We the Living by Ayn Rand Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.95 You Save: $2.04 (26%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of We the Living
Book Review: A definite view of the quirkiness of life.
Summary: 4 Stars
I first saw this book in bookstores when I was in junior college, not more than 16 years old. I looked at its last page (as was my habit) and decided I could not digest the book.But the book persisted. It was there in bookstores even when I became 30 years old and I said there must be something to it. I have to read it. And so I read.
I read it after a tiring journey in which I had not slept for 36 hours and it was so interesting I forgot my tiredness and read it with the customary tears that I shed every time I read a touching Readers Digest story. It must be in my nature to cry.
The plot is clearly absorbing and not an ideal one . As close to reality as mundane life, with its crushed expectations gets to be. But I do not know why Kira is the heroine in the story. It should have been Andrei - the only man who is a man in the entire story. The only man who never betrays his values, the only man with a heart and decency. What does Kira see in Leo? Is Rand trying to portray that women can have no sense of seeing things for what they are? Is Rand saying that women need to doll up and let men love their bodies and not their souls?
True love may be rare, but it better be well deserved! Love may be a religion but it should have a sense of values which allow it to be given to the deserving person. The lover Kira and love itself become some slavish fetter which is loved as a drug addict may love his drug. If this is love and if imagination of love is greater than achieving it in reality as the last passages show then it is a monumental acceptance of the fact that humans are capable of fooling themselves. Kira may have been a good soldier but she did not see the direction she was headed in. That is not anytime the mark of a good soldier at all. Real love should be one which improves one's values and not one which destroys them. Kira did not know the preciousness of love - the immunity it gives to any true love - though Rand imagines and shows that Kira achieves just that! It is the only novel by her I read, so I cannot comment more on this.
Book Review: A haunting book
Summary: 5 Stars
10 years out of Russia I almost forgot how it was over there. This book brought it back, with all the subtlety of a hammer blow. To an American reader the descriptions may seem unreal: "did people really talk that way? behave that way?" Yes, they did, even in the more prosperous post-Stalin times. This is one of the most powerful indictments of collectivism in general and communism in particular - it shows, in stark colors, what this ideology does to its adherents and enemies.Book Review: A mesmerizing read
Summary: 4 Stars
As soon as I started reading this book I could not put it down. It's the best thing I've read in a long time! I can't give it 5 stars because to me the dialogue comes off as kind of stilted and unnatural-sounding--but the dialogue is by no means the most important aspect of the book. It has the kind of propulsive plot that makes you wish you could read faster so you could find out what happens next, and Ayn Rand's descriptive writing is peerless. It really blows my mind to think she only learned English when she was in her twenties. I highly recommend this book to everyone. It is fabulous! I now plan to read everything else Ayn Rand ever wrote.Book Review: A moving story of the Russian Revolution
Summary: 5 Stars
I really enjoyed this novel becuase it dealt with something that the author never mentioned in her later two novels: war. It is a heartbreaking tale of totalitarianism and very readable. Since this is apparently a novelization of her life, it made the story even more compelling. One of the interesting things about this book that makes it different from 'Atlas Shrugged' and 'The Fountainhead' is that it seems written in a wholly different style, which is very stimulating. The reader from Los Angeles is correct in that this book does not contain a point by point refutation of Marx' dialectical materialism. Whereas that would come under the purview of theory, Rand chooses to chronicle the practice (of course, the argument is that it was not applied correctly, yet any capitalist will tell you that the United States of America has not had the ideas of the free-market applied correctly for most of this century, due to elements of socialism creeping in here and there). For a critique of the theory of dialectical Marxism I would suggest von Mises' "Theory and History."Book Review: A must read to avoid this in the future
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the first Ayn Rand book I have ever read. Its length wasn't nearly as intimidating as ATALS SHRUGGED, however once I started reading it the subject matter made me re-think whether or not I wanted to read through this. The depth of political and philosophical issues made me wonder if I had the energy to withstand something of this magnitude. As it was I did have to take a break from reading it half-way through the book. Rand, herself, admits that this is closely autobiographical, yet it is written so that you keep rooting for the good guy hoping that they come out on top in the end, but as Communism kept a firm grasp on the USSR for decades we know that there is little chance that the oppressed citizens are going to find themselves living comfortably in the end. After reading this though, one can understand why Rand promoted the philosophy that she did and championed THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS. Once forced to think about everyone but ones self, a person eventually begins to think only of herself. Politically, socially, psychologically or otherwise people cannot live without balance and by forcing its citizens to live for the collective the Communist party eventually forced them to live for themselves, even unto death.
The writing was descriptive making the realness of Communism more than just history and illuminates just how twisted their campaign became. The revolt that led to the Communist inception was noble indeed, but as the years past it can be seen how fear led them to the same lengths of control that they had previously accused the Czar of perpetrating. Having read 1984 and ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell I found this to be much scarier as not only did this narration depict parts of the Orwellian books that had already played out in Communist Russia it also foreshadowed ideas that are seemingly materializing in the United States; the idea that people were afraid to have their own thoughts, among them.
There were parts of the story that I bristled at. Particularly, Kira's continued devotion to Leo even in the wake of his disrespectful treatment of her. I don't understand how she had the courage to not get married, yet didn't have a problem with his shabby treatment of her. This personal dynamic detracted from her initial desire to be an individual. She wanted to be an engineer, but when that possibility was taken from her she lived for Leo rather than for herself. Victor was, also, a considerable thorn. Part of a classified bourgeois family who find difficulty in acclimating to the new political environment Victor threw his self heart and soul into being accepted by the proletariat to the point of betraying his family. Devotion to one's political convictions should not preclude the protection of one's relatives.
Though it took me a couple of months to read, as it forces the reader to think, I would encourage people to read it. We live in a society that largely over-estimates the abilities of the government and this book shows what can happen when the government is completely in control.