(2) The only place I can really stand characters who are symbols rather than living, breathing human beings is in something like The Pilgrim's Progress (although Bunyan's characters are breathing flesh-and-blood creatures compared to the likes of Taggart and Galt, despite their old-fashioned descriptive names). But that sort of set-piece only works when it doesn't attempt to exist in the Real World . . . I think Rand really couldn't decide if she was writing a novel, an allegory, or a polemic. A little of all three, perhaps.