Anthem

            For each of the following quotes, explain its meaning in the story and its wider significance:.
             "We knew suddenly that this place was left from the Unmentionable Times. So it was true, and those Times had been, and all the wonders of those Times. Hundreds upon hundreds of years ago men knew secrets which we have lost. And we thought: 'This is a foul place. They are damned who touch the things of the Unmentionable Times.' But our hand which followed the track, as we crawled, clung to the iron as if it would not leave, as if the skin of our hand were thirsty and begging of the metal some secret fluid beating in its coldness.".
             b. "To earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born.".
             c. "But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.".
             Ayn Rand's novel Anthem displays a collectivist society governed by strict rules and strongly embracing the ideas of brotherhood and equality. This first given quote is said after Equality 7-2521 and International 4-8818 find a hole underground covered with iron bars. They knew it was "was left from the Unmentionable Times." The fact that the earlier times are unmentionable show the strict control the rulers have over their people; things have changed and the rulers do not want anyone to know how the times before them had been. When Equality 7-2521 says that "they are damned" if they touch anything from those times, he illustrates the severity of the rulers and the extent of their beliefs that no one should ever know about those times. When referring to the Unmentionable Times, Equality 7-2521 says, "Men knew secrets which we have lost." He is in despair, thinking he may never know about the difference in the times before him. He seems to have little hope for finding out about the Unmentionable Times, but he later is driven to do so.