He learns that her name is Liberty 5-3000 and she is beautiful, poised, and different from the other women in the city. He also gets to meet a girl from another trade, the Home of the Peasants, and feels attracted to her despite it being a crime for males and females to interact in the city. In the course of his work as a street sweeper, he secretly becomes friends with a fellow street sweeper called International 4-8818 a bright artistic boy with smiling eyes. He resigns to life as a street sweeper and follows the routine like everyone else in the Home of the Street Sweepers believing the degrading vocation is punishment for his nonconformist thoughts. After ten years of schooling, they are assigned to different trades by the state through the Council of Vocations and the students must never question the decision of the Council of Vocations.Įquality 7-2521 recalls how he had hoped to be assigned to the Council of Scholars, which is the body of intellectuals in charge of research and innovations, because of his love of Science but gets assigned to be a street sweeper instead. Children are taken by the authorities to a place called Home of the Infants from birth and there they are cared for following the totalitarian edicts of the state until they get to the age of five when they are sent to the Home of the Students where they are taught subjects provided by the state and indoctrinated into the collectivist values of the state for ten years.

He talks of the educational and social structure of the city he lives in. He introduces himself as a twenty-one-year-old young fellow who is six feet tall and who wears a bracelet that identifies him with the name Equality 7-2521. He refers to himself with the pronoun “We” as he does not know any first-person singular pronouns. He begins to narrate the events of his life up to that moment which makes us understand his world, then his narration goes further to tell of his decisions from that point and of his plans as the story draws to an end.Ī young man is alone in a secret tunnel as he writes in a stolen journal, he recounts the many transgressions he has committed against the authorities of his state, some of which have specific punishments, others so inconceivable by his society that no law has made provisions for it.įrom talking about his transgressions, he begins to relate the story of his life and how conforming to societal standards have been a struggle for him.

Anthem begins as the protagonist called Equality 7-2521 expresses his concern for breaking the rules of society as he sits in the solitude of a secret tunnel.

Anthem a novel