Journal For Class English Learning Skills in Academic Contexts
Recently, I have finished reading a novel named Atlas Shrugged which is written by Ayn Rand. The novel really impressed me so I’d like to write down the feelings after reading the novel.
The book depicts a dystopian United States, wherein many of society’s most prominent and successful industrialists abandon their fortunes and the nation itself, in response to aggressive new regulations, whereupon most vital industries collapse. It is obvious that the novel advocates individualistic heroism and liberalism. The people are divided into two kinds, one is a group of heroes who are so outstanding that they dominate the whole world, however the other is a group of people who are seen as parasite, they contribute less to the world but they always ask for a lot and once they are not satisfied, they will call a strike. In the author’s pen, she praise the heroes a lot and look down upon the others. Maybe the scene described in the novel is a little extreme, but the author offers us a new way to think about our society. The question is that how to balance the interests of mass and elite. We have to admit that there are only a few people making a great contribution to the course of human history. As for the others, they are even doing the opposite things sometimes. Under such circumstance, if we always emphasize that all men are created equal, is it fair then?
There is also another interesting detail that the sentence “Who is John Galt?” appears frequently in the novel. It could be seen anywhere and said by any person. When I began to read the novel, the recurring sentence confused me a lot because the person John Galt didn’t appear at all. But as I read this book, I find the sentence seems to be a slogan, it means the pursuit in the heroes’ heart.
In a word, the novel is so attractive because it makes me reflect on our society. Although some of the opinions in the novel is so rational that they could even be seen as cruelty, we should understand that compromise may be a good way to get peace, but will never be the way to promote society progress.