Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

3 reviews

vickymcckey's review against another edition

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dark reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Atlas Shrugged is an effective treatise on capitalism…if you ignore a decent amount of the issues people have with capitalism. Ayn Rand seems to hold the belief that poor people are poor for a reason that is always their fault (mostly shown in the scenes
before the discovery of Galt’s motor
) and ignores issues of racism and sexism that can make success significantly more difficult. Similar to the communist mindset she criticizes, Ayn Rand’s set of beliefs hinge on a lack of jealousy and greed in the world. Despite the fact that Dagny is shown to posses those emotions
when she gets to the mountain village and momentarily spies Kay Ludlow, the beautiful actress
, Rand does not let anyone else have that luxury.
(Even the men who fawn over Dagny are perfectly happy to let her move from one to the other, conceding that she will find “the best one”)
.
Though fine for a hypothetical mountain village with no competition due to its size
, that is a wildly unrealistic approach to people. Rand argues that humanity should be viewed as rational, based solely on their achievements and not intangible things like “feelings”. Though there is merit in that viewpoint, believing in a society where feelings don’t affect anything ever is as wildly illogical as saying they should control everything. As nice as a society based solely on intellect and work is, the truth remains that child slaves are cheap. People will take advantage of others, and will feel like they deserve more than they get. So while ambition and intellect are parts of humanity, you can’t just ignore that jealously is too.

As for the writing of the book itself, it is part adventure story, part political treatise. Though this is typical of plenty of stories, there are faults with the formatting of both. Of the storytelling aspect, Ayn Rand has created an insufferable self-insert in the form of Dagny Taggert, and has endowed her with success in every way.* Every man wants to bang her (unless they despise her because she’s “too good for them”) and no woman is able to match her (
and if they show even a sparkle of her “intellect” they commit suicide because they’re not as “strong” as she is
). Dagny is adored by all the identical-in-all-but-profession heroes of the story, and hated by the cartoonishly stupid villains. She is rarely likable and those flickers of something more only serve to remind me of better heroines.

As for the formatting of the more non-fiction aspects of this book, Ayn Rand feels the need to beat her readers over the head with her point.
The climax of the story is a speech by Galt that goes on for far to long, mostly because it says the same thing over and over again. Not only that, other characters have said it repeatedly in the 1000 pages before.
Ayn Rand often takes it upon herself to posses her already lifeless and interchangeable characters and make them give a speech for a few pages. If you took this book and cut out all the repetition, it wouldn’t have taken me over a month to get through.

Is Atlas Shrugged a completely useless piece of trash? No. There are parts of it I like-parts of which I like a lot. Rand, though she may not have changed my mind about a lot of things, at least challenged my perspective about the why behind my values. There is the makings of a really intelligent criticism in these pages…but you definitely have to dig through a lot of drivel in order to get it. And even then, it’s more
the pieces of an abandoned motor
than anything useable. 



*Yes i know there’s another minor character who is Rand’s self-proclaimed cameo, but from the description of Dagny to everyone’s treatment of her, it’s pretty obvious that isn’t her sole appearance.


Also I believe most conservatives who quote this book haven’t read it. There, I said it. 
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marionhoney's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

The writing is beautiful but the objectivism philosophy is laid on too heavy handed that often getting through character speeches becomes a slog.
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grayscale08's review against another edition

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challenging reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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