This article reviews information from the Ayn Rand Institute.
Early Life of Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand, born in 1905 as Alisa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, was a precocious reader who decided at a young age to become a writer.
When she was in high school, the Bolshevik Revolution (depicted in Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago) led to her father's pharmacy being taken over by Communists.
This confiscation and the poverty which resulted profoundly impacted Rand, and when she learned about American history, she took their example as the model for how a free nation could live.
She studied Philosophy and History at the University of Petrograd, and in 1925 she travelled to the United States, having told Soviet authorities she was visiting relatives. She never returned.
Career of Ayn Rand
Rand began her career in writing as a screenwriter in Hollywood, writing such screenplays as Red Pawn and Night of January 16th. While working in Hollywood, she met and married actor Frank O'Connor (who played Jake Canon in As Husband's Go). Their marriage lasted until O'Connor's death in 1979, fifty years later.
The Fountainhead
Rand's first novel, We the Living, was based on her experiences under the Soviet Communist Russia. In 1935 she started writing the book The Fountainhead, in which Howard Roark, a courageous architect, chooses to destroy his buildings rather than have his vision adulterated by lesser people and watered down by the mediocrity of collectivism.
She went on to write the screenplay for The Fountainhead and the film was produced in 1948. While awaiting the completion of this project, she began work on Atlas Shrugged, in which she would fully articulate the philosophy outlined in The Fountainhead, Objectivism.
Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged tells the story of Dagny Taggert, a brave Vice President of Taggert Transcontinental, a railroad whose progress is constantly thwarted by the mediocrities of lesser souls, represented by her brother James Taggert. She finds that the men of ability and courage have begun disappearing, refusing to contribute to a society which does not allow them to express the fullness of their abilities.
Objectivist Philosophy
As outlined in the Fountainhead and later expanded upon in her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged, the principles are best summarized by the oath which the "strikers" in Atlas Shrugged each take:
"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine."
This philosophy has had a profound impact on American society, influencing such luminaries as Alan Greenspan, former Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank.
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