The book Anthem is a book about a world full of mindless people. They let the
government control their every action from birth to death. The weirdest thing is how they
actually seem to enjoy that lack of control. One young man named Equality 7-2521, however,
starts to feel there's something wrong with his life. Unfortunately, because of his life as a
mindless drone, he is virtually unable to express how he feels. The small parts he does
understand are crowded with phrases like "for the good of all" and "we know we are wrong".
Then he meets Liberty 5-3000. Since men and women only meet once a year for the Time of
Mating, they never get married. Equality becomes infatuated by her and secretly stares at her
everyday from his job as a street sweeper. He names her The Golden One, and she names him
The Unconquered. One day she talks to him. They both know this is forbidden and will get
them into trouble, so they devise a system of simple hand signals to say hello. Meanwhile,
Equality is unhappy with the Life Mandate, or job, he was given. Secretly, he develops things
like electric light that had been abolished since the Unspeakable Times. One night, he returns
late and when he is asked where he went he doesn't answer. He is thrown into the Palace of
Corrective Detention. He's fiercely beaten but never tells of his secret haven. He escapes from
there because there are no locks in the cells since no one has ever thought of escape before. He
runs away to the woods and hides. Later Liberty comes looking for him. While there he reads
some books found in an old house and has an epiphany. He discovers words like I, my and mine.
He also names himself Promethus and names her Gaea. They live together in an old house in the
woods and raise their child to be an individual and never know the word "we". Because Anthem
was a complex book, it...