Sacrifice

The idea of being a martyr is a theme that shows up throughout the novel Atlas Shrugged especially through the concept of sacrifice. As described by Rand in Galt’s speech near the end of the novel, “sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious” (940-941), and unfortunately for the men and women like Dagny, Francisco, and Hank the world unknowingly sacrificed them for ideals they believed to be good, but are in fact ideals that in the end have destroyed them. Unbeknownst to those such as James and Lillian, they have sacrificed themselves as well, as shown in the inevitable fall of all of civilization.

What Rand is saying reminds me a lot of the discussion we had the first day we started to discuss The Stranger. We were questioning whether selflessness existed and I believe want Rand is saying is that it does not. One of the hardest examples that we had to discuss in class was the sacrifice made by the firefighters who ran into the World Trade Center the day of 9/11. Rand has stated is that sacrifice is selfish, but I think that in order to understand what Rant is saying, we’re going to have to remove connotation associated with both of the worlds. We’ve gotten used to hearing the word sacrifice and thinking of honor and morals, and yet we’ve used the idea of a martyr has a calling to war. During the Afghan Iraq War, the Iranian government in order to raise troops handed out plastic keys preaching to boys as young as thirteen that if they went and fought and died for Iran this would be their key to heaven, and so millions of boy sacrificed themselves for a cause that they didn’t even understand. And of course this is incredibly tragic, but I find it disgusting that this idea of sacrifice could so easily manipulate people into giving up their lives. I feel that the idea of sacrifice has more often then not been used as an excuse, whether it has been the boys in the Afghan Iraq War or those we lost in the War in Afghanistan. So now when we look back to firefighters who lost their lives in the World Trade Center we cant just say that what they did was sacrifice. It is true that the firefighters who died that day gave up the time they could have spent living out the rest of their lives with their loved ones, but they gave up that time for what they believed to be a greater cause. This was their choice and they made it, and there is little that is more honorable, but according to Rand this was not a sacrifice. They believed that possibly saving the life of another was a greater cause; their sacrifice would have been to run in the other direction of the towers. Their bravery will always be remembered, but their choice should not be used for the benefit of politicians who cry out that we have to fight for their sacrifice, and I believe this is the same message that Rand was trying to send. That James Taggart and the others like him took advantage of this idea of sacrifice and used it to manipulate the people into believing that the sacrifices they were being forced to make was for the “good of the people”.