| | We just finished discussing Atlas Shrugged Part 3 Chapters I-V last night at our Merritt Island chapter of PROPEL Florida.
I have noticed that Ayn Rand conveniently made the protagonists wealthy enough to divorce their unloving spouses or to drop their fizzling romances without great financial consequence. Unfortunately, in the real world, most people cannot afford this so easily. I would have liked to have seen how she would have handled a typical middle class couple in such a situation -- not necessarily "the folks next door" but perhaps a noble soul of limited means attempting to leave an emotionally abusive spouse and the financial ramifications of such a move, especially with children involved. She did depict Cherryl Taggart as choosing suicide as her only way out of her marriage to James Taggart -- not the best possible option in my view.
As it stands now, the novel offers little in the way of a concrete template for such people. This does not stop some of them from engaging in wishful thinking and evading such harsh facts in their pursuits of new romances when they "feel" their marriages have become loveless. I have seen this happen too many times and, well, sometimes they get what they want and many other times the whole effort proves itself something that should never have happened in the first place.
I find the romances in the novels the most, er, unrealistic of the "romantic realism" of her artwork. Again, I base this on my candid observations of how people act when they mischaracterize their own passionate feelings of "being in heat" as "being in love." Yawn, yawn, I know -- Lord Buzz Killer speaks again.
A variance of the saying, "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush," also applies here. I snickered at how Dagny Taggart "just knew" she had to leave Henry Rearden -- "a cock in hand" -- for John Galt -- "a cock not yet in her bush" -- based on her feelings of the moment in the valley. Granted, the author intended to make the point that one should not continue a romance after it has run its course and become burdensome compared to "better things out there" and I would have a hard time arguing against the choices the characters made in the end. However, in real life, other factors like marital commitments, children, finances, jealousy, etc. make such "flighty flaky flibbertigibbet" choices poor ones indeed.
I am related by marriage to someone who had two children out of wedlock to one woman, left her to marry another woman to bear three more children, then left her for his second wife to bear even more children. The man will have to work until his dying day to support all these relationships and has already had one heart attack from all the stress. I just do not see this as a path of reason.
Sorry, I just do not trust horniness that much! At least prostitution enjoys a certain basic honesty that contrasts sharply with the willful self-delusion to which too many supposed "romances" fall victim. I cannot say the same for flings that generate hope for one or both parties yet in the end bring disaster to them and to those close to them.
(Edited by Luke Setzer on 12/16, 3:15am)
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