Ayn_Rand

 =Biography=

Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905, in St. Petersberg, Russia. Growing up, she witnessed political struggles like the Kerensky and Bolshevik Revolutions, and in order to escape the violence her family moved to the Crimea, where Rand finished high school. It was during her last year of high school that she was first exposed to American history, and she immediately decided that the United States was the perfect example of a free nation. When her family moved back from the Crimea, she enrolled in the University of Petrograd to study history and philosophy. Rand graduated from college in 1924, and entered the State Institute for Cinema Arts, having always enjoyed theater. After watching the communist takeover of her old school, the University of Petrograd, and the elimination of free inquiry, she obtained permission to travel to the United States, telling Russian authorities that her stay would be short.

In fact, she stayed six months with her relatives in Chicago and then obtiained an extension on her visa. A twenty year old Rand went straight to Hollywood, where she was discovered by director Cecil B. DeMille when she was standing outside the gates to his studio. Rand struggled through many jobs in Hollywood that did not showcase or even involve her writing talent, until finally in 1932 when two of her plays, //Red Pawn// and //Night of January 16th//, were published and produced. A few years later //We The Living// was published, and Rand's career as a fiction writer was truly started.

=Overview of Objectivism=

Looking at Rand's background, it's easy to see where her philosophy of Objectivism, which focuses on man as the highest being of power, came from. Ayn Rand spent her early life struggling against the evils of communism and socialism, which brought about the collectivism she thouroughly despised and the lack of free speech, inquiry, and thought, which she detested even more. Objectivism preaches that the individial is the most important and most treasured being, and that one should always be true to oneself over anyone else. Rand rejected the thought of self-sacrifice and martyrdom as values, holding the happiness of the individual as the highest importance in a man's life. However, Ayn Rand did not support mindless self-indulgence- happiness came from virtue, she said, and one's virtues came from oneself. Rand didn't approve of the idea of a god or higher power, and so shunned religion.

In //Philospophy: Who Needs It//, a collection of Rand's speeches and essays about morals, she states that values come from rational thinking, and that one must rely on one's rational thought process, not one's emotions or some book that tells one how to live. Reject the irrational, Rand preached. If it doesn't make sense, first analyze why it doesn't make sense, and then come up with your own rational explanation, based on your own thoughts and observations rather than general consensus and public opinion.

Ayn Rand's own statements, such as “From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man -- the function of his reasoning mind," do a good job of showing her love of reason and rational thought, but there are other elements to Objectivism, perhaps the most important of which involve the "I", or the ego.

=Analysis Of Books=

Anthem
In Rand's 1937 novella //Anthem//, she illustrates the importance of one's own self. The book is set in a future-era sort of "Utopia", where everyone are brothers and love each other equally. Personal preference is not simply ignored- it is blown out of existence by a series of Councils that rule the large-scale bureacracy that Rand's hero, Equality 7-2521 (later known as Prometheus) lives in. Equality 7-2521 and his so-called brothers and sisters refer to themselves as "we." The individual has been completely elminated. In fact, Rand starts off the book (which is a journal of Equality's thoughts) with the statement that in this world, "It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down on paper no others are to see." Throughout the rest of //Anthem//, Equality 7-2521 not only struggles with his own inner conflicts, but in turn must deal with the wrath of one of the Councils. Equality had always been smart in school, much smarter than any of the others, and especially loved the rational thought process involved in science- clearly the hero of Rand's story. However, when the time came for Equality and his peers to be assigned jobs, or "Life Mandates", Equality was sent to the Home of Street Sweepers. One day, completing his daily task of cleaning the roads of his city, Equality stumbles upon an ancient service entrance to an old subway tunnel, and decides to climb down it and see what lies beneath the streets he is forced to sweep. There he finds iron and concrete, two things unheard of in this primitive future-land, clearly from what are called the "Unmentionable Times". Though at first he uses the tunnel as an underground hiding place where he finds previously impossible solitude, he eventually begins to use the place to conduct tests of a scientific nature and soon re-discovers electricity. When he wants to show the Council his discovery, they shun him and claim he is evil because he thinks ideas that no one else does. No one else has discovered this power of nature, and so it must be evil. Equality is so disinheartened by this rejection of logic that he flees to the Uncharted Forest ("of which men must not think") along with his forbidden love, Liberty 5-3000 (forbidden because it is evil to love someone more than any others). They trek through the wilderness together until they find an abandonded house from the "Unmentionable Times." It is here that Equality 7-2521 discovers the Unspeakable Word: I. Equality (now known as Prometheus, a character in Greek mythology that Ayn Rand makes references to in some of her other books because of his inventive and rebellious nature) ends his journal with "The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: EGO."

The Fountainhead
This concept of the sacred ego is continued in her book //The Fountainhead//, by Rand's hero, architect Howard Roark She describes his pain at the world and having his work being rejected as "only going down to a certain point", and then stopping, the "certain point" presumably being his ego. Roark is supposedly modelled after the real-life modern architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who is also famous for refusing to modify his work once he has completed it, choosing to keep his buildings the way he wanted them on paper rather than seeing them erected with changes made, like adding facades or unneccessary columns for appearance, ect. Rand's own philosophy about life is reflected in Roark's philosophy about buildings: It the absolute effeciency, competence of design, and precision of skill on the inside that makes something beautiful on the outside. This is the modernist movement that Roark fights for, only to have to struggle against seemingly endless amounts of irrationality and unwillingness to progress- the giants in architecture build skyscrapers modelled after the Parthenon: a complete contradiction of logic. Eventually the public opinion shifts in favor of so-called "modern" architecture, the leaders of which create awful, ugly, empty, gray buildings that are no more efficient than their outdated predecessors. Roark begins to succeed with the creation of Monadnock Valley, a kind of resort that allows its guests to have almost absolute privacy. People flock to it and the profits start racking up, although its investors only hired Roark because they were sure his buildings would attract no one and they could scam millions of dollars off the project and make a run for it. This is what hurts Roark's friends, like artist Steven Mallory, the most- the fact that these business men recongnized Roark's impeccable work as something that was sure to fail. Rand has a certain disdain for this kind of behavior, as she believes that no one should be hurt by something that happens to another person.

Atlas Shrugged
=Analysis of Themes/Elements in Writing=

Physical description plays a major role in Rand's characters, with the villians usually being plump and often looking as though they were always pouting. Sometimes, though, the antagonists are described as being handsome or beautiful, as in the case of Peter Keating //(The Fountainhead//)//,// with their appearance admired by all: A reflection of their inner selves, which seek only to be appreciated and validated by others. Almost all of Rand's heroes are depicted as being traditionally homely with sharp, angled planes making up their faces, while the heriones are consistently slender, somewhat frail, and beautiful with equally angled faces.

Rand also seems to stress a particular dislike of mothers, which links to her hatred of motherly or unconditional love. She despises the idea that one should be loved for their flaws, shown by one of her hero's, Henry Rearden (//Atlas Shrugged//), reaction to his wife Lillian's statement as such. "To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless," Lillian claims. "She's earned it, as payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all of virtue for her sake- and //that// is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity, and your invaluable self-esteem." The list in the end part of this statement being Rand's most cherished virtues, it is In both //Atlas Shrugged// and The //Fountainhead,// mothers are constantly depicted as manipulative and controlling. Peter Keating's mother pushed him into the field of architecture, destroying his childhood dream of being a painter with the justification that she only wanted him to be successful, and it was unlikely that he would be successful in art, while archictecture (coupled with charm replacing competency) could take him places. In //Atlas Shrugged,// Henry Rearden's mother attempts to convince him to give a job to his brother. Even though he has not earned it, she claims he deserves it because he needs it. It is this sort of logic that Rearden and all of Rand's protagonists cannot understand- one of the basic principles of the socialism that Rand so thourougly despised: rewards based on one's needs rather than competency and whether or not one has earned it.

This hatred of need-based handouts is a constant theme in //Atlas Shrugged// especially, in which heroes and business tycoons Henry Rearden and Dagny Taggart are forced to fight against so-called equal opportunity and fair-share laws. Rand exposes the corruption of such plans by revealing that what constitutes as legitimate "need" is determined by one's connections to Washington. Meanwhile, the competent big business owners are penalized by having to cut back their production to match their peers', in order to "maintain fairness". Rearden, a metal alloy manufacturer, is forced to sell the same amount of his product to every company who asks for it- the number being a figure apparently pulled out of thin air with no rhyme or reason to back it up. While heavy industrialists like Taggart Transcontinental who support the country's needs can't get enough metal to make any sort of significant impact, small kitchen appliances and tools made out of Rearden Metal appear. Furnaces, trains, and engines are all made out of inferior iron because of the government's restrictions on how much metal Rearden can produce, which cannot exceed his peers: However, Rearden has no peers. Rand supports the idea of a natural monopoly, which goes along with her love of lazziez-faire capitalism, and despises socialism for penalizing the men that were competent enough to make their business highly successful in order to give the "little guys", who otherwise wouldn't be able to elbow into the market mainly because of lack of mental ability to do so, a "fair chance".

=Criticism=

//Atlas Shrugged// and //The Fountainhead// share a seemingly constant underlying theme of sexism. In both novels, there is focus on a woman who is governed by absolute reason and self-interest who finds final guidance in a man who is Rand's version of a perfect person- the total Objectivist. It is here that one begins to see Rand's tendency towards sexism, with the woman's purpose being to make herself happy by making the man happy. Although Rand was considered a feminist in her time, modern feminists have called her a "traitor to her sex". Although Rand claimed that women were equal to men and shouldn't be discriminated against, she said that "For woman qua woman, the essence of feminity is hero-worship- the desire to look up to man." After this statement she goes on to say that "looking up" does not imply inferiority or obedience, but also states that a proper woman does not have any desire to be a leader over men. She believed that although women are competent to be President of the United States, as a matter of psychology, no rational woman would enjoy being in that position (as a woman in charge of men). This type of sexism is apparent in her description of the relationships between her heroes and heriones, where the herione is happy by making the man happy, and the hero's happiness comes from within his own "self". When put in the context of her time period, this is not an uncommon pattern of thought, even among Rand's controversial subject matters. Sexism of this sort (believing that women should live to make a man happy and not to rule other men) was almost total in the early nineteen hundreds and continued to be widespread with a slow rate of decrease from the fifties to even now. As much as Rand thought that free will could override anything, it's clear that she was a product of her enviornment in not only her brand of sexism but also her entire Objectivist philosophy, which stemmed from her hatred of the socialism and communism regimes that she was raised in.

Another element in her philosophy that stems from her hatred of collectivism is her overwhelming value of selfishness. While Rand makes some interesting points about total self-sacrifice, many say she takes egotism too far. In //Atlas Shrugged// she suggests that a husband shouldn't go to something as small as a party because his wife wants him to simply because //he// doesn't want to go. Rearden's wife, Lillian, makes such a suggestion and Rand twists her simple words into something that is conveyed as pure evil. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that Rand herself was the greatest force of evil in this time period. It is impossible to think of a world where everyone cared only for himself, as Rand suggests it should be. Her absolute lack of human compassion is at times disturbing- she even makes the rich that give to the poor look like the bad guys. When confronted with issues such as extreme poverty, she makes an example in //Atlas Shrugged// of character Cherryl Brooks, who rose up out of rural poverty to make a living in a dime store in New York City. Cherryl left behind her mother and family of several siblings, and talked once of a neighbor who wanted Cherryl to help look after the family rather than devote her life to her own cause. While Rand makes a valid point about not living one's life for others, she seems to lack any compassion for the children Cherryl left behind- who cannot be held accountable for themselves at such a young age.