I do not recommend the movie based—unfaithfully and ineptly, in my judgment—on Atlas Shrugged (Rand 1957) that opens today. (See my analysis of one scene here.) Instead, I urge every thoughtful individual to read the novel, again and again, and to urge your thoughtful friends to do so too.

There is a great deal of information and misinformation on the Internet about this novel, which I consider the greatest work of art I have ever encountered. Here is my way of describing the novel to those who have not yet read it.

The theme of Atlas Shrugged, the novel, is “the role of the mind in man’s existence.” (Rand [1968] 1975, 85.) For Ayn Rand, man’s basic means of survival is man’s mind, in particular, man’s ability to reason.

The novel deals with the role of the mind in all aspects of man’s life, including science, business, art, love, and sex. It deals extensively with the role of the mind in one crucial, often misunderstood, aspect of man’s life: the production of material goods. The novel focuses most on one kind of producer, what Ayn Rand (1967, 44) called “America’s persecuted minority”: the businessmen.

The novel depicts businessmen who—by their own independence of thought, inventiveness, integrity, and steadfast adherence to the facts and figures of reality (that is, by their own use of reason)—create prosperity on a grand scale. And the more prosperity that they create for themselves and bring to others through trade, the more that they are vilified as greedy and selfish, and the more that society—in the form of government and the pseudo-intellectuals and pseudo-businessmen who partner with government—tries to control them, to control their thinking, to override the independent thinking that created the prosperity in the first place.

The controllers—Ayn Rand calls them looters, because they take by force what others produce—count on the inventiveness and perseverance of the producers. The looters assume that no matter how much burden they load onto the producers—no matter how high the taxes or how stifling the controls—the producers will always figure out how to produce more and to bear the ever-growing burden. The producers are the Atlases who support all of mankind. But there is a limit to everything, and finally the burden becomes too great, and the producers begin to break down. And some of the producers decide that they are not going to take it anymore. But they don’t start a war or an armed rebellion. All they do is quit. One by one, individual producers quietly decide to stop thinking. Some of them retire early, some of them take menial jobs, and some of them just disappear. And one of the mysteries of the novel is this question: Is this some kind of organized strike, or is this simply the case of diverse individuals reaching the same conclusion without talking to each other about it?

But what I have just described is only the set-up of the story. The main conflict is not the producers vs. the looters, or good vs. evil. For Ayn Rand, evil is impotent and could not survive without the sanction of or tolerance by the good. A deeper conflict is good vs. good: some of the producers are against the others. Some of the producers have quit, but many of them have not. Some of the heroes who love each other passionately are on the opposite sides of this conflict. They are each other’s worst enemy, and they oppose each other with all of the power of their brilliant minds, but they also love each other and try to win each other over to their side. And the deepest conflict of all is the inner conflict within each producer who must take a side. Does he continue to struggle to keep his productive career and business going despite the greater and greater burdens imposed by the looters who live off of him, or does he abandon the productive career and business that he has poured his life and soul into?

(Added on 6/3/2011: Another form of inner conflict, related to all the other conflicts, is that some of the producers have adopted some premises from the anti-reason society that vilifies yet depends on them.)

In order to resolve these conflicts, the producers must first grasp—explicitly and in its crucial implications—the novel’s theme: “the role of the mind in man’s existence.”

The book jacket to the original edition of Atlas Shrugged (Rand, 1957) concludes, “It is a mystery story, not about the murder of a man’s body, but about the murder—and rebirth—of man’s spirit.”

Update, 4/16/2011:

It occurred to me that I should reduce my description above to one sentence, a kind of “plot-theme” that withholds spoilers, or a DeMille-like “situation” stated in thematic terms. (See Rand [1968] 1975, 85–86 for an explanation of her term “plot-theme.” In short, it is a one-sentence summary of the plot—like a ‘log-line’—stated in terms informed by the theme. See also Rand [1958] 2000, 57 for Ayn Rand’s account of Cecil DeMille’s term “situation.”)

So here is a DeMille-like ‘situation’: In continuing to use their minds to create great wealth in the careers they love, the men of the mind keep alive the unthinking society that oppresses them more and more.

And here is a plot-theme that backs off on spoilers, but that still gives away more than the ‘situation’: The men of the mind, the Atlases of the world whose productive careers keep alive the unthinking society that oppresses them more and more, must decide whether to continue supporting their oppressors or to abandon the careers they love.

References

Rand, Ayn (1957), Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House.

——— (1967), Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. New York: Signet.

——— ([1968] 1975), “Basic Principles of Literature”, The Objectivist 7(7): 1–7. Reprinted in The Romantic Manifesto, Second Revised Edition. New York: Signet, 80–98.

——— ([1958] 2000), The Art of Fiction. [An edited transcription of a course on writing fiction given by Ayn Rand in 1958.] Tore Boeckmann (ed.) New York: Plume.

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The essay is here.

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I will celebrate the remainder of Ayn Rand’s birthday by thinking about why this passage had this effect on me.

There is no need for me to name the passage for you, gentle reader. Any passage from Ayn Rand will do.

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There are many movies I have not yet seen, so I may add to this list from time to time.

An Affair to Remember (1957)
Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, The (1947)
Ball of Fire (1941)
Battling Butler (1926)
Black Stallion, The (1979)
Cameraman, The (1928)
Christmas in July (1940)
Cluny Brown (1946)
College (1927)
Cover Girl (1994)
Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)
Day Will Dawn, The (aka The Avengers) (1942).
Dodsworth (1936)
Easter Parade (1948)
Escape (1940)
For Me and My Gal (1942)
Fountainhead, The (1949)
Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)
Houseboat (1958)
In the Good Old Sumertime (1949)
It Happened One Night (1934)
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
Lady in Question, The (1940)
Libeled Lady (1936)
Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The (1943)
Lili (1953)
Love Letters (1945)
Madame Curie (1943)
Major and the Minor, The (1942)
Middle of the Night (1959)
Miracle Worker, The (1962)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
National Velvet (1944)
Navigator, The (1924)
Notorious (1946)
Now Voyager (1942)
On the Waterfront (1954) (added 5/16/10)
Palm Beach Story, The (1942)
Pride and Prejudice (1940)
Random Harvest (1942)
Sabrina (1954)
Scarlet Pimpernel, The (1934)
Shane (1953)
Sherlock Jr. (1924)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
So Proudly We Hail! (1943)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Sound of Music, The (1965)
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
Summer Stock (1950)
Sunrise (1927)
Swing Time (1936)
This Land is Mine (1943)
To Be Or Not To Be (1942)
Top Hat (1935)
Vacation from Marriage (aka Perfect Strangers) (1945)
We the Living (1986, edited from movies from 1942)
Wizard of Oz, The (1939)
Women, The (1939)

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Perhaps I should perform this celebration every day. After all, I look at beautiful paintings every day. The novels of Ayn Rand (especially The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged) are the most beautiful and inspiring works of art that I have ever encountered. Why not enjoy them every day?

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I loved reading the novel Crosspoints, by Alexandra York. Many parts were moving to me. The heroes are noble, like the Greek statues that the archeologist heroine searches for on ocean floors. They pursue their happiness with passion, courage, style, and remarkable wisdom about life, love, and art. And their pursuits are described with realistic, evocative detail that makes me understand why they love what they are doing. I love it too, and wonder whether I would have the courage to do what they do.

I realize that I’m not doing as I say: I am not giving details. I am afraid to give anything away in an order other than what the author intended. The book is very exciting from the first page. I read the novel several years ago, but when I recently recalled the ending of the first chapter, I got goose bumps again.

If you want to know specifics about the characters and plotline, see the summary on the book jacket. Better yet, my suggestion to the author is to make the first chapter available online. But my advice has not been needed in order for the book to sell; a Russian translation is already on the market, and a Spanish translation is on the way. For more information about the novel and other works by Alexandra York, go here.

One of my least favorite things about the novel is the title, which is a little on the nose for me. But the fact that the novel really is about ‘crosspoints’ is ultimately the most important virtue of the novel. Apropos of my recent discussions about dramatic conflict (here and here), each character faces a dramatic internal conflict and a ‘crosspoint’: a moment when the internal conflict comes to a head, and the character must make a conscious choice. The choice that each character makes shapes that character’s world. And that is why the sense of life of this novel is bright, not dark: not because life is always happy, but because one can make it so.

The author, Alexandra York, is the founder of American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART), a “nonprofit educational foundation dedicated to a rebirth of beauty and life-affirming values in all of the fine arts.” I have seen some of Ms. York’s personal collection of art, and I can tell you that she knows beauty.

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With revenge and altruism as the only values (if any) that today’s heroes fight for, no wonder they are so grim. And no wonder the expression of any other values seems so unmotivated, like lip service. When the hero in Braveheart started speaking for freedom, I remember having asked myself, “Where did that come from?”

Perhaps an even starker illustration of the points you all make is in the movie The Patriot (2000). In this film, the hero (played by Mel Gibson, for whom revenge seems to be a recurring theme) does not join the American Revolution until his son is killed by the British. The idea of reducing America’s fight for independence to a fight for revenge is particularly appalling. Can anyone name an American Founding Father who joined the Revolution only after a loved one was killed by the British?

Thankfully, heroes in some films do sometimes seek selfish values, at least in the realm of love. But fighting a war and killing for selfish values—or for any values—does seem forbidden. It seems that writers feel the need to give their heroes an excuse—in place of a valid reason—for killing an enemy. And an excuse is a feeling, an urge, a neurosis or psychosis, something the hero has no control over—as opposed to an idea, which is chosen.

This mindset is consistent with Naturalism as opposed to Romanticism, as defined by Ayn Rand. For those unfamiliar with her esthetics, see Ayn Rand’s essay “What is Romanticism” in The Romantic Manifesto; the essay begins as follows:

Romanticism is a category of art based on the recognition of the principle that man possesses the faculty of volition.

For a Romantic hero, an internal conflict (traditionally called ‘Man vs. Himself’) would be a conflict of values, such as love vs. honor, or freedom vs. peace; and the hero must choose between them.

Naturalism, on the other hand, denies free will. For a Naturalist character, an internal conflict would be a conflict of emotions, urges, or psychological problems, such as rage vs. despair, or lust vs. guilt; such a character never makes a choice, instead merely wallowing in his torment and oscillating between satisfying one urge and then the other in response to external stimuli.

(For a good exploration of Ayn Rand’s distinction between Romanticism and Naturalism in characterization, see “Consciousness vs. Subconscious Motivation in Literature”, by Tore Boeckmann in The Intellectual Activist, July 1993 and September 1993.)

By far the most famous teacher of screenwriting today is Robert McKee. From my reading, he is also by far the best ‘mainstream’ writer on screenwriting. (Of course, I am not including Ayn Rand in the mainstream.) I looked up ‘conflict’ in McKee’s famous book on screenwriting, Story. Here is part of what I found.

In praising the creation of “inner conflict” in the film Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), McKee writes (p.215):

In the film’s first moments Kramer discovers his wife has left him and his son. He’s torn with an inner conflict that takes the form of doubts and fears that he’s in over his head vs. a male arrogance telling him whatever women do is easy.

Whether the scene from Kramer vs. Kramer is actually as weak as McKee’s praise implies, I don’t recall. My point here is that an entire generation of screenwriters is being mis-taught on the nature of internal conflict.

(McKee also analyzes the conflict in a scene from Casablanca (1942). Perhaps in a future post, I can discuss that.)

It is too bad that more screenwriters are not studying Ayn Rand (for example, The Art of Fiction) instead of McKee.

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Even a rat fights when cornered. But a man of reason and courage does not wait until his loved ones have been murdered and his own survival hangs by a thread. He fights well before it is almost too late.

In contemporary movies, it is common for the hero to be so reluctant that he does not start to fight until it is actually too late.

Consider the hit movie Braveheart (1995). At the beginning of the movie, friends of the hero are married, but the bride is carried off and raped by an English nobleman under the King’s decree of primae noctis (first night). The hero does nothing. He eventually marries in secret to avoid primae noctis, but one day his wife is attacked by soldiers. Only then does the hero fight, but it is too late; his wife is killed.

A better hero would have fought sooner. He would have understood the principle: If his friend’s wife could be raped legally, so could his own wife; more generally, he and his own future wife had no rights. A better hero would, from the moment the other bride was raped, have begun planning to fight. He would have had the courage to begin his fight at the time of his own choosing, at the time most advantageous for his own victory. Instead, this hero chose to plan nothing; he chose instead to have a few extra months of peace. The result was that when his own wife was attacked, he was unprepared to defend her, and she was murdered.

Some might say that the writer of Braveheart made the story go this way for the purpose of having more drama: the hero’s loss of his wife puts the hero in the lowest possible situation from which he must rise; the loss burdens the hero with the greatest hardship that he must overcome. This setup for the story, many contemporary writers would say, gives the story greater conflict.

The exact opposite is true. With his beloved wife already dead, with his highest value already gone, the hero has far less to live for. Indeed, for most of the remainder of the story, the hero acts like someone already half dead. He is a soldier fighting until the day he dies to join his wife. Risking his life is therefore not much of a risk; his choice to fight is not much of a choice. Therefore, the conflict is greatly diminished.

It is a curious fact that so many contemporary screenplays exemplify this incorrect view of dramatic conflict. In the hit movie Gladiator (2000), the hero’s wife and child are murdered early in the movie. The effect is the same as in Braveheart, only more so: the hero seems hardly to care to live anymore; he kills people, including bad guys, merely while waiting to join his dead family.

In contrast, the heroes of Ayn Rand’s novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged would be quite well off—by the standards of most—without having to struggle at all. But they aspire to lives much more exalted than would be possible under the status quo. For these heroes, the conflict is great, because they have a great deal of “skin in the game”; they must constantly choose to stake all they have or could have—a highly successful career (by the standards of most), a wife and family, a life of comfort—for their higher goal. These heroes don’t have hardship thrust upon them; they constantly face the difficult choice to undergo hardship in order to achieve their goal.

Now that’s conflict.

America’s Founding Fathers are great real-life models for dramatic heroes. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Paul Revere—these men were successful in their careers and lived in relative material comfort for their time. But they risked all of that—“we mutually pledge our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor”—for an idea.

Again, that’s conflict.

Both Braveheart and Gladiator could have been exceptionally good movies if not for an erroneous notion of what makes dramatic conflict. This notion seems prevalent among today’s screenwriters (present writer excluded). Why?

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Why is my verse so barren of new pride
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
O! know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.

Happy Shakespeare’s Birthday.

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