28 : The Great Oak Tree

This quote is from the infamous ‘Atlas Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand. Regardless of one’s views on Ayn Rand or capitalism, which I hear this book had a big influence on, this metaphor for the institution of America as The Great Oak Tree always stuck with me. Big and mighty on the outside, revealed by a bolt of lightening to be an already dead hollow shell, rotten on the inside. Whoa. It resonated with me years ago when I first read it, it resonates even more today. Feels like it’s time to speak about it.

The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot on 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 the 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 a 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, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it 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.

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 the house. He never spoke about it to anyone, then or since.

- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged