"The only hero [Kira] had known was a Viking whose story she had read as a child; a Viking whose eyes never looked farther than the point of his sword, but there was no boundary for the point of his sword; a Viking who walked through life, breaking barriers and reaping victories, who walked through ruins while the sun made a crown over his head, but he walked, light and straight, without noticing its weight; a Viking who laughed at kings, who laughed at priests, who looked at heaven only when he bent for a drink over a mountain brook and there, over-shadowing the sky, he saw his own picture; a Viking who lived but for the joy and the wonder and the glory of the god that was himself."
-We The Living p. 49
One can see the ideals of Ayn Rand embodied in this story. It's about living, about being and not getting caught up in the details and drudgery of life. It's easy to see the destruction that the Viking normally is thought of as bringing, but Rand finds away of finding the beauty in it as well. It's the beauty yet rugged nature of the Viking. The Viking is only concerned with himself--which is the individual value that Rand is known for. In a simplistic form the Viking embodies the hero that she came to fully write about in works such as Atlas Shrugged.
So what is the lesson that the Viking brings?
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