The Fountainhead

Have you ever sat row upon row, staring at the backs of other students, and being bored out of your mind? Have you ever stood up in front of a classroom of silent students and talked about a particular topic for an agonizing few hours? All you do is listen to the teacher without voicing your outlook. If you have, then you are aware with what Paulo Freire defines as the “banking concept of education” from his paper “The Banking Concept of Education”. He defines this concept as harmful to the…

Exile is often associated with punishment, the result of a wrongdoing. It can consume the human spirit, creating a longing for home and comfort. However, through the hardships of isolation, a person can find themselves discovering their gumption and stride in life. This can be readily seen in Tobias Wolff’s Old School, where an unnamed narrator attends a high-class preparatory school which has an extremely competitive focus on literature. In the story, three authors, Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and…

Bestowing a Heavenly Atmosphere Upon a Bland Planet The inner conflict between the pressures of society and the innate passions of the individual often arises, and social pressure often dominates. As a result, visceral inclinations of the soul can only manifest in the mind, having no bearing on external conduct. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece, this initially is the case: Jane upholds, in her mind, values that contradict wholly Victorian ones, but does nothing to bring upon…

When Mr. Weidler asks Roark why he must be so “fanatical and selfless” (196) and refuse the Manhattan Bank Building contract on principle, he evinces two fallacious dichotomies within his own mind— two dichotomies that have facilitated the corruption and denigration of morality throughout man’s history: morality versus practicality, and morality versus selfishness. Not only is a rational code of ethics profoundly efficacious and practical in guiding the life of whomever abides by it, but also…

From the most obvious or simplified version of history, the 20th century made a clearly distinct jump in scientific advancements compared to any other period in humankind. Modern innovations such as nuclear power plants, the digital computer, or multi-billion dollar space shuttles seem to generate from a collective source that began in the early 1900s and onwards. What caused such rapid leaps to be made within such widely diverse fields of science? By all accounts, historians of science relate…

Upon beginning Ayn Rand’s novel Anthem, the reader will immediately notice one thing: the point of view. Anthem is written in first person point of view, which sets it apart from Rand’s other novels such as The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged, both written in third person. Furthermore, it is written in first person plural, a point of view that is unusual considering that the narrator, the protagonist called Equality 7-2521, is referring to himself. This use of first person plural pronouns while…

How effective were the Late Qing Reforms of Empress Dowager Cixi in modernizing early 20th century China 1902-1908 INTRODUCTION Empress Dowager Cixi (alternatively Tz’u-his) has traditionally been characterized as a powerful obstacle to reform; promulgating Qing conservatism, Manchu values and neo-Confucianism, and, throughout the second half of the 19th century, stolidly resisting political reform. However, from her return to court in 1902 to her death, a dramatic revolution in Cixi’s approach…

n Plato 's Republic, an analogy is struck between the state of the city and the state of the soul. While, in the latter case, a well balanced, or just, soul is one that is commanded by reason, and in which the spirited and appetitive parts of the soul play subordinate roles, a well balanced, or just, city is one in which the rulers are commanded by reason, the soldiers by spirit, and the laymen by appetites. The difficulty implicit in this state of affairs is that it does not appear, on…

and in support of a theory that suggests unwise decisions. Lastly, my third argument for ethical egoism has to do with the fact that Altruism is intrusive and self-serving. Ayn Rand said that it does not respect individuality, she authored The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. She was massively in support of ethical egoism, and her reason or arguments for supporting ethical egoism aligns with mine. Her first reason was that the moral duty of selfishness, aided in preserving our…

Macbeth is a tragedy play written by William Shakespeare in 1606 and published in 1623. Shakespeare created this play during the Elizabethan era, and was highly influenced by ‘The Great Chain of Being’, which the social structure of the time. This play revolves around a noble that soon changes after he meets three witches on his way home from a battle and they tell him of three prophecies, which spark his interest and causes worry when they start coming true. These prophecies start to occupy his…