Tundraco's Daily Living Guide to Book Reviews
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Tundraco's Daily Living Guide to Book Reviews |
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Three Plays Night of January 16th, Think Twice, & Ideal By Ayn Rand Signet (2005), 304 pages. ISBN 10: 0451214668 ISBN 13: 978-0451214669 |
Reviewed by Israel Drazin - January 13, 2010
Ayn Rand stresses a philosophy of Objectivism: people must pursue their objectives and let nothing stand in their way.
This seems to reflect the philosophy of Erich Fromm who wrote that people should be all that they can be, a theme that the US army accepted for its recruitment drive in the early 1980s. However, neither Fromm nor the Army went to Rand’s extreme. Rand writes that people should be "selfish." Altruism, any concern for others, is "an evil," "a crime" against one’s self. Thus she had a sexual affair with another man during her marriage, an affair that her husband knew about and suffered.
Paul Gauguin may have been a Rand hero. He abandoned his wife, children and lucrative job. He betrayed his friends and fled his country in his quest to paint, and he was successful. Another example, one mentioned in Rand’s last play, is a man driving a car at ninety miles an hour to get to his destination. He runs over an old lady and doesn’t stop or look back.
Thus the main character in the first of her three plays, her only successful play, was a thief and rapist, an embezzler like the recently imprisoned Bernie Madoff. He wanted money and let no one stop him. Rand asks her readers to decide if they think that the rapist is the ideal man. She admits that he is her ideal.
The second play is similar. It did not appear on stage. Many people have an ideal in life, but when the opportunity arrives to achieve it, they refuse it. Rand’s play shows examples of how many people in all social strata fail. One is handed his goal but refuses it because at the last minute he prefers money instead, another because of his wrong-headed idea about religion, another because his wife does not want what he wants, another because of sex, while still another, as so many people, has a goal that is so abstract and amorphous that when he sees the chance to obtain his goal, he does not recognize it. Two characters do what Ayn Rand’s thinks is right: one kills himself to attain his objective; the other lets a person die.
The third play, which was also never on stage, is a cleverly constructed murder mystery. The murdered man is an altruist. He helps people with his enormous wealth by giving what he feels is appropriate, but never ask what the person wants. Everyone in his house, every suspect, except one, hates him for his help. Ayn Rand wrote that anyone who truly understands her philosophy can figure out who is the murderer, but most people, she admits, are stymied.
These are the only plays that Rand wrote. They exude her philosophy in fascinating dramatic ways. Readers are challenged to decide whether they agree with her.
Dr. Israel Drazin is the author of fifteen books, including a series of five volumes on the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible, which he co-authors with Rabbi Dr. Stanley M. Wagner, and a series of four books on the twelfth century philosopher Moses Maimonides, the latest being Maimonides: Reason Above All, published by Gefen Publishing House, www.gefenpublishing.com. The Orthodox Union (OU) publishes daily samples of the Targum books on www.ouradio.org
