Is Equality 7-2521/Prometheus (from Anthem) a model for John Galt?
A few major similarities:
- Significantly, Equality calls himself Prometheus once he realizes that he has a right to exist as an individual. Francisco d'Anconia also compares John Galt to Prometheus.
- Both were inventors
- Perhaps most significantly is this quote from Anthem:
I have learned that my power of the sky was known to men long ago; they called it Electricity. It was the power that moved their greatest inventions. It lit this house with light which came from globes of glass on the walls. I have found the engine which produced this light. I shall learn how to repair it and how to make it work again. I shall learn how to use the wires which carry this power...
John Galt's main invention in Atlas Shrugged is his motor.
- Both called people out of the Looter society. The end of Anthem is quite explicit about Promethius's desire to have his house be a center of "the Resistance," in effect. Similarly, Galt's Gulch is the center of the Strike.
- Both were driven in part by their love of the book's primary female character (Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged and the Golden One/Gaia in Anthem).
- Equality 7-2521/Prometheus stated that "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." Compare that to the Oath that all of the Strikers take in Atlas Shrugged: "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 mine."
The major difference, of course, is that, unlike Equality 7-2521, John Galt never accepted the looters' creed.
