Dystopia In Anthem

In “Anthem”, the society is the perfect example of dystopia by instilling unity into each of its citizens. This concept revolves around each of the citizens believing they are living for the sole purpose of helping their ‘brothers’ or the other citizens. The story begins with the main character, Prometheus, not addressing himself as ‘I’ but as ‘We’. He calls another citizen ‘They’ even though the person is not a group. The use of plural pronouns in the story explain that the society’s leaders or the Council (the totalitarian ruler in the story) want to have peace in their cities by making the citizens feel as though they cannot live without each other. In fact, it is actually a crime (with the punishment of public burning) to speak the word …show more content…
They reject him by saying, “What is not thought by all men cannot be true”, and “What is not done collectively cannot be good”. This supports the fact that they had all been brainwashed and were thus living in a backwards state of mind. In “Anthem”, the society is still using candles and people who are above the age of 40 are called useless. The Scholars believe that the light bulb is evil and cannot exist as it was not thought by the many but only one man. “And if this should lighten the toil of men," said Similarity 5-0306, "then it is a great evil, for men have no cause to exist save in toiling for other men.” The text uses this to support how the society had reverted into the Dark Ages by the force of a totalitarian government – the perfect example of a dystopia. This shows that individualism, which drove humankind for centuries and created many advances in math, science, and technology, is lacking. Overall, “Anthem” shows a perfect example of a dystopia because it has a totalitarian government and has caused all advances to be destroyed so the citizens are living in the Dark Ages, but they have been brainwashed into believing that their lives are perfect and anything that disrupts it is