Dystopia and Utopia: The Story of The Two Johns and Other Such Randian Jewels
by Manfred F. Schieder
For someone who likes science fiction as much as I do, Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950) is a must-read. He was a socialist of course, but unfortunately so were and are practically all science fiction writers, with only a few exceptions.
Now Stapledon is a special case which relates closely with Ayn Rand, just as Yevgeny Zamiatin does with his dystopian novel We (1924). It is known that Rand wrote Anthem as the antithesis of We, and drew the correct conclusion by showing that a collectivist society is and ever will be a death guarantee for mankind.
It could be that Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy (1888), which describes a "cooperative commonwealth," also came to Rand’s attention, but there is no information available to determine whether that was the case.
We, as the originator of the argument which Rand developed for Anthem, is just one indication that Rand incorporated in her novels certain “connections” to other works of fiction, in addition to the use of a series of real life facts and certain “impossible situations” as symbols. I’ve been haunted for quite some time by the belief that Rand must have read or at least have heard of the argument of a novel by Olaf Stapledon which was published in 1935-1936: Odd John. The connection is similar to that with Zamiatin’s We.
Perhaps she even read, or at least heard of another dystopian novel of Stapledon’s, Last and First Men (1930). These novels were very popular at that time and are well-known to science fiction fans even today, and Atlas Shrugged itself could be considered a science fiction romance.
Stapledon’s Odd John describes the criminal means (theft and murder) by which a telepathically-endowed human mutant, named John Wainwright, rallies other similar mutants to a desert island where they establish a communal society that is similar to Galt's Gulch in Atlas. The collectivist community is finally destroyed by the armed forces of the reactionary (capitalist?) countries of the world.
Here we have two Johns in two stories, one of them moving towards a communist society, which Rand deduced early in her life to be anathema to mankind’s survival, and the other moving toward a society based on productive individuals who show, by their strike, that a human society depends on the existence of individuals who can freely use the creative power of their brains. Two pairs of opponents confront each other: We and Odd John against Anthem and Atlas Shrugged, with the well-known triumph of the two last mentioned.
Odd John is fully Nietzschean and even Nazi-like, for this "Odd John" destroys—just like Hitler, Mussolini and other such dictators—everything that is in his way. Both Equality 7-2521 and Galt's strikers never destroy anything; they merely set the collectivists on the path to havoc by refusing to collaborate with them.
For sure, the final spark for the marvelous magnus opus of Rand could have been Frank O’Connor’s comment that the idea of the mind on strike would make a very good premise for a novel (a comment made following a phone call from one of Ayn Rand's friends, whose name has never been known!). But she then used the same name as Stapledon did for her main character, placed the society in a gulch instead of on an island, and came to the necessary conclusion that men who base their goals on the correct philosophical basis must finally triumph, while dystopian “ideals” are condemned to destruction by their own irrationality.
Also, this novel may very well have been a splendid opportunity for Rand to showcase her peculiar sense of humor and sprinkle in symbols (as she had already done both in real life and in her earlier novels) such as:
- The first letters of Alissa Rosenbaum’s pseudonym (Ayn Rand) are the same as those of her real name.
- Rand uses the name of a famous typewriter she carried at her arrival in New York as part of her pseudonym.
- The Fountainhead starts and ends with the name of the hero (Howard Roark).
- Francisco d’Anconia heads a Chilean copper company. Before Allende’s dictatorship came to power, a very powerful American copper company operated in Chile. Its name was Anaconda. This company was co-founded by George Hearst, father of publisher William Randolph Hearst, the famous newspaper tycoon whom Ayn Rand used as the prototype for Gail Wynand in her novel The Fountainhead.
- D’Anconia plays with marbles when Dagny visits him in his apartment at the Wayne-Falkland hotel. (Playing with marbles constituted a revealing identification among Maccabeans in their fight against their enemies.)
- Galt appears as a dark silhouette against frosted glass, and Rand herself used a cloak for some photographs depicting her, which constitutes a very peculiar resemblance to one of the most popular pulp fiction heroes of the time, “The Shadow.” During the scene when Francisco defends Rearden's plant from a mob's assault, Rearden views him as a cloak-like figure (“standing as if he wore a cape waving behind him in the wind”); this scene reminds us again of the victorious, righteous figure of “The Shadow.” (Atlas Shrugged, Part 3, Chapter 6)
- Rearden’s gift of a ruby pendant to Dagny recalls the Biblical quotation: “Who can find a virtuous woman? For he price is far above rubies.” (Ronald Merrill: The Ideas of Ayn Rand)
- While Dagny strolls through Galt’s Gulch she finds a man working at a pump. When she comments that he is probably a professor of philology, the man replies that he is a truck driver. Now, it’s really very, very unlikely that Galt took his time to convince a “truck driver” to join the strike. He would have had less trouble convincing Eddie Willers to join. But of all strikers, a truck driver! Yet here Rand creates a magnificent symbol of the fact that everyone can join Objectivism—not just the high and intellectually mighty, but also the common citizen. This is in itself a wonderful Randian construction..
- As Dagny, Galt and the other strikers return to New York, the lights go out. Galt orders “Don’t look down!” thus “saving” Dagny from turning into a pillar of salt in a reference to Lot’s wife. (The Ideas of Ayn Rand, by Ronald E. Merrill, Chapter 5)
- Chapter 36 of Exodus (the Second Book of Moses) mentions “wise men,” and there are 36 strikers in Atlas Shrugged. Additionally, Ronald E. Merrill notes in his book that Jewish scholars established, for numerical reasons, that “God would destroy the earth if it ever lacked a minimum number of good people.” (The number was 36.)
I am sure that this list isn’t complete yet. Surely many other readers of Rand’s books must have found other such oddities and symbols (which, incidentally, is a good reason to read Rand’s works again), and I would surely like to hear what other readers can add.
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