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A
Revolution in Making
 Ever
since the genesis of earth, the spirit of man has been the fountainhead
of mankind's success. Right from Noah, the sailor who saved civilization
from the 'Great Flood', till date, it has been the human force that
has worked wonders. All that we are today is a gift of human endeavor.
There is a greatness of human spirit that is indomitable. It is
the glorification and appraisal of this human spirit that is the
pivot of Ayn Rand's life.
Alice
Rosenbaum, better known as Ayn Rand, was born on February 2, 1905,
in St Petersburg, Russia to a middle class Jewish businessman Zinovy
Zacharovich and his wife Anna. Zinovy Zacharovich was a successful
pharmacist in St Petersburg. Alice grew up in a non-religious home
with her two sisters Natasha and Nora.
Alice
adored her father as an honorable and principled man. Her mother,
Anna considered herself an intellectual and attended many lectures
and theatrical productions. She often commented to Alice that raising
children was a 'hateful duty', but was concerned and attentive to
her family needs.
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Alice was closer to her father. The simple reason being that she found her father and herself intellectually compatible.
Being an autodidact, she taught herself to read at the age of six. Doing this, she found her first image of a heroine in herself. Unlike her sisters Natasha and Nora, Alice had little interest in children's stories and preferred reading young boy's magazines filled with tales of heroes, achievers, and adventures.
Finding the Direction
In 1913, i.e. at the age of eight, she discovered her first fictional hero in a French magazine. The character was 'Cyrus', a character from The Mysterious Valley, who defeated an Indian Raja's attempt to overthrow British rule. Cyrus became her ideal man, a man in complete control of himself and his destiny and triumphant over forces beyond man's control. This hero's heroic flourish blessed her with a heroic vision, which sustained her throughout life. At the age of nine, Alice decided to make fiction |
writing her career. The very next year she began trying to write novels.
The
Turmoil
Life
was moving smoothly for her when all of a sudden Alice's life was
thrust into chaos and confusion. After living comfortably under
the Czar, Russia went spinning from Monarchy to Democracy to Communism
during her 13th year.
Once
the Bolshevik began its reign of power, Alice found herself in poverty
as her father's business was nationalized for the 'new society'.
This turbulence of fortune metamorphosed her physically and intellectually
and Alice argued that the most repugnant of Marxist doctrine was
secular altruism that professed the sacrifice of the individual
to the common good.
In
1918, Russia surrendered to Germany, a Civil War began and Alice's
family fled to Crimea where she discovered the works and heroes
of Victor
Hugo. About Hugo she later reflected by saying : "Victor
Hugo is my favorite writer in all world literature, not for the
content of his ideas, but for his literary method, and he is the
only writer who had some influence on my style of writing."
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