"If I wanted to worry so much about symbolism (beyond that in the work, for the work), I'd go back to high school English class. "
While to the discerning reader, that may be the case, there are clearly others who, upon reading such tripe, will take up the cause promoted by her books. So, the symbolism is certainly there, whether you care about it or not. However, if you don't care about it, you can't begin to understand the people who have incorporated such concepts into their beliefs and actions.
In many cases, this is the root philosophy building up to anti-union and anti-government sentiments. And the fallacy there is the notion that everyone, when left to their own devices, are all budding John Galts. But, that's clearly not the case, EVER, as demonstrated, over and over, throughout history. The near slave labor conditions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is what spurred the creation of unions. These workers could never be John Galts, because they had ZERO power and ZERO resources. And the people that ran these factories had might on their side.
Likewise, one can consider the American Indians, to be John Galt-like, and the lack of a common government that could command the total resources of the Indian tribes again allowed those with "might," i.e., the US Army, to take those lands away from the Indians and "give" them to the settlers that moved in. Of course, it's unclear whether the Indians could have ever won, given that they were numerically outnumbered, but, they probably could have made it a lot more difficult, e.g., the defeat of Custer.
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Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize