I've been reading this for a week now and I'm almost done. Everyone that I talk to seems to think that it's confusing and they don't get it. Which I don't really understand because it seems to make perfect sense to me. What do you all think or have any of you read it?

From what I've heard a lot of people were somewhat confused at the time the book was originally published, so Rand decided to write Atlas Shrugged. If you are "confused" after Atlas Shrugged, I don't know what to tell you...it is like the Foutainhead times ten. It is like a mallot, every page. But anyway, Atlas Shrugged is my favorite of hers...very philosophical/political. Practically non-fiction.

I wasn't the one who was confused, the people I talked to about it were. I was confused as to why they were confused, of course, I haven't finnished it yet, so maybe it gets more confusing in the last 200 pages.

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Originally posted by Ginny:
I've been reading this for a week now and I'm almost done. Everyone that I talk to seems to think that it's confusing and they don't get it. Which I don't really understand because it seems to make perfect sense to me. What do you all think or have any of you read it?

I loved that novel. It's been years since I ready it, but I wasn't confused in the least. I never finsished Atlas Shrugged, though. I think I got to page 500-something, but the damn things bigger than the bible, and I don't have that kind of time.

It seems as if it is impossible to read the book and come away from it confused. Why? Because it is objectivism. Meaning only 1 right answer for everything. There are no hidden meanings, nothing to interpret, no ambiguity at all. Every single word is clear. That's the point.

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Originally posted by Musicalifragilistic:
It seems as if it is impossible to read the book and come away from it confused. Why? Because it is objectivism. Meaning only 1 right answer for everything. There are no hidden meanings, nothing to interpret, no ambiguity at all. Every single word is clear. That's the point.

I should have mentioned that I found the "philosophy" behind the book too simplistic and cold-hearted, but yet somehow I still enjoyed it as a novel.

Yeah, me too. I was just trying to say I find it hard to believe people are confused by the book.

I didn't think The Fountainhead was confusing at all, but massively boring. Howard Roark has to be the most boring and static protagonist of all time.

That being said, I have enjoyed her other three fiction novels, especially We the Living. Atlas Shrugged would probably be a very good book if she didn't preach so much - it's got a great story.

I agree that it was a tad preachy. For a while, I actually gave objectivism some hard though, wondering if it could be a philosophy that would make sense for me as a human. Of course, at the time, I was like fifteen or sixteen, so very impressionable. Now, based on her philosophies, I think Rand was probably a cold-hearted bitch--but I still love The Fountainhead as a novel.