"Atlas Shrugged" is a dystopian novel by a Russian-born American writer Ayn Rand, first published in 1957. It is Rand's fourth and final novel, and also the longest. Rand considered it to be the main work of her literary career.
"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." ― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
The main idea of the novel is that the world is supported by talented lone creators, whom the author compares with the mythical titan Atlas, holding the firmament on his shoulders. If these people stop creating ("keeping the sky on their shoulders"), the world will collapse. This is exactly what happens in the novel, when the Atlantean creators lose in the fight against a socialist government.
Plot
In the United States, politicians are beginning to actively support demands against the monopolization of markets. In fact, their actions are similar to the demands of the socialists. This is happening all over the world. Gradually, the oppression of large (and then all the rest) business begins, the free market gives way to the planned economy, the country is slowly sinking into chaos and darkness. The main characters of the novel, Hank Rearden (steel king, owner of mines, metallurgical plants, inventor) and Dagny Taggart (vice president of the railway company) try to resist this. Economic ties are inevitably destroyed, and a deep economic crisis unfolds.
A company of businessmen and politicians from Washington, which has political power, is trying to regulate economic life by planned methods, but this only worsens the situation. Oil production is almost completely stopped, coal supplies are seriously disrupted, and over time, coal production is also curtailed. Dagny Taggart notes that a number of famous entrepreneurs and creative people have closed their business and disappeared. Trying to find out where they disappeared, she meets a philosopher and inventor named John Gault. As it turned out later, the reason for the disappearances was the "strike of the people of the mind," as the disappeared themselves called it.
Structure
Book 1. Part 1. Non-Contradiction.
Book 2. Part 2. Either-or.
Book 3. Part 3. And there is A.
The names of the parts of the novel correspond to three laws of formal logic: 1 part - "Non-Contradiction", that is, the law of non-contradiction, 2 part - "Either - or" (English Either-Or), that is, the law of the excluded third, Part 3 - "A is A" (English A Is A), that is, the law of identity.
Professor Ludwig von Mises wrote a letter to Ayn Rand on January 23, 1958, in which he congratulated the author for having managed to write not just a novel, but academic chatterboxes implementing the anti-industrial revolution ”.
"Atlas Shrugged" received many negative reviews after its publication in 1957, but became popular in the following decades. According to The Economist and The New York Times, sales of the novel have skyrocketed in the wake of the economic crisis that began in 2008.
Criticism of Rand's concept began immediately after the release of Atlanta. The National Review magazine published Whittaker Chambers' Big Sister Watching You. The critic described the text as a "philosophical nightmare" and pointed out that the book is not just a work of fiction, but an ideological message. From Chambers' point of view, Rand is campaigning for technocracy, the style of the novel is primitive, the characters are caricatures, and the ideal of man is perhaps even worse than the Marxist one.
Skeptical critics still believe the book is poorly written, boring and propaganda. Historian and publicist Ilya Budraitskis believes that the novel “is a kind of mirror image of socialist realism in its worst examples. It has characters-functions, whose individual characteristics correspond to their political role. "
Granville Hicks wrote in The New York Times Book Review that the book was written out of hatred. Alan Greenspan, future chairman of the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve, responded in a letter to the magazine by calling Rand's book “a celebration of life and happiness. Justice triumphs inexorably. Creative individuals, unchanging goals, and rationality get joy and satisfaction. Parasites that persistently avoid purpose or prudence die as they should. "
Interesting Facts
"Atlas Shrugged" hit # 6 on The New York Times bestseller list three days after the start of sales. He remained on the list for 21 weeks, including staying at the 4th position for 6 weeks, starting on December 8, 1957.
In a 1991 survey of Book of the Month Club members, 17 out of 2,000 respondents identified Atlas Shrugged as an influential book in their lives. This is the second result after the Bible, which was mentioned 166 times.
On the popular American site Modern Library in 1998, a three-month survey was conducted and a list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century was compiled, readers recognized the novel Atlas Shrugged as number 1, although it was not included in the list of finalists compiled by the expert group of this site. The list was formed taking into account 217,520 votes. However, critics note the distortion of the poll results by massive voting of the supporters of one or another author. It should also be noted that only novels in English written from 1900 to 1998 were included in the list.
The key section of the novel - John Gault's speech - the author wrote for 2 years.
The novel contains over a thousand pages, approximately 645,000 words, and is one of the ten longest novels written in European languages. The book examines a number of philosophical themes that Rand would later develop into the philosophy of objectivism.
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