Characteristics
The archetype of the Randian hero is the creative individualist. Though Rand rejected the notion that individuals have obligations towards one another, her heroes are marked by an essential generosity, for the reason that they act out of compassion and empathy rather than guilt. Rand's fiction displays a self-consciously Promethean sense of life, declaring through her characters the heroic value of self-assertion in the face of the established order.
Generally a Randian hero is characterized by radical individualism, moral resolution, intelligence/aptitude, self-control, emotional discipline, and (frequently, but not always) attractive physical characteristics in the eyes of other Randian heroes. Rand's heroes are tall, strong and upright; the females share slender figures, defiant stances and the impression of internal calmness, while the males are physically hard and supple, often with gray eyes. Jerome Tuccille described U.S. President Gerald Ford as physically exemplifying the Randian hero—"tall, blond, clear-eyed, ruggedly handsome and well-built".
Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek situates the Randian hero in Rand's fiction in the "standard masculine narrative" of the conflict between the exceptional, creative individual (the Master) and the undifferentiated conformist crowd. He does not consider the Randian hero to be phallocratic, arguing that these "upright, uncompromising masculine figures with a will of steel" in effect emerge as the feminine subject liberated from the hysteria of entanglement in the desire of the Other to a "being of pure drive" indifferent towards it.
Read more about this topic: Randian Hero