The Objective Truth: An Ayn Rand Analysis

    A is A. Existence exists. 2 and 2 is, undoubtedly, 4. Such is the paradigm of rationality; thought derived from the perception and acceptance of reality. Nothing can change these absolutes. No subjective thinking can alter the truth, no matter how much a man may believe in such irrational thoughts. Alternate realities cannot be created. Reality itself cannot be altered. To understand these concepts, to realize them as absolutes in the universe, is to achieve the highest potential of man’s mind. In the words of Ayn Rand “Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over the act of perceiving it.” Ayn Rand lived and died by her mind. She wrote by it as well. All of her writing, every word she ever put into print, was a tribute to herself and to her mind. Her novels The Fountainhead, Anthem, and Atlas Shrugged all portray her thoughts through the lives of fictional characters. Howard Roark, Equality 7-2521, and John Galt all embody that which Ayn Rand believed. The all live by a code of rationality, they all remain true to, and understand, their moral bases, and, most importantly, they all succeed. Ayn Rand’s writing carries with it a deeper philosophical meaning, a meaning always supported in part by the same idea: man’s mind will always succeed.
    Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead portrays architect Howard Roark in a society determined to destroy him. His innovative and simple designs are shunned by a society that finds beauty in the clichéd form of superfluous adornment. He is offered very few contracts, his work is berated by the nation’s most popular critics, and he is viciously slandered at social events by the biggest names in the architectural world; yet still he is determined to succeed.
    One of Rand’s early character sketches of Roark describes him as a man “who never truly suffers” stating that there will always be a part of him, locked deep inside, that is immune to pain and torment. This deeper part of Roark is Rand’s representation of moral integrity, the purest form of which stood as a driving ideal in Rand’s life. She always believed in man’s ability to hold true to that which he believes, no matter of what the outside world may do.
    Rand also believed wholeheartedly in the heroic in man, seeing him in her mind not as he often is, but as he should be; a being of success through moral integrity. Roark was her first attempt at such a figure. Throughout the novel, it is obvious that Roark lives by his objectivist code, even if his beliefs are never outright stated.
    Roark’s discussion in the beginning of the book with the Dean of the college he attends is a perfectly simple summation of everything that Rand believed, and is a window into the mind of Howard Roark.
    “…I don’t intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build.”
    “How do you propose to force your ideas on them?”
    “I don’t intend to force or be forced. Those who want me will come to me.”
    This is the epitome of Roark’s struggle throughout the book; himself, a man of integrity and rational thought versus a man with no moral base or philosophy to live by. The Dean is, although a small character, Roark’s foil in every sense. Their small disagreement in the novel’s exposition is the epitome of the idea behind Rand’s creation of The Fountainhead; the individual versus the collective.
    Howard Roark is a man of reason in a society with an accepted lack of rational thought. So why do people hate him? Should not a rational voice in a world of the irrational be listened to and thanked? Shouldn’t people be grateful to “see the light” and progress both morally and mentally? Rand’s overwhelming answer is “no.”
    The Fountainhead is Rand’s portrayal of how a blind society will fight to keep its eyes closed, simply because it is used to not seeing. “The truth hurts” is a rather trite phrase that describes the struggle that Roark faces. As he openly states to the Dean, he does not wish to change people’s views on life, yet, simply because of how he thinks and acts, he sticks out in a society that values exactly what he hates; and so a struggle is born.
    Rand shows the vast difference between those who think rationally and those who value irrationality by contrasting Roark to the majority of the world around him. People fight to suffocate Roark, to kill career and silence him simply because he represents that which they know but refuse to recognize: reason.  This frame of mind in itself represents the irrational thoughts of the society that Roark faces, as the obviously logical route would be to accept the idea of knowledge through reason and live accordingly, but the world in which Roark lives (which represents Rand’s idea of our own society) is one used to hiding from reality, and chooses to try and destroy the truth rather than face it.
    A secondary theme of the novel is Rand’s idea of the existence of two mentalities concerning the integrity of rational thought. Rand shows, through the characters of Howard Roark and Dominique Francon, these two different thought processes. Roark, much like Rand, believes in the heroic in man, in the success of rational thought. He believes that the man who is true to himself and lives based upon rational values is destined to succeed. Conversely, Dominique Francon believes that such men are destined to fail. She feels that the great will be crushed y society. This is why she seeks to destroy Roark. She fights with her own love for him and tries, to the best of her ability, to end him. She does it not because she hates him, not because she agrees with society, but because, as previously stated, she feels the great will ultimately fail, and she wishes to be the downfall of Roark because she, at least, realizes his greatness. In her mind it is a sort of mercy killing. Throughout the novel, Roark helps Dominique see the flaw in her logic, and eventually, once she realizes that the great are destined to succeed and not to fail, she states openly her love for Roark and begins to live as she had always wanted to. This transition from half-logic to fully realized rationality truly represents the idea behind all of Rand’s writing: the success of man’s mind.
    Howard Roark stands strong in the face of everything that tries to destroy him. He builds in a world bent on its own destruction. As the Dean asks Roark in the beginning of the novel “My dear fellow, who will let you?” Roark simply replies “That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?” Roark is symbolic of the imminent success of man’s mind. Even Dominique Francon, the rational figure who felt that the greatest minds were destined for failure, realizes that the truth is found in the opposition to such a statement. Rand’s underlying theme to The Fountainhead, to anything she wrote, is that man’s mind will, under any circumstances, succeed.
    But how can man’s mind possibly succeed in a world where rational thought has been stamped out for centuries? Such is the question raised by Ayn Rand’s first and only piece of dystopian literature, Anthem. The story follows a man labeled Equality 7-2521 who lives in a dystopian society set in the future. In Equality’s world technology no longer exists. People at birth are given a generic name; a term referring to an aspect of communism followed by a number. They are raised with a standard, collectivist education to start, followed by an education specific to an assigned trade. Throughout his childhood, Equality was disliked by the “scholars” (the rulers of Equality’s world) because he had a preference, something forbidden by law, as it was an act that went against the choices of the scholars. He always wanted to be a scientist. He wanted to build, to discover. He always felt the need to act.
    This want to act is symbolic of a theme in all of Rand’s work: man’s instinct to do. Howard Roark’s need to design, John Galt’s need to invent, to build, to progress, and Equality’s need to discover. All of these men and their desires are a representation of a second idea of Rand’s as well: technological progression is derived from man’s mind, and man’s need to use it. Rand felt that technology was a side effect of rational thought, and she shows this idea through Equality’s society.
    Equality lives in a primitive world, one where there is no electricity, no running water, no automobiles; it is a world that has regressed. A world in which all technology has been forgotten. Rand heavily implies in Anthem that Equality’s world is the way it is because rational thought has been not only forgotten, it has been outlawed.
    Equality, as a teenager, was assigned the trade of street sweeper, one of the lowest jobs in society, simply because he had wanted to be a scientist. Such an act was the Scholar’s attempt to stifle thought. The suppression of rational and personal thought is very prominent in Anthem, with anything pertaining to the two ideas being outlawed, such as inventions not sanctioned by the scholars, friendships (as all “brothers” and “sisters” are equal), personal pronouns, questioning the scholars, and going outside the city limits.
    Equality, however, could not be stifled. On patrol one night, he discovers an entrance to an old subway tunnel, a remnant of the old world, and claims it as his own. He realizes that he is breaking the law by both exploring outside of the city and claiming the tunnel as his own, but he proceeds with his actions anyway. Equality does not understand why he feels so intent on breaking the law, but something inside him drives him to do so. This unknown force that moves him is, as Rand implies, his mind’s natural inclination to act. To succeed.
    Much like Howard Roark, Equality is condemned for his mind. He finds, inside the subway tunnel, an old lighting system, and, through a superior intellect that was no doubt what originally drew him to the idea of inventing, rediscovers electricity. Upon showing his discovery to the scholars, an act that he thought would change the world for the better and put him into the graces of the scientists and scholars, he is immediately seized, but quickly, and without a second thought, escapes and flees into the woods surrounding the city he had always known.
    Yet again, Equality’s actions are driven by his rational thought, even if he doesn’t immediately recognize it as such. He even goes so far as to start over in the land surrounding the society that tried to kill his mind. He lives in a house he discovers on a hillside, another leftover memory of a reasoning world, and forgets the ways of the society that he never really felt a part of. In a book he finds in his new home, a piece of literature long since forgotten, Equality discovers the word he had always felt but never been able to verbalize: “I.” As he stands atop a mountain, thinking of that which he has discovered, he speaks openly to his new found world the truth that he has come to realize. “This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before…The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of spirit.”
    Equality’s struggle with a society stuck in a dark age that has tried to kill rational thought and reason, and his eventual victory over it, is, much like the struggle of Howard Roark, a representation of the power of man’s mind. Equality grew up in a world where no one knew the meaning of the word ego, where advancement, in any sense of the word had been forgotten, and where thinking was one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, and still his mind overcame. He invented, he discovered, he realized, he thought. Anthem just goes to show how much Rand believed that man is a being destined for success, and that his mind, being his greatest and most powerful asset, will overcome all. 
    “An inventor is a man who asks ‘Why?’ of the universe and lets nothing stand
between the answer and his mind.” These words, uttered by John Galt, the hero of both Rand’s mind and of her masterpiece Atlas Shrugged, express everything the two ever lived for. Atlas Shrugged is Rand’s life work, a novel in which John Galt, a brilliant man of rationality and reason, says that he will stop the motor of the world, and does. It chronicles the destruction of our nation in the near future as it falls apart because of the crude and irrational governing of a group of men to whom reason is a non-issue. John Galt, the epitome of the heroic in man, of the rationality in man, of the maximum potential of man’s mind and the greatness that can be achieved through such potential.
    Galt represents, without a shadow of doubt, Rand’s idea of the success of man’s mind. Galt, driven by nothing but his mind and his values and morals derived thereof, stops the nation’s economy and makes the citizens realize that the irrational way that they had been living was destroying them. Galt sees that, in the world around him, there were two kinds of people: the creators and the looters. The creators, men and women like Galt, who lived by their minds, are the driving force behind the world and its progression. The looters are the men and women who count on the creators, who use them for their creations, who believe the world will continue to work the way it always has just because they have never had to do anything. Galt saw that, for each creator, there are hordes of looters, and he strove to do something about it.       
    He took, one by one, the creators of the nation, and watched as the economy, as the nation itself, crumbled without the support of those who had held it up for so long.
Galt realized that his mind was bound to succeed. There was never a question of whether or not her could overcome the adversity of a society that functioned without reason. It was the other creators, the people who hadn’t realized that simply by creating for an irrational world, they were letting irrationality reign, that he needed to let see the truth. He opened their minds, he opened their eyes, he opened their hearts. He made them see that because they thought, they were bound to succeed.
    John Galt is a symbol for Ayn Rand herself. He is a man that was created by her mind at the apex of its thought. John Galt represents all that Rand ever felt, all that she ever believed. He sums up the entire objectivist way of thinking. Howard Roark and Equality 7-2521 both lived by their minds, but they never stated what they thought, not in the way that Galt does. John Galt makes his life work that of his mind and its potential. He achieves all that he can, simply because he knows it’s possible. He acts because he feels the need to, he invents because to not do so would be a most contemptible act, he builds because he can, he leads because he was born to.
    Man’s mind is destined to succeed. Galt knew this because he felt that anything other than success is failure; there is no in between. John Galt is the pinnacle of Rand’s thought. He is the representation of things rational, of reason. He stands as the leader of men like Howard Roark or Equality 7-2521. He stands as proof that no matter what, man’s mind will succeed.