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The Value of Atlas Shrugged
Originally published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged, one of the most controversial novels in American fiction, celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. Annual sales have been growing for years, and may grow even faster if Hollywood talk of a film-adaptation proves accurate.
Atlas Shrugged is routinely included on ‘favorite books’ surveys. It is not uncommon to hear a businessman, a teacher, a truck driver, or a musician say, “Atlas changed my life.” How is it that a fifty-year-old, 1200-page novel about industrialists and inventors can have such an effect on so many people?
Written by Ayn Rand, the Russian-born philosopher who escaped communism early in the 20th century, Atlas is a compelling novel about a cast of business executives struggling to achieve their interests in an inimical world. Set in New York City, it tells the story of Dagny Taggart, an underappreciated railroad VP, who fights to save her company from the incompetence and envy of her brother, the company’s President; of Henry Rearden, creator of a new metal alloy, who defends his invention against government bureaucrats who first mistrust then covet the valuable metal; of Francisco D’Anconia, heir to a lucrative copper mining firm, who pursues his own mysterious agenda while seemingly wasting away his wealth on frivolities; and of several other protagonists, each struggling in their own way to achieve and articulate their personal values.
What makes Atlas different is its philosophic depth. Underneath the suspenseful action, the story is fundamentally an intellectual mystery. Why do characters make the choices they do? What ideas animate them? The answers penetrate to the very core of Western Civilization’s traditions and values: Is man his brother’s keeper? Is the love of money the root of all evil? Is sexual pleasure base? Is happiness possible? What does it mean to be moral?
Atlas Shrugged, like all classics of literature, dramatizes a particular worldview, a way of approaching life that readers can judge, learn from, and incorporate into their own perspective. Unlike other classics, however, Atlas dramatizes values that are normally opposed in our culture—the justice of unfettered capitalism, the morality of principled egoism, the absolute efficacy of human reason. The heroes of Atlas are idealized expressions of values normally attacked in America’s college classrooms, churches and political platforms: commercialism, selfishness, and rational certainty.
If college is a time to survey the intellectual landscape in order to discover one’s own identity, if it is a time to read the great works of literature and philosophy, then it is eminently a time to read Atlas Shrugged. Atlas is a novel about what it means to be moral—and the answer, presented in an intense, page-turning, emotionally moving, intellectually challenging form, is one that will otherwise not be given a fair hearing. And it will be unlike anything you’ve ever encountered before.
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Objectivism
The Undercurrent's cultural commentary is based on Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism. Objectivism, which animates Ayn Rand's fiction, is a systematic philosophy of life. It holds that the universe is orderly and comprehensible, that man survives by reason, that his life and happiness comprise his highest moral purpose, and that he flourishes only in a society that protects his individual rights.Event Calendar
I highly encourage anyone who haven’t done so already to read Atlas Shrugged. I’ve read it several times over the years.
I first read Atlas thirty years ago. I read it again this past summer, and I cannot believe how prescient it truly was. Much of what Rand depicted is happening. This week, especially, as the Federal Government considers a plan to bail out the Jim Taggarts and leave us holding the bill, I was reminded again and again of Atlas.
“Atlas Shrugged is routinely included on ‘favorite books’ surveys.”
Maybe in the US, but like here in Europe its basicly unknown.
Excerpt:
I am a musician and I feel like we objectivist musicians have a special affinty to Atlas Shrugged. In a world where collectivism has run rampant, there is no better example of it than the current state of the music industry. Thousands of talent-less “visually arresting” artists are shoved down the throughts of a public whose only desire is “keep it simple”. I think the disapperance of talent in the industry goes hand and hand to the disappearance of the industrialists in the novel. I feel all musicians with a passion for talent and individual art should read Atlas Shrugged, over and over again.