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Symbolism In Atlas Shrugged

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Joynewyeary

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Lee Hunsacker suggests Hun + sacker. The Huns sacked Rome.

The Huns were a serious threat only after the Empire was near collapse because of its own internal problems. Rome might correspond to Christianity or the Church of Rome, which has some things in common with the philosophy put forward by the Starnes heirs.

Lee Hunsacker bought the factory and ran it into the ground after it was already in a very bad state, just as the Huns sacked Rome after Rome was already in a bad state. Of course, that doesn't mean that it was not possible for new management to improve things. It's just that Lee Hunsacker didn't manage the factory any better than Huns, in sacking Rome, managed Rome.

In other words, maybe what destroyed the Roman Empire was Christian philosophy.

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Rand's fiction is ripe with sexual imagery and symbolism. But far from trivializing her prose, the subtle (and not so subtle) allusions to male genitalia, physical intensity of copulation and ecstasy of orgasmic release serve to enrich and enliven her descriptions.

Take the opening passage from The Fountainhead:

Howard Roark laughed.

He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below him. A frozen explosion of granite burst in flight to the sky over motionless water. The water seemed immovable, the stone flowing. The stone had the stillness of one brief moment in battle when thrust meets thrust and the currents are held in a pause more dynamic than motion. The stone glowed, wet with sunrays. . .

His body leaned back against the sky. It was a body of long straight lines and angles, each curve broken into planes. He stood, rigid, his hands hanging at his sides, palms out. He felt his shoulder blades drawn tight together, the curve of his neck, and the weight of the blood in his hands. He felt the wind behind him, in the hollow of his spine.

Roark’s nakedness; his pleasure; the hardness of the granite outcropping paralleling the “rigidness” of Roark’s body; the choice of the words “explosion,” “burst,” “flowing” “wet,” “thrust meets thrust” to describe a quiet scene in nature -- all of this lends the unmistakably pungent flavor of sex! to the proceedings.

And, keep in mind, we haven’t even got to the phallic imagery of the skyscrapers yet.

Now skip ahead to the scene that precedes what Rand famously called the “rape by engraved invitation.” Describing the natural creation of marble, Roark says, the forces involved are "heat and pressure," and then explains, "pressure is a powerful factor -- it can lead to consequences which, once started, cannot be controlled." (Hmm, now what human experience does that resemble?) When Dominique asks about the consequences, Roark’s answer is all but explicit: “The infiltration of foreign elements from the surrounding soil."

Only a dunce would miss the double entendre.

Take the sexual zest out of Rand’s writing and you get Henry Hazlitt the novelist of Time will Run Back. Great economics but deadly dull fiction.

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Miss Rand did not purposely create word puzzles to put in her works.  That would have been contrary to everything she stood for in the realm of Aesthetics.

Um.... they're not word puzzles. It's part of the literary tradition of naming characters according to their personality/role/"character." And YES, she did do that quite often and on purpose.

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One image in particular that I really like is when in Atlas Shrugged, at a party, The Halley Concerto is played, but it is modified with 'modern' elements. Ayn Rand makes the comment that despite it being horrendously disfigured, the essentials of Halley's melody 'carried' the musical piece. It is a great symbol of what was happening in the world at the time, when despite all the mouchers were doing to corrupt the good in the world, somehow the Prime Movers carried the world forward.

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  • 5 months later...

I dont mean to pick, but wasn't it the Visigoths, not the Huns, who sacked Rome?

In other words, maybe what destroyed the Roman Empire was Christian philosophy.

what destroyed the Roman Empire was Imperial control of the money supply and prices. Massive shortages along with a marginalized currency meant Rome was all but bankrupt economically by the time she was sacked.

Christianity's sin, is the 1100 year dark age it perpetuated after the fall of the Empire.l

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  • 1 year later...
One image in particular that I really like is when in Atlas Shrugged, at a party, The Halley Concerto is played, but it is modified with 'modern' elements. Ayn Rand makes the comment that despite it being horrendously disfigured, the essentials of Halley's melody 'carried' the musical piece. It is a great symbol of what was happening in the world at the time, when despite all the mouchers were doing to corrupt the good in the world, somehow the Prime Movers carried the world forward.

This is an excellent one!!

what about the bracelet made from Rearden Metal as a symbol for Dagny's and Hank's appreciation for each other? maybe it doesn't count as symbolism.

how about the oak tree at the beginning and how Eddie thought 'nothing' can destroy it, and then he turns the corner and sees the Taggart building and thinks that 'nothing can destroy that :)

as for Rand using names as symbols, how 'bout Wesley Mouch?

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