Sunday, September 15, 2013

Alex Williams pages 315-352 Reaction


            So far I find the second part of Atlas Shrugged interesting, but I feel that Rand’s constant pushing of her philosophy is getting annoying. Page after page she keeps repeating the same concepts up to this point in the book.
I found the conversation between Stadler and Ferris quite interesting. While for the most part I disagree with the ideas in Stadler’s book, he brings up some interesting points. For example, he wrote that many the theories and inventions of great scientists of the past have been disproven, so even if we think we may know something, we may really know nothing. I thought this was actually a good point. I also thought it quite amusing that Ferris wrote the book for the public and admits that most of it is nonsense. This made me think deeper about Ferris as a character. He is not simply a socialist fanboy but is just trying to excel in the current state of the world. He sees the way the world is going and realizes which side he needs to take. He is the type of person Mayor Bascom described as willing to do anything to survive and leaving morals behind.
I’m also beginning to see the parallelism between this story and George Orwell’s 1984, not a direct correlation yet, but the world in Atlas Shrugged seems to be turning into the totalitarian one in 1984. There is a rapid change in this world. The government is given immense powers and they are taking away basic economic freedoms from people like Hank and letting those with connections do as they please. 

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