Atlas Shrugged VS Lord of the Rings

In At Home: A Short History of Private Life, the author, Bill Bryson, writes a short bit about John Lubbock.  Among other activities, John Lubbock spent some three months trying to teach his dog to read.  I've also tried to teach my dog to read!  I doubt I went about it with the same scientific rigour with which Mr. Lubbock did.  My efforts were all through teaching my own children to read while making sure the dog was paying attention. 

No, he did not learn to read.  Why a dog can learn to understand and carry out the commands of subtle hand signals but can't learn to distinguish between certain shapes on paper, I don't know.  But, I think we've found our new "Space Race".

Anyway, here's a picture of my cat after reading Atlas Shrugged for a few minutes.  Unlike Fluffy Justin Beeber, I happen to like the book.  Admittedly, as a novel on humans, it's greatly flawed.  As a distopian struggle against the end of humanity, it's great.  True, the Evil threatening the world is of our own doing for not being born beautiful and brilliant, but, still, it's a rousing struggle between Good and Evil.  

I like to pit Atlas Shrugged against The Lord of the Rings.  Here are some of the differences:

1) In Atlas Shrugged, the heroes are beautiful, perfect individuals with the only flaw of not being fully cognizant of just how wonderful they are. 

In LOTR, heroes can be found amongst even the smallest and weakest of beings.

2) In AS, there is no forgiveness for a moment's weakness or for any mistakes.  Actually, the protagonists do not make mistakes. 

In LOTR, the characters learn from their mistakes.  They do the right thing despite personal shortcomings.

3) Neither work has much to do with children, but inferences can be made.  It is implied in AS that children are the by-product of the slack-jawed crowd engaging in a shameful need they can't enjoy because sublime sexual pleasures are only for an incredibly small number of highly attractive people, say three or four.  And then only with Dagny. 

In LOTR, children are lovable, wanted, protected, and trained.  Young boys are reluctantly armed and sent out to fight in a desperate battle to save humanity.  And the boys go.  Very heroic and moving.

4) In AS, there is no attempt to reach out to people with IQs lower than 200, or worse, who are unattractive.  Whenever a minor character in AS starts to see the light, Rand kills them off.   One is born perfect or one is born a sneering, dead-eyed slattern.  She preaches a form of predestination.

In LOTR, characters do change.  Boromir is one.  Gollum questions himself.  Pretty much everyone toys with the idea of using Evil for Good before rejecting the idea.  Even characters lost to Evil are given the chance to change sides, like Saruman.

So, why do I like Atlas Shrugged?  Rand was a master at capturing certain people who litter our modern world -- the vacuous, self-rightous, self-promoting, untalented, entitled, sneering; the taste-makers without taste, the critics without talent, the leaders without vision, our betters without morals.   She skewers such people as they deserve to be.  It's all very entertaining and satisfying.