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Ayn Rand: In Pursuit of Happiness

Posted on Jun 14, 2018

Writers wear many hats. They aren’t just writers; they’re also directors, educators, activists, and so much more. Ayn Rand, a Russian American author, has successfully made a name for herself, not only as a writer across various media, but also as an activist and philosopher pioneering the Objectivist movement. Though she has since passed on, her legacy lives on in the pages of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

Ayn Rand, as she is contemporarily known, was actually born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum. Being born in St. Petersburg to a middle-class family meant that she had access to education. As early as eight years old, she was already writing screenplays; and at ten, she started writing novels.

In 1917, when she was twelve years old, she and her family fled to the Crimean peninsula during the February Revolution and the rule of the Bolsheviks. They stayed there until Rand graduated from high school, then returned to St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to return to the life they previously enjoyed. They ended up living in poverty.

After the revolution, Russian universities were opened for attendance to women. Rand, at the age of sixteen, became one of the first women to enter Petrograd State University. Majoring in history and social pedagogy, Rand was introduced to many philosophers and writers, such as Plato, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Hugo, and Dostoevsky, who later influenced her own writing. In 1924, she finished her education and was purged from the university, along with other “bourgeois” students. Around this time, she started using Ayn Rand as her penname.

Rand visited relatives in Chicago after her graduation. She also visited New York and fell in love with the city almost immediately. So she decided to stay and become a screenwriter. In order to do this, she stayed with her relatives for a few months before moving to Hollywood, California, to pursue her writing dreams. She took on various jobs in Hollywood in order to support her writing.

Her first screenplay was Red Pawn, bought by Universal Studios in 1932. Unfortunately, it didn’t make it to the silver screen. This was followed by Night of January 16th in 1934, a courtroom drama. The film was successful in Hollywood, as well as on Broadway, where it was adapted as a stage play. The Broadway version included audience participation as the jury, making each show unique for each audience.

Rand later forayed into publications, with the semiautobiographical novel We the Living being her first book. She also wrote a novella called Anthem, a dystopian story set in the future, wherein a totalitarian collectivism has taken over the world. In this dystopian future, the word “I” has been replaced completely with “We.”

Rand became highly involved with politics in the ’40s. Her 1943 novel The Fountainhead is about an architect named Howard Roark and his struggles against “second-handers,” people who attempt to live through others. Unlike We the Living, Rand did not directly contradict collectivism, rather used philosophical ideas in order to contrast individualism and collectivism and man’s motivations to choose one over the other. The novel was a success and gave Rand financial security for a long time. She sold the film rights to Warner Bros. in 1943 and returned to Hollywood to write the screenplay. She wrote other screenplays as well, including Love Letters and You Came Along. Rand returned to New York City in 1951.

Six years after returning to New York, Rand published what is now considered her best work: Atlas Shrugged. The novel is set in a dystopian Unites States where industrialists, scientists, and artists go on strike and move to the mountains in order to build an independent economy. The novel introduces Objectivism, the philosophy Rand is most known for. The novel marked the end of Rand’s career as a novelist but debuted her to becoming a philosopher.

Objectivism is Rand’s most popular contribution to philosophy. The core of most of her stories is the idea that there is no greater moral goal than achieving happiness without wish or whim.

In the ’60s and ’70s, Rand promoted Objectivism by conducting lectures and writing nonfiction books. She spoke at Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, and similar institutions. Her support for issues like abortion rights was unrestrained, and her opposition to the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War was unrelenting.

In 1974, Rand had to undergo surgery after having contracted lung cancer from decades of perennial smoking. She retired from writing in 1976, and toward the end of the ’70s, her involvement in the Objectivist movement started to decline. One of her final projects was the never-completed TV adaptation of her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. She passed away in March 6, 1982, at her home in New York City.

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In this series, we shine a spotlight on the most unsung heroes of language: punctuation marks. For this part of the series, we’re going to talk about quite a breathtaking mark. Like others, this one gets overlooked a lot, but if not for this particular punctuation mark, we probably would have run out of air. Let’s all take a pause and talk about the comma.

Behind the Mark

We can trace the roots of the comma back to third century BC in a system of single dots that indicated the “amount of breath” one was to take when reading verses aloud. The comma is a mark that is used across different languages and is available in different typefaces.

The comma shares a symbol similar to the apostrophe and the single quotation mark: a small dot with a tail. The difference is in placement because unlike the apostrophe and the single quotation mark, the comma is placed at the bottom of the line.

How to Use It in English

There are several uses for the comma, but generally, the comma has two functions: pauses and linkage. This is because the commas are used to distinguish separate but related ideas.

For one, commas are used to separate items in a list. The use of the comma in lists indicates not only separation but also the link between all the items within the list.

The new subjects include geography, biology, ethnography, and statistics.

Another important use of the comma is to separate clauses. Two dependent clauses may be separated by a comma. This again goes back to the idea that commas are used for distinguishing related ideas.

Ginger wanted to become a doctor, but she also wanted to teach.

Some adverbs also require the use of the comma when they are used. These include therefore, however, nevertheless, and others. Should these adverbs be used in the middle of a sentence, they would have to be preceded and followed by a comma.

Furthermore, studies show that smoking causes harm to both the smoker and anyone inhaling the smoke for cigarettes. It is recommended, therefore, that smoking be banned from public places.

In some cases, commas are used in place of parentheses, as in the case of parenthetical phrases. These phrases contain information that are not necessary to the meaning of the sentence.

Kath’s grandmother, whom she considers her closest relative, will be attending her graduation.

The comma is also a valuable punctuation mark when using vocatives and quotations.

In his speech today, the mayor said, “Students who apply for scholarships will also be eligible to receive a monthly allowance.” And that, Rose, is why you should aim for better grades this semester.

The comma also has plenty of uses outside of grammar. In mathematics, commas are used to separate numerical values. They are also used to separate geographical locations, names, and titles, as well as dates.

There are 525,600 minutes in one year.

I used to live in Nashville, Tennessee.

Today’s keynote speaker is Charles Xavier, PhD.

In speech as well as literature, commas mark a pause (as opposed to the full stop indicated by periods). The comma also retained its original use of marking breaths.

The Oxford Comma

One of the most controversial issues surrounding the comma is its elevated form, the Oxford comma. The Oxford comma is a highly contested and highly polarizing use of the mark. People either feel that it is absolutely necessary or absolutely useless.

The Oxford comma, or the serial comma, is an “optional” comma that comes before the word and on the last item of a list. For cases such as single-word lists, the serial comma may seem unnecessary, such as in the example below.

Popular dog breeds for large families include the Golden Retriever, the Labrador Retriever and the Newfoundland.

However, some lists may be confusing without the extra comma. Read this sentence below to see what I mean.

The lawyer’s clients include a teacher, a newly divorced mom and an accused murderer.

See the problem? Without the Oxford comma, two meanings could be gleaned from the above sentence: the lawyer has three distinct clients, or the lawyer’s client is a teacher, mom, and murderer all in one. Here it is easy to see the importance of the Oxford comma.

As is the case with plenty of rule makers (grammarians and linguists included), one of the aims is to standardize the use of the Oxford comma, making it more than just an option. While practitioners of the language are yet to come to an agreement, for now, the rule of thumb is to follow what the style guide you’re using says about the subject. For example, most academic style guides always require an Oxford comma, but most publication style guides don’t. It all boils down to whom you’re writing for.

Phew! Safe to say, that was more than just a pause. Safe to say, the comma is one punctuation mark that’s sure to pack a punch. We hope you learned plenty today, and we hope you stick around for the rest of 1-Hour Proofreading’s Punctuation Series!

Still unsure about the comma? We’ve got your back! Send your documents through our main page here at 1hourproofreading.com and we’ll make sure to keep all of them in check.

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1-Hour Proofreading is a growing start-up offering fast and efficient editing services at a reasonable price with the assurance that the document is publication-ready the soonest you need it. Its team of highly competent professional editors is committed to helping those in need of quality editing services while facing tough deadlines.

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