In the stories, Anthem, by Ayn Rand, and By the Waters of Babylon, by Stephen Vincent Benet, each of the main characters posses a desire deep within themselves to discover things that they do not already know about. Equality and John both live in societies where almost all knowledge of the past has been forgotten. These communities are enveloped in superstition, which causes them to fear the unknown. The desire within Equality and John, however, brings them past these fears and leads them to learn many new things about the “old times”. Anthem starts off with Equality feeling as though he