Vocabulary in Anthem

The act of breaking a rule or law; here used for any violation of the collective's strict codes, which carries severe punishment.

Hard, exhausting physical or mental labor performed day after day without rest or reward.

Suffering or hardship accepted or imposed as punishment for wrongdoing, meant to make amends for a sin or violation.

A miserable, pitiable, or morally condemned person; used here as a term of self-reproach by the narrator.

The forbidden era before the current collectivist society, whose history is suppressed and whose very name is a taboo phrase.

So forbidden or shocking that it cannot be spoken of; in this society, applied to any thought or act that asserts individual identity.

The governing bodies that hold absolute authority over every aspect of life in the collectivist state, assigning work, residence, and punishment.

The lowly labor assignment given to the narrator by the Council of Vocations, considered a menial and degrading occupation.

An underground passage the narrator secretly discovers and uses as a hidden laboratory, away from the collective's surveillance.

A thin wire inside an electric light bulb that glows when current passes through it; central to the narrator's secret scientific experiment.

The narrator's homemade electric light device — a bulb enclosed in glass — which he invents and presents as a gift to mankind.

The officially sanctioned class of learned men who control all knowledge and decide what is true; they reject the narrator's invention.

The wild, forbidden woodland beyond the city's borders where the narrator flees after his arrest, and where he and the Golden One begin a free life.

A stroke of a whip used as corporal punishment; the narrator endures lashing when authorities try to force him to reveal his secret.

The prison where rule-breakers are held and tortured; the narrator is sent there after being caught outside his home at night.

The all-encompassing society that demands every person subordinate themselves entirely to the group, erasing individual identity.

The individual self; in Part III the narrator reclaims this word as the sacred foundation of human identity and freedom.

The first-person singular pronoun, which is the forbidden word the narrator discovers and adopts as the supreme expression of selfhood.

The narrator's term for the word 'I,' which he treats as holy and revolutionary because it names the individual self that his society has erased.

Handwritten documents; the narrator writes his story and thoughts in secret notebooks, which are the manuscripts that form the novel.

The compulsory term all citizens must use for one another, enforcing the idea that no individual bond or preference is permitted.

One of the collective's core values, meaning enforced brotherhood and sameness among all citizens, used to suppress individual will.

The society's official doctrine that the individual does not exist and that only the collective 'We' has any reality or value.

The official name for the revolution that destroyed the old world and established the collectivist society in which the story is set.

The only permitted first-person pronoun in the narrator's society; every citizen must refer to themselves as 'we,' never 'I,' to deny individual identity.