I know it's a bit too late to talk about The
Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged but when they were first
published, I wasn’t born and had I read any sooner, I wouldn’t have understood
half of either. Before I say anything that I have to say, let me first congratulate
Ms Rand for her achievement: it’s not everyone who can write a book of 1084
pages, and with such a uniquely captivating style. Hats off to you! Though I
prefer We the Living, her
first and semi-autobiographical novel to her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged, I wouldn’t say
that it does not make a good read. It is precisely the fact that it does make a
good read that makes some of its central traits all the less agreeable, as far
as I’m concerned.
The central theme of The
Fountainhead is that man’s
ego is the fountainhead of human progress. It celebrates individualism through
Ms Rand’s philosophy of objectivism. It is interesting that we can read through
all its detailed descriptions of architecture as easily as fiction. It is
highly influential when it comes to architecture and has inspired many of the
profession all over the world. Before reading it, I have never thought of
buildings with Victorian or Elizabethan designs as inferior to buildings that
propound originality. Now the first thing that comes to my mind when I see a
building is how Howard Roark would have designed it. It’s almost as
if there really was such a person, and his buildings. The
book is divided into four parts: part one, Peter Keating begins with a chapter
on Howard Roark; part two, Ellsworth Toohey, begins with a chapter on Howard
Roark; part three Gail Wynand begins with himself (perhaps because he is
selfish enough to be considered right) and part four, Howard Roark features
himself in the first chapter. The characters who are egotists and selfish- and therefore the
right, according to Ms Rand, include Dominique Francon, Roark’s lover who sets out to destroy him, Steven Mallory, a
sculptor damned by the world for giving shape to what is heroic in man, Gail
Wynand, whose only mistake (not realizing the fact that men who seek power are
the worst of the second-handers,
a term used by Ms Rand for people who stand for collectivism and thus seek to
destroy individual spirit) destroys him, Henry Cameron, Roark’s mentor, and others like Mike
Donnigan, Austin Heller, Kent Lansing and Roger Enright who support Roark.
There is Peter Keating who falls to a deplorable state as he went for
architecture though he had neither interest nor talent in the field. The
antagonist, Ellsworth Toohey, is the hero of common people as an exponent of
collectivism but is towards the end, revealed to be an evil man who seeks to
control people by ruling their souls. He uses the mask of altruism to replace
the genius with the mediocre. I’ve never disliked fictional characters as much
as Loius Cook, Ike (what was his surname?), Gus Webb and Lancelot Clokey till I
met some even worse in Atlas
Shrugged. That is Ms Rand’s virtue- she knows exactly how to make you hate
a character and through him, his ideals. Roark’s statement to Wynand aboard his
ship I Do (named so to answer all those who
have told him that he does not run things around their place) - "I
could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you."- sums up the
essence of the book.
Atlas Shrugged begins with the question “Who is John
Galt?” which is repeated throughout the book, whenever people are confronted
with things they can’t understand and questions nobody can answer. John Galt is
in fact, the hero of the book who sets out to stop the motor of the world and
succeeds. He is highly talented but on realizing that the world which seeks to
exploit his genius is not the one in which he wants to live in, finds another
Atlantis and brings productive men, who knows they are the best, to live there.
So we find geniuses of all kind- composers, philosophers, industrialists,
actresses, miners, novelists, inventors and producers of cars, metals and
aircrafts- giving up their works and vanishing overnight to this mysterious
place. That the heroine, Dagny Taggart, had to fall in love with John Galt
after two true love affairs with her childhood friend
Francisco d’Anconia who is John’s best friend and fellow businessman Hank
Rearden (the author says that Dagny will always love Francisco and Hank while
loving John and that this is not treason to any of them) reminds one of Ms
Rand’s romantic affair with Nathaniel Branden,
(both married and not to each other) with the consent of their spouses. The
deplorable characters, who oppose selfish men (who are naturally the real
economic powers), are James Taggart, Orren Boyle, Wesley Mouch, Dr.Floyd
Ferris, Dr.Simon Pritchett, Fred Kinnan, Chick Morrison, Cuffy Meigs and so on.
Ms Rand seems to have invented quite a number of technologies in the book, the
prominent being Rearden metal (a bluish green metal which is cheaper and
stronger than steel) and Galt’s motor that can convert static electricity into
mechanical energy.
After
reading three of Ms Rand’s works, here is what I understand about her: she is
in love with buildings, steel, glass, concrete, aluminium (in case of Kira) and
bridges. She talks of man’s ego- even if she had used the word
to include both genders, her view that women have to submit to the force of men
and that they find exaltation during a sexual act in being humiliated by men
have been regarded as anti-feminist. I’m no feminist myself, but being female,
I strongly disagree with Ms Rand in this aspect. Another thing that is obvious
in her works is that she regards the USA Israel
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