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    A Study Guide for Ayn Rand's "The Night of January 16th"
    A Study Guide for Ayn Rand's "The Night of January 16th"
    A Study Guide for Ayn Rand's "The Night of January 16th"
    Ebook46 pages35 minutes

    A Study Guide for Ayn Rand's "The Night of January 16th"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Ayn Rand's "The Night of January 16th", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateMay 15, 2018
    ISBN9781410393272
    A Study Guide for Ayn Rand's "The Night of January 16th"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Ayn Rand's "The Night of January 16th" - Gale

      18

      Night of January 16th

      Ayn Rand

      1934

      Introduction

      Ayn Rand's Night of January 16th (1933) was a successful Broadway play and has many attractive elements of a legal thriller: plot twists and suspense. Unfortunately, its gimmick of a jury drawn from audience members to decide the verdict of the trial that makes up the body of the play, and therefore the outcome of the final scene of the play, is not available to readers of the text. However, Rand considered far more important than any of the play's literary qualities its usefulness as a platform for projecting the ideals of her objectivist philosophy. Rand believed in a sort of hypercapitalism, in which leading entrepreneurs, whom she unashamedly thought to be on a higher level than most human beings, should be free to pursue their own interests with absolute selfishness and with everyone below acting in the same way but under their guidance, so that society as a whole would benefit as everyone fulfilled and enriched themselves. After writing successful novels in the 1940s and 1950s, Rand devoted herself to lecturing and writing solely to promote objectivism. She succeeded to the degree that many of her followers and readers obtained the highest government positions and worked to implement her ideas.

      Author Biography

      Rand Was Born In St. Petersburg, Russia, On February 2, 1905. Her Birth Name Was Alisa Zinov' Yevna Rosenbaum, But Throughout Her Adult Life She Used Her Pen Name Ayn Rand (Whose Origin And Meaning Are Obscure). Her Family Was Jewish But Not Particularly Religious. Her Father, Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum, Was A Pharmacist; He Owned A Large Building As A Rental Property, Which Contained His Pharmacy And The Family Apartment. Rand Attended A Prestigious Private School, The Stoiunina Gymnasium, Where Her Best Friend, Olga, Was The Sister Of The Later Prominent Novelist Vladimir Nabokov. After The Communist Revolution, Rand'S Family Was Dispossessed Of Its Property, And During The Russian Civil War They Fled To Territory Controlled By The White Anti-Communist Faction In The Crimea, Making The Thousand-Mile Trip On Foot. They Eventually Ended Up Back In Their Home City In Very Reduced Circumstances.

      Because in the Soviet Union universities were free and open to women, Rand was able to take a degree in philosophy (though not without a hiatus caused by her expulsion for coming from a bourgeois background) and spent a year at graduate school in film studies. Rand took the opportunity in 1926 to travel to the United States, where she had relatives. She lived with her extended family in Chicago for several months, perfecting her English, before they bought her a train ticket for Hollywood. They sent her with a letter of introduction from a relative who owned a movie theater to the prominent producer Louis B. Meyer. Rand took various jobs in Hollywood, working on the

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