Atlas Shrugged

This was my grandmother's favorite book. When I was a senior in high school my mom bought me a nice edition and said, "you can keep this copy but you have to read the book by the end of college." At the time I very much enjoyed reading but my tastes were very different and I had not yet tackled a book as long or detailed as Atlas Shrugged. I started reading it before I left to Arizona for two years and was only able to get through about 500 pages. Last summer, I started once again, and this time I finished.

Don't let the 1200 pages of pure brilliance intimidate you. This book is absolutely amazing. I think it should be required high school reading. Every student should know the answer to the question "Who is John Galt?" With the growing socialist attitude in the United States at the moment, I actually would not be surprised if they banned this book instead of required it.

Actually this book scared me a little bit. It was easy to draw parallels between the fictional story and real life occurrences in the American government at the moment. Let me first give a brief synopsis. The story follows the life of a Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden; two powerhouse business people during the slow change of capitalism to communism. During the story, good people, those who own big businesses, or those that simply have morals and work hard, those that contribute the most to the economy, slowly start to disappear as the government imposes more laws and restrictions on their success. The only question left when each disappears is "Who is John Galt?"

There are a lot of things that I could say about this book. I actually love the fact that she took 1200 pages to write this story. At the beginning of the novel, society is suffering but there is still some prosperity, and there is still hope. The government does not yet have complete control over all the industry and capitalism is still apparent. The progression from capitalism to communism is slow, and the reader can hardly recognize when the switch and mentality really occurs. Yet, by the end of the book, when Dagny finally makes up her mind to go on strike as well, and the socialist attitude is prominent, society has fallen. The poor, who supposedly the system is supposed to help, are worse off, and those that once contributed to society have been forced more or less to leave society all together. As the attitudes are pacified more and more to socialism, the government allows itself to take more and more control until laws are passed that force people to stay in their jobs, work for nothing, and employers no longer have control over their own business. All of a sudden the people no longer have rights or free will.This is communism.

The following is an interesting quote from the book about governments and their roles:
"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of mans self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you against foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breaches or fraud by the others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from role of protector to the role of man's deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against the victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his."

I also loved the role of the media in this novel. From the very beginning it has a very powerful influence over the attitudes of the people. For example, when Dagny decides to use Rearden metal for the John Galt line, the government uses the media, and its influence to teach the public lies about its safety. The government is even able, through its control of the State Science Institute, to gather false opinions from "reliable sources." Really the sole purpose of this media storm was to prevent positive public opinion concerning the metal, knowing that Hank Rearden would gain more power and control over the metal industry. I also love how the media is used to make bad men look good. For example, James Taggart, the brother of Dagny, time and again took credit for the great accomplishments of his sister. Or how the "boys in Washington" used the media for their own political agendas. I loved this aspect of the book because it is so applicable to life in the real world. Politicians use the media in so many ways to sway public opinion. They are more concerned with how they look instead of who they are and what they stand for.

I also loved the flashbacks to a "better world." I specifically loved the flashbacks to the childhoods of Dagny Taggart and Fransisco D'Anconia. Both were heirs to great empires and both had great dreams. Frisco and Slug, as they were nicknamed were perfect examples of children with the vision of their own "American Dream." They both knew that they could achieve whatever they want as long as they worked hard for it-that is capitalism. They started small and learned the trades, working in the mines and on the railroads, so that one day when they took over their empire, they would know how to run and improve the business. They received good educations, and they loved their work. Capitalism is the American Dream. As the country becomes pacified more and more towards the idea of communism, those dreams are no longer possible. You no longer are successful based on how hard you work for it, instead the government requires you to work hard, so that they can take all of your success. Again, there are many parallels to our own society today.

The most emotional part of the entire book is probably the train crash. At this point in the story, Dagny abandoned her post at Taggart Transcontinental after a horrendous law passed by the government. And no one knew what to do without her. It was during this time, that a train on the John Galt line got stalled, and inside was an "important political man." There was eight miles of tunnel that the train needed to get through and the only spare engine was a steam engine. There was also another "government train" coming from the other direction. No one wanted to make a decision about what to do. No one wanted to disappoint the politician on the train and delay him more so they attached a steam engine and went through the tunnel. No one wanted to take the responsibility.

This is what Ayn Rand says on the subject.
"The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into the looter's stomach, is an absolute.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromise is the transmitting rubber tube."

I don't have too much else to say about the book. It is excellent. If any reader ever chooses to read the book, I would have one more comment to mention. I found that two of the most interesting characters in the book, although not the protagonists of the story, were Lilian Rearden (Hank Rearden's wife) and Cherryl Brooks (James Taggart's wife).