The Enigma of the Plant “Twenty Century” in Ayn Rand’s Novel “Atlas Shrugged”: Soviet Russia in the Mirror of American Novel

Abstract. The article is devoted to the analysis of the episode connected with the plant The Twentieth Century in the novel of American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged. The goal of the analysis is to track the influence of the October revolution and forced emigration on her major “American” novel. The originality of the research is in the fact that Ayn Rand’s works are almost not studied in the aspect of Trauma Studies. The thoughts that the plant The Twentieth Century is the allusion on the Soviet Russia and its state structure and the destruction of the USSR is predicted in the novel are proved during the analysis. The last one can be explained by Ayn Rand’s relationships with the economists of the Austrian school (L. von Mises and F. von Hayek); their economical theories about the harm of socialism were relevant to her trauma experience, giving it evidence-based and authoritative manner. The analysis reveals the presence of Gogol allusions in the images of the plant masters that make Ayn Rand’s connection with Russian literary tradition deeper. As the result the author made a conclusion that the episode is the essential traumatic component in the writer’s art works.

Keywords: American literature, American novel, Ayn Rand, Soviet Russia, Trauma Studies, Literary Trauma Studies, trauma experience.