Read It: We The Living

"Kira Argounova entered Petrograd on the threshold of a box car. She stood straight, motionless, with the graceful indifference of a traveler on a luxurious ocean liner, with an old blue suit of faded cloth, with slender sunburned legs and no stockings. She had an old piece of plaid silk around her neck and short tousled hair, and a stockingcap with a bright yellow tassel. She had a calm mouth and slightly widened eyes with a defiant, enraptured, solemnly and fearfully expectant look of a warrior who is entering a strange city and is not quite sure whether he is entering it as a conqueror or a captive." 

Amidst the bleak surroundings that follow the Russian Revolution and faced with an unforeseeable future, Kira Argounova’s goal is to pursue excellence. Her aim is to storm the male bastion of engineering, to march into life like a Viking hero. And for this life "which is a reason unto itself", she is prepared to do anything, even to go with the communist way of life that she doesn’t believe in until she equips herself to fight it back. Kira is but one of the three protagonists. Through Leo, a free spirit like Kira and Andrei, an idealist, a communist party worker the novel brings to light the other tenets to the communist regime and dilemmas dogging the people.

According to Ayn Rand We The Living is the closest to her autobiography, and this is fairly apparent from the details it delves into. The writing transports you to Russia in the 1920s, the inequality, the treatment meted out to erstwhile bourgeois, the glaring poor state of affairs in general. And each of the three main characters strikes a chord. Kira is one of my favourite characters ever; her loyalty to life irrespective of what it throws at her and of how loved ones betray her. The way she sticks to her beliefs through to the end is simply awe-inspiring. “A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.” 

The book is different from Rand's other works in that the characters (the leads and the many other small yet vital ones) are alive and telling us a tale from post revolution Russia. That is, unlike Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead in which characterization is a sheer prop for philosophy and which are replete with lengthy sermons that can be unnerving if you don’t feel the same way (or as much) as Rand about individuality. I know this is precisely why many people stay away from her books. But I’d recommend reading We The Living for the story it narrates, just follow its wonderfully etched characters and take away what you wish to. This book doesn’t preach and it deserves a fair chance - no matter what you think of Rand’s philosophy.

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