REALITY SHRUGGED

"I'm not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours." - - - Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat.

In the 1957 novel, author Ayn Rand depicts a dystopian  United States, wherein many of society's most prominent and successful industrialists abandon their fortunes and the nation itself, in response to aggressive new regulations, whereupon most vital industries collapse. The title is a reference to Atlas, a Titan, "the giant who holds the world on his shoulders". The significance of this reference appears in a conversation between the characters  in which one asks another what advice he would give Atlas upon seeing that "the greater [the titan's] effort, the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders". His own response: "To shrug."

The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is "the role of man's mind in existence". The book explores a number of philosophical themes from which Rand would subsequently develop Objectivism.^[ In doing so, it expresses the advocacy of reason, individualism, capitalism and the failures of governmental coercion.

The story of Atlas Shrugged dramatically expresses Rand's  advocacy of "rational selfishness,"  whereby all of the principal virtues and vices are applications of the role of reason as man's basic tool of survival (or a failure to apply it): rationality, honesty, justice, independence, integrity, productiveness, and pride. Rand's characters often personify her view of the archetypes of various schools of philosophy for living and working in the world. A reviewer wrote, "Rand rejected the literary convention that depth and plausibility demand characters who are naturalistic replicas of the kinds of people we meet in everyday life, uttering everyday dialogue and pursuing everyday values. But she also rejected the notion that characters should be symbolic rather than realistic.^"

Rand herself stated, "My characters are never symbols, they are merely men in sharper focus than the audience can see with unaided sight. . . .  My characters are persons in whom certain human attributes are focused more sharply and consistently than in average human beings^."

In addition to the plot's more obvious statements about the significance of industrialists to society, and the sharp contrast to Marxism's value of labor theory to the explicit conflict is used by Rand to draw wider philosophical conclusions, both implicit in the plot and via the characters' own statements to caricature fascism, socialism, communism  and any state intervention in society, as allowing poor people to "leech" the hard-earned wealth of the rich; and Rand contends that the outcome of any individual's life is purely a function of its ability, and that any individual could overcome adverse circumstances, given ability and intelligence.

The concept "sanction of the victim" is defined as "the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the "sin" of creating values". Accordingly, throughout Atlas Shrugged, numerous characters are frustrated by this sanction, as when one appears duty-bound to support his family, despite their hostility toward him; later, the principle is that somebody's got to be sacrificed. Characters note "If it turned out to be me, I have no right to complain;" "Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us;" and, "I saw that evil was impotent ... and the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it."

Is the island's own reality akin to a Cheshire Cat mash up with Rand's concepts? The permeation of evil, the lawlessness against control and structure, and the selfishness of the main characters as a means of survival are all deep roots in the LOST plot lines. The theme of a "sacrificial" victim, such as Charlie and his warning to Desmond, or Jack's final breath in the bamboo grove, is a homage to the forces of evil and not a heroic conduit to paradise. For the weight of the series was not carried on the shoulders of one titan character, but shoved through the meat grinder of selfish evil intent.