Answer:
In Anthem by Ayn Rand, the citizens of this imaginary society are pawns without rights who exist as wards of the state. They are born in state-controlled hospitals, raised in state-controlled nurseries, educated in state-controlled schools, toil at state-assigned jobs, and sleep in massive barracks organized by the state. Citizens have no personal lives or loves; they cannot choose friends or lovers. Instead, they engage in state-controlled breeding, in which the government decides who sleeps with whom and when. Even their names are variations on collectivist slogans — Unity, Fraternity, International, and so on — followed by numbers, indicating the many "brothers" who share the slogan for a name. Above all, the word "I" has been outlawed; it is the "Unspeakable Word" that has been erased from the language and from the thoughts of citizens. All first-person references have been expunged from individual thought. When individuals speak of themselves, they use the collective "we," there being no individualistic concepts or words available.
Students often think that the citizens of Anthem are mindless puppets, brainwashed and controlled by the state. This is not so. The citizens retain their capacity to think and to choose. Equality 7-2521's plan, at the end, depends on this free will — for when he creates a different kind of society, he fully expects the best among humankind to recognize the society's merit and flock to its banner. They will choose freedom over tyranny. The mind may lie dormant, but never extinct; no dictatorship can kill the human capacity to choose liberty.
