This article was originally created by [Galaxy Surfers]." This account writes about history and humanities, but never writes the parents of the emperor and generals, welcome to pay attention.
I recently read two novels, one is Sinclair Lewis's "The Street", Lewis was the first Novelist in the United States to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and this book is also its masterpiece. When the book was first published (1920), it was reprinted 28 times in a year, causing a sensation at the beginning of the century. The book is also considered a classic of the awakening of American women.
The other is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, an Ayn Rand is not well known in China, but in the United States, is a female writer who has influenced a generation. The book is said to have sold over 100 million copies worldwide and is said to have had an impact on Americans second only to the Bible. But very few people around me have read this book.
The protagonists of both novels are women, which is special among the many novels about the American dream (or how to transform the United States).
It is worth mentioning that in the same year that "Atlas Shrugged" was published, another "On the Road", which is familiar to domestic wenqing, was also published. The two novels, published in the same year, illustrate two different American temperaments. But for the theme we're going to compare today — how to transform America with both hands, or shape an American dream — "On the Road" may not help much.
So, let's compare how Main Street and Atlas Shrugged their shoulders built America in their own way.
The storyline of "Main Street" is very simple, the literary young woman Carol always dreamed of transforming the small town in the United States, and finally after she married a dentist in a prairie town in the middle of the United States, she began to implement her own town transformation plan. The main thing she did was to break the boring cultural life of the town and improve the local education level.
There are many discussions in "The Street" about how to transform the town, but these discussions are more between women, and the heroine Carol tries to change the whole town through the women in the town. The heroine knows very little about her husband's business, the town's economic resources, the business environment and the level of technology at that time. Therefore, whenever the novel talks about Carol's dream of transforming the town, it always gives people a feeling of "empty talk".
The novel was published after World War I, and perhaps Lewis wanted to borrow the heroine to encourage people to build a new American temperament after the war. He did, and the United States got rid of the European culture of luxury, salon love, and empty talk, and became more pragmatic. At the end of "Main Street", the heroine is not empty talk, she accepts the boring culture of the prairie town, and becomes a new woman who cares about her husband's clinic operation and personal finances.
Looking at "Atlas Shrugged", the plot is also very simple, the heroine in it, Dagny, as the vice president of business of the railway company, and three excellent men (entrepreneurs, inventors), fight with the evil brother Taggart's faction and finally win. In the reader's view, this is beyond the scope of feminism.
Dagney never discussed how to "transform" New York or the United States, and she focused more on her job, keeping the railroad business running. She is an activist, like those who, like her, do not stop using their minds to change the world by acting, who never hook up with bureaucrats and take "individualism" to the extreme. Their credo is "I swear with my life and my love for it that I will never live for anyone else or ask someone to live for me".
"Atlas Shrugged" in the eyes of many people, like a domineering president wen, the heroine hugged the world's best three men into her arms, bringing emotional satisfaction to many female readers. However, the textbook reasoning in the book does make people feel that this is not a novel, but a manual for propagating some idea.
Indeed, in the mid-20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union were in the midst of a cold war. In the United States, there was the "Beat Generation", the representatives of this generation Kerouac, Alan Ginsburg, and Bob Dylan also had a deep relationship with this school of writers, which played a very important role in shaping the thinking of young Americans. However, for the economic development of the United States, the "Beat Generation" can not come up with any good suggestions, and even let young Americans indulge in drugs and sex.
In the mid-20th century, this decadent ideology hung over the United States. Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged No to this kind of thinking, a novel that reinvents a whole new personality that resists spiritual mysticism and material mysticism, and possesses "reason, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, creativity, and pride," conforming to rational morality, and conforming to the objectivism of "A is A."
For the first time, the novel proposes a strike by the elite, and argues that when entrepreneurs and creators stop working, society as a whole will fall into chaos. Many readers argue that this is a defense of capitalism. As a result, reviews of the book have always been polarized.
However, looking back at American history, we do see the shaping of American society by those elites (many of whom were immigrants from abroad). Numerous entrepreneurs, whether in the oil age of the 19th century or Silicon Valley in the 20th century, revered a rational, honest and upright lifestyle and were less likely to be interfered with by the U.S. government. Rather than "Atlas Shrugging" as a defense of capitalism and individualism, Ayn Rand taught a history lesson to the beat youngsters in the mid-20th century.
This class tells those decadent young people that the United States can have today, relying on non-stop struggle, hard work, everyone should stay in their posts, use reason and knowledge to change the world, rather than always thinking of stealing chickens and dogs from the government to get subsidies to survive.
I personally prefer the ruthlessness of Atlas Shrugge to the book angry at The Avenue. Although Ayn Rand is very straightforward about the narrative in terms of story style, just like the current online cool articles, the whole book gives me the feeling that this female author is too capable of fighting, much better than the male writers who are kneading.
For the topic of "transforming America", some of the suggestions made by Main Street, such as making people more funny and humorous, making the town full of love and kindness, etc., seem to be almost unchanged today. The "individualist manifesto" in "Atlas Shrugged" is closer to the real history of the United States.