Emotions and Appreciation of Rand's Awareness of them

            Atlas Shrugged is exhilarating. I tend to judge the worth of a story (in pages or on film) by the amount that anxiety it gives me, the scale being, the more anxiety I feel, the better the story. I must admit that I am picky: if a conflict resolves itself too quickly, or vice versa, I am displeased. This novel beautifully relieves my anxieties over one conflict while bringing up new ones at a balanced pace, keeping me entertained. I also enjoy the fact that I can choose what I want to focus more on in terms of Ayn Rand's commentaries because this novel has such variety. Although I am aware of and acknowledge the importance of the economic and political arguments that Rand wants to bring forth, it is in my nature to fall more captivated in character psychology and analysis via their development and relationships. This makes the blog useful, because I can learn of other opinions that I did not delve into on my own.

            Returning to my main point, when mention Atlas Shrugged being exhilarating, a few scenes come to mind that stirred many emotions: the difficulty to suppress laughter in the middle of class after reading Dagny's blunt comment to the press, the deep admiration of realizing that I shared the same tense anticipation as all of America after the debut of the John Galt line, the stillness of the world around me as Dagny and Rearden's story unfurled unexpectedly- all of these feelings make this novel worth the read. To know that I am merely 300 pages in a thousand-page book makes me nervous as to what is left to uncover and tie up, but because it does a phenomenal job in balancing this, I do not fear an early death to this exhilaration.