Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Atlas Shrugged

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

vickymcckey's review

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.

Content Warnings

o_cox25's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious slow-paced

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

3.5

Content Warnings

singerscientist's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

This is a compelling piece of drivel that is riddled with logical fallacies and... well... lack of logic. Her failing to grasp basic economics is fascinating, seeing as libertarians who claim to understand economics cling to this book as doctrine (if supply of oil goes down, and then demand for cars goes down because people have to find other modes of travel, she says the price of cars will skyrocket? I may not have taken many econ classes at this point, but if demand goes down it is my understanding that prices usually go down too... This is one of the most glaring examples, but this behemoth of a book is riddled with this type of logical loping).
Rand likes creating types of people that do not exist or are at the very least extremely rare, including "socialists" that want to stop innovation altogether and CEO's that could do any job in their business, including smelting and fixing broken machines. I get it, we all want the Musks of this world to actually be good at innovation and working with the things they are managing, but the thing is they mostly are just skating on their parents' money being able to buy the right engineers. I can believe that a few CEO's would be like that, but to have that be the rule rather than the exception is quite the fantasy.
The self-insert for Rand being super sexy to every man she meets is a choice, but it was definitely the most compelling part of the book. Rand is very good at making the reader feel powerful and giving them that cathartic "YEAH Get 'em!" sneer as long as they don't critically think about her points or understand that she has simply created fun, punchable straw men that don't have any bearing on the real world. It is made for 15 year old boys that will never think past that glowing feeling it gives them and its license to be greedy. This book is a skip unless you're intending to get the scholarship the Rand foundation puts out every year.

Content Warnings