![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Atlas Shrugged
Thursday, April 16th, 2009 07:04 pmI'm about a fifth of the way through "Atlas Shrugged", which may not sound like much, but it's a nearly thousand page book. The book is still keeping my interest, and I'm still enjoying it, but it's becoming clearer to me what I don't like about it.
One thing that bothers me is that the world is portrayed as having a small percentage of "good" people, with the remainder being "bad" people. The good people are intelligent, honorable, hard-working, and industrious. The rest of society is portrayed as an odd combination of dim-witted and cunning... dim-witted in that they don't seem to be able to think for themselves, or in that they say things and espouse ideas that don't make any logical sense, and cunning in that they are apparently trying to take advantage of the "good" people's labor and productivity, because they are either too stupid or lazy to do any useful work themselves. These "bad" people are portrayed as totally unlikeable. The way they are described - the adjectives used - make them seem completely ugly/lazy/cowardly/unpleasant.
That whole good versus bad quality of the story makes it seem too fictitious; like a children's cartoon. In some way, it reminds me of George Orwell's story, "Animal Farm".
Another thing that bothers me about the book, is the feeling that the whole story is trying to prove a point which I do not agree with, or only partially agree with. It's not just a feeling; the introduction to the book clearly states that Rand was putting forth her philosophy of something-or-other in the book's story. It seems to be a very pro-capitalism, anti-socialism philosophy. The "good" people are portrayed as industrious businesspeople, who can get anything done they set their mind too, and the only thing that causes them problems is the "bad" people getting in their way. Any mention of doing something for "the public good" is portrayed very negatively.
Another thing which strikes me about Rand's writing, is that she often uses 2 adjectives meaning nearly opposite things, next to each other. Sometimes they don't make any sense together, or it takes effort imagining what is meant by the combination. For example, "belligerent defensiveness". This isn't a bad thing in itself, it just seems curious to me, as if Rand was trying to combine the negative or positive overtones of two words to enhance the overall negative or positive aspect of something, without considering that the meaning of the words don't actually fit together. Most likely though, she did consider it, and did it on purpose.
One thing that bothers me is that the world is portrayed as having a small percentage of "good" people, with the remainder being "bad" people. The good people are intelligent, honorable, hard-working, and industrious. The rest of society is portrayed as an odd combination of dim-witted and cunning... dim-witted in that they don't seem to be able to think for themselves, or in that they say things and espouse ideas that don't make any logical sense, and cunning in that they are apparently trying to take advantage of the "good" people's labor and productivity, because they are either too stupid or lazy to do any useful work themselves. These "bad" people are portrayed as totally unlikeable. The way they are described - the adjectives used - make them seem completely ugly/lazy/cowardly/unpleasant.
That whole good versus bad quality of the story makes it seem too fictitious; like a children's cartoon. In some way, it reminds me of George Orwell's story, "Animal Farm".
Another thing that bothers me about the book, is the feeling that the whole story is trying to prove a point which I do not agree with, or only partially agree with. It's not just a feeling; the introduction to the book clearly states that Rand was putting forth her philosophy of something-or-other in the book's story. It seems to be a very pro-capitalism, anti-socialism philosophy. The "good" people are portrayed as industrious businesspeople, who can get anything done they set their mind too, and the only thing that causes them problems is the "bad" people getting in their way. Any mention of doing something for "the public good" is portrayed very negatively.
Another thing which strikes me about Rand's writing, is that she often uses 2 adjectives meaning nearly opposite things, next to each other. Sometimes they don't make any sense together, or it takes effort imagining what is meant by the combination. For example, "belligerent defensiveness". This isn't a bad thing in itself, it just seems curious to me, as if Rand was trying to combine the negative or positive overtones of two words to enhance the overall negative or positive aspect of something, without considering that the meaning of the words don't actually fit together. Most likely though, she did consider it, and did it on purpose.