First Place

Lori Thomas, Christiana, TN

What was your initial response to the novel(s)? In what ways has reading Ayn Rand inspired you and the choices you have made in your life?

I first encountered Ayn Rand’s work almost twenty years ago as a high school student. I noticed an advertisement for an essay contest on a school bulletin board. In search of scholarship money, I decided to enter, even though I had never heard of a book called The Fountainhead. I remember thinking two things during that initial reading: this book is different, and this book is the best thing I’ve ever read. I didn’t win the money, but I was too busy rereading the novel to care. I read it again hoping to understand why I was in love with Howard Roark. Roark possessed a particular trait that shouldn’t be admirable, yet it was the quality I admired most in him. Howard Roark was selfish. The idea that selfishness is morally good was revolutionary to me. Understanding that selfishness is a virtue has enriched my life more than anything else.

Growing up in the Bible Belt of Tennessee, I was taught that selfish people were immoral. Parents bragged about how they sacrificed for their children. Ministers preached about how God sacrificed his son Jesus. People did things out of obligation, whether they associated with “friends” they pretended to like or stayed with abusive husbands for the sake of the children. Everyone I knew said things like, “My goodness, you can’t do that. What will people think?”

What I didn’t understand as a young person is that my selflessness–constantly considering what everyone thought and trying to make everyone else happy–was making me miserable. It was impossible to do and it killed my self-esteem. I was a kid afraid to raise her hand in school. Even though I was an A student who knew the answers, part of me always doubted that I was right. I wouldn’t stand up for myself when people hurt me, particularly when the ones hurting me were people who were supposed to care about me. I felt like maybe I deserved the pain and I just didn’t understand love. If I didn’t understand who created God or why I should repeatedly forgive those who hurt me, maybe it was because I just wasn’t smart enough to understand religion. I blamed myself for things that weren’t my fault. I spent most of my childhood feeling stupid and overwhelmed. That all started to change with The Fountainhead.

Roark didn’t consider what people thought. He even says to Toohey, “I don’t think of you.” Roark didn’t define himself in relation to anyone. He was the first person I met–fictional or real–who lived his entire life selfishly and did not apologize for it. “I will have built Cortlandt” was a powerful line for a kid like me who had never heard anyone so certain of himself. Roark’s selfishness put him in control of his life. When he got fired, when he was broke, when the woman he loved tried to ruin him, he still had the moral certainty to know he would triumph. He had self-esteem. He had confidence in his own judgment. Roark’s example was such a contrast to my life that, as clichéd and hyperbolic as it sounds, it saved my life. I started to think that maybe the moral precepts I’d been taught just might be upside-down. Maybe selfishness would make me happy. Maybe selfishness was morally good.

I soon read Atlas Shrugged and every other piece of Miss Rand’s writing I could find. After meeting Francisco, Rearden, and Galt, the world began to seem knowable and bearable. It took years of studying Objectivism to fully understand that man needs his mind to survive and that selflessness destroys the mind. Atlas Shrugged showed all of society collapsing because of altruism. I would have collapsed, too. Without Objectivism, I may well have ended up like Catherine in The Fountainhead–unable to desire anything. I may have been Cherryl in Atlas Shrugged, whom the world so overwhelmed that she killed herself. I didn’t want either of those ends.

Slowly, I started making different decisions. Because of the examples of Roark and the Atlas heroes, I felt capable of handling my life. I stood up for myself when people hurt me. I lived alone when I never thought I would have the courage to do so. I voiced my disagreement, even if I did so quietly and was the only one in the room to hold my particular view. I did what I wanted at my own wedding despite family who said I should sacrifice my happiness for others. Yes, I was expected to do what others wanted, at my wedding, when my fiancé and I were paying for it. Before Rand, I felt guilty if I placed my own happiness above others’. I felt I owed everyone everything–everyone but myself. I do not feel guilty anymore, and Ayn Rand is the reason. Her heroes of selfesteem showed me how to live. The first lesson I learned from her writing remains the most inspirational: my life is my own.

I don’t know how that essay contest flyer ended up at my small-town high school. I am grateful to the unknown person who posted it, and I am grateful forever to Ayn Rand. One of my favorite scenes in The Fountainhead is the one in Monadnock Valley with Roark and the boy on the bicycle. Rand says Roark gave the boy “the courage to face a lifetime.” Rand is Roark, and I am the kid on the bicycle. Ayn Rand gave me the courage to face my lifetime, and that is the reason I say things like “she saved my life.” I say it, because she did.