Atlas Shrugged and The Grapes of Wrath are (almost) the same book

There's this comment on Reddit that I'm not going to look up again, but it implies that anyone who is so vulgar as to read Atlas Shrugged should immediately reprogram their brains by reading The Grapes of Wrath.

I went the other way around, only discovering this sentiment after having read The Grapes of Wrath (which is an incredible book, although you don't need me to tell you that) and having this thought –

and I don't even know where this thought came from, but there it was –

telling me that it was finally time to read Atlas Shrugged.

According to the spreadsheet in which I track these kinds of things, it took me six days to finish it. I have since begun a second read, going more carefully through each paragraph and tracking the ways in which Rand asks her reader to actively participate in the narrative. (I've also started reading the Ayn Rand Lexicon.)

And, as someone who is in favor of loading brains with as many useful programs as possible –

I understood instantly that Atlas Shrugged and The Grapes of Wrath were trying to install similar software.

Here are some of the parallels between the texts:

• Both novels follow a group of individuals who want to work and/or produce in a fair marketplace.
• Both novels follow a group of individuals who understand the importance of property rights.
• The protagonists of both novels are repeatedly undermined by unscrupulous businesspeople, bankers, and politicians who negate property rights and the ability of individuals to work and/or produce in a fair marketplace.
• In both stories, some of the characters choose to remove themselves from what they consider to be a rigged game. The remaining characters do not understand why they are doing this, and speak poorly of them in their absence.
• Both novels include an idyll in a community based on individual primacy and mutual cooperation. This is what the world could be, these books tell us.
• Both of these communities require payment to enter and continued payment to remain. They are not communes. (The community in The Grapes of Wrath is government-sponsored, which is worth noting – as is the fact that the local government actively works to destroy it.)
• Both novels specifically argue that the primary role of any government should be to enforce the rule of law (that is, to protect its citizens from physical harm), and that government should not concern itself with lobbyists and/or those who would seek to manipulate people into unfair trades.
• Both novels include scenes in which characters pass through beautiful, unspoiled land and wish that someone was using that land to produce something.
• Both novels include scenes in which oranges that could have fed starving people are destroyed.
• Both novels acknowledge that the producer, the person who studies and iterates and invents a better way of propagating trees or generating energy, is an essential component of a functioning system.
• Both novels acknowledge that the worker, the person who can execute a task with competence, is an essential component of a functioning system.
• Both novels acknowledge that moochers, looters, zealots, and profiteers ruin the system for everybody. "I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this," Steinbeck wrote – and Rand, twenty years later, taught us how to solve for this particular kind of greed.

The trouble is that Steinbeck specifically writes about going from I to we, and Rand specifically writes about going from we to I.

This may be why the novels have such different endings.

The other problem is that The Grapes of Wrath contradicts itself in several places. (I didn't realize this when I first read it; I only realized it when I started re-reading and thinking about what was actually going on.) In one section Steinbeck writes about the importance of being able to own one's home and farm one's private land, to the extent that he states that what one owns becomes part of one's self, and in another section he writes that the act of ownership literally cuts you off from humanity.

He writes about the individual desire to work and create, describing it as the essence of what it is to be human, and then he writes about the Holy Spirit as a hivemind and implies that joining up with this single soul may also be the essence of what it is to be human.

He valorizes the scientists who improve the production of trees while denigrating the technologists who build machines and the farmers who use tractors instead of getting their hands dirty.

It is unclear, at the end of the book, what kind of world Steinbeck might propose. Perhaps he is unclear of it himself. He writes "Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten," and he ends his book glorifying futile self-sacrifice (we don't actually believe the man Rose of Sharon feeds from her own body survives, after all).

Rand, to her credit, provides the system.

She also writes a non-contradictory text, whether or not you agree with it.

(yes I do mean a non-contradictory text)

(yes that means Eddie does not earn his way into Atlantis)

(Eddie does not think for himself, he "tries to do his best" but allows other people to do his thinking for him)

(go read that first chapter again)

Before I began reading Atlas Shrugged I believed what I had been taught to believe about Ayn Rand. Apparently she promoted the idea of ruthless self-interest without concern for how it might affect others, and she was the favorite author of unscrupulous politicians and businesspeople.

As soon as I started reading not only Atlas Shrugged but also several of her essays, I realized that this wasn't at all what she was advocating.

I also realized Larry and I had come up with many of the ideas in Atlas Shrugged on our own, when we founded the Art Lab and began discussing the nature of reality.

We called our nascent philosophy what-it-is-ism.

Larry and I discovered, on our own, that our first imperative was to survive; our second was to learn something and pass it on (these exact words); our third was to be happy, although the third one naturally follows if the first two are in play.

We believe that things are what they are and they are not what they are not. We believe that concepts have specific meanings and ideas are either coherent or incoherent and music is played either correctly or incorrectly and the math works or it doesn't.

We do not believe in fooling ourselves – or our students – into an unrealistic assessment of our own capabilities. We do believe that we are capable of improving, and are working on improving to the point of mastery.

We believe in removing and/or declining burdens. We also believe in living without grievance.

We believe in honest unequivocal communication.

We believe that problems are solvable and that problem-solving is the process of going from guessing to knowing.

All of this is in Atlas Shrugged, and very little of it is in The Grapes of Wrath.

Ah, you might say, but what about the poor –

GO READ ATLAS SHRUGGED, I might answer. IT SOLVES FOR POVERTY. STOP MISREADING IT AS A BOOK THAT IS ANTI-HUMANITARIAN SIMPLY BECAUSE ITS HEROES ARE DISGUSTED WITH CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS THAT TAKE MONEY WITHOUT PRODUCING ANYTHING.

And what about the people who aren't as clever or as strong or as healthy –

NO, SERIOUSLY, IT SOLVES FOR ALL OF IT. GO READ THAT FORTY-PAGE SPEECH AT THE END OF THE BOOK.

And what about parents and caregivers –

YOU MEAN PEOPLE WHO AREN'T ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN THE LABOR MARKET? HOW DO THEY SURVIVE IN THIS SYSTEM? THERE'S LITERALLY AN ESSAY ABOUT THIS, IT'S FIGURATIVELY CALLED "I'M NOT TELLING YOU NOT TO SUPPORT YOUR FAMILY YOU DINKS" BUT BE CAREFUL BECAUSE THERE'S ANOTHER ESSAY FIGURATIVELY CALLED "IF YOU WANT TO BE LOVED YOU HAD BETTER HAVE SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE TO A LOVING RELATIONSHIP."

But what if I don't have anything to contribute –

And what if I don't want to contribute –

DON'T WORRY. THE BOOK SOLVES FOR YOU, TOO.

(I should state very clearly at this point that I am not interested in basing my own philosophy [that is, my own system of understanding and acting in the world] entirely out of someone else's thoughts)

(that would make me an Eddie, and I would never achieve my potential)

(so I am not an objectivist, and anyway I've heard objectivism is a closed system so it already fails the prime directive)

(I'm also not whatever Steinbeck is)

(whatever that is)

(perhaps The Grapes of Wrath really is incredible)

I sort of wish there was a way to repackage Atlas Shrugged with a different author and a different title and a different cover, so nobody would come to it with any preconceptions, and see how it might be received by a reader who had never heard anything about Ayn Rand.

But the best thing to do may be to give people The Grapes of Wrath first, and then suggest that they follow it up with Atlas Shrugged –

and see whether they come to the same conclusions I did.

(And, as always, please email nicole@nicolediekerfinley.com if you think I'm wrong about something. BE WRONG FAST SO YOU CAN BE RIGHT EVEN FASTER, after all.)