“Man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute” (Rand, 1996, p. 1074).

       Long after the glorious Atlantis disappeared from horizon, the lost continent has become a fortress archetype that secures an individual spiritual garden beyond geographic scales. Ayn Rand constructed her Atlantis out of a dichotomous perception of reality under the hegemonic control of reasoning. The idealized miniature world was inhabited by Rand’s heroes imprinted with her personality.

Ayn Rand, born Alice Rosenbaum, was the eldest daughter of Fronz Rosenbaum and Anna Rosenbaum. Fronz Rosenbaum was a self-made man from a poor Jewish family and owned his own chemist shop in St. Petersburg. What Rand could remember of her uncaring father was a silent man with “strong convictions” towards whom she remained a “strong affection, a dutiful ‘official’ affection” (Branden, 1986, p. 4). Anna Rosenbaum, the dominant figure in the family, was a responsible homemaker and a dedicated mother for her three daughters. The closeness, however, did not solicit from Rand any love for her mother. Anna Rosenbaum was very interested in social life and Rand was the opposite. The personality conflict led to the mother’s dissatisfaction with Rand’s “every respect” (Branden, p. 5) except intelligence. In return, Rand’s disdain for her mother’s sociable character was later to be exemplified by the “emptiness of spirit” (Branden, p. 5) in her works. Branden commented that her father’s indifference and her mother’s disapproval provoked “a process of self-protective emotional repression” (p. 5). Consequently, intelligence that had won Rand the recognition from adults became the weapon to fend off her anguish towards her parents and the external world. 挺有意思，往下瞧瞧 »