Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition

Ayn Rand

by Peter B. Heller

Other literary forms

In addition to her three novels and one novelette, Ayn Rand published a play and several philosophical disquisitions. An early critique, Hollywood: American Movie City, was published in the Soviet Union in 1926 without Rand’s permission.

Ayn Rand.

ph_0111207240-Rand.jpg

(Library of Congress)

Achievements

Ayn Rand won the Volpe Cup at the Venice Film Festival in 1942 for the Italian motion-picture dramatization of We the Living, a novel about the failures of the Soviet system. She was awarded an honorary degree, a doctor of humane letters, by Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, in 1963, but this sole award does not reflect the significance of her influence on America’s philosophical and political economic thought.

Biography

Ayn Rand was born Alisa (Alice) Zinovievna Rosenbaum, the eldest of three children, into a Russian Jewish middle-class family in czarist Russia. When her father’s pharmacy was nationalized following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Rand, who had been writing stories since she was nine, found a calling: She turned against collectivism, and she elevated individualism—personal, economic, political, and moral—into a philosophy that eventually attracted a large, occasionally distinguished, following. Early in her career she declared herself to be an atheist.

At the University of Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), Rand studied philosophy, English, and history, graduating with highest honors in history in 1924. By then the works of French writers Victor Hugo and Edmond Rostand, and of Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz, had inspired her passion for the heroic and the ideal. Fyodor Dostoevski and Friedrich Nietzsche also left their mark.

Unhappy because the Soviet system was not moving in the direction of her republican ideals and because she had a dead-end job, Rand accepted an invitation from relatives and went to Chicago in 1926. It was while in the United States that she restyled herself Ayn Rand, and within a few months moved to Hollywood, California.

Working as a film extra, a file clerk, and a waiter and doing other odd jobs from 1926 to 1934, Rand perfected her language skills and became a screenwriter at various motion-picture studios. In 1937, she worked as an unpaid typist for Eli Jacques Kahn, a well-known New York architect, in preparation for her first major novel, The Fountainhead. Given her early experience in totalitarian Russia, Rand soon became known as the most driven of American anticommunists. She had acquired U.S. citizenship in 1931. In 1947, she appeared as a “friendly witness” before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) during the period of the communist witch-hunts—an action she later admitted regretting. Along the way, in 1929, Rand married Charles Francis (Frank) O’Connor, a minor actor and amateur painter. He died in 1979.

After her major literary successes, Rand devoted herself exclusively to philosophizing, writing, and lecturing. She spoke on numerous Ivy League university campuses. She became a regular at the Ford Hall Forum and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. She was coeditor or contributor to several philosophical publications. She was active in the Nathaniel Branden Institute, created to spread her philosophy of objectivism, until her personal and professional break with Nathaniel and Barbara Branden in 1968. This triangular relationship had played an important part in Rand’s life, because the Brandens formed the nucleus of a close group of followers, ironically known as the collective.

Rand, a chain smoker whose loaded cigarette holder had become a symbol of her persona, was diagnosed with lung cancer in her seventies. She died in March, 1982, in the New York City apartment in which she had lived since 1951. Her wake was attended by hundreds of people, including Alan Greenspan, an early Rand devotee and later chair of the Federal Reserve Board Bank. Philosopher Leonard Peikoff, Rand’s intellectual and legal heir, also was present.

Rand’s publications have sold well over twenty million copies in English and in translation even as literary critics generally dismissed her ideas as reactionary propaganda or pop philosophy. Rand was a paradox. She was a writer of romantic fiction whose ideas were often taken seriously, but she was also a controversial individualist and a contrarian who defied the moral, political, social, and aesthetic norms of her times.

Analysis

In her two major works of fiction, Ayn Rand explicated her philosophy of objectivism in dramatic form. Thus, in The Fountainhead and especially in Atlas Shrugged, Rand argues that reality exists independent of human thought (objectively), that reason is the only viable method for understanding reality, that individuals should seek personal happiness and exist for their own sake and that of no other, and that individuals should not sacrifice themselves or be sacrificed by others. Furthermore, unrestricted laissez-faire capitalism is the political economic system in which these principles can best flourish. Underlying this essence is the philosophy of unadulterated individualism, personal responsibility, the power of unsullied reason, and the importance of Rand’s special kind of morality.

In her long fiction, the philosopher-novelist spells out her concept of the exceptional individual as a heroic being and an “ideal man,” with “his” happiness as the highest moral purpose in life, with productive achievement the noblest activity, and reason the only absolute. Rand advocates minimal government intrusion and no initiation of physical force in human interactions. She represents such a system as enshrining the highest degree of morality and justice.

Because Rand also focuses on the denial of self-sacrifice and altruism, a staple of conventional morality and welfarism, she opposes both Christianity and communism. She finds it irrational to place the good of others ahead of one’s own rational self-interest. Likewise, she denies mysticism and promotes the Aristotelian view that the world that individuals perceive is reality, and there is no other. Both her major novels can be considered elitist and antidemocratic in that they extol the virtues of a few innovative, far-thinking individuals over the mediocre majority, which is either ignorant and uncaring or, even worse, actively striving to destroy the brilliant individuals of great ability. Besides disparaging mediocrity, Rand also decried the power of connections, conformity with what has been done before, a trend she found far too evident in the American welfare state, and the intellectual bankruptcy she deemed it to have fostered.

Rand considered herself a practitioner of Romanticism, who was concerned with representing individuals “in whom certain human attributes are focused more sharply and consistently than in average human beings.” Accordingly, in both these novels the characters of the heroes, sharply drawn, are idealized creations—not depictions of real individuals—who are in control of their own destinies despite major odds.

The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead is the story of Howard Roark, Rand’s ideal man, an architect who has a vision of how buildings should really be designed. He is innovative and efficient; he also has a strong aesthetic sense and has integrity—in short, he is a man of principle and artistic individuality. Roark is contrasted with Peter Keating, a former classmate and fellow architect but a “secondhander,” constantly replicating conventional styles because he has no originality of his own. He achieves a seeming success by manipulating others. Unlike Roark, whom he envies, Keating does not know who he really is.

Another of Roark’s adversaries is Ellsworth Toohey. He writes a column for the Banner, arguing that architecture should reflect the art of the people. Gail Wynand is the Banner’s owner and newspaper magnate; he appreciates Roark’s creativity but buckles under societal pressures, disregards his vision, and thereby engineers his own downfall as a worthy human being.

The love interest is embodied in Dominique Francon, the daughter of Guy Francon, the principal owner of the architectural firm that employs Peter Keating. She is a typical Rand heroine, a self-reliant idealist alienated by the shallowconventions of her day in interwar America and convinced that a life of principle is impossible in a world ruled by mediocrity. Her affair with Roark is motivated not by physical or emotional passion but by the recognition that he is a man of great worth. Along the way, in between and sometimes during other affairs, she marries Keating and then Wynand before finally marrying Roark. Dominique seems inconsistent in her ideals, attitudes, and critiques of architectural designs, but the inconsistencies are all part of her effort to spare Roark from ultimate destruction.

Roark, long professionally unsuccessful because he is unwilling to compromise the integrity of his creations, preferring not to work at all or to do menial tasks, eventually overcomes not only financial difficulties but also numerous intrigues by the likes of Keating. For instance, through the mean-spirited Toohey, Roark is assigned to build an interdenominational temple for a patron, Hopton Stoddard, a traditionalist who is abroad at the time. Toohey knows that Stoddard will hate Roark’s radically innovative design. Roark makes the building’s centerpiece Dominique’s nude figure. Toohey incites public condemnation and persuades the patron to sue Roark for breach of contract. Stoddard wins the case, as Roark fails to defend himself in court.

Paradoxically, a friendship develops between Roark and Wynand, attracted to each other for different reasons. Wynand helps Roark in his defense at a second trial, which follows Roark’s dynamiting a low-income housing project that Keating had commissioned. The latter had agreed not to alter Roark’s design in any way in exchange for Roark’s allowing Keating to claim credit for the former’s innovative and cost-effective blueprint. When Keating fails to keep his promise and adulterates the design, Roark, with Dominique Francon’s assistance, destroys the structure. The trial gives Roark the opportunity to spell out his—that is, Rand’s—defense of ethical egoism and opposition to a world perishing from an “orgy of self-sacrifice” and conventional morality. After Roark’s exoneration, Wynand commissions him to build the tallest skyscraper in New York City despite Wynand’s losing Dominique to Roark.

Ultimately, The Fountainhead is a novel of ideas, of heroic characters who are the fountainhead of human progress and of their opposites, who live secondhand, second-rate lives and constantly seek social approval for their beliefs. The philosophy in the novel alternates with the action, and neither can be understood without the other.

Atlas Shrugged

Rand’s philosophy extolling the myth of absolute, rugged individualism and its relationship to society is most fully explicated in what proved to be her last work of fiction, several years in the making: the twelve-hundred-page Atlas Shrugged. In this novel, Rand tries to answer the question raised by one of her earlier heroes: “What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce?” In this apocalyptic parable, it is John Galt of Twentieth Century Motors, a physicist, engineer, inventor, and philosopher, who is Rand’s ideal man and leads the other “men of the mind” on a strike against the exploitation of the genuine creators of wealth by all the leeches and parasites—the nonproducers—whom they had been sustaining.

Rand’s philosophy is played out through the stories of the four heroes, the authentic moneymakers. They are the Argentine Francisco d’Anconia, heir to the world’s leading copper enterprise; the Scandinavian Ragnar Danneskjold, a onetime philosopher who turns pirate in order to steal wealth back from the looters and return it to the producers of legitimate values; Henry (Hank) Rearden, an American steel magnate and inventor of a metal better than steel; and finally, the other American, John Galt, who, with the others, stops the ideological motor of the world in a strike before rebuilding society. The heroine, rail heir Dagny Taggart, wonders where the individuals of ability have gone.

Confronting them is an array of villains, manipulative appropriators, enemies of individualism and free enterprise, scabs, and moochers profiting from the achievements of the producers and united by their greed for unearned gains. Especially, there is Dr. Robert Stadler, the counterpart of Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead. Stadler, once the greatest physicist of his time, fully cognizant of the value of the human mind, fails to stand up for his principles. The progressive decay of James Taggart, Dagny’s brother and the titular president of Taggart Transcontinental Railroad, parallels that of the society in which he lives.

In the novel, set some time in the vaguely defined future, the United States is following Europe down the long, hopeless path of socialism, government regulation, and a predatory state into a new Dark Age. The heroes join forces with other intelligent, freedom-loving leaders of commerce, industry, science, and philosophy to reverse the slide. They do this as Atlas may have done had he grown tired of holding the world on his shoulders without reward.

Eventually, the heroes repair to a secret Colorado mountain citadel, where they wait for their time to rebuild the decaying collectivist society whose end their “strike of the mind” against productive work is hastening. Galt, arrested and tortured by the looters but finally freed by the other heroes, delivers a thirty-five-thousand-word oration via a commandeered radio, epitomizing Rand’s objectivism and views of the ideal man. Galt’s (Rand’s) philosophy then becomes that of the new society: “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.” By the end of the novel, socialism has produced a bankrupt world pleading for the return of the men of the mind, who, after a confrontation with the parasites, start to rebuild society. Atlas Shrugged is Rand’s most thorough exploration of the social ramifications of politics, economics, psychology, metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, religion, and ethics.

Bibliography

1 

Baker, James T. Ayn Rand. Boston: Twayne, 1987. A brief introductory overview of Rand’s life and work, written in an objective and highly readable style. Includes a chronology, references, a bibliography, and an index.

2 

Branden, Nathaniel. My Years with Ayn Rand. Reprint. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, 1999. A personal account by Rand’s disciple, organizer, spokesman, lover, and, ultimately, enemy. Includes photographs and an index. Originally published in 1989 as Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand.

3 

Branden, Nathaniel, and Barbara Branden. Who Is Ayn Rand? New York: Random House, 1962. This book contains three essays on objectivism’s moral philosophy, its connection to psychological theory, and a literary study of Rand’s methods in her fiction. It contains an additional biographical essay, tracing Rand’s life from birth to her mid-fifties.

4 

Britting, Jeff. Ayn Rand. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 2005. A readable biography of Rand’s literary and personal life but lacking in scholarly analysis.

5 

Gladstein, Mimi Reisel. The New Ayn Rand Companion. Rev. and expanded ed. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. Provides biographical information, a summary of Rand’s fiction and nonfiction, information about her characters, criticism of her writing, and a comprehensive bibliography. This revised edition contains newly discovered information about Rand’s posthumous publications, updated biographical data, and summaries of books and articles published since her death.

6 

Gladstein, Mimi Reisel, and Chris Matthew Sciabarra, eds. Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. Collection of essays examining Rand’s life and work from a feminist perspective. Includes pieces by cultural critics Susan Brownmiller and Camile Paglia and analysis of Atlas Shrugged.

7 

Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton, 1991. A comprehensive overview of objectivist philosophy, written by the philosopher who was closest to Rand during her lifetime. Includes a discussion of Rand’s ideas about reason, the good, virtue, happiness, government, art, and capitalism.

8 

Pierpont, Claudia Roth. Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Evocative, interpretive essays on the life paths and works of twelve women, including Rand, connecting the circumstances of their lives with the shapes, styles, subjects, and situations of their art.

9 

Sciabarra, Chris M. Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. Sciabarra charts the evolution of the author as a philosopher, of her dialectics, and of her philosophy, beginning with her early years. Includes a bibliography and photographs.

10 

Younkins, Edward W., ed. Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”: A Philosophical and Literary Companion. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2007. Collection of essays discussing Atlas Shrugged as a work of literature and philosophy. Includes discussions of the novel’s ideas about aesthetics, economics, and human relationships, the novel as a work of science fiction, and its characterization.

Citation Types

MLA 9th
Heller, Peter B. "Ayn Rand." Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition, edited by Carl Rollyson, Salem Press, 2010. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CSLF_15100140000446.
APA 7th
Heller, P. B. (2010). Ayn Rand. In C. Rollyson (Ed.), Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Heller, Peter B. "Ayn Rand." Edited by Carl Rollyson. Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2010. Accessed September 19, 2026. online.salempress.com.