Anthem Author & Background Information

1. pbs.org pbs.org Anthem Author & Background Information Anthem: Ayn Rand pbs.org pbs.org

2. The Author: Ayn Rand • Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in February 1905 • She lived during the Russian Civil War & the Bolshevik Revolution: these gave way to the Communist era in Russia. • She majored in Philosophy & History in College & studied screen-writing at Cinema Arts. • When Stalin ascended to power in the 1920s, she escaped to Chicago in 1926. • She then moved to Hollywood to become a screen-writer.

3. Rand married the actor Frank O’Connor. • She wrote a screen play called Red Pawn, a play Night of January 16th, and then her first novel We the Living (1933). • Anthem was published in Great Britain in 1938. She later revised the novella, and, in 1946, published it in the United States. • She is best known for The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957).

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5. Communist Russia • Stalin was the leader of the USSR & he improved the country’s economic status. • Stalin also ordered purges (execution) of all those who opposed him, especially independent thinkers & intellectuals. • Millions of people were killed including government officials, military, & common people. • There were also forced labor camps and collective farms, causing many people to die from starvation. • Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 until his death in 5 March 1953.

6. Anthem: Themes & Ideas • Theory of Objectivism, or ego-ism, the idea that an individual’s worth comes from him or herself, not from what they contribute to society. • The novel is written as an allegory, a fictional story whose purpose is to present a fictional idea. (Allegory: arepresentation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or materialforms;figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another.)

7. Dystopian Novel • dystopia • [dis-toh-pee-uh] animaginaryplacewhereeverythingisasbadasitcanbe (opposite of utopia) • Rand describes a dystopia in the novel, an imaginary world through which Rand shows the negatives of Collectivism:

8. To Know Before You Read . . . • The novel is written using the word we because people were not allowed to use the word I. They were a collective society and not an individual one. • The novel is written in the future, and people can barely remember/know what life was like (life as society now). Imagine that everything has been wiped out and society is starting from scratch even though it is the future.