How to even begin a review of a book that is over 1100 pages long?!
This book book follows a young female railroad tycoon, Dagny, as she operates the nation's largest railroad. She and some of the other main characters who work in industry are seen as greedy and selfish when what they are really trying to do is follow their passions, see their job done "right", and in many cases work in innovative new ways to improve their industry and the world around them
The story shows her struggles trying to succeed in a country where the social/political atmosphere seeks to shame and work against her and others like her simply because of their success. The politicians and public think the industrialists should show more concern for "the people", stressing things like equal share and equal opportunity, even though the services they provide are, themselves, providing for the good of the people.
As politicians, and less-motivated industrialists, pass regulations to "even the playing field" a little, for fairness, and "most importantly" to help the good of "the people"--discouraged businesspeople begin simply vanishing--closing up shop and leaving without a trace.
Dagny begins to feel that there is an actual destroyer working against her efforts to succeed--someone coming along collecting the last of the competent and intelligent people left in the country, leaving her with a greater and greater burden to carry on her own to keep the ever-more fragile country running, and eventually posing her with the question of whether or not she is fighting on the right side of the conflict.
This book was fascinating. It showed how quickly our country can be changed for the worse, by constantly operating in the present and in reactionary attitudes, and most-importantly by punishing those who can help things change for the better. It was actually a book that I felt pretty "somber" while reading. There is just so much that goes on that was so frustrating, and discouraging (particularly the things that rang true to the state of our nation right now).
This book had a sub-theme of sexuality that ran through it (written in the 50's, it was pretty mild there were, I think, two paragraphs where I skipped to the end). But the theme of sexuality was important in the way it was a metaphor for the contradictions existing in the general values and morality of the society as a whole. This was demonstrated through their different relationships which served to give a concrete example of the product of their values. This string of quotes between two characters helps describe this view of sexuality.
"We are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds from the actions of their bodies. . . You knew that the physical desire I was damning as our mutual shame, is neither physical nor an expression of one's body, but the expression of one's mind's deepest values. . . I love you, my dearest, with the deepest passion of my body which comes from the clearest perception of my mind.(pp 859-860)"
This discussion was of a "good" relationship, but these same ideas were shown through a few "bad" relationships as well--that the physical was a manifestation of the person's truest inner values.
I'm coming to believe that I really appreciate a cognitive discussion on healthy sexuality simply to counteract all the immorality that we are exposed to so frequently. So I really appreciated the quote of sexuality being "the deepest passion of my body which comes from the clearest perception of my mind". I really believe that to be true, and what a different view than the worldly idea of sexuality being involuntary physical lusts!
In the end I'll put this book on my "to read again" at some point list. I enjoyed it and would love to pull out some more quotes from it--the philosophy is fascinating--but that task just seemed a little too daunting the first read through.
