Atlas Shrugged

Summary

Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's longest novel and the fullest dramatization of the philosophy she later called Objectivism. It is set in an unnamed near-future United States whose economy is sliding into collapse as government controls tighten and the country's most able industrialists, scientists and artists mysteriously disappear. People shrug off every unanswerable question with a catchphrase, "Who is John Galt?" The central figure is Dagny Taggart, operating vice-president of the Taggart Transcontinental railroad, who keeps the line running while her brother James, its president, trades favors with officials in Washington. Dagny allies herself with Hank Rearden, a steel manufacturer who has invented Rearden Metal, an alloy stronger and lighter than steel. Against public denunciations and official obstruction they build the John Galt Line with the new metal and prove it on a triumphant first run. Their business partnership becomes a love affair. Meanwhile Francisco d'Anconia, heir to a great copper fortune and Dagny's first love, appears to be squandering his inheritance as an idle playboy. As new laws and directives multiply, culminating in Directive 10-289, which freezes jobs, prices and patents, more producers vanish. Dagny pursues a clue: the remains of a revolutionary motor that could draw energy from the atmosphere. Following one of the missing men, she crash-lands in a hidden valley in the Colorado mountains, where she finds the vanished producers living in a community of free trade. Their leader is John Galt, the engineer who built the motor and who has organized a strike of the mind: the people who carry the world, like the Titan Atlas, have withdrawn their effort from a society that, in their view, punishes ability. Dagny refuses at first to abandon her railroad and returns to the outside world. As the economy breaks down, Galt seizes the national radio to deliver a long speech setting out the strikers' philosophy. Officials capture him and try to force him to take charge of the economy; the strikers rescue him. The novel ends as New York goes dark and Galt announces that the strikers will soon return to rebuild. Readers and critics have responded to the book in sharply divided ways. Admirers treat it as a defense of reason, individual achievement and free markets; critics object to its view of altruism, its schematic characters and its length. Its sales and political influence have remained strong for more than six decades.

Plot or Argument

• Part One: Non-Contradiction

  Dagny Taggart struggles to keep Taggart Transcontinental running while her brother James courts political favor. She and Hank Rearden build the John Galt Line from Rearden Metal despite public condemnation, and its first run succeeds. Dagny and Rearden become lovers. Ellis Wyatt, the oil producer, sets his fields on fire and disappears.

• Part Two: Either-Or

  Government controls tighten. Dagny and Rearden find the remains of a motor that runs on atmospheric static electricity and search for its inventor. At James Taggart's wedding Francisco d'Anconia delivers his speech on money. Directive 10-289 freezes the economy; Rearden is pressured into signing over his metal; the Taggart Tunnel disaster kills a trainload of passengers. Dagny follows a departing scientist by plane and crashes in the mountains.

• Part Three: A Is A

  Dagny wakes in Galt's Gulch, the hidden valley of the strikers, and meets John Galt. She returns to the outside world, where the collapse accelerates. Galt broadcasts a long radio speech explaining the strike, is captured and tortured by officials who want him to run the economy, and is rescued by Dagny, Francisco, Rearden and Ragnar Danneskjöld. The strikers prepare to return to a ruined world.

Characters

• Dagny Taggart, protagonist

  Operating vice-president of Taggart Transcontinental, a gifted engineer and executive who refuses to let the railroad fail.

• Hank Rearden, major

  Self-made steel magnate and inventor of Rearden Metal, burdened by a family that resents him.

• Francisco d'Anconia, major

  Heir to the d'Anconia Copper fortune, Dagny's first love, who poses as a playboy while secretly working for the strike.

• John Galt, major

  Engineer and inventor of a revolutionary motor who leads the strike of the producers.

• James Taggart, antagonist

  Dagny's brother, president of the railroad, who prospers through political connections.

• Eddie Willers, minor

  Dagny's loyal assistant, who opens the novel and is left stranded with a stalled train at its end.

• Ragnar Danneskjöld, minor

  Philosopher turned pirate who seizes government relief ships.

• Lillian Rearden, minor

  Hank Rearden's wife, who works to humble him.

• Dr. Robert Stadler, minor

  Eminent physicist who lends his name to the government's State Science Institute.

• Wesley Mouch, minor

  Bureaucrat who rises to become the economy's chief planner.

Lessons

• Ideas have consequences

  Rand builds the plot as an argument: each new law in the novel produces a visible economic effect. Readers can test whether the causes and effects she shows are persuasive and where the novel simplifies.

  • Pick one government directive in the novel and trace its effects. Does the chain of consequences seem realistic?
  • Where might an economist or historian say the novel oversimplifies?

• Rand's ethics of rational self-interest

  The novel presents Rand's view that a person's own life is the proper purpose of morality and that trade, value for value, is the just relation among people. Understanding her argument precisely is a prerequisite for agreeing or disagreeing with it.

  • How does Rand define selfishness, and how does her definition differ from everyday usage?
  • Which characters embody the trader principle, and which oppose it?

• Novel as philosophy

  Long speeches by Francisco and Galt state the book's ideas directly. The work invites discussion of what fiction gains, and loses, when it argues a thesis.

  • Does the novel persuade more through its speeches or through its story?
  • Compare Galt's speech with a philosophical essay: what can each do that the other cannot?

Context

Rand wrote the novel during the late 1940s and 1950s, in the early Cold War, after her own flight from Soviet Russia. Debates over the New Deal, wartime price controls, nationalization in postwar Britain and central planning in the Soviet Union form the background to its picture of an economy strangled by regulation.

Composition

Rand began the book in 1946 under the working title The Strike and spent about twelve years on it, including two years on Galt's radio speech. Random House published it in October 1957.

Reception

Early reviews were largely hostile, including Whittaker Chambers's attack in National Review, but the novel became a best seller and has sold millions of copies. It has been central to the libertarian movement and to American debates about capitalism, and it remains a frequent target of criticism.

Comparisons

• Freedom and the Law

  Bruno Leoni's 1961 critique of legislation as a source of uncertainty and coercion offers a scholarly counterpart to the novel's Directive 10-289 and its picture of law made by decree.

• The Road to Serfdom

  Hayek's argument that central planning erodes liberty parallels the novel's political plot, though Hayek grounds it in economics and knowledge rather than Rand's ethics of self-interest.

• The Law

  Bastiat's idea of 'legal plunder', law used to take from some for others, anticipates the novel's 'looters'.

• The Communist Manifesto

  Marx and Engels argue the opposite thesis about capitalism and property; reading both clarifies the terms of the debate.

• The Wealth of Nations

  Smith's account of trade and the division of labor is a classic source for the free-market position the novel defends.

• The Fountainhead

  Rand's earlier novel treats the individual creator in architecture; Atlas Shrugged widens the theme to a whole society.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How each new law or directive changes the behavior of the characters.
• The repeated question "Who is John Galt?" and how its meaning changes.
• The motor, the bridge and the dollar sign as symbols.
• Which characters earn what they have and which seek the unearned, as Rand draws the line.

Key terms and names

Objectivism

Rand's name for her philosophy: objective reality, reason, rational self-interest and laissez-faire capitalism.

Looters and moochers

Rand's terms for those who take wealth by force or by appeals to need rather than by trade.

Directive 10-289

The novel's sweeping decree freezing jobs, prices and patents.

Galt's Gulch

The hidden valley where the striking producers live.

The strike of the mind

The withdrawal of the able from a society they believe exploits them.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What is Rearden Metal, and why do officials and rivals oppose it?
2. Comprehension What does Dagny find in the valley, and why does she leave it at first?
3. Interpretation Why does Rand make the strikers' leader an inventor of a motor rather than, say, a politician?
4. Interpretation How does Francisco's public behavior serve the strike?
5. Big Question Is a society morally obliged to reward its most productive members, and are they obliged to keep producing?
6. Big Question Can rational self-interest serve as the foundation of ethics, as Rand argues?

Faith Connections

• 1 Timothy 6:10 (Scripture)

  Francisco's speech responds to the familiar saying about money as the root of evil; the verse itself speaks of 'the love of money', a distinction worth examining.

• Matthew 25:14-30 (Scripture)

  The parable of the talents also concerns productive use of what one is given, but within a framework of stewardship that contrasts with Rand's ethics.

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Great Conversation)

  Rand named Aristotle as her chief philosophical influence; his ethics of flourishing invites comparison with her egoism.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: If wealth is created by the reasoning mind and exchanged by voluntary trade, then a system that seizes it by force destroys its own source, and the creators are justified in withdrawing.

Rhetorical device: rhetorical question. Francisco opens his speech with questions ("Have you ever asked what is the root of money?") that he then answers himself.

Debate: Resolved: The strikers in Atlas Shrugged act justly in withdrawing from society.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain Rand's distinction between the trader and the looter and evaluate whether it holds up in a modern economic example.

Comparison with Freedom and the Law: Compare Leoni's critique of legislation with the novel's portrayal of Directive 10-289: do they object to the same thing?

Medical Lens

Rand's philosophy treats mind and body as an integrated whole and casts emotional conflict as the result of contradictory premises, a view relevant to readers interested in the history of cognitive and moral psychology.

• Part Three, Chapter VII ("This Is John Galt Speaking")

  Galt's speech presents mind-body integration and the role of reason in emotion.

  Mind Body

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Write an essay explaining Rand's argument in Francisco's money speech in your own words, then give the strongest objection you can and her likely reply.

• Dialogue

  Write a dialogue between Hank Rearden and a modern regulator about a new invention that could be dangerous or transformative.

• Classroom

  Hold a structured debate: half the class defends the strikers' decision to withdraw, half argues for their duty to stay.

Further Reading

• The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand

• For the New Intellectual, Ayn Rand

  Contains Galt's and Francisco's speeches.

• Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, Jennifer Burns

• Ayn Rand and the World She Made, Anne C. Heller