A review by dbzvin
We the Living by Ayn Rand

2.0

“We have to answer this! If we don’t—history will answer it for us. And we shall go down with a burden on our shoulders that will never be forgiven! What is our goal, comrades? What are we doing? Do we want to feed a starved humanity in order to let it live? Or do we want to strangle its life in order to feed it?”
- Rand, Ayn. We the Living (p. 389). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Fiction is designed to challenge us. As a registered democrat, I wanted to know more about Ayn Rand's work since it had a major cultural impact on the neoconservative movement. I chose her first published novel as a starting point, eventually I'll go through her whole catalog (currently I'm reading Atlas Shrugged).

I won't spend a lot of time explaining why Ayn Rand is a brilliant philosopher, story teller, political commentator, capitalist, and some may argue anarchist. Her depiction of the state only producing evil is very one-note, but her points are valid and worth our consideration. This review is solely on the scope of the book as a work of fiction.

Sure, fiction is a powerful tool to explore allegory but when Ayn Rand is hellbent on allegory, it's borderline preachy, and I think that can be said about her whole fiction catalog: Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem, and now We the Living.

Kira Argounova is a strong-minded and outspoken young woman during the Russian Revolution. We see the effects life under totalitarian communist Russia in such horrid detail that any room for hope or optimism is crushed. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth in repetitive fashion through propaganda speeches, group-think dialog, and even the description of state-issued rations can bring about that sensation of stale bread. Kira falls in love with a man, Leo Kovalensky, who we presume is in trouble with the Soviet state, who at the beginning mistakes her as a prostitute and they end up living together. At the same time, Kira enrolls in an education program to study engineering. Listening to lectures propagandizing Leninist ideas she runs into her fair share of communist/socialist students and active members of Russia's secret police, one of which is Andrei Taganov. Andrei is romantically interested in Kira and together they all form the love triangle, if one defines love as the terms of self-interest. Leo and Kira, I feel, are in an open relationship but at the same time Leo is jealous of Andrei, and Andrei doesn't like Leo. Kira, although begins the story as a strong characters that professes no attachment to people (like some kind of ambitious logic machine).

The book felt dated and the writing prose okay. I can see Rand's Objectivist thought this early in her career in parts of the story. The proletarian speeches capture the spirit of the Russian Revolution. And the characters who fight for their desire to live, live in making their own choices, are admirable and compelling in their own right.