Atlas Shrugged (Criticism)

Criticism

Jeremy W. Hubbell

Hubbell is a graduate student in History at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. In the following essay, he explores how Rand's technique of dialogue and character development support the philosophy of Objectivism.

Ayn Rand was extremely proud of Atlas Shrugged: she often said that her last novel was a perfect fictional presentation of her philosophy of Objectivism, and even directed inquisitive critics to read the novel if they had any questions about her theories. Indeed, the protagonists of Rand's "Bible of Objectivism" embody and thoroughly explain the principles the author considered sacred: individualism, morality, reason, judgment, self-sufficiency, and freedom from guilt. The most complete explanation of Rand's philosophy in Atlas Shrugged is undoubtedly John Galt's 60-page speech, but the ideas that support and expand the scope of the Objectivist outlook onto other aspects of life are presented gradually by her other characters. Francisco d'Anconia, Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, and many minor characters contribute to the construction of the Objectivist outline in the novel; they teach, learn, discover, and struggle with Rand's principles, growing through interactions with each other as well as through conflicts with their enemies in the society. While Hank and Dagny are the most prominent "learners" among the novel's characters, Francisco and Galt serve primarily as teachers. The process of the characters' budding awareness of the social, psychological, and philosophical factors in their lives is illustrated in Rand's effective use of dialogue.

Often called one of Rand's most appealing fictional personalities, Hank Rearden is a man without much introspection at the beginning of Atlas Shrugged: he heads the group of characters who have to go through much learning before they embrace the novel's Objectivism. Hank has a good basis for his further Objectivist development: he is a self-made and self-educated industrialist, with enviable abilities, an inventor's spirit (he creates the miraculous Rearden Metal himself), and a perfectionist attitude towards his work. From the start, Hank is an example of Rand's heroic business entrepreneur, a proponent of the capitalist system and the justly earned triumph such a system enables. He enjoys his possessions, because they are the results of many years of hard work, but his pride in personal achievements is marred by his self-imposed guilt, upheld by his parasitic family and a manipulative wife. Because the closest people in his life keep telling him that his attention to business rather than to people is evil and selfish, Hank develops a deeply rooted sense of deficiency as a human being, convinced that he lacks compassion.

As Galt will eventually point out, however, Hank's real guilt lies in the fact that he does not question the rational impulse of injustice that he feels whenever a member of his family calls him egotistic and unfeeling. In the Objectivist doctrine, reasoning and judgment are imperative in one's self-awareness. Instead, Hank accepts the guilt they impose on his lack of interest and respect for their lives, and does not question whether he is right in dismissing their concerns as unimportant. The novel eventually reveals that each of his family members is a useless ingrate, feeding off of Hank's own sense of obligation to the bond of blood rather than the Objectivist bond between people of same values. According to Rand, a person is what a person does: one's values are inextricable from one's work ethics, which is why Hank can only feel love for the businesspeople he can trust.

The theme of guilt imposed by one's family appears in Dagny's biography as well, although she does not accept it. Mrs. Taggart tries to make her daughter "normal" by motherly advice on femininity, and the rest of her relations mourn the girl's unnatural aspirations and development, but Dagny never falters in her single determination: to run the family railroad. The only relative she respects is Nathaniel Taggart, her ancestor who built the railroad business with extraordinary determination. Dagny's dedication to the railroad is not inspired by its family tradition; rather, she loves the business because of its nature of human inventiveness, production, and motion. If family were important to Dagny, she would be concerned about Jim Taggart's opinions; luckily, Rand's heroine never pays attention to her inept brother's reactions to her threatening adequacy.

In fact, both Dagny and Hank become aware of greater social evils through their arguments with family members. Hank shocks his mother when he refuses to hire his incompetent brother only because he is a human being who needs a job, but the national legislature eventually legalizes the hiring on the basis of need. As Dagny realizes in one of her confrontations with Jim, he supports the censuring directives that eliminate the competitive market because he is weak himself and does not like to compete, especially with his sister. Nonetheless, the government passes a law that cuts down the production of successful businesses so that the smaller ones will not be destroyed by the competition, even though there is a greater demand for goods and services than the legislature allows. In both cases, Rand bases the faults of the communist system on personal failings: individual immorality, exemplified in Hank's mother's claim of brotherly obligation and in Jim's need to restrict his environment to his own level, is at the root of the political evil that eventually destroys the country.

As the pressure increases and industrial entrepreneurs begin to see the organization of their elusive social enemy, Dagny and Hank are offered alternatives. Francisco, Galt's revolutionary who operates against the system under the guise of a reckless playboy, steps on the stage and confronts the social parasites with the contradictions of their own beliefs. When Jim attacks him for the disaster at the San Sebastian copper mines in Mexico, which cost his investors a fortune, Francisco replies that the catastrophe was actually a blessing: workers were employed and paid for months without much work to do; the contractor, although unqualified, really needed the job; and the wealth of the investors was distributed to the needy poor. Plus, Francisco adds, they should be thanking him from liberating them from the root of all evil — money. He continues by questioning this assertion, however, and concludes that there is nothing evil about money, because it is only a symbol used for exchange. The evil is the shame people feel when they are making money, shame caused by unjust social condemnation. Thus, Francisco's logic teaches those who actually listen to him about the faults in the so-called altruistic approach, which dismisses the value of work and glorifies the virtue of need. Rand thus explains the Objectivist principle of self-sufficiency and honest labor as inherently moral.

Nevertheless, neither Dagny nor Hank (although they both feel a bond with Francisco) is ready to accept completely the philosophy behind the secret revolution. Hank, already preconditioned to feel guilt, is bound by his love for Dagny; when his wife uses the information about their affair to blackmail Hank, he succumbs. However, between the beginning of the affair and the blackmail incident, Hank's feelings about Dagny gradually change: he starts the relationship almost against his own wishes, tortured by guilt for what he perceives as depravity in himself, and thinking that his physical desire is base and vilifying. Dagny, on the other hand, has never considered mind and body as separate; she enjoys the pleasures of their relationship fully and does not see sex as detached from the rest of her personality. The change in Hank's attitude and his full acceptance of his sexuality happens in another conversation, another lecture with Francisco, who explains Rand's Objectivist application to sex. According to Francisco, people only want the lovers who exemplify what they are striving for in life. Thus, Hank's desire for everything that Dagny is transcends the mere limitations of bodily lust.

According to Rand and Objectivism, a person's pursuit of happiness is the top priority in life. Dagny realizes early on that the joy she was expected to feel at parties in her youth does not come from the lavish interiors, beautiful music, and expensive food; instead, the only true joy is that of the creative human spirit, and the only people who enjoy parties are those who have some accomplishment to celebrate. Of course, the happiness must be of the right kind. Jim's happiness at finding a poor girl to marry so that he'll always have someone to look down upon is abusive and destructive. However, Rand makes another differentiation: when Hank feels exhilarated after Wyatt burns down his refinery so that it does not fall into the parasites' hands, he is also aware of the danger of feeling joy at the sight of destruction. But the destruction of an achievement which, in the corrupt system, can only be used against its creators, is actually a constructive act, Rand suggests. This lesson is the hardest one to learn: Dagny is the last to join the revolution, because she is too devoted to the railroad and cannot bear to see it destroyed. But her final awareness comes when the old world literally collapses in panic, and the world leaders use brute force to try to persuade Galt to salvage their economy.

Some of the most striking moments of philosophical awakening in the novel occur in conversations between the protagonists and their social enemies. As Hank notices early on, the very process of dialogue is one of the weapons of the corrupt system: the faults of the establishment and its criminal activities are never named, because the power of the uttered word could shake up the illogical foundations of communist ideology. Also, words are actions in the lives of executives, and in the decaying world of Atlas Shrugged, only the competent are capable of making decisions.

Another way in which language is used by social parasites is to make the issues as elusive as possible. Repeatedly Hank and Dagny confront contractors who offer excuses and collectivist slogans rather than completed work; the state institutes condemn, in vague terms, new inventions that could shake up the economy by advancing specific companies; the government agents who threaten business operations avoid clearly presented ultimatums; and even blackmailers do not name the threat they want to impose. Hank challenges the system that requires the victim's verbal participation in his own execution: in his trial for the sale of illegal quantities of steel to a customer, Hank refuses to admit guilt as such on the basis that the definition of guilt is wrong. The disabled system, which needs his capable business to leech on, sets him free. Through sometimes tiring repetition of clear versus ambiguous language, Rand depicts the all-pervading nature of immorality by Objectivist standards; her heroes, however, convey the clarity and simplicity of her philosophy in the end.

Atlas Shrugged describes with painstaking detail the deterioration of a political system whose faults are rooted in personal shortcomings. Through her protagonists, Rand makes a binding connection between the individuals in society who wish to preserve their creative and productive freedoms, and the members of the same society whose immorality (whether they are aware of it or not) causes destruction.

Source: Jeremy W. Hubbell, in an essay for Novels for Students, Gale, 2000.

What Do I Read Next?

• Every utopian text draws, if only a little, from Sir Thomas More's classic original. Utopia, published in the sixteenth century at the bloom of English Humanism, criticizes the existing social, political, and religious order in Europe from the viewpoint of an imaginary perfect society based on reason.
• Anthem, Ayn Rand's 1938 novella, served as a basis for her further publications. A parable of Objectivist philosophy, it presents the ideology and the basic plot of Atlas Shrugged in a nutshell.
• In her first critically acclaimed novel, The Fountainhead, Rand's hero Howard Roark explores and celebrates the morality of individualism and egoism in the world of architecture. The novel, published in 1943, ensured Rand's principle of Objectivism a cult following.
• We the Living was Rand's semi-autobiographical first novel, published in 1936. Begun only four years after her arrival in the United States, it is Rand's fulfillment of a promise given to the friends she left behind that she would tell the world about Russia's slow death. Kira, the young woman in the story and Rand's alter ego, struggles for love and survival under the communist regime.
• The Virtue of Selfishness, Rand's 1964 non-fictional publication consisting of several of her theoretical essays, spells out her philosophical principles from selfishness and ethics to purpose and morality, as described in her novels.
• Another writer who dared to make a business entrepreneur his fictional hero in the 1950s was Cameron Hawley. His 1952 novel, Executive Suite, tells the story of a man's struggle to maintain a major company after the CEO's sudden death.