They Say That Perfection Is An Unattainable State - But Ayn Rand Proved It Wrong

They say that perfection is an unattainable state. Yet, there was a woman who showed a glimpse of perfection through a portrayal of her ideal world, with ideal men and women. Her name was Ayn Rand. An excellent writer, she went a step ahead of most writers and created a unique philosophy of her own, known as “Objectivism”, which outlined her philosophy and vision about how life on earth can and perhaps, should be lived. Though the validity of her vision of perfection can be argued to be relative, her fans choose to believe that what she advocated is and will remain true perfection.

Many people consider her an extremist, which no doubt she can be called, in that she never compromised with her basic values and always stuck to her beliefs. Maybe her extreme aversion to communism can partly be attributed to the fact that she actually experienced living in Soviet Russia, and endured the appalling conditions there. Also, her devotion to individualism guaranteed antipathy to any form of totalitarianism.

Though she was born in Russia, she accepted America as her home. Born in 1905, she was witness to the political turmoil in Russia by the time Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown. She supported the Kerensky revolution, and denounced the Bolshevik Revolution. Her yearning for a free nation with no force or control is understandable in the face of the fact that she encountered the true nature of collectivism in which an individual’s life is meaningless and all that matters is a huge, mindless collectivity. Her flight to America and her job as a screen writer there are well known facts, as is her fifty year old marriage to actor Frank O’ Connor.

Before she left Russia, an acquaintance had asked her to tell the world the truth about the conditions in Bolshevik Russia, describing it as “a huge cemetery”. In her first novel, “We the living” she showcased the effects of a totalitarian regime in the context of Russia and through her principle characters showed how it could have only three ends in any sane individual – death, suicide or an extreme apathy towards life, a condition where the soul dies.

The protagonist, Kira, is one of the strongest characters she ever created, being the principle and most superior character in the novel. Kira represents Ayn Rand herself in terms of her values, as Miss Rand herself puts it, “The specific events of Kira’s life were not mine; her ideas, her convictions, her values, were and are”. Leo and Andrei are the other two main characters who represent versions of the arrogant individualist and the misguided but honest man who understands his mistakes too late, respectively.

Ayn Rand had just learned English when she began developing this novel, yet her descriptions and portrayal of the situations and characters in this book are stark, honest and extremely beautiful. Even though she herself managed to escape to the States, Kira dies in the attempt, bearing Leo’s love still in her heart and the vision of the success of her personal revolt against outside and unwanted coercion. The last line of the book says it all, as it describes how a shot Kira lies dying just outside the Russian border, in her white dress and in the white snow, “She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible”.

The book also uncovered the blatant hypocrisy of the communists, who claimed that their system of government was the most extreme form of democracy. In fact, what had happened under the Bolsheviks was just a transfer of power from the bourgeoisie to the so called proletariat. The people were no more equal than they had been under the Tsar. Miss Rand also contradicted the assumption some people tend to make, that communism is not pragmatic as a practice but ideal as an ideology. However, her two masterpieces, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are perhaps better known and more popular than all of the other works that she produced.

The Fountainhead is about the core values that Miss Rand prized, within the context of the creative work of an individual, the pioneer, the creator, Howard Roark. Atlas Shrugged is about the relationship between these kinds of people and the rest of the world and what happens to the world without them. Howard Roark is the personification of the qualities of self esteem and independence, and his character is delightfully uncompromising and full of integrity. His indifference to people like Toohey, who know of his worth and are consciously out to destroy him, and his pity of Keating, the inefficient parasite in his life, makes him a very strong and admirable character. Dominique’s love for an equal match in Roark, Keating’s hatred for being dependent on the brilliance of his mind, Wynand’s potential to be like him and Toohey’s extreme polarity to him mark the other major features of The Fountainhead.

Here was a woman who refused to believe that as a human being, she had inherited the original sin, and that in itself shows her rejection of determinism in any form whatsoever. She glorified a human as a heroic being, yet she claimed that a normal human being can and should be like the characters she created, and that there was nothing extraordinary or impossible about that. As she says, “I trust that no one will tell me that men such as I write about don’t exist. That this book has been written – and published, is my proof that they do.”

In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt personifies all that a perfect person could be, and shades of him are strongly seen in the other amazing characters like Dagny, Francisco and Ragnald.It has a complex and brilliant plot in which Miss Rand demonstrates what can happen to the world if the prime movers, i.e. the people who move the world and make everything work but are often not given credit for it, especially in the realm of ideas-go on strike.

In this “Strike” of Atlas, i.e. symbolically the people who hold the world on their shoulders and thus make it function, the supreme irony lies in the fact that such people are the ones who never declare strikes, while all the rest of the world which functions because of them, does so repeatedly. Though Galt appears only in the last part of this magnum opus, his presence is felt throughout the novel, as everybody repeats the refrain “Who is John Galt?” and Dagny yearns for her ideal and builds the “John Galt” line, one of her greatest achievements as a railroad runner. It demonstrates the primary mistake of the prime movers, their acceptance of bad treatment by less efficient people who have no right to do so, and shows the ultimate rebellion, and victory, of the great mind against brute force.

Apart from these books, she has written Anthem, a novelette which portrays an imaginary society which is completely collectivized and how even one individualist can make a difference and create an entirely new and improved world of his/her own. Miss Rand’s fiction works are widely known and acclaimed and those who are inspired by them choose to go deeper into her philosophy through the other writing that she has produced. However, essentially these books contain the applications of her unique philosophy and open the reader up to the world of one of the most inspiring and influential thinkers of our time. As Miss Rand said, a human being is essentially an individualist, and she considered it her duty to keep reminding everyone of this fact.

So as long as a great mind is appreciated in this world and the values of self esteem, integrity and independence exist, Ayn Rand will be immortal.

[tags]Ayn Rand, Objectivism, We the living, Fountainhead [/tags]

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Achievers, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.