Anthem Chapter 9 Summary

  • Equality 7-2521 says that he has not written for many days.
  • We enter into another flashback.
  • On his second day in the forest, Equality 7-2521 hears footsteps behind him and discovers the Golden One! Liberty 5-3000 has followed him into the forest.
  • Equality 7-2521 is overjoyed, and wants to know how she found him.
  • Liberty 5-3000 responds that she heard about Equality 7-2521's flight into the forest. And the night she heard it, she ran into the forest herself. She was able to follow the tracks his feet had made, and the trail of broken twigs he'd left as he went through the forest.
  • Liberty 5-3000 says she will follow Equality 7-2521 wherever he goes and kneels before him in reverent admiration.
  • Equality 7-2521 reaches down to raise her up, but is promptly seized with sexual desire. He kisses her passionately on the lips. After the kiss, they embrace and just stand there for a while.
  • Equality 7-2521 says that the forest belongs to them, and they walk further in together, holding hands.
  • That night, Equality 7-2521 and Liberty 5-3000 discover "the one ecstasy granted to the race of men" (9.24).
  • By the time he's writing, Equality 7-2521 tells us, he and Liberty 5-3000 (a.k.a. "The Golden One" and "The Unconquerable") have been in the forest for many days. They've grown to like the lifestyle. They've even made a bow and arrow to go hunting.
  • Equality 7-2521 is also discovering that everything he learned in the City was wrong. Toil and the service of others are not the only joy in life. The real joys he's had in his life were his building of the light, and Liberty 5-3000. And those belong to him alone.
  • The day that Equality 7-2521 is writing, Liberty 5-3000 stopped walking at one point to say "We love you." (Remember that no one knows about or uses first-person pronouns.)
  • But she was frustrated she wanted to say something else. Something that would express that "we are one…alone…and only…and we love you who are one…alone…and only" (9.38).
  • Equality 7-2521 thinks that both of them are missing some crucial word. But what is it…?