Amazing Thoughts - From Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Currently deep into the Magnum Opus of literary fiction - Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. With every description vivid, every tiny detail non-discountable, well she nearly captures it all. People may say that she has this obsession with the 'minutiae' of every event. However, I feel, it is this knack for freezing a moment, capturing every single detail in that scene and then unfreezing it all with as much ease is what makes her a compelling writer. Beneath all the fiction there is a fine thread of reality, all it needs is a bit of thinking... There is this particular narrative where she talks about the "Impact of broken faith and trust in childhood". Such a hard hitting truth! Simply stunning. I have reproduced the piece verbatim to avoid diluting the writer's intent...

"The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot in the Taggart estate. Eddie Willers, aged seven, liked to come and look at that tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by a top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of the string. He felt safe in the oak tree’s presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength.
One night, lightening struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside – just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it.Years later, he heard it said that children should be protected from shock, from their first knowledge of death, pain or fear. But these had never scarred him; his shock came when he stood very quietly, looking into the black hole of the trunk. It was an immense betrayal – the more terrible because he could not grasp what it was that had been betrayed. It was not himself, he knew, nor his trust; it was something else. He stood there for a while, making no sound, then he walked back to his home. He never spoke about it to anyone, then or since."

Am really speechless! Hats off to her ingenuity...