Ayn Rand believed that evil begins in an evasion of reality and triumphs only through the sanction of the good. How did she dramatize this ethical abstraction in the particular experiences of her evil characters? What can Ellsworth Toohey or James Taggart teach us about villainy that other literary characters cannot?

Susan McCloskey is the president of McCloskey Writing Consultants. She is a former professor of English literature and an occasional lecturer at the Summer Seminar.