Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

 

Title: Atlas Shrugged

Originally published: 1957
Dates read: 5/21/18-7/15/18 (Part I 5/21-6/13; Part II 6/14-7/3; Part III 7/3-7/15)
Back to the Classics category: Classic that Scares You
Find out more about the Back to the Classics 2018 reading challenge HERE.
Read my other book reviews from the challenge HERE.

Author: Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was born in St. Peterburg, Russia in 1905 and died in New York City, USA in 1982. At age 6, she taught herself to read and, by 9, she decided to make fiction-writing her career. She lived through communist Russia and the final Communist victory brought the confiscation of her father's pharmacy and periods of near starvation. Thoroughly opposed to the mysticism and collectivism of Russian culture, she became an atheist and took America's capitalism as the model of what a nation of free men could be.

At the Univerity of Petrograd, she studied philosophy and history and graduated in 1924. One of her greatest pleasures was Western film and plays. Long a movie fan, she entered the State Institute for Cinema Arts in 1924 to study screen-writing. In late 1925, she obtained permission to leave the USSR for a visit to relatives in the United States. Although she told the Soviet authorities that her visit would be short, she was determined to never return to Russia.

She went to Hollywood to pursue a career as a screenwriter. After 2 weeks in Hollywood, she met an actor, Frank O'Connor, whom she married in 1929; they were married until his death 50 years later. Her first job was as an extra, then as a script reader, and, after struggling for several years at various non-writing jobs, she sold her first screenplay. Rand wrote several plays/screenplays, 4 fiction novels, and 9 non-fiction books about her philosophy, Objectivism. She published and edited her own periodicals from 1962-1976. She had a hard time initially getting published, was not well received in her day, and is still considered controversial today.

The Description on Back of Book:
Who is John Galt? When he says that he will stop the motor of the world, is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he have to fight his battles not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves?

You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the amazing men and women in this book. You will discover why a productive genius becomes a worthless playboy...why a great steel industrialist is working for his own destruction...why a composer gives up his career on the night of his triumph...why a beautiful woman who runs a transcontinental railroad falls in love with the man she has sworn to kill.

Objectivism: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

Favorite quotes:
"Morality is: judgment to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, and integrity to stand by the good at any price."

"Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. Joy is not 'the absence of pain,' intelligence is not 'the absence of stupidity,' light is not 'the absence of darkness,' an entity is not 'the absence of a nonentity.' Building is not done by abstaining from demolition. Existence is not a negation of negatives. Evil, not value, is an absence and a negation, evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us."

"In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit."

Review:
I was scared to read this book because it seemed highly philosophical, its philosophy seemed to be very contradictory to my worldview, and it also is super long. My fears were well founded since it was philosophical and, for the most part, contradictory to my worldview. My mass paperback version is 1078 pages long and, if it wasn't for the Classics Challenge, I would have stopped reading the book before I made it to 100 pages.

Atlas Shrugged made me depressed, angry, and feel sick to my stomach. I consciously had to refrain from throwing the book across the room due to the stupidity of the characters and my mind kept screaming 'JUST GIVE UP AND LET THE WORLD BURN!" Spoiler alert - that's what happens in the end and there was absolutely no reason for the book to be as long as it was. If nothing else, the book definitely made me feel strongly.

The story itself was intriguing, but it was very extreme and unrealistic. The characters were black and white - there was no middle ground. There were parts that drew my attention, but also many long stretches of boredom and exposition and more exposition and more exposition. I think part of what made it so hard to read was that I tended to relate more with the antagonists than the protagonists. Oh, did I mention that there's a lot of exposition?

For example, John Galt gives a 58-page speech at the end of the book. By the time it got to the speech, I understood the philosophy pretty well and felt it was unnecessary. It was during this speech that I felt sick due to the denunciation of Christianity. There are parts of the philosophy that I can agree with, but when I say "I believe in God," then I automatically disagree with Objectivism's metaphysics, epistemology, and view of human nature.

I also believe that socialism is the biblically ideal form of politics, which means I disagree with Objectivism's ethics and politics. Due to sin in the world, I do not think that we will ever see socialism actually work in the world until Jesus comes back. Until then, I do think that Meritocracy is the best substitute, but I'm also a strong supporter of Welfare.

I just cannot accept a philosophy that denounces both God and altruism since both are extremely important to me and my worldview. Even so, there are parts that I do agree with and I had a hard time reconciling those with the 2 main parts I disagree with. I'm not a philosopher, and though I have a degree in biblical studies, I don't really consider myself a theologian. After reading the book, I looked for reviews that would help me understand the book and philosophy better.

If you are thinking of reading Atlas Shrugged, I would suggest reading The Ethics of Ayn Rand by John Piper before you do. His review is the review I wish I had the knowledge to write here. If you are still interested in the book after reading his review, then go ahead and read it. If my review or his makes you question reading the book (or you think my review or his is too long), then I suggest not wasting your time. I wish I had not wasted mine.

[John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota and is the author of over 50 books.]

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Ayn Rand have the last words:

"'If you saw Altas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?'"

'I... don't know. What... could he do? What would you tell him?'

'To shrug.'"