Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

 

My second attempt on the book of whooping 1078 pages of an Ayn Rand classic. I made a promise I would stick till the end this time, as a next time (after a couple of years) may mean a pair of age-infused cataract eyes struggling with the tiny print.

The book is divided into 3 parts, each named as a tribute to Aristotle, as stated by the author herself. A reader familiar with ‘The Fountainhead’ may get a DeJa’Vu at the beginning of the book, but if managed to survive that part, the readers are presented to a dream world, dream team of heroes -many Howard Roark(s) (hero - The Fountainhead).

The concept of romantic realism as detailed in The Fountainhead has been levelled up in Atlas Shrugged. Though there are multiple points where my ideology differs with that of the author, there are a couple of areas where we find a common footing. Given below are some of the gems that I picked up along the pages – these are train of thoughts or bits of conversations by 2 of the main characters - Hank Rearden and Ragnard Danneskjold:

What I liked:

-        People think that a liar gains victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to who one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from them on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked.

-        We do not hold the belief that this earth is a realm of misery where man is doomed to destruction. We do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and we do not live in chronic dread of disaster. We do not expect disaster unless we have specific reason to expect it and when we encounter it, we are free to fight it. It is not success but calamity that we consider as abnormal exception in human life. It is not happiness but suffering that we consider unnatural.

-        He saw for the first time that he had not known fear because against any disaster he had held the omnipotent cure of being able to act. No, he thought, not an assurance of victory – who can ever have that? – only the chance to act – which is all one needs.

Another interesting piece that caught my attention is the take on the legendary story of ‘Robin Hood’ by Ragnard:

-        He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he did not produce, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement is the source of rights, that we do not have to produce only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does.

What I did not like:

-        One main idea conveyed in this book, one that is borrowed from Aristotle – ‘A is A’ – implying that everything that exists has an identity that is independent of how people think or talk about it; for example, you can’t have a cake and eat it too. This idea is implanted throughout the book, but mainly concentrated in the public speech by John Galt over radio. That was one part, which I guiltily admit, I skipped, reason being exhaustion. To emphasize a point is one thing but to repeat it to a level of bordering boredom is another.

-        At the end of the book, the author has elaborated her philosophy – romantic realism and its four pillars. Agreeable on many scales, one point which counteracted with my logic is the author’s claim of man’s free-will irrespective of his/her environment, surroundings, and social interaction; a man is shaped by a bit of all these as we now know via numerous studies on the subject.

Overall I give 5 stars because ‘Atlas Shrugged’ managed to make an impact on my personal life and I picked up these below points:-

• -        It is okay to be proud about what you are good at – because you identified it, you put effort on it, and thus earned the claim over it rightfully.
• -        Happiness should the natural state of life and not suffering.