Atlas Shrugged

I remember how in 2017 I read in a newspaper that Atlas Shrugged had been translated into Finnish, 60 years after its original publication. I had seen the novel mentioned here and there before, which usually signifies a classic. I thought it was kind of an oddly long wait for such a book to get a translation. Maybe the novel's resurgence after the 2007 financial crisis had something to do with it finally getting a Finnish print: evidently just in 2011 Atlas Shrugged's English editions sold nearly half a million copies which I think is impressive for an old book.

I knew very little about Atlas Shrugged beforehand. I was merely aware that Ken Levine of Irrational Games was influenced by the novel when developing BioShock (which came out in 2007). He even named one of the game's characters, Andrew Ryan, after the novel's author Ayn Rand. (Rand was born Alisa Rosenbaum in Saint Petersburg. She later took the name Ayn Rand and immigrated to the United States.)

It couldn't be more obvious that Atlas in BioShock got his name from Rand too but that realization didn't come to me until I started reading the book. I understood what the novel's title implied but the Finnish name kind of spells it out, maybe even underestimating the reader, by being called Kun maailma järkkyi ('when the world shook'). Although apparently it's a common misconception that Atlas was forced to hold the Earth on his shoulders rather than celestial spheres.

I had not realized how much English-to-Finnish translation will increase the size of a book. The original print nears 1200 pages but in Finnish it goes past 1500, making it an absolute brick and very unwieldy as a hardcover book. Of course there could be other factors affecting that (like bigger font size) but I checked another arbitrary example which I happened to have in my bookshelf: the English and Finnish paperbacks of the second volume of The Death Gate Cycle, Elven Star by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. And sure enough, in the English one there are about 400 pages while the Finnish one has 500.

I sometimes wondered if Atlas Shrugged truly needed to be that huge. That always brought to mind a quote from Andrew Ryan:"It was not impossible to build Rapture at the bottom of the sea. It was impossible to build it anywhere else." Maybe it was impossible to tell the story of Atlas Shrugged in anything fewer than 1000+ pages. I didn't mind the length (except in the physical weight of the book) but the arguments of the novel's antagonists did get old for they never change.

Atlas Shrugged is listed under many genres: philosophy, romance, mystery, and even science fiction. But when I started reading it, I thought oh, it's a dystopian novel. It does not depict a society heavily oppressed as in something like 1984 (at least not initially) but the atmosphere and how the world outside the novel's USA is vaguely described felt very similar to me. There is a constantly increasing apathy. People are becoming less and less proactive. It's harder to find anyone who knows how to do stuff, anyone who is willing to take responsibility. People who have passion. Things are breaking from the lack of maintenance and few care to fix them. Why bother? Who is John Galt? Don't ask questions nobody can answer.

The phrase 'Who is John Galt?' seems like a random meme people in the book keep repeating but it slowly moves into a more central focus. Atlas Shrugged follows pretty tightly Chekhov's gun principle -- every story element introduced is necessary. Even a side character whom I thought gratuitous did have a purpose eventually.

Dagny Taggart is the one of the protagonists and maybe a bit of a self-insert too by Rand: Dagny is pretty much the only likable woman in Atlas Shrugged. She's the operating vice-president of Taggart Transcontinental railroad, the one who is keeping the company afloat during the growing economic depression. The sole reason for Dagny not being the company's president appears to be she being a woman. Dagny doesn't seem too upset about the fact: she believes that hard work will reward itself in the end and place her on the chair that is currently occupied her apathetic brother James.

Dagny's special assistant Eddie Willers is an interesting viewpoint because he lacks the creative capability of the novel's other protagonists. He still recognizes the value of their work and morals however. He sees these pillars of society, the atlases holding the world as individuals to be celebrated rather than exploited. Eddie's viewpoint is usually visited as interludes where he talks to someone but curiously only Eddie's lines are shown. I figured out whom he was talking to on my own although I can't say I was smart enough for that to have happened immediately. Eddie getting excluded from the heroes' elite club in the end felt sad.

Other protagonists include Hank Rearden, the head of Rearden Steel, and Francisco d'Anconia, the inheritor of d'Anconia Copper. Both men are Dagny's love interests. I was fine with the romance elements of the novel until things expanded even beyond Hank, Francisco, and Eddie's distant admiration. How many guys there needed to be competing for Dagny? And she (literally) falling for some stalker was dreamy and silly.

Atlas Shrugged has a handful of monologues. Francisco disputing the claim that money is the root of all evil was a great read. And so was Hank's defense speech in court. Or rather his refusal to defend himself from an accusation he does not recognize. To have done so would have been to accept the "lawfulness" of looters' and moochers' actions.

The mother of all monologues appears in a chapter titled -- almost spine-chillingly -- "This is John Galt speaking", a 60-page radio speech that took Rand more than two years to complete. It explains the novel's theme and the philosophical system developed by her called Objectivism. Since the novel as a whole is long, I doubt Rand wrote it merely as a framework for the speech.

I found Objectivism to make a lot of sense, though I should study it more before latching onto it completely. But I think the thought of rational self-interest, ethical selfishness has merit to it. I have been casually looking for a philosophy that I agree with for a couple of years. Unfortunately I have found that philosophers tend to be prisoners of their times. With way too many Western philosophers that means their starting and focus point is Christianity even when they end up going against it like Nietzsche for instance. They're so obsessed with it that they seem to have trouble thinking in a more timeless manner. That is of course just a layman's opinion.

However, philosophy is older than Christianity. By going all the way back to Ancient Greece, one can find thinkers who didn't live in a society taken over by the latter. (I should've started my search there.) Ayn Rand named Aristotle as her main influence and I would guess Objectivism is an extension of Aristotle's thoughts. In fact the three parts Atlas Shrugged is divided into are named after Aristotle's laws of logic: Non-Contradiction, Either-Or, and A Is A. When initially eyeing up the novel's table of contents I had thought they looked like they had something to do with philosophy which very much turned out to be the case.

The end of Atlas Shrugged gave me a hint I might not agree with everything Rand thought. One of the minor characters is sketching out what I assume would be the new constitution for the US and the section he's writing states no law shall limit the profit potential of a company (or something along those lines). That to me sounds like a bad idea.

Maybe within the world of Atlas Shrugged I could agree. In the novel every successful company is led by a person whose last name is found in the company's name: Taggart Transcontinental, d'Anconia Copper, Rearden Steel, Wyatt Oil etc. They're people who take pride in their work and success, in delivering a good product or service -- for a fair price of course. Such a company having a monopoly in some area of industry might not be the worst thing ever. But in the real world? It would never work. Even with existing monopoly laws internet companies (Amazon, Facebook, Google) have grown enormous global forces -- probably because the laws had no effect on services that are seemingly free for their users.

Dystopian novels have an uncanny tendency to be prophetic, I have noticed. The way the US government in Atlas Shrugged -- and the novel's Europe and the rest of the world too before probably -- forces the nation's pillars into supporting failing companies is like what the European Union does with its member states. Countries that handle(d) the Covid-19 pandemic worst should get the most financial aid from the ones that did the best. Countries with higher tax rates should support the economic failings of ones that don't dare to raise theirs.

The intention seems good -- to raise everyone to well being -- but does rewarding bad performance and failure at the cost of those succeeding and doing well lead to overall success? Does it teach people to do better? At least in Atlas Shrugged it does not.

Atlas Shrugged is thought-provoking. The fact many have named it as the novel that influenced them the most is not surprising to me at all. I, too, now consider it as one of the most important works of fiction I have read.