Anthem Page #3

Anthem is a dystopian fiction novella by Russian-American writer Ayn Rand, written in 1937 and first published in 1938 in the United Kingdom. The story takes place at an unspecified future date when mankind has entered another Dark Age.

• Science fiction

								

      We raised our right arm and we spoke, and our voice was the
      clearest, the steadiest voice in the hall that day, and we said:

      “The will of our brothers be done.”

      And we looked straight into the eyes of the Council, but their
      eyes were as cold blue glass buttons.

      So we went into the Home of the Street Sweepers. It is a grey
      house on a narrow street. There is a sundial in its courtyard, by
      which the Council of the Home can tell the hours of the day and
      when to ring the bell. When the bell rings, we all arise from our
      beds. The sky is green and cold in our windows to the east. The
      shadow on the sundial marks off a half-hour while we dress and
      eat our breakfast in the dining hall, where there are five long
      tables with twenty clay plates and twenty clay cups on each
      table. Then we go to work in the streets of the City, with our
      brooms and our rakes. In five hours, when the sun is high, we
      return to the Home and we eat our midday meal, for which one-half
      hour is allowed. Then we go to work again. In five hours, the
      shadows are blue on the pavements, and the sky is blue with a
      deep brightness which is not bright. We come back to have our
      dinner, which lasts one hour. Then the bell rings and we walk in
      a straight column to one of the City Halls, for the Social
      Meeting. Other columns of men arrive from the Homes of the
      different Trades. The candles are lit, and the Councils of the
      different Homes stand in a pulpit, and they speak to us of our
      duties and of our brother men. Then visiting Leaders mount the
      pulpit and they read to us the speeches which were made in the
      City Council that day, for the City Council represents all men
      and all men must know. Then we sing hymns, the Hymn of
      Brotherhood, and the Hymn of Equality, and the Hymn of the
      Collective Spirit. The sky is a soggy purple when we return to
      the Home. Then the bell rings and we walk in a straight column to
      the City Theatre for three hours of Social Recreation. There a
      play is shown upon the stage, with two great choruses from the
      Home of the Actors, which speak and answer all together, in two
      great voices. The plays are about toil and how good it is. Then
      we walk back to the Home in a straight column. The sky is like a
      black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst
      through. The moths beat against the street lanterns. We go to our
      beds and we sleep, till the bell rings again. The sleeping halls
      are white and clean and bare of all things save one hundred beds.

      Thus have we lived each day of four years, until two springs ago
      when our crime happened. Thus must all men live until they are
      forty. At forty, they are worn out. At forty, they are sent to
      the Home of the Useless, where the Old Ones live. The Old Ones do
      not work, for the State takes care of them. They sit in the sun
      in summer and they sit by the fire in winter. They do not speak
      often, for they are weary. The Old Ones know that they are soon
      to die. When a miracle happens and some live to be forty-five,
      they are the Ancient Ones, and the children stare at them when
      passing by the Home of the Useless. Such is to be our life, as
      that of all our brothers and of the brothers who came before us.

      Such would have been our life, had we not committed our crime
      which changed all things for us. And it was our curse which drove
      us to our crime. We had been a good Street Sweeper and like all
      our brother Street Sweepers, save for our cursed wish to know. We
      looked too long at the stars at night, and at the trees and the
      earth. And when we cleaned the yard of the Home of the Scholars,
      we gathered the glass vials, the pieces of metal, the dried bones
      which they had discarded. We wished to keep these things and to
      study them, but we had no place to hide them. So we carried them
      to the City Cesspool. And then we made the discovery.

      It was on a day of the spring before last. We Street Sweepers
      work in brigades of three, and we were with Union 5-3992, they of
      the half-brain, and with International 4-8818. Now Union 5-3992
      are a sickly lad and sometimes they are stricken with
      convulsions, when their mouth froths and their eyes turn white.
      But International 4-8818 are different. They are a tall, strong
      youth and their eyes are like fireflies, for there is laughter in
      their eyes. We cannot look upon International 4-8818 and not
      smile in answer. For this they were not liked in the Home of the
      Students, as it is not proper to smile without reason. And also
      they were not liked because they took pieces of coal and they
      drew pictures upon the walls, and they were pictures which made
      men laugh. But it is only our brothers in the Home of the Artists
      who are permitted to draw pictures, so International 4-8818 were
      sent to the Home of the Street Sweepers, like ourselves.

      International 4-8818 and we are friends. This is an evil thing to
      say, for it is a transgression, the great Transgression of
      Preference, to love any among men better than the others, since
      we must love all men and all men are our friends. So
      International 4-8818 and we have never spoken of it. But we know.
      We know, when we look into each other’s eyes. And when we look
      thus without words, we both know other things also, strange
      things for which there are no words, and these things frighten
      us.

      So on that day of the spring before last, Union 5-3992 were
      stricken with convulsions on the edge of the City, near the City
      Theatre. We left them to lie in the shade of the Theatre tent and
      we went with International 4-8818 to finish our work. We came
      together to the great ravine behind the Theatre. It is empty save
      for trees and weeds. Beyond the ravine there is a plain, and
      beyond the plain there lies the Uncharted Forest, about which men
      must not think.

      We were gathering the papers and the rags which the wind had
      blown from the Theatre, when we saw an iron bar among the weeds.
      It was old and rusted by many rains. We pulled with all our
      strength, but we could not move it. So we called International
      4-8818, and together we scraped the earth around the bar. Of a
      sudden the earth fell in before us, and we saw an old iron grill
      over a black hole.

      International 4-8818 stepped back. But we pulled at the grill and
      it gave way. And then we saw iron rings as steps leading down a
      shaft into a darkness without bottom.

      “We shall go down,” we said to International 4-8818.
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