Atlas Shrugged: Exploring the Layers of Meaning both from Literary and Philosophical Perspectives (Essay Sample)

Atlas Shrugged: Exploring the Layers of Meaning both from Literary and Philosophical Perspectives
Spontaneity and creative endeavor are two essential human virtues that help a human being to enjoy a spiritually prosperous and emotionally fulfilled life. A comparison of the early and contemporary time would reveal that gradual progress of the human civilization has always not been capable of producing the desired positivism, especially in the context of human emotional and spiritual nourishment and this process of providing less importance over basic human qualities rather than lust for material possession commenced since inception of the industrial revolution. Humankind’s escape from the state of spiritual and eternal bliss to the mad quest for mundane obsession has repeatedly emerged as one of the favorite themes of discussion and criticism for literary artists in different times, although such process received different forms of literary manifestations. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is one of the greatest literary pieces deals with the same theme and during the course of reflecting over different aspects of modern existence it has provided considerable focus over different aspects of human life, starting from gender, spiritual, physical and philosophical discourses. The theme of “individualism and collectivism … manifested within the individual’s soul” (Sciabarra 114) has recurred among Ayn Rand’s literary works at different points of time; however, in the Atlas Shrugged her mastery to treat the same theme has reached culmination as she has been able to fuse both literary techniques and philosophical arguments to their perfectly measured respective proportions.
The storyline of Atlas Shrugged provides a reader with an interesting mode of characterization, and the main reason behind such characterization can be the author’s conscious effort to portray the characters as perfect representatives of the modern world of capitalist observation both towards life, society and social duties or commitments. Presence of the capitalist socio-economic discourse at the heart of the novel plays a very important role in the context of orienting the nature of characters and parts that they have played in contributing to the ongoing course of the story. On one hand, the author has narrated tale of a society, where immorality and extreme selfishness gnawed the foundation of morality and fellowship; on the other, suffering of individuals, their emotional tenderness and their spiritual and emotional suffocation within an extremely inhuman situation clearly indicate that every time the entire social system will attempt to suffocate human spontaneity with material obsession and emotional deprivation, such heartlessness will be responded with catastrophe of the entire system, which has been signified by title of the novel itself. According to the ancient Greek mythology, a great Titan Atlas maintains earthly equilibrium by resting it over his shoulder. While man’s crime against humanity will become too heavy for him to endure, he will respond to it by shrugging his shoulder.
John Gult: Perception of Selfishness in the Atlas Shrugged
John Gult has been introduced in the novel Atlas Shrugged since the very beginning but his human entity has not been defined properly by the author. “Who is John Gult”, the very question has been asked on frequent occasions in the novel and each time in the context of referring to questions, answers of which are unknown. Sometimes he has emerged as a successful industrialist and on other occasions, as a mythological figure, “John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures” (Rand 478). Keeping in accordance with this observation, it can be understood that the way a human being suffers within a capitalist and parasitical society John Gult also has gone through this phase. In return to his contribution for the modern industrial society, he was repaid in a quite unlikely way; consequently, in order to teach this selfish and immoral world the lessons of gratitude, John Gult not only stops conveying the benefits of his invention but he also builds a team of his own with those people, whose analysis and critical thinking can provide the capitalist society to find a way out of the prevailing economic crisis. Protagonist of the novel, Dagny Taggart finds herself quite trapped into the same situation. Since her very childhood she had only one dream: to govern the entire Taggart Transcontinental and apart from that desire if anything she has really liked or admired from the bottom of her heart is Richard Halley’s music: “She loves the music of Richard Halley. Outside the railroad, that's the only thing she loves” (Rand 66). While she was desperately tried to save the entire business, both due to her love for the organization and keeping in mind future of all the people, associated with the company, she was betrayed and her dreams were almost demolished: “Her work was all she had or wanted. But there were times, like tonight, when she felt that sudden, peculiar emptiness, which was not emptiness, but silence, not despair, but immobility, as if nothing within her were destroyed, but everything stood still.” (Rand 67). Betrayal of the society took away her love for work, spirit and enthusiasm – left her as a shallow creature. She was almost in the same situation that John Gult experienced and reevaluated that joy of the soul is the main impetus that keeps a person alive. Her love and passion for work has been taken away from her, thus, standing “in the middle of the room, alone between sky and city” (Rand 68), she tried to find the fuel for living through music.
However, despite being part of the capitalist society, the humane aspects of Dagny Taggart are not totally dead and she still believes in emotional benevolence, mutual existence and the importance of sacrifice. During his speech John Gult, breaking the silence of twelve long years also mentions that the he also believed in human virtues but the world of disaster and immorality that has been created, is actually a result of man’s own deed as people have taken human willingness to sacrifice as natural and exploited others on that basis. Human fallibility lies in the fact that they have never paid adequate respect to the sacrifices that helped them to enjoy a better existence. They always have questioned others capacity to sacrifice or attempted to determine that to which magnitude sacrifices should be done, whereas respectively such deciders have remained selfish and immoral: “Through centuries of scourges and disasters, brought about by your code of morality, you have cried that your code had been broken, that the scourges were punishment for breaking it, that men were too weak and too selfish to spill all the blood it required. You damned man, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but never dared to question your code. Your victims took the blame and struggled on, with your curses as reward for their martyrdom - while you went on crying that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough to practice it” (Rand 925). What he actually implied through his speech is that in the world of capitalist and parasitic behavior, an individual is left with a very limited scope to exhibit the grace of sacrifice as a human virtue and thus, under such circumstances selfishness becomes both moral and practical as it acts as a defense mechanism against human ruthlessness.
While the characters in the novel Atlas Shrugged, the characters can be classified into two sections, namely, capitalists with human traits and capitalists with inhuman traits, people belon...