Kira Ayn Rand's We The Living

1413 Words6 Pages
Eleanor Roosevelt once said “Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life." This same grasp on life coincides with Kira Argounova’s belief that the USSR suppresses the lives of its citizens when she says the USSR “forbids life to those still living”(Rand p.189). By this, Kira explains that this sense of duty the USSR imposes on its citizens is just a manipulation device in which one loses personal identity and in turn the act of being alive. To Kira, living is not only about being physically alive, but more about living every day to its full potential. Rand argues, through We the Living, that to be alive, humans much have the ability to think for oneself, and to be able to come to one’s…show more content…
Having lost all his belonging, as well as his sense of life, with the rule of the Red Party and his aristocratic demise, he is left bitter, helpless, and alone. Leo’s family’s loss represents Kira’s original statement of how the USSR forbids life to those still living, because Leo’s life is essentially taken away when all his property is taken away. Both Kira and Leo’s losses from the Communist revolution put into perspective how many bourgeois families’ lives, through their pleasures, happiness, and passions, were taken away, even though the lives they have are rightfully deserved. In a telling conversion between Leo and his employer, he is asked to do additional volunteer work and says “did it ever occur to you that I have a life to live – in my spare time?” (166), and his employer retorted, “the Soviet State recognizes no life but that of a social class.” (166). The Communist philosophy quite literally expects its citizens to live merely as machines, serving their purpose to the greater good, yet never experiences the pleasures of being alive. Leo is left frustrated and despaired, as many bourgeois were, and began to partake in illegal private trade. This sense of desperation to return to the life of amenities which were at one time rightfully and legally his own, lead him to his arrest and later death. Like Kira, he became consumed with anger and desire to defeat the USSR’s
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