Brilliant Industrialists No More (Monica Rodriguez)

This weeks reading of Atlas shrugged left me shaking with exasperation. I, as well as many of my other classmates, have been terribly frustrated with the looters in the parts of the book leading up to this section. I am certain that that is what Rand intended when she wrote about such polar characters, using extremes to make the reader see clearly what she perceives as right or wrong. Up to this point I have, for lack of a better word, rotted for Dagny and those like her to defeat these looters, whom I perceived as being in the wrong. After this week’s reading, I no longer know which side I am rooting for.  To be honest, I no longer like any of the characters in this novel. I simply do not understand them. What I liked about the industrialists was their ambition and their pride in their success. In their new community these industrialists, who where once powerful people with jobs that showed off their skill sets, work normal, boring jobs, and are okay with it. They live happily knowing that they living their motto of living for themselves. However the are not living for themselves, they are living for an ideal and are willing to give up everything they once where for that ideal. It frustrates me to read about the few redeeming characters in this novel giving themselves up wholly to the words of John Galt. I think they have gone too far to the extreme and can only hope that further reading will show this cult-like community coming to an end.