A brief reflection on Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged'

[AmericanPop]

I am beginning to understand that Atlas Shrugged is not merely a deceptive mask for the right, an act of cunning intent on treading shallow water rather than taking the big plunge. After reading over half of the book, and to my surprise, Ayn Rand has committed most of her time to the topics of love, morality, and the human condition.

Rather unconventionally, Ayn Rand has disregarded the idea that love is about sacrifice. We have all read those gushy novels, or seen those melodramatic movies, where say, a man risks his life in the name of his family, or, a girl defies her father to run away with the boy she loves. But are these really the selfless acts of love we are made to believe? Is love about giving, and giving unconditionally?

No. It is like any contract, however intangible the stakes may be. The man risks his life because he owes it to the single woman who alone is capable of allowing him to feel life in the first place.One's lover represents an idea, a feeling, a feeling that is inside oneself and recreated before one's eyes in material form. When a woman gives you her body you are not giving in to a primitive desire, but experiencing that feeling of rapture in it's tangible form. It is the process of making an idea real, a virtue that the likes of Dagny Taggart, Francis D'Anconia and Hank Rearden understand better than any other.

It is here that this book has affected me greatest - the sheer reality of binding thought with action. For so long I have sneered at the greedy capitalist, a subhuman materialist governed by things rather than the other way around. How can a human calculator, having never shown any interest in the arts and whose sole purpose seems to be aimed at profit, possibly know anything about morality, profundity, or life? Having veiled myself behind ideas, having indulged in the emotions ideas are meant to provoke, it has betrayed me to think that anything as dry as business could possibly offer those ineffable, profound feelings I get from the arts - or better yet something even greater.

There is something compelling about bringing thought and action together into a united whole. And the more I look around at those who profess to be learned, or cultured, the more it strikes me that these are the people who are missing half of the equation. If it feels so good to sit here and read my books, to empathize with the author's ideas, how must it feel to take those ideas and assert them to the world around me? Am I to give the world meaning, or am I to merely reflect on what the world means to me?

[Didymos Thomas]

I really do not get all the fuss about her 'magnum opus'. Rand uses 200 pages to express what Nietzsche does in 2. Philosophy aside, Rand's characters are static and inhuman. The only change we see in Dagny (the best character in the book) is that she is more confident about what she already felt to be true in the first place.

[AmericanPop]

I'm only half way through so no spoilers please

But I can definitely relate with your statement, but I can also see it differently.

[Didymos Thomas]

I hope you enjoy the book.

But I can definitely relate with your statement, but I can also see it differently.

Well, it's hard to determine how much a character changes until the book is finished. From a purely literary standpoint, philosophical disputes aside, I have to say the book is second rate at best. Again, very long book with inhuman characters. People change, and Atlas certainly provides them enough time to change, yet the characters are almost entirely static. What does Dagny learn that changes her from the beginning of the book? She learns to be more confident in her disregard for others. Makes me wonder what Rand thought of Raskolnikov in 'Crime and Punishment'.

To engage the philosophical disputes would be to refute Objectivism outright - and that's a topic for another thread

[Aristoddler]

My grade 10 History teacher gave me that book.
At the time it took me almost a year to read it, but I did finish it and I kept it so that my kids that I knew I would have later in life would have something to inspire them.

Not that it was a fantastic piece of literature, because it wasn't...it was a terribly written book in my opinion...but the philosophies behind human nature and social relations were something that she made very easy for me to relate to as a person, and not a philosophy student.
I think that's one of the best things I got from the book, was the fact that some things can be taught, and others simply shown.

[Didymos Thomas]

Yeah, but even then, the philosophy is Objectivism.

Nietzsche wrote a book to exemplify his philosophy - 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'. Much better book, the philosophy behind it is far more mature.

[Aristoddler]

You're comparing Nietzsche to Ayn Rand...not a fair fight.

It's comparing Shakespeare to Dr Seuss and saying that good ol' Bill wrote more mature poetry.

[de Silentio]

One thing I didn't like about the book is that there are only two kinds of people, dumb socialist and smart individualists. I think she does a good job of outlining her philosophy in a literary piece, but she sets the epitome of her philosophical lifestyle against unintelligent polemics who do nothing but ruin everything they touch.

[Didymos Thomas]

You're comparing Nietzsche to Ayn Rand...not a fair fight.

It's comparing Shakespeare to Dr Seuss and saying that good ol' Bill wrote more mature poetry.

You're right that the comparison is not fair, but I think the analogy does not work here. Rand thought her philosophy, and literature for that matter, to be absolutely brilliant, and most certainly mature.

Dr Seuss was always for children.

I think de Silento is entirely right. The characters are entirely inhuman in this way.

[boagie]

Hi Y'all!

Ayn Rand, is she even considered in the same context as the great thinkers, what does the philosophical community, the intellectual community feel about her works. You realize that if she does not make the grade, she will be martyred, crown of thorns and all, the eternal sufferer of all womanhood-its a touch subject What's this, the oldboys club?