Ayn Rand1905-1982

Early Life

• Born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1905

• Father was a pharmacy owner

• By age 9, wanted to be a fiction writer

• As a young girl, witnessed 1917 Bolshevik Revolution (which she opposed)

• Family moved to the Crimea to avoid the war (Ukraine)

• Communists seized father’s business; near starvation for the family

Education• Attended University of

Petrograd

• Studied philosophy & history

• Did not study literature because she did not want to focus on writers who bored her and that she despised

Emigration

• 1926 -- left USSR for America

• No intention of returning

• Moved to Hollywood to become a screenwriter

• 1929 -- married actor Frank O’Connor

Writings

• Considered herself a European writer

• Red Pawn - 1932 first screenplay

• Night of January 16th - Broadway play

• We the Living - first novel

–completed in 1933; finally published in 1936

–Based on her years under Soviet rule

• The Fountainhead - began in 1935; published in 1943–Rejected 12 times

–Protagonist is Howard Roark, Rand’s “ideal man”

• Atlas Shrugged - began in 1935; published in 1957

–An “intellectual mystery”

–Most famous work

• Anthem - finished in 1937; published in England in 1938, America in 1946

–Novelette about the danger of collectivism

–Focuses on a society where the individual has no value

Philosophy• Realized that she needed to

identify the philosophic principles that created a “hero” to write well

• Needed to “formulate a ‘philosophy for living on earth’”

• Philosophy is called “Objectivism”

• Focuses on the importance of the individual

• The Fountainhead shows this ideal hero

• Mike Wallace Interview

Morality of Man

• Morality rooted in Survival and man survives through Reason

• Morality is really man’s achievement of his own habits

• Man should only be influenced by SELF ONLY…not the church, government, or society’s institutions (marriage)

• Man doesn’t have to sacrifice himself to others to be moral or have self esteem

• Self esteem determined by himself

In Her Own Words

• What is Love?

• What is Education?

Final Notes

• Every book Rand published is still in print

• Hundreds of thousands of copies are still sold each year

• So far, more than 20 million copies have sold