention In Ayn Rand's Anthem

Within the novella Anthem the author, Ayn Rand, forges a government based upon a puppet master council that controls the inhabitants of a postwar dystopian world. This council dehumanizes their people from birth with no individualism in the sleeping quarters, being locked in the cellar for fighting, and indoctrinating “We are nothing and mankind is all” (Rand 21). As a result of the dehumanization, technology and scientific advancements halt and anything revolutionary to the society to vanish. Inside Ayn Rand's world the scientific field has relapsed to a medieval-ish way with the loss of anything electrical, and mechanical from the prewar world. In Anthem the use of candles takes fifty year for the Councils to approve (Rand 74). Their society's greatest advancement is made about 200 B.C. within the Qin Dynasty in China and spread quickly through Western Europe (“History of Candles”). It took fifty year just for the candle to start spreading in Anthem but in the past the candle was already in two countries and continued to spread within the same time. With Anthem a new invention has to be voted upon by the majority of the
The closest simulation of Anthem is North Korea where Kim Jong-un is in total control, North Korea compared to the rest of the countries that are as developed as them, North Korea is behind in technological advancements because the oppression put onto the society to make them into programmable machinery. In doing so one loses the creative aspect that makes a person and correlates to