" I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine."
-- John Galt, Atlas Shrugged
This short novel by Ayn Rand take place centuries after a great war, a one world government has taken over after with the theme of "We are one in all and all in one, There are no men but the great WE, One, indivisible and forever". All scientific and industrial knowledge is lost and the masses appear to be living in a Dark Ages type feudal society where there are no freedoms or rights. The political part of this society reminds me somewhat of George Orwell's "1984" but much more hellish. In this world people do not have names but labels such as Equality 7-2521 or Union 5-3992 engraved on their metal ID bracelets they have to wear at all times.
The State takes complete control of all children from the time they are born till the day they die. Individualism of any kind is strictly prohibited and punished. At age 15 their schooling is over and they are then assigned to their lifetime job by the state;"Dare not choose in your minds the work you would like to do when you leave the Home of the Students (State run boarding schools for children till they turn 15). You shall do what the Council of Vocations shall prescribe for you. For the Council of Vocations knows in it's great wisdom where you are needed by your brother's men, better than you can know it in your unworthy little minds. And if you are not needed by your brother men, there is no reason for you to burden the earth with your bodies."
So the story starts with the main character, Equality 7-2521, who is punished for not conforming in the Home of the Students by being smarter, taller, and more inquisitive than his brothers by the Council of Vocations (a five member board with "three of the male gender and two of the female gender") by assigning him a lifetime job as a street sweeper.
One day while performing his duties he came across an old manhole and decides to climb down despite a warning for one of his fellow street sweepers; "Since the council does not know of this hole, there can be no law permitting to enter. And everything which is not permitted by law is forbidden." It leads down to an old subway tunnel that was left over from the "Unmentionable Times", a term for the history before the "Great Rebirth" of the present world. So he returns night after night and eventually, by theft and scavenging objects during his cleanup duties, he builds a scientific laboratory and library and educates himself. He meets the woman, ah, female gender of his dreams working on a collective farm, Liberty 5-3000 is her name, and falls in love with her. This is forbidden as the crime of Transgression of Preference because the State Council of Eugenics assigns sex partners for one night each year at the City Palace of Mating. Any children conceived are taken away at birth to State run children's homes.
One day he made his first great discovery by accident, the wet cell battery and later, the electric light. He decides to present his discoveries to the World Council of Scholars to benefit his brothers and maybe the Council of Vocations will assign him to that group. The World Council of Scholars declared it to be evil simply because one man invented it, "What is not thought by all men cannot be true"and "What is not done collectively cannot be good". They pointed out that it took twenty men to invent the candle one hundred years before and that is why that invention was good.
He barely escaped with his invention and life into the Uncharted Forest, a great dark wilderness outside of the city where no man ever returned. He was dammed by society and he soon finds that being dammed is not so bad. He can do what he wants when he wants and take care of only his needs. Liberty 5-3000, since renamed Golden One by him because of her hair, had followed him. Together they discovered the freedom of individualism and independent resourcefulness of survival, deriding what good are their brothers to them now?
The last couple chapters mirrors Atlas Shrugged in that he finds a place with a deserted house and library and plans to some day return to the city and gather up a selected group of his friends and lead them there to live out their lives as free men and woman. One day all the people living there will return to the cities and free the world with a John Galtist speech: "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."
This novel repeats the pattern I have seen in most of her novels, the free thinking individualist fighting against the collective society and winning. The first thing that struck me was Rand's use of the word "gender" in place of "sex" in this 1937 novel. That substitution is what today's liberals are trying to force feed us, that there are not two "sexes" but five "genders". Another was the extreme reaction of the World Council of Scholars to Equality 7-2521 inventions solely because a single man invented it. I recall last year when the Smithsonian turned down a gift of several million dollars because of the condition that it be spent on honoring individual inventors and they wanted to spend in on "inventions by group", whatever the hell that means.
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