I admire Ayn Rand's writings very much and her portrayal of certain scenes depicts her immense writing capability. A barometer to the same is one starts feeling as if one is in that very place which Rand is describing and one's imagination achieves a new altitude altogether. The connect she has been able to achieve through her writing ability is quite evident in present times when despite many controversies surrounding her writings and even after five decades her philosophy is still applicable and therefore I believe Rand has achieved the longevity she aspired for, a tremendous achievement according to all writing standards.
I will start recounting my favorite scenes which established Rand's brilliance in my mind & heart. I started with her very first novel, We the living and although it is one of her lesser known novels, it doesn't fail to capture the heart of the reader. I had no earlier conceptions Rand's popularity so that was not a driving force when I started reading it but after finishing it, I still wanted to read her other novels, particularly Atlas Shrugged. So her genius can't be doubted even though this was not one of her best works.
The first scene that caught my mind was when the protagonist, Kira, fed up with the environment she was born into, runs away at midnight simply out of the recklessness that follows her frustration. The purpose of this scene was to bring to the notice of the reader the suffocation one feels in an environment which tries to cripple one's abilities and is the sole cause behind the person's inability to achieve one's maximum potential. Another scene that caught my attention was that just before Kira is about to flee, she comes across Vasili Ivanovic, who is still hopeful about the change that is never going to come and is willing to wait for it till eternity. His character seems to be portraying a ghost of optimism which is not aligned with the circumstances. And the last, Andrei Taganov's suicide, this I knew was inevitable because by the end, the code of conduct he had believed in through out his life and the values that guided him while distinguishing right from wrong had fallen apart, and his suicide was again consistent with Rand's philosophy that man is his ideals and he can't exist without them. I found the novel to be complete in itself but it left a lead for the readers to read another of her novels where the backdrop changes and the similar characters who were helpless in Soviet Russia are empowered immensely when the setting is of America during the Industrial Revolution.
I went on to reading Atlas Shrugged, Rand's Magnum Opus. Recounting one's experiences while reading this novel can never even come close to actually experiencing them and there are so many scenes that will remain in my memory all through my life. Without further ado, I will attempt at recounting a few of my favorite parts from this novel. Scenes start accumulating from the very beginning where Eddie Willers realises, "Your days are numbered". In this particular scene, Rand is laying down the foundation of distinction between the prime movers and the parasites. "Your days are numbered", if you don't make the best use of your time, you are wasting your existence. Another favorite scene that comes in mind while maintaining the parallel of We the living and Atlas Shrugged is the suicide of Cheryl Brooks. Her suicide is also for the same reason but with another layer. Here her suicide was based on her belief that she committed a breach to her ideals for which and she can't live with herself after having committed the breach. In case of Andrei Taganov, he would have to commit a breach to his ideals if he went on to live. To recount one more from a long list of favorites, Eddie Willers' fate left open without a conclusion where he tries to repair the train track but lacks the ability to do so. This particular scene can have many interpretations, one being that apart from prime movers and parasites, there is one other type of people who are aware of what is ethically correct but do not possess the skills to redress the unethical practices and conventions. The common person who suffers because of circumstances and due to no fault of his own.
From Atlas Shrugged I went on to The Fountainhead, Rand's most famous novel. Most of it was on the same philosophical lines except for two new characters, Gail Wynand and Dominique Francon. All the characters apart from these two can find a parallel in the novels I read before but not these two. These were completely new. Dmoinique in the starting of the story is depicted to have given up the hope to find a person who can share the same sentiment of man's existence and therefore she goes about trying to destroy any piece of brilliance she ever encounters because she believes that such brilliance should not be forced to exist in a world full of imperfections. The scene where Wynand tells Dominique that her theme of life is 'Suffering' is very close to my heart when I link it to the part where she argues that we only know the people we meet in life: there is nothing big or grand like "Mankind," just individual people with their own individual failings. Her pessimism is something I relate to very closely . Gail Wynand, my favorite character from this book, fights his way up. I love the scene where he fights against elder boys during his childhood and Rand's depiction and characterisation of him as "bodiless human will ." This character unfolds in a self-destructive manner which restates Rand's belief of man and his ideals, in this case, Wynand misinterprets that power is the only way to success. He knows that his own mistakes will lead him to his destruction, he knows he is committing errors and in spite of this knowledge, he goes on. He doesn't lack integrity like James Taggart or Peter Keating but he isn't even close to Eddie Willers or Hank Rearden. Finally the scene where Kent Lansing makes Roark aware that Roark could better tell why people should hire him as an Architect but even so people would not listen to him but to Lansing because of the convention of judging men on the basis of the source of information than the content is one I will remember for a very long time.
These are the few scenes and characters I love which made reading Ayn Rand's novels memorable for me. Of course these are not the only reasons why I love her writing, that's a completely different question. Rand is one author I truly enjoyed reading and it took me a lot of time to find another book that I could like as much as I liked her novels after I finished reading all four of her novels. I didn't mention Anthem here because that is a short read and I can't pick out scenes from it. Ayn Rand got me interested in Philosophy and opened a whole new area of interest for me and laid the foundation for further exploration.
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