Well it would be best that you privy yourself to my previous posting on Atlas Shrugged to fully understand this one.
Before I began reading this book, I was heavily biased I have to admit. I didn't want to like the book, I wanted it to be as bad as Atlas Shrugged if not worse.
Well it wasn't.
I enjoyed reading the foreword for the book, very straight to the bone and passionate. A mention of how when we are born we have hope that our lives are meant to be purposeful and magnificent in their worth. But the world is such that it wrecks our dreams and we are gutless bar some to stick to our convictions.
So Ayn decides to offer to us the ideal situation and world where humanity can have it's first ''Hero'' from the AynRand stable.
Well she had my attention till that point, but if that grotesque capitalist world in Atlas Shrugged was her idea of Utopia, then I think we are having serious ''individual'' differences on what an ideal world is. My ideal world of happy pink people hopping around like bunnies, would sit very well with a clique of 6 year old girls. Who is to say that their ''lil untainted by the world'' ideals are any lesser?
My problem is with her badgering you into believing what she dictates to be relevant, lampooning all those human qualities which she feels are dispensable.
It's hard for me to criticise the book because it wrote about so many things I strongly believe in and have thought about... it felt like an affirmation reading those passages where she left the realm of a cheesy story and related her own personal thoughts through the book. But these passages were few and far between...when I think about it I enjoyed reading the foreword more than the book...the story only sullies what she means to say.
Roark never seemed to have a family, a mainstay of her main protagonists the same for John Galt. These men were completely self-made, including their own conception you'd think. Individualism taken to an immaculate level.
Sadly very few of us are orphans and couldn't possibly aspire to be an AynRand hero.
Though AynRand might not feel similarly, I do feel from personal experience and vicarious accounts that human beings tend to bond with their environment and are sensitive to what surrounds them, including other humans. Maybe that's why we think its noble to be concerned for society and those who are lacking in material and creative means by no fault of their own persons.
Reading the book, I could not help but notice the vicious branding of charities as utter evil and social workers as the Devil himself. Need I mention the sensitivity with which physically or mentally handicapped people were slotted. I believe in competence and the best man for the best job...but is it so hard to understand that some people need a little more help thanks to circumstances to achieve their competent and competing potential??
Hence charities. And as far as social workers not being creators, I don't know what greater joy in creation there could be than to know that you aided in someone having a life.
A major irritant for me in both her books were the female leads...they seemed nothing more than accessories to the central male and were tossed around in different beds for some reason. The rape sequence in Fountainhead and the incessant marriages of convenience left me wondering with incredulity about the need for such drama.
If I were a feminist I would take offence to the sidelined supporting roles relegated to the women in her books...especially Dominique Francon who didn't seem to have any redeeming qualities other than a nice face.
The plot is as thin as the ice on the bay of bengal and the philosophy incomplete without adequate substantiation save propaganda.
She is irrelevant to me because she twists self-respect and self-worth to call it selfishness(thus deviating it from its generic interpretation). Now these are two qualities I know all too well and don't need to add on a new tag to it make it revolutionary. Anyone can be a spin doctor.
To summarise... she says that her books aren't meant to sell her philosophy( to which I am in agreement when you sift away her recycling of already held views with newer controversial terminology) so I'll restrict my critique to just the plot, the characters and her style of writing.
The plot just served as a platform for her to drive in her opinions regarding charities, taxation amongst other needless-to-be-mentionables. It was ludicrous in parts without being as stark raving looney as Atlas Shrugged.
The characters...some of them were seriously flawed. Roark was a Mr Spock, some would like to call him ideal and a superman...I'd wonder how, if you can't relate to him one bit. Peter Keating I felt sorry for, I think she was confused about what she wanted to do with him...she abandoned a temperate approach with him having some spine and proceeded to totally molest his character, to exhibit what the insides of a jellyfish look like. Ellsworth Toohey was another badly founded character, I had hopes for him...he was shaping out to be a good villain but she deflated his potency for the expediency of her Roark. Gail Wynand was alright without being anything worth noting...but as all others except the super couple he too by necessity needs to fall and fail in the eyes of Rand.
Dominique Francon was the most vile character in the book, she epitomised those floosies in films who don't do anything but muck around and get picked up by the hero. She was empowered with a character that wasn't visible to the non-R*andian eye. But what was truly annoying was the dramatics where the three leads start reading each others thought much to their mutual disbelief. There is such a thing called Soliloquoy, it needn't be trifurcated lady.
The style of writing wasn't too bad, it started well...quality wise it was far superior to Atlas Shrugged.
But I cannot stand drama.. There are people who lap it up but I cannot tolerate anything that isn't close to reality when it claims to be. Hence this book left me flummoxed as far as the interpersonal relationships of these superhumans and their conduct was concerned.
In ending... she talks about a world that needs to be and offers us a hero... how man should be...an aspirational standard....strangely enough Roark claims that he holds himself to no standard. I think I have a grasp of what it is to think originally and be individualistic. I have lots of ambition, integrity and ego, and respect heroism as the constitution of the noblest of human qualities.
Now for an ''egoist'' there is nothing worse than someone dictate to them the ideal of what heroism is and what a hero looks like...because for the most part, that isn't me. Her idea of a hero is a man who can make people feel unworthy of his presence without having to even try. His ''innocent'' arrogance is enough. Thats something I really don't care to model myself on.
She also uses the term second-hander to describe those who need others to carry them along and necessary for their survival and fulfillment...but where would AynRand stand as a writer who cannot do without her Roarks and John Galts and an audience to buy her thoughts on what should be but what she isn't. A prime example of a second-hander?
ps: this is a critique, a negative one for the most part but I'd still want people to read it for some reason possibly to form an opinion on it.
