Atlas Shrugged and the Merits of Objectivism (A Preliminary Review)

Let me start this preliminary book review by saying that I am extremely confident in my ability to give an accurate and sincere review of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged despite having only read about 200 pages thus far.

Out of a hefty 1070 pages (all in dishearteningly fine print), the portion I have conquered may not seem like much; however, Rand's writing is so predictable that I do not feel guilty about discussing it. Nor do I feel comfortable waiting until I am finished to vent about her frustrating writing; if I don't have some sort of catharsis, I'm probably never going to finish the essay I have to write about this book, and will cheat myself out of $10,000 of prospective scholarship/car repair money in the process.

Aside from the heinously selfish philosophy of objectivism that she propagates throughout her story-- which I will delve into later-- the major problem I have with Rand's work is that it's too awkward to be believeable. Mechanical and strange, none of the interpersonal interactions occur in a way that I have ever seen replicated in real life, and frankly, I'd be scared if they did. A good portion of her dialogue is devoted to her characters spouting off about topics such as capitalism, literature, and morality. These conversations are never embellished in a way that makes them resemble something real.

On top of that, her characters, while usually likable in a detached way, fall flat under the overlying complexity of the society she is attempting to create.  Even if she manages to be successful in persuading her audience to like her characters, she is likely to make them like the wrong ones. Nearly all of her "good" characters are portrayed as meticulous and domineering sociopaths that are too absorbed in their work to focus on any other outside force, except for maybe their painfully awkward lover (the protagonist, Dagny Taggart, has hooked up with two men thus far, both as introverted and cold as she is, which makes absolutely no sense given the context of their personalities).

By contrast, the characters that she casts as her "villians" are actually quite respectable. Try though she might to make me dislike her bumbling crew of well-intentioned, altruistic businessmen, Rand fails to convince me that I should prefer her greedy and apathetic good guys to her selfless bad ones.

This, of course, is probably all attributable to the problems I have with her philosophy. Called objectivism, its primary tenants are that reality is an absolute, reason is man's basic tool for survival, a man's moral purpose is to act in his own self-interest, and that laissez-faire capitalism (and, therefore, free trade) is the best way to govern a nation.

I could take or leave all of her frequently-espoused philosophies were it not for the third tenant; the idea that it is a man's moral duty to act in his own self-interest is absurd. Being a pragmatist, I tend not to enjoy listening to anyone who tells me that there is one specific moral way to act. However, it becomes simply unbearable when such a way includes ignoring the needs of a fellow human being.

Rand's philosophies decry altruism and promote greed for seemingly no good reason (I have to read one given in Atlas Shrugged), and the way she constructs her book in accordance with her views is irritating to me. While I plan to review her book more thoroughly when I finish, so far Atlas Shrugged has proven to be a static, predictable, and infuriating read with no real redemption in character, plot, or philosophy.

Are we depressing our students?

With the school year in full swing, and literary oriented classes trying feverishly to cram as many books down students' throats as possible, it seems to be a valid question, one that is usually met with an emphatic "yes" as an answer.

 Speaking purely from personal experience, I can say that I have read my fair share of heavy handed classics, many of which have left me with a sour taste in my mouth as I wonder, bitterly, why on Earth I am being made to read such tragic things at school.

There is little contest over the legitimacy of the claim that high schoolers, by and large, are made to read darker materials. With that argument, however, comes the question of whether or not such profound (and profoundly morbid) works are beneficial to the student as a whole.

I am, in all likelihood, not a good person to answer this question, as I tend to be overly sensitive to the materials I absorb in school.  From 1984 to Raisin in The Sun, fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, video or recording, a good portion of the things I read send me into a mini existential crisis, during which I spend a good portion of my time shouting things excitedly at anyone who will listen about the totally awesome or (more frequently) completely depressing work I just came across.

However,  I've always found that these literary and visual experiences are constructive in the way that they mold my outlook on the world. Quite often, I find myself able to step back and consider things in a new light that reflects something I have recently absorbed.

A good example of this would be a movie recently shown to our 6th period Spanish class, an independent 80s piece titled El Norte. It is a multilingual film that discusses the nature of illegal immigration via its recount of two orphaned teenagers' journey to the "promised land" of America. Without revealing too much about this powerful (and highly recommended) work, I will say that El Norte's chilling ending and somewhat creepy undertones caused me to rethink, oddly enough, about the construction workers that are currently hard at work building a new building for my school.

Knowing that some of the men toiling away beyond the comfortable, air conditioned sanctuary that I study in could very well be from the same culture as the one I celebrated and mourned over while watching the movie greatly changed the way I perceived the work they were doing. They suddenly became valuable, precious; they caused me to feel a sharp pang of guilt whenever I remembered the countless jokes I partook in of which they were the subject.

Anecdotes aside, this example is just one way in which my learning experiences have affected my behavior. The things I have read or heard in school definitely affect me to noticeable degrees. Everything causes me to think, in some form or another-- however, in a way, I feel like "depressing" works are even more potent than their lighthearted counterparts, if only due to the affect their oftentimes gruesome contents can have on the students reading them.

It is widely accepted that people, especially teenagers, require a "shock value" to spur them into critical thinking and social consciousness. Countless commercials, movies, and advertisements make money off of concept that people will not act unless coerced into doing so. This phenomenon seems to be working-- if only from personal experience, I have realized that I have learned more and felt more from stereotypically "depressing books" than I have from their more light-hearted counterparts that have so often be

This shock value is what leads me to conclude that the answer to the aforementioned question is, instead, a resounding "no". Despite the heaviness of many of the works found in high school curriculum, the very nature of the of the adolescent audience suggests that such morbid topics will actually help the reader in the long run, if only because, for even just a moment, they were motivated to linger over the moral lesson the book is attempting to broadcast.