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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2006
Ayn Rand's Heroes: Between and Beyond
Good and Evil
Robert L. Powell II
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
AYN RAND’S HEROES: BETWEEN AND
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
By
Robert L. Powell II
A Dissertation submitted to the
Department of English
in partial Fulfillment of the
requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Awarded:
Fall Semester, 2006
The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Robert L. Powell defended on
October 30, 2006.
_________________________________
Douglas Fowler
Professor Directing Dissertation
__________________________________
William Cloonan
Outside Committee Member
__________________________________
Caroline “Kay” Picart
Committee Member
___________________________________
John Fenstermaker
Committee Member
Approved:
________________________________________
Name of Department Chair, Department of English
________________________________________
Name of Dean, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.
ii
Dedicated to my lifelong mentor, teacher and friend.
To my grandfather, the late Dr. C.E. Walker, who saved my
life and helped to instill three things within me which
no man can ever take away—knowledge, wisdom
and courage.
iii
ACKN OWLEDGEMENTS
In Ayn Rand’s postscript at the end of her novel, Atlas Shrugged,
she claimed that no one helped her towards success in her life
achievements. In no way does the same hold true for me. First and
foremost, I would like to thank God for giving me the talents and
abilities that I do have. A heartfelt and profound thank you goes out
to Dr. Douglas Fowler and Dr. Stephen Armstrong, true friends and
mentors to me in every sense of the words. I would also like to thank
Dr. Caroline "Kay" Picart, Dr. William Cloonan and Dr. John Fenster-
maker for agreeing to serve on my committee and for all their pro-
fessional help and guidance. A grateful word of acknowledgement
goes out to the Florida State University School of Arts and Sciences
for its English Teaching Assistant Summer Stipends. Without the
stipend I received in the Summer of 2005, this timely completion of
my dissertation would not have been possible. I would also like to
thank my mother, Dr. Deidre D. Powell and the love of my life,
Felicia A. Storey for their love, motivation and inspiration.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………vi
PREMISE/INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………….1
1. THE FOUNTAINHEAD AS ART AND ROMANTIC LITERATURE…………………….9
2. THE FOUNTAINHEAD AS PHILOSOPHICAL LITERATURE: EXISTENTIALISM AND
MARXISM…………………………………………………………………….......…………..56
3. THE FOUNTAINHEAD AS POLITICAL LITERATURE: AYN RAND’S OBJECTIVISM vs.
GEORGE ORWELL’S SKEPTICISM……………………………….......................................85
4. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE’S SUPERMAN IN AYN RAND’S HEROES. THE
FOUNTAINHEAD’S TRUE HERO: GAIL WYNAND-- THE FOUNTAINHEAD’S TRUE
VILLAIN: DOMINIQUE FRANCON……………………………………………………….116
5. RAND’S LITERARY LEGACY: WRITERS POSSIBLY INFLUENCED BY RAND’S
FICTION………………………………………………………………………………………158
6. THE AMERICAN DREAM OF SUCCESS, WEALTH AND EXCESS: THE RANDIAN
HERO IN TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE…..........194
7. GREED IS GOOD: THE RANDIAN HERO IN POP CULTURE……………………........230
CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………..251
NOTES………………………………………………………………………………………...255
WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………………283
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH………………………………………………………………….301
v
ABSTRACT
This comparative study examines Ayn Rand’s fiction in relation to Twentieth century
literature and culture. Despite its linguistic potential, The Fountainhead is not good art and does
not represent romantic fiction in the tradition of Victor Hugo or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Artistically speaking, it truly represents Rand's own reactionary type of prose which rebels
against literary movements she hated such as naturalism and modernism.
In bringing the Russian tradition of ideological fiction to America, Rand's philosophy of
Objectivism is really a right-wing form of Existentialism. This philosophy was originated in
fiction by Rand’s beloved Fyodor Dostoevsky. Many ideas of her fiction are similar to Marxism.
Ayn Rand and George Orwell both endured shocking life experiences which shaped their
ideas and fiction. Where Rand learned anti-communism and extreme capitalism, George Orwell
learned skepticism. Rand’s most skeptical heroes, Gail Wynand, Dominique Francon, Dagny
Taggart and Hank Rearden are the most realistic and interesting of her canon.
Rand’s The Fountainhead is a blend of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy of the
Superman and the typical American capitalist hero. In the tradition of Theodore Dreiser’s
Cowperwood trilogy, Gail Wynand, her most Nietzschean character, is Rand’s true hero and
Dominique is her true villain. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged don't fit easily into any
specific literary genres. Therefore, popular writers, such as Mickey Spillane and Edna Ferber
may have been influenced by Rand. Furthermore, similar tendencies of Rand’s work can also be
seen in choice literature novels of Simone deBeauvoir, Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates.
As a novel of capitalist heroes, The Fountainhead sits among an unappreciated group of
works by the literary establishment which should be understood, if not embraced. The 1943 work
portrays capitalist heroes such as Mark Twain’s Hank Morgan and Jack London’s Burning
Daylight without their loveable ‘common man’ aspect. Rand’s capitalists are rebel anti-heroes
with the American idea, that, in pursuit of their excessive selfish desires-- the sky’s the limit.
Randian heroes—anti-heroes of productive work, have continually re-emerged in
American Popular Culture. Rand’s fiction is popular because it’s entertaining soap opera trash
that Americans love. Loveable common man tycoons such as Bill Gates and Sam Walton have
turned into the anti-heroic Don King and Ken Lay. Anti-heroic icons such as J.R. Ewing of
Dallas and Gordon Gekko of the film Wall Street, in the Randian tradition, show us the ugly but
true side of American capitalist culture that is important for us to expose, admit and examine.
vi
PREMISE/INTRODUCTION
Throughout this study, I aim to examine how alternate versions of Ayn Rand’s heroes
continually re-emerge throughout Twentieth Century British and American literature and pop
culture and ponder the possible implications of that emergence. I will also compare and
contrast key characters and ideas in The Fountainhead with those of contemporary literature
and pop culture to show how the content of Rand’s novel is artistically, politically and
philosophically similar in construction but different in stance to typical twentieth century literary
tendencies in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Furthermore, I hope to show how
Rand’s work opposes the typical literature and pop culture theme “excess causes downfall” to
demonstrate an unpopular but accurate side of the American imagination—we all want to strive
for some version of the success, wealth and excess-- or greed. Perhaps we all strive to be like
Ronald Reagan and the robber-barons of Enron, Jay Gatsby and George W. Bush—all modern
day versions of Ayn Rand’s heroes who are incarnations of the “American” dream. The self-
enlargement of this hero is a dark but spellbinding super-nova at the center of the American
firmament.
Rand’s work carries on literary traditions of nineteenth century Europe. Her work shows
the influence of French and German romanticism and Russian philosophical literature.
According to Gene H. Bell-Villada, “Along with her Nietzsche-through-Russian eyes, Rand
poured her potent American brew into a very Russian vessel: the novel of ideas. The grand
debates that breathe life into The Brothers Karamazov have long moved and excited many a
college youth, and Rand indeed acknowledged in Dostoevsky a kindred literary [if not
philosophic] spirit.”1
Most great works of literature, such as Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, J.D.
Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle teach the reader
and relate the work to real life with mostly pessimistic portrayals and narrative. Rand constructs
these same types of traditions in her fiction but instead of teaching, she preaches to the reader to
strive to achieve exaggerated positions of greatness with extremely optimistic portrayals and
narrative. Artists like Ford, Salinger and Steinbeck are skeptical while Rand is empowering.
When discussing the nature of literary art, Rand states, “art does not teach--it shows, it displays
the full concretized reality of the final goal.”2 Therefore, what Rand shows us with her
“characters as ideas” is more important than what we learn from either the story itself or the way
1
it is told. “Lovers of Rand fiction . . . admire the work for its contents, not its art.”3
In stating the purpose of her novels, Rand goes on to say:
The motive and purpose of my writing is the projection
of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my
ultimate literary goal, as an end in itself—to which any
didactic, intellectual or philosophical values contained
in a novel are only the means. . .My purpose, first cause
and prime mover is the portrayal of Howard Roark or
John Galt or Hank Rearden or Francisco d’Anconia as
an end in himself-not as a means to any further end.
Which, incidentally, is the greatest value I could ever
offer a reader (The Romantic Manifesto 162).
Although these portrayed ideals are too extreme, Rand’s heroic Nietzschean idea of “greatness in
man” is beneficial in that, if taken in moderation, this optimistic hope can motivate us to strive
for success and happiness as the heroes of our own lives. Since 1943, alternate versions of the
Randian hero continue to emerge in both twentieth century literature and pop culture.
Rand’s fiction, portrayed through her rebellious heroes, is bothersome, controversial and
nerve striking because it represents the noisy, industrialized and unnatural city aspect of the
American imagination. The American Eden is furnished within primeval forests and virgin
landscapes and perhaps a noble savage or two; it is, of course an outdoor affair and powered by
God’s own green photosynthesis. We never even adjusted ourselves to Henry Ford’s engine,
much less the soiling money and machinery of Wall Street and Hollywood. In the American
imagination, the spare, bare quietism of Henry Thoreau is everywhere preferred to the mansions
of the money changers. The Randian hero is neither lovable, ‘heart of gold’ nor common
everyman who embraces nature and the ‘goody-goody’ country existence. The American
imagination prefers its heroes to be at least mildly sugar coated with good morals, religious
convictions and a likeable character. Rand’s heroes bluntly challenge all these aspects of the
American establishment.
In defining the Randian hero, it is a mixture of two specific archetypes—the rogue hero
and the independent egotist. In their book Popular Culture: An Introductory Text, Jack
Nachbar and Kevin Lause give four categories to pop culture heroes—citizen hero, rogue hero,
citizen celebrity and rogue celebrity. They define the rogue hero as, “those who represent the
beliefs and values associated with individual freedom-with the need to challenge the mainstream
2
when its powerful currents threaten to wash away minority rights in favor of majority rules”
(316). All four of these heroes maintain key similarities and differences. Nachbar and Lause
categorize former President Ronald Reagan as a citizen-hero and just like Rand’s Howard Roark,
he was eternally optimistic and eternally youthful (319). Optimism is a key element of both
Rand’s and nearly all pop culture [Movies/T.V./Video Games] heroes.
Rand’s heroes are a mixture of this optimism and independent egoism:
All that which proceeds from man’s independent
ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s
dependence upon men is evil. . . he [the Randian
Hero] does not exist for any other man—and he
asks no other man to exist for him. . . The first right
on earth is the right of the ego. Man’s first duty is
to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime
goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation
is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not
depend primarily upon other men. This includes the
whole sphere of his creative faculty, his thinking, his
work. But it does not include the sphere of the gangster,
the altruist and the dictator (For the New Intellectual 81,82).
Therefore, the Randian Hero is one who egoistically lives by his own productive work and
individually rebels for his freedom against the mainstream establishment. Rand’s famous novel
takes on more similarities to pop culture than literature because it is exaggerated in both style
and character portrayal.
Parallels of Rand’s heroes tend to be characterized more as “good guys” in literature and
more as “bad guys” in pop culture. For example, in works of twentieth century British and
American literature such as Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and Ford Madox Ford’s The Good
Soldier, the rogue heroes Humbert Humbert and Edward fall more or less into the role of
protagonists. However, the same type of heroes in pop culture [especially in the greedy decade of
the 1980s] like Robert Redford on Indecent Proposal, Michael Douglas on Wall Street and
Larry Hagman on Dallas serve as the antagonistic “men we love to hate” versions of the
Randian heroes Roark, Dominique and Wynand in the The Fountainhead.
Again, with her heroes, Rand gives the opposing view of the same issue in relation to
politics. Rand’s heroes show that greed is good and extremes of wealth and prosperity can never
hurt us. Most works of literature and pop culture, such as F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great
3
