Alex Williams final reaction

            Before I actually read Atlas Shrugged, I always thought that I would enjoy and understand the message it gives. I had heard much about Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism and I’ve been told many times that I would wholeheartedly agree. Throughout the entire book, I kept an open mind but slightly favored the industrialists like Rearden and Dagny. I thought this book would reinforce my own views on politics and economics. In many ways, it did. It also made me realize how insane and exaggerated everything in this book is. I would agree that the book is very well written and that Rand really gets her point across, but the downsides is that it’s extremely repetitive, overly exaggerated, and highly unrealistic.

            Throughout the course of the plot, Rand does not leave much room for interpretation. Sure there are a view characters that firmly stand on one side and have ideas that can be used for either side, but the majority of the characters are inelastic and represent one-sided views with not a hint of changing them. What amazes me even more is the way Rand paints certain characters as heroes and others as villains. Rand creates these characters to represent different beliefs and values, and by that I mean anything that doesn’t fully agree with her is tossed into the villain category.

            Examining the main actions of the characters in this book really makes me disagree with Rand. She molds everything to make her philosophy seem ideal and anything that contradicts it seem wrong. The affair between Dagny and Rearden is idealized as true love and how it should be. Rand casts Lillian as an evil manipulator who seeks pleasure in destroying Rearden’s life. To be honest, she should have a mindset like that.  Rearden ruined her life. He married her and trapped her in their loveless marriage. Rand made it clear that Lillian married Hank for his virtues and courage, with the intention of destroying them. But I highly doubt she wanted this from the start. Hank is a sociopath with nothing but his own interests in mind; he married Lillian for no reason whatsoever. Her hatred grew over the years, it was not there to begin with. I agree with everything he for the sake of making money and doing everything for his own benefit, I just think that he should’ve never married Lillian in the first place and definitely not act the way he did to her. He even threatened her with violence if she ever brought up his affair again. How can she still paint this man as a hero? In economic terms he is, but he also represents evil.

            Another thing I don’t agree with is her portrayal of John Galt, the real hero of this story. He is Rand’s hypothetical hero, the ideal man in her philosophy. From what I observed, this is a huge contradiction. He is the one who spent hours preaching to the world about self-interest and never living for another man. What I saw constantly throughout the book was everyone giving up their own self interests to serve him. Hank goes from punching Francisco in the face to admitting he knows Dagny loves Galt, and that he is fine with it. How is this self-interest? Francisco and Hank just gave up Dagny and from what I observed from the book, basically gave up women.

            I think Rand overly exaggerates everything in this book. First of all, this took place in under two decades and America became a complete totalitarian state. That just couldn’t happen with the way the world is. Sure if everyone suddenly became mindless then yes this story would make sense. But the way she laid it out is just not possible. She makes everyone except the protagonists just mindless drones who have no ability to do anything about their circumstances. In fact, the only people who she really makes capable of doing anything are the brilliant minds that were the protagonists. From what I observed, Rand does not have much respect for anyone unless they’re born with a vastly superior intelligence. People like Eddie Willers shared the same philosophy as Galt and the others, but because he wasn’t born an absolute genius like Francico, Ragnar, and Galt, she casts him as a loser, reaching total failure at the end of the novel, then a happy ending for the three geniuses and their friends.

            Overall, I agree with many of the views of Objectivism, but I think it’s highly unrealistic and itself not rational. There are too many contradictions in this book and the biggest of them all was Ayn Rand herself. While preaching of the evils of welfare and charity, about how taking alms for anything was a mortal sin, she herself received welfare and aid from the government. She like men of Washington in the book, expects everyone to pay their way, but its okay for her to reap the benefit of the hard work of others. I think this book is great, but greatly exaggerated to the point of losing the rationality that she preaches.