At first, I was daunted by the size of the book, but when I
started to read it, I started to enjoy it. I found the plot to be majorly
interesting at first and the ideas initially were appealing as well as the characters.
As the book went on, I started to change my opinion. Each chapter was just
another drawn out criticism of socialism and I felt like a large part of the time
I spent reading this book was basically wasted. I could have just read Galt’s
speech and I would have accomplished the goal of the entire novel. The whole
story is interesting, but with Rand’s message so blatantly obvious, there is
absolutely no mystery in reading the book, my analytic skills were not
challenged, I just learned to read along with the ranting nature that Rand
assumed. Personally, I liked the initial metaphor of the tree in Dagny’s
childhood memory and that at first it was just a tree, then it came to
symbolize the fall of Taggart Transcontinental and eventually, the entire
government. In each situation, a seemingly indestructible system, at least from
the exterior, is destroyed by a single brute force, whether it be nature in the
case of the tree, or the destroyer in the case of the government. This brings
me to my next criticism of the book, John Galt is a pretentious asshole. He
does not give a crap about others, and all he cares about is money. Yet the
book portrays him as a kinglike and almost godlike figure and calls those who
support giving, and charity corrupt. In the end, the book tries to portray the “looters”
as the rot that destroys the tree from the inside, leaving a gleaming husk of
what was a magnificent government. Yet, it took one fell swoop through the
force of nature to take down the tree, and in the symbolic nature of the
government, it was John Galt. Again, another instance where Galt is being
compared to the force of nature itself, but to me it seems like Galt is at
fault for tearing down the government, and killing off probably ninety nine
percent of the population, just because he could not step off Mt. Galt,
otherwise known as Atlantis of Galt’s Gulch, to just solve the corruption of
the government. Instead he feels it is necessary to destroy it all and start
anew with his ideas.
So who is to
blame in the situation, the tree itself for rotting on the inside, or the force
of nature that eventually uprooted the tree? Personally, I feel like the force
of nature is at fault, instead of uprooting the tree, why could nature not work
to restore the health of the tree, remove the rot, and create an even better tree,
without killing everything else?! The force of nature being Galt and the rot
being the corruption of the government. Putting Randism, sorry Objectivism, aside, I feel that Galt as
a character had the power to take all the important people and make sure they
were there to keep the government from falling, to right it’s course, instead
of removing them. The much more humanitarian version of the story would have
been a much greater novel in my idea, much less drama, but I would end up
actually liking the people that I am supposed to like, and disliking but not hating
the people who forced Galt into action. But now if we consider
Randism/Objectivism, we see that that people should only live for themselves
and use the power of reason to work hard and make a happy life for themselves,
therefore, Galt only cares for himself. Because of that, Galt uses his reason
to conclude that it would be easier and make him happier if he could watch the
world burn as he sat atop his throne with Dagny strapped to his hip and
commanding an army of rich aristocrats and industrialists. It is for that
reason that I hate Galt, he follows Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism to a tee and
ends up destroying humanity.
This brings
me to my last criticism of the book, the fact that I disagree so strongly with
Rand’s personal philosophy of Objectivism, yet I was forced to read a 1069 page
bible on Objectivism. I could not help but hate every character that Rand liked
but that does not mean I liked the people Rand hated. I still hated the
philosophers and the politicians who all felt that reason meant nothing, and I
liked Dagny because she was so incredibly smart and successful and at first she
decided to stay behind and try to help and become a hero. But as soon as she
decided to go away and succumb to the siren that is John Galt, I felt that
there was no characters I could like at the end of the book. All in all I
enjoyed certain parts of the plot of the book, but I officially hate Rand for
being sadistic enough to write such a long book as propaganda for objectivism.
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