January pleasure reading

For Christmas this year I received Anthem and We the Living by Ayn Rand. I started Anthem on New Year's Eve and I've already read it twice. Granted it's only about 100 pages long, but I really enjoyed it and I wanted to read it again to soak everything in!



I really like her writing style and, of course, her ideology. For the first part of the book I was a little confused because everything is written by and about one person, but he always refers to himself as "we" instead of "I", which is part of the main themes of the book (the dangers of living solely for the collective good).

I had a few quotes that I liked in particular, such as:

"It was not that learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy. That is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them."

As we reached the end of the story, the main character has escaped the oppressive collective, along with his new knowledge of electricity (which had been lost to men previously) and discovered homes occupied by people long ago. In the home it was obvious they already had electricity and clothing and books (things all lost to the people now) and the main character read the books contained in the home and came to understand the word "I" (the Unspeakable Word in the society he escaped). My favorite part of the book was the end where he understands all these things and can put all the answers to the questions he poses in the beginning of the book into words:

"Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me; the guiding star and the lodestone which point the way. They point in but one direction. They point to me.

I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is not but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the mean to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars.

I am a man. This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before!

I do not surrender my treasures, nor to I share them. The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of spirit. I guard my treasures; my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.

I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet.

I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim in. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned."

And then my last favorite quote from the book:

"And as I stand here at the door of glory, I look behind me for the last time. I look upon the history of men, which I have learned from the books, and I wonder. It was a long story, and the spirit which moved it was the spirit of man's freedom. But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. This and nothing else."