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Saturday, July 3, 2010

Review: Anthem

Anthem



Here is the summary from the back of the book:

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 trace 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 a man alone.

My review:
I first read Anthem in for a high school English class.  I remember really liking it, but I decided to re-read it since that was quite a while ago.  I liked it just as much as I remember.  At just over a hundred pages, Anthem is a very quick read.  Because it is so short, there is not much character development.  However, the reader does get to know quite a bit about the character and the world he lives in because he is really the only character in the book.  It was confusing at first because the author never uses the pronoun "I", rather everybody uses "we" and "they", even to refer to themselves.  Once I understood that, it was easy to get into the sense of the society.  I think the only thing that would have made this book better is if it was longer and the reader could better understand the society.  I will definitely read more of Ms. Rand's books.

1 comment:

  1. I'm reading The Fountainhead right now--definitely plenty of pages for character development! But it moves sooooo slowly. I should have picked up Anthem as my first Rand read!

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