The Human Condition (Ari Garvett)

    Throughout the first two chapters of his novel, Atlas Shrugged, Ayan Rand confronts her reader with a growingly crucial conflict of mankind. Throughout humanity, human beings have always had a thirst to enhance, explore, and expand their knowledge of the universe. This curiosity can be analyzed in multiple ways: the creation of culture and business both enhance mankind’s abilities to solve problems; however, this power is paradoxical. The paradox of such power is that it can create the destruction of a human’s emotional capacity. The gradual demise of mankind is illustrated by the repetitive gloomy images of dark skies and empty faces described throughout the narrative.
    The novels protagonist, Dagny Taggart, is a business savvy woman who at the time defied all odds in order to assume the job as vice president of Taggart Transcontinental; However, during the process of dethroning her superiors, Dagny and her fellow colleagues lost the one aspect that separates human beings from machines known as the ‘human factor’. The ‘human’ factor consists of the ability of human beings to feel compassion, empathy, and emotion which has vanished in the world that Dagny lives in. The elderly newsstand man tells Dagny “...I’ve watched them here for twenty years and I’ve seen the change. They used to rush through here, and it was wonderful to watch, it was the hurry of men who knew where they were going and were eager to get there. Now they’re hurrying because they are afraid. It’s not a purpose that drives them, it’s fear...” (Rand, 64) Rand suggests that capitalism and socialism have siphoned all affirmative feelings from the people who lived during the depression. As a result, a world of misery and struggle have been created. In order to maintain the ‘human’ factor and prevent its’ destruction, mankind will have to chose between material success or the emotional capacity to connect to one another as human beings. The human condition always contains within it the possibility of greatness versus desolation.