THE FIRST FRIDAY BOOK GROUP will meet at 10 a.m. Oct. 4 in room 129 of the Jackson County Senior Center. The book to be discussed is The Traveling Cat by Hiro Arikawa. The November selection is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. For more information, call 586-4940.

Cullowhee Valley School is having its annual yard sale from 8 a.m. to noon, Saturday, Oct. 12. The yard sale helps middle school students earn money to go towards their annual trips to Camp Greenville and Charleston, South Carolina. Community members can reserve a table for $30 by visiting the front office staff by Wednesday, Oct 2.

The CommUnity Square Dance is 7-9 p.m. Saturday at Reid Gym at Western Carolina University. The caller will teach and call all dances to live old-time music. No experience or partner is necessary. For more information contact Pammanottus@gmail.com.

Harris Regional Hospital will host a reception and dedication ceremony for anyone affected by breast cancer. The event will take place at noon Thursday, Oct. 3 at Harris Medical Park, 98 Doctors Drive, Sylva. Attendees will be allowed a time to place a card on the tree of hope in celebration and/or memory of a breast cancer patient. Refreshments will be served.

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Noteworthy: Notes from our business community and everywhere else - The Sylva Herald

INTRODUCTION: Ayn Rand held that art is a re-creation of reality according to an artist s metaphysical value judgments. By its nature, therefore, a novel (like a statue or a symphony) does not require or tolerate an explanatory preface; it is a self-contained universe, aloof from commentary, beckoning the reader to enter, perceive, respond. Ayn Rand would never have approved of a didactic (or laudatory) introduction to her book, and I have no intention of flouting her wishes. Instead, I am going to give her the floor. I am going to let you in on some of the thinking she did as she was preparing to write Atlas Shrugged. Before starting a novel, Ayn Rand wrote voluminously in her journals about its theme, plot, and characters. She wrote not for any audience, but strictly for herself that is, for the clarity of her own understanding. The journals dealing with Atlas Shrugged are powerful examples of her mind in action, confident even when groping, purposeful even when stymied, luminously eloquent even though wholly unedited. These journals are also a fascinating record of the step-by-step birth of an immortal work of art. In due course, all of Ayn Rand s writings will be published. For this 35th anniversary edition of Atlas Shrugged, however, I have selected, as a kind of advance bonus for her fans, four typical journal entries. Let me warn new readers that the passages reveal the plot and will spoil the book for anyone who reads them before knowing the story. As I recall, Atlas Shrugged did not become the novel s title until Miss Rand s husband made the suggestion in 1956. The working title throughout the writing was The Strike. The earliest of Miss Rand s notes for The Strike are dated January 1, 1945, about a year after the publication of The Fountainhead. Naturally enough, the subject on her mind was how to differentiate the present novel from its predecessor. Theme. What happens to the world when the Prime Movers go on strike. This means a picture of the world with its motor cut off. Show: what, how, why. The specific steps and incidents in terms of persons, their spirits, motives, psychology and actions and, secondarily, proceeding from persons, in terms of history, society and the world. The theme requires: to show who are the prime movers and why, how they function. Who are their enemies and why, what are the motives behind the hatred for and the enslavement of the prime movers; the nature of the obstacles placed in their way, and the reasons for it. This last paragraph is contained entirely in The Fountainhead. Roark and Toohey are the complete statement of it. Therefore, this is not the direct theme of The Strike but it is part of the theme and must be kept in mind, stated again (though briefly) to have the theme clear and complete. First question to decide is on whom the emphasis must be placed on the prime movers, the parasites or the world. The answer is: The world. The story must be primarily a picture of the whole. In this sense, The Strike is to be much more a social novel than The Fountainhead. The Fountainhead was about individualism and collectivism within man s soul ; it showed the nature and function of the creator and the second-hander. The primary concern there was with Roark and Toohey showing what they are. The rest of the characters were variations of the theme of the relation of the ego to others mixtures of the two extremes, the two poles: Roark and Toohey. The primary concern of the story was the characters, the people as such their natures. Their relations to each other which is society, men in relation to men were secondary, an unavoidable, direct consequence of Roark set against Toohey. But it was not the theme. Now, it is this relation that must be the theme. Therefore, the personal becomes secondary. That is, the personal is necessary only to the extent needed to make the relationships clear. In The Fountainhead I showed that Roark moves the world that the Keatings feed upon him and hate him for it, while the Tooheys are out consciously to destroy him. But the theme was Roark not Roark s relation to the world. Now it will be the relation. In other words, I must show in what concrete, specific way the world is moved by the creators. Exactly how do the second-handers live on the creators. Both in spiritual matters and (most particularly) in concrete, physical events. (Concentrate on the concrete, physical events but don t forget to keep in mind at all times how the physical proceeds from the spiritual.). However, for the purpose of this story, I do not start by showing how the second-handers live on the prime movers in actual, everyday reality nor do I start by showing a normal world. (That comes in only in necessary retrospect, or flashback, or by implication in the events themselves.) I start with the fantastic premise of the prime movers going on strike. This is the actual heart and center of the novel. A distinction carefully to be observed here: I do not set out to glorify the prime mover ( that was The Fountainhead ). I set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers, and how viciously it treats them. And I show it on a hypothetical case what happens to the world without them. In The Fountainhead I did not show how desperately the world needed Roark except by implication. I did show how viciously the world treated him, and why. I showed mainly what he is. It was Roark s story. This must be the world s story in relation to its prime movers. (Almost the story of a body in relation to its heart a body dying of anemia.) I don t show directly what the prime movers do that s shown only by implication. I show what happens when they don t do it. (Through that, you see the picture of what they do, their place and their role.) (This is an important guide for the construction of the story.) In order to work out the story, Ayn Rand had to understand fully why the prime movers allowed the second-handers to live on them why the creators had not gone on strike throughout history what errors even the best of them made that kept them in thrall to the worst. Part of the answer is dramatized in the character of Dagny Taggart, the railroad heiress who declares war on the strikers. Here is a note on her psychology, dated April 18, 1946: Her error and the cause of her refusal to join the strike is over-optimism and over-confidence (particularly this last). Over-optimism in that she thinks men are better than they are, she doesn t really understand them and is generous about it. Over-confidence in that she thinks she can do more than an individual actually can. She thinks she can run a railroad (or the world) single-handed, she can make people do what she wants or needs, what is right, by the sheer force of her own talent; not by forcing them, of course, not by enslaving them and giving orders but by the sheer over-abundance of her own energy; she will show them how, she can teach them and persuade them, she is so able that they ll catch it from her. (This is still faith in their rationality, in the omnipotence of reason. The mistake? Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.) On these two points, Dagny is committing an important (but excusable and understandable) error in thinking, the kind of error individualists and creators often make. It is an error proceeding from the best in their nature and from a proper principle, but this principle is misapplied. The error is this: it is proper for a creator to be optimistic, in the deepest, most basic sense, since the creator believes in a benevolent universe and functions on that premise. But it is an error to extend that optimism to other specific men. First, it s not necessary, the creator s life and the nature of the universe do not require it, his life does not depend on others. Second, man is a being with free will; therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and it s up to him and only to him (through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be. The decision will affect only him; it is not (and cannot and should not be) the primary concern of any other human being. Therefore, while a creator does and must worship Man (which means his own highest potentiality; which is his natural self-reverence), he must not make the mistake of thinking that this means the necessity to worship Mankind (as a collective). These are two entirely different conceptions, with entirely (immensely and diametrically opposed) different consequences. Man, at his highest potentiality, is realized and fulfilled within each creator himself. Whether the creator is alone, or finds only a handful of others like him, or is among the majority of mankind, is of no importance or consequence whatever; numbers have nothing to do with it. He alone or he and a few others like him are mankind, in the proper sense of being the proof of what man actually is, man at his best, the essential man, man at his highest possibility. (The rational being, who acts according to his nature.) It should not matter to a creator whether anyone or a million or all the men around him fall short of the ideal of Man; let him live up to that ideal himself; this is all the optimism about Man that he needs. But this is a hard and subtle thing to realize and it would be natural for Dagny always to make the mistake of believing others are better than they really are (or will become better, or she will teach them to become better or, actually, she so desperately wants them to be better) and to be tied to the world by that hope. It is proper for a creator to have an unlimited confidence in himself and his ability, to feel certain that he can get anything he wishes out of life, that he can accomplish anything he decides to accomplish, and that it s up to him to do it. (He feels it because he is a man of reason. But here is what he must keep clearly in mind: it is true that a creator can accomplish anything he wishes if he functions according to the nature of man, the universe and his own proper morality, that is, if he does not place his wish primarily within others and does not attempt or desire anything that is of a collective nature, anything that concerns others primarily or requires primarily the exercise of the will of others. (This would be an immoral desire or attempt, contrary to his nature as a creator.) If he attempts that, he is out of a creator s province and in that of the collectivist and the second-hander. Therefore, he must never feel confident that he can do anything whatever to, by or through others. (He can t and he shouldn t even wish to try it and the mere attempt is improper.) He must not think that he can. somehow transfer his energy and his intelligence to them and make them fit for his purposes in that way. He must face other men as they are, recognizing them as essentially independent entities, by nature, and beyond his primary influence; [he must] deal with them only on his own, independent terms, deal with such as he judges can fit his purpose or live up to his standards (by themselves and of their own will, independently of him) and expect nothing from the others. Now, in Dagny s case, her desperate desire is to run Taggart Transcontinental. She sees that there are no men suited to her purpose around her, no men of ability, independence and competence. She thinks she can run it with others, with the incompetent and the parasites, either by training them or merely by treating them as robots who will take her orders and function without personal initiative or responsibility; with herself, in effect, being the spark of initiative, the bearer of responsibility for a whole collective. This can t be done. This is her crucial error. This is where she fails. Ayn Rand s basic purpose as a novelist was to present not villains or even heroes with errors, but the ideal man the consistent, the fully integrated, the perfect. In Atlas Shrugged, this is John Galt, the towering figure who moves the world and the novel, yet does not appear onstage until Part III. By his nature (and that of the story) Galt is necessarily central to the lives of all the characters. In one note, Galt s relation to the others, dated June 27, 1946, Miss Rand defines succinctly what Galt represents to each of them: For Dagny the ideal. The answer to her two quests: the man of genius and the man she loves. The first quest is expressed in her search for the inventor of the engine. The second her growing conviction that she will never be in love For Rearden the friend. The kind of understanding and appreciation he has always wanted and did not know he wanted (or he thought he had it he tried to find it in those around him, to get it from his wife, his mother, brother and sister). For Francisco d Anconia the aristocrat. The only man who represents a challenge and a stimulant almost the proper kind of audience, worthy of stunning for the sheer joy and color of life. For Danneskjld the anchor. The only man who represents land and roots to a restless, reckless wanderer, like the goal of a struggle, the port at the end of a fierce sea-voyage the only man he can respect. For the Composer the inspiration and the perfect audience. For the Philosopher the embodiment of his abstractions. For Father Amadeus the source of his conflict. The uneasy realization that Galt is the end of his endeavors, the man of virtue, the perfect man and that his means do not fit this end (and that he is destroying this, his ideal, for the sake of those who are evil). To James Taggart the eternal threat. The secret dread. The reproach. The guilt (his own guilt). He has no specific tie-in with Galt but he has that constant, causeless, unnamed, hysterical fear. And he recognizes it when he hears Galt s broadcast and when he sees Galt in person for the first time. To the Professor his conscience. The reproach and reminder. The ghost that haunts him through everything he does, without a moment s peace. The thing that says: No to his whole life. Some notes on the above: Rearden s sister, Stacy, was a minor character later cut from the novel. Francisco was spelled Francesco in these early years, while Danneskld s first name at this point was Ivar, presumably after Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish match king, who was the real-life model of Bjorn Faulkner in Night of January 16th. Father Amadeus was Taggart s priest, to whom he confessed his sins. The priest was supposed to be a positive character, honestly devoted to the good but practicing consistently the morality of mercy. Miss Rand dropped him, she told me, when she found that it was impossible to make such a character convincing. The Professor is Robert Stadler. This brings me to a final excerpt. Because of her passion for ideas, Miss Rand was often asked whether she was primarily a philosopher or a novelist. In later years, she was impatient with this question, but she gave her own answer, to and for herself, in a note dated May 4, 1946. The broader context was a discussion of the nature of creativity. I seem to be both a theoretical philosopher and a fiction writer. But it is the last that interests me most; the first is only the means to the last; the absolutely necessary means, but only the means; the fiction story is the end. Without an understanding and statement of the right philosophical principle, I cannot create the right story; but the discovery of the principle interests me only as the discovery of the proper knowledge to be used for my life purpose; and my life purpose is the creation of the kind of world (people and events) that I like that is, that represents human perfection. Philosophical knowledge is necessary in order to define human perfection. But I do not care to stop at the definition. I want to use it, to apply it in my work (in my personal life, too but the core, center and purpose of my personal life, of my whole life, is my work). This is why, I think, the idea of writing a philosophical nonfiction book bored me. In such a book, the purpose would actually be to teach others, to present my idea to them. In a book of fiction the purpose is to create, for myself, the kind of world I want and to live in it while I am creating it; then, as a secondary consequence, to let others enjoy this world, if, and to the extent that they can. It may be said that the first purpose of a philosophical book is the clarification or statement of your new knowledge to and for yourself; and then, as a secondary step, the offering of your knowledge to others. But here is the difference, as far as I am concerned: I have to acquire and state to myself the new philosophical knowledge or principle I used in order to write a fiction story as its embodiment and illustration; I do not care to write a story on a theme or thesis of old knowledge, knowledge stated or discovered by someone else, that is, someone else s philosophy (because those philosophies are wrong). To this extent, I am an abstract philosopher (I want to present the perfect man and his perfect life and I must also discover my own philosophical statement and definition of this perfection). But when and if I have discovered such new knowledge, I am not interested in stating it in its abstract, general form, that is, as knowledge. I am interested in using it, in applying it that is, in stating it in the concrete form of men and events, in the form of a fiction story. This last is my final purpose, my end; the philosophical knowledge or discovery is only the means to it. For my purpose, the non-fiction form of abstract knowledge doesn t interest me; the final, applied form of fiction, of story, does. (I state the knowledge to myself, anyway; but I choose the final form of it, the expression, in the completed cycle that leads back to man.) I wonder to what extent I represent a peculiar phenomenon in this respect. I think I represent the proper integration of a complete human being. Anyway, this should be my lead for the character of John Galt. He, too , is a combination of an abstract philosopher and a practical inventor; the thinker and the man of action together In learning, we draw an abstraction from concrete objects and events. In creating, we make our own concrete objects and events out of the abstraction; we bring the abstraction down and back to its specific meaning, to the concrete; but the abstraction has helped us to make the kind of concrete we want the concrete to be. It has helped us to create to reshape the world as we wish it to be for our purposes. I cannot resist quoting one further paragraph. It comes a few pages later in the same discussion. Incidentally, as a sideline observation: if creative fiction writing is a process of translating an abstraction into the concrete, there are three possible grades of such writing: translating an old (known) abstraction (theme or thesis) through the medium of old fiction means (that is, characters, events or situations used before for that same purpose, that same translation) this is most of the popular trash; translating an old abstraction through new, original fiction means this is most of the good literature; creating a new, original abstraction and translating it through new, original means. This, as far as I know, is only me my kind of fiction writing. May God forgive me (Metaphor!) if this is mistaken conceit! As near as I can now see it, it isn t. (A fourth possibility translating a new abstraction through old means is impossible, by definition: if the abstraction is new, there can be no means used by anybody else before to translate it.) Is her conclusion mistaken conceit ? It is now forty-five years since she wrote this note, and you are holding Ayn Rand s master-work in your hands. You decide. Leonard Peikoff September 1991. Chapter 1: THE THEME Who is John Galt? The light was ebbing, and Eddie Willers could not distinguish the bum s face. The bum had said it simply, without expression. But from the sunset far at the end of the street, yellow glints caught his eyes, and the eyes looked straight at Eddie Willers, mocking and still as if the question had been addressed to the causeless uneasiness within him. Why did you say that? asked Eddie Willers, his voice tense. The bum leaned against the side of the doorway; a wedge of broken glass behind him reflected the metal yellow of the sky. Why does it bother you? he asked. It doesn t, snapped Eddie Willers. He reached hastily into his pocket. The bum had stopped him and asked for a dime, then had gone on talking, as if to kill that moment and postpone the problem of the next. Pleas for dimes were so frequent in the streets these days that it was not necessary to listen to explanations and he had no desire to hear the details of this bum s particular despair. Go get your cup of coffee, he said, handing the dime to the shadow that had no face. Thank you, sir, said the voice, without interest, and the face leaned forward for a moment. The face was wind-browned, cut by lines of weariness and cynical resignation; the eyes were intelligent. Eddie Willers walked on, wondering why he always felt it at this time of day, this sense of dread without reason. No, he thought, not dread, there s nothing to fear: just an immense, diffused apprehension, with no source or object. He had become accustomed to the feeling, but he could find no explanation for it; yet the bum had spoken as if he knew that Eddie felt it, as if he thought that one should feel it, and more: as if he knew the reason. Eddie Willers pulled his shoulders straight, in conscientious self-discipline. He had to stop this, he thought; he was beginning to imagine things. Had he always felt it? He was thirty-two years old. He tried to think back. No, he hadn t; but he could not remember when it had started. The feeling came to him suddenly, at random intervals, and now it was coming more often than ever. It s the twilight, he thought; I hate the twilight. The clouds and the shafts of skyscrapers against them were turning brown, like an old painting in oil, the color of a fading masterpiece. Long streaks of grime ran from under the pinnacles down the slender, soot-eaten walls. High on the side of a tower there was a crack in the shape of a motionless lightning, the length of ten stories. A jagged object cut the sky above the roofs; it was half a spire, still holding the glow of the sunset; the gold leaf had long since peeled off the other half. The glow was red and still, like the reflection of a fire: not an active fire, but a dying one which it is too late to stop. No, thought Eddie Willers, there was nothing disturbing in the sight of the city. It looked as it had always looked. He walked on, reminding himself that he was late in returning to the office. He did not like the task which he had to perform on his return, but it had to be done. So he did not attempt to delay it, but made himself walk faster. He turned a corner. In the narrow space between the dark silhouettes of two buildings, as in the crack of a door, he saw the page of a gigantic calendar suspended in the sky. It was the calendar that the mayor of New York had erected last year on the top of a building, so that citizens might tell the day of the month as they told the hours of the day, by glancing up at a public tower. A white rectangle hung over the city, imparting the date to the men in the streets below. In the rusty light of this evening s sunset, the rectangle said: September 2. Eddie Willers looked away. He had never liked the sight of that calendar. It disturbed him, in a manner he could not explain or define. The feeling seemed to blend with his sense of uneasiness; it had the same quality. He thought suddenly that there was some phrase, a kind of quotation, that expressed what the calendar seemed to suggest. But he could not recall it. He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it nor dismiss it. He glanced back. The white rectangle stood above the roofs, saying in immovable finality: September 2. Eddie Willers shifted his glance down to the street, to a vegetable pushcart at the stoop of a brownstone house. He saw a pile of bright gold carrots and the fresh green of onions. He saw a clean white curtain blowing at an open window. He saw a bus turning a corner, expertly steered. He wondered why he felt reassured and then, why he felt the sudden, inexplicable wish that these things were not left in the open, unprotected against the empty space above. When he came to Fifth Avenue, he kept his eyes on the windows of the stores he passed. There was nothing he needed or wished to buy; but he liked to see the display of goods, any goods, objects made by men, to be used by men. He enjoyed the sight of a prosperous street; not more than every fourth one of the stores was out of business, its windows dark and empty. He did not know why he suddenly thought of the oak tree. Nothing had recalled it. But he thought of it and of his childhood summers on the Taggart estate. He had spent most of his childhood with the Taggart children, and now he worked for them, as his father and grandfather had worked for their father and grandfather. 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 the 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. Years later, he heard it said that children should be protected from shock, from their first knowledge of death, pain or fear. But these had never scarred him; his shock came when he stood very quietly, looking into the black hole of the trunk. 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. Eddie Willers shook his head, as the screech of a rusty mechanism changing a traffic light stopped him on the edge of a curb. He felt anger at himself. There was no reason that he had to remember the oak tree tonight. It meant nothing to him any longer, only a faint tinge of sadness and somewhere within him, a drop of pain moving briefly and vanishing, like a raindrop on the glass of a window, its course in the shape of a question mark. He wanted no sadness attached to his childhood; he loved its memories: any day of it he remembered now seemed flooded by a still, brilliant sunlight. It seemed to him as if a few rays from it reached into his present: not rays, more like pinpoint spotlights that gave an occasional moment s glitter to his job, to his lonely apartment, to the quiet, scrupulous progression of his existence. He thought of a summer day when he was ten years old. That day, in a clearing of the woods, the one precious companion of his childhood told him what they would do when they grew up. The words were harsh and glowing, like the sunlight. He listened in admiration and in wonder. When he was asked what he would want to do, he answered at once, Whatever is right, and added, You ought to do something great. I mean, the two of us together. What? she asked. He said, I don t know. That s what we ought to find out. Not just what you said. Not just business and earning a living. Things like winning battles, or saving people out of fires, or climbing mountains. What for? she asked. He said, The minister said last Sunday that we must always reach for the best within us. What do you suppose is the best within us? I don t know. We ll have to find out. She did not answer; she was looking away, up the railroad track. Eddie Willers smiled. He had said, Whatever is right, twenty-two years ago. He had kept that statement unchallenged ever since; the other questions had faded in his mind; he had been too busy to ask them. But he still thought it self-evident that one had to do what was right; he had never learned how people could want to do otherwise; he had learned only that they did. It still seemed simple and incomprehensible to him: simple that things should be right, and incomprehensible that they weren t. He knew that they weren t. He thought of that, as he turned a corner and came to the great building of Taggart Transcontinental. The building stood over the street as its tallest and proudest structure. Eddie Willers always smiled at his first sight of it. Its long bands of windows were unbroken, in contrast to those of its neighbors. Its rising lines cut the sky, with no crumbling corners or worn edges. It seemed to stand above the years, untouched. It would always stand there, thought Eddie Willers. Whenever he entered the Taggart Building, he felt relief and a sense of security. This was a place of competence and power. The floors of its hallways were mirrors made of marble. The frosted rectangles of its electric fixtures were chips of solid light. Behind sheets of glass, rows of girls sat at typewriters,

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Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand: 9780451191144: Amazon.com: Books

Reason and freedom are corollaries, Ayn Rand holds, as are faith and force. Atlas Shrugged showcases both relationships.

The heroes are unwavering thinkers. Whether it is a destructive business scheme proclaimed as moral, the potential collapse of the economy, or a personal life filled with pain, the heroes seek to face the facts and understand. To them, reason is an absolute. Politically, therefore, what they require and demand is freedom. Freedom to think, to venture into the new and unknown, to earn, to trade, to succeed and fail and pursue their own individual happiness.

The villains, by contrast, reject the absolutism of reason. They want a world ruled by their feelings, in which wishing makes it so. James Taggart, for instance, wants to be the head of a railroad without the need of effort. No amount of thinking can bring such a world about he must attempt to bring it about by force. As Rand puts it elsewhere, Anyone who resorts to the formula: Its so, because I say so, will have to reach for a gun, sooner or later.

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In an environment of worsening economicconditions, Dagny Taggart, vice president in charge of operations,works to repair Taggart Transcontinentals crumbling Rio Norte Lineto service Colorado, the last booming industrial area in the country.Her efforts are hampered by the fact that many of the countrysmost talented entrepreneurs are retiring and disappearing. The railroadscrisis worsens when the Mexican government nationalizes TaggartsSan Sebastian Line. The line had been built to service FranciscodAnconias copper mills, but the mills turn out to be worthless.Francisco had been a successful industrialist, and Dagnys lover,but has become a worthless playboy. To solve the railroads financialproblems, Dagnys brother Jim uses political influence to pass legislationthat destroys Taggarts only competition in Colorado. Dagny mustfix the Rio Norte Line immediately and plans to use Rearden Metal,a new alloy created by Hank Rearden. When confronted about the SanSebastian mines, Francisco tells Dagny he is deliberately destroyingdAnconia Copper. Later he appears at Reardens anniversary partyand, meeting him for the first time, urges Rearden to reject thefreeloaders who live off of him.

The State Science Institute issues a denunciation of Rearden metal,and Taggarts stock crashes. Dagny decides to start her own companyto rebuild the line, and it is a huge success. Dagny and Reardenbecome lovers. Together they discover a motor in an abandoned factorythat runs on static electricity, and they seek the inventor. Thegovernment passes new legislation that cripples industry in Colorado.Ellis Wyatt, an oil industrialist, suddenly disappears after settingfire to his wells. Dagny is forced to cut trains, and the situationworsens. Soon, more industrialists disappear. Dagny believes thereis a destroyer at work, taking men away when they are most needed.Francisco visits Rearden and asks him why he remains in businessunder such repressive conditions. When a fire breaks out and theywork together to put it out, Francisco understands Reardens lovefor his mills.

Rearden goes on trial for breaking one of the new laws,but refuses to participate in the proceedings, telling the judgesthey can coerce him by force but he wont help them to convict him.Unwilling to be seen as thugs, they let him go. Economic dictatorWesley Mouch needs Reardens cooperation for a new set of socialistlaws, and Jim needs economic favors that will keep his ailing railroadrunning after the collapse of Colorado. Jim appeals to Reardenswife Lillian, who wants to destroy her husband. She tells him Rearden andDagny are having an affair, and he uses this information in a trade.The new set of laws, Directive 10-289,is irrational and repressive. It includes a ruling that requiresall patents to be signed over to the government. Rearden is blackmailedinto signing over his metal to protect Dagnys reputation.

Dagny quits over the new directive and retreats to a mountain lodge.When she learns of a massive accident at the Taggart Tunnel, shereturns to her job. She receives a letter from the scientist shehad hired to help rebuild the motor, and fears he will be the nexttarget of the destroyer. In an attempt to stop him from disappearing,she follows him in an airplane and crashes in the mountains. Whenshe wakes up, she finds herself in a remote valley where all theretired industrialists are living. They are on strike, calling ita strike of the mind. There, she meets John Galt, who turns outto be both the destroyer and the man who built the motor. She fallsin love with him, but she cannot give up her railroad, and she leavesthe valley. When she returns to work, she finds that the governmenthas nationalized the railroad industry. Government leaders wanther to make a speech reassuring the public about the new laws. Sherefuses until Lillian comes to blackmail her. On the air, she proudlyannounces her affair with Rearden and reveals that he has been blackmailed. Shewarns the country about its repressive government.

With the economy on the verge of collapse, Francisco destroys therest of his holdings and disappears. The politicians no longer evenpretend to work for the public good. Their vast network of influencepeddling creates worse chaos, as crops rot waiting for freight trainsthat are diverted for personal favors. In an attempt to gain controlof Franciscos mills, the government stages a riot at Rearden Steel.But the steelworkers organize and fight back, led by Francisco,who has been working undercover at the mills. Francisco saves Reardenslife, then convinces him to join the strike.

Just as the head of state prepares to give a speech onthe economic situation, John Galt takes over the airwaves and deliversa lengthy address to the country, laying out the terms of the strikehe has organized. In desperation, the government seeks Galt to makehim their economic dictator. Dagny inadvertently leads them to him,and they take him prisoner. But Galt refuses to help them, evenafter he is tortured. Finally, Dagny and the strikers rescue himin an armed confrontation with guards. They return to the valley,where Dagny finally joins the strike. Soon, the countrys collapseis complete and the strikers prepare to return.

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SparkNotes: Atlas Shrugged: Plot Overview

Billing itself as part one of an intended trilogy, Atlas Shrugged is an adaptation of Ayn Rand's famous 1200-page book on the merits of self-interest. Rand has become resurgent in the last few years, a favorite author of the Tea Party, as her anti-government, anti-regulation, anti-union, and anti-poor perspective has found a new legion of fuming followers. I can't imagine anyone else buying a ticket to the big screen version of Atlas Shrugged, a resoundingly tiresome and didactic enterprise. If this is what Part One brings, I can already predict the extensive yawning exercises I'll have to do to get in shape for Parts Two and Three.In the not too distant future, America's airline industry has ground to a halt due to rising gas prices ($35 a gallon we're told). The country has gone back to rail and leading that charge is Taggart Railway, lead by Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling). She's trying to save her company from her lazy brother, James (Matthew Marsden), who wants to rely on bribery and his Washington friends to get by. Dagny wants to join forces with steel tycoon Henry Reardon (Grant Bowler), who has staked his company's future on special new extra shiny steel. Other companies want to block Dagny and Reardon's efforts, relying on Washington to write strict laws penalizing the rich and successful and spreading the wealth around to those less unfortunate. At the same time, powerful businessmen seem to be vanishing and the only connection seems to be the identity of John Galt, a mysterious capitalist with an offer no rugged man of industry will refuse. Maybe Atlas shrugged because he got tired of how unbelievably boring this movie is. Oh my goodness, I was rolling my eyes and checking my watch every five minutes. The vast majority of this film involves ideologues disguised as characters talking about esoteric business practices. A full 80 percent of the dialogue has to be about railways and steel and this manufacturing and ore mines and... I'm sorry I fell asleep in the middle of writing that sentence. Seriously, this movie could be a cure for insomnia. It's so crushingly boring that it makes you wonder how anyone could ever pick up Rand's novel and think, "This deserves to be a film." There are segments where characters will talk this corporate gobblety-gook in unbroken reams, the actors behaving like androids. Now technical talk is not necessarily a one-way ticket to snoozeville, as political and corporate dramas can be quite invigorating in the right hands (see: Margin Call). It helps when you have a story, but with Atlas Shrugged all we have are mouthpieces for a political ideology. Regardless of political opinion, the movie fails because it never makes the story feel like it matters. The dialogue is perfunctory, labored, and inert, bogged down with lazy philosophical jabs. It's all tedious expository dialogue with no room for character. Who wouldn't want to watch a movie completely around the conflict of whether a train will get its steel tracks? That's it. You wouldn't know any of this mattered without the helpful inclusion of an overly enthusiastic dramatic score. Who cares about any of this junk? If you're looking for the most high-profile movie of 2011 to talk about the infrastructure dynamics of railways, your long wait ends here.Dagny and Reardon are supposed to be our heroes, the champions of the not-so-little guy, and thus we're intended to root for their romantic coupling. Never mind that Reardon is married because, in that age-old point of rom/com rationalization, his wife is a bitch. The two have one of the most robotic lovemaking scenes I've seen in recent memory, and this flash of sexuality and a few dirty words are the sole reason this film earned a PG-13 rating. These characters remain one-note and vacant, including icy heroine Dagny casually admitting, "I don't know how to feel." And then there's Reardon, who admits, "My only goal is to make money." What better antagonists than unfeeling heads of huge corporations who just want to be left alone so they can make their untold millions? What a great entry point for the empathy of the audience. None of these characters grow, change, learn, or even seem to reflect recognizable emotions beyond venom-filled anger. The villainous government stooges act shady, plotting the downfall of those laudable titans of industry, but it all just becomes indistinguishable chatter, villains clucking to themselves. Set in the near future of 2016, this adaptation feels strangely dated, most notably in its ascent of railroads. There's some ham-handed throwaway line about the cost of gas being so high so America just reverted back to the good old locomotive. I find this deeply implausible. It would have made more sense to actually make this a 1950s period piece, the original setting of Rand's novel. We're constantly told about the instability in the world via newscasters and announcers, but we don't ever see the effects of this world in crisis. Mostly that's because we're hobnobbing with the rich in their boardrooms and cocktail parties, but there's a scene where Dagny exits her limo and walks in a huff down the streets, which are empty of those dirty hordes of bottom-dwellers we've been hearing about. Apparently a world in crisis has done little to upset the disadvantaged, or the cities have just been very adamant about cleaning up the riffraff. The world depicted does not seem realistic. Would the country so easily go back to train travel where Dagny's super train can cross 200 miles in a single hour? What about international freight and travel? I guess that still has to run on all that precious petrol. I'd assume that by 2016 the world will still be an interdependent, globalized economy, so I would think that the United States would face more dramatic tension than the oversight over a railroad company.I've noticed that when it comes to a mostly conservative, mostly Christian fan base, the quality of movies is almost irrelevant. Movies like Left Behind, The Omega Code, Fireproof, or the recent Courageous are not expected to be good movies by traditional standards. They are sermons packaged in the guise of popular entertainment, which means that the artistic particulars come second to the message, and often do. Atlas Shrugged seems to fall into this same category. The production is very low budget, hence all those conversations in offices, and the CGI that is utilized looks pretty chintzy. The acting is profoundly bad, with Schilling (TV's Mercy) giving a flat, monotone performance throughout, closer resembling a well-dressed mannequin than a human being. She is a horrible actress, resembling a bug-eyed Botox addict who has forgotten the correct muscles to express emotion. And naturally subtlety goes out the window in favor of reconfirming the belief system of the people buying the tickets. I have no issue with movies that adhere to an ideology, whatever that may be, as long as the message doesn't get in the way of telling a good story. Atlas Shrugged is not a good story, not even close, and the message can be all too bludgeoning at times, like when Dagny incredulously remarks, "What's with all these foolish altruistic notions?" The movie seems to be bristling with anger and many a character spits venom at the very idea of government involvement, unions demanding safe working conditions, and regulation in any form, red meat for the Tea Party faithful. Without that red meat, or the film's strident message, there would be no reason to watch this mess. And now I'll shed my objective reviewer cap briefly to get on my own little soapbox and denounce the dangers of Randian politics. To be fair, I've never read an Ayn Rand book and honestly have no inclination of ever reading one of this woman's polemics. I just feel I have better uses of my time than reading a justification for sociopathic greed. Rand's extreme philosophy has been described as reverse Marxism, wherein the social elite is being sucked dry by the lechers of the world, those who do not contribute to the value of society. And for Rand the only value is money. The world, Rand posits, would be a better place if man would only think of himself. I fundamentally disagree with this notion. Remember that part in the bible where Jesus gives money to the rich and tells the poor to suck it up? Rand's self-involved philosophy seems like a round of consumerist Calvanism, rehashing a skewed religious perspective that was popular with the upper classes because it provided celestial reasoning why the rich were so rich and the poor were so poor. You see God wanted you to be rich, that is why you were born into a wealthy family, and he wanted all those miserable poor people to suffer. To help out the poor would therefore be blaspheming God's infinitely unknowable plan. The basic plotline of Atlas Shrugged, though only teased in Part One, is that the rich will get tired of being burdened by societal constraints and up and leave us all. Here's a good question: if all the billionaires in the world were to vanish, do you think everything would grind to a halt? Would we all be so out of luck without the super wealthy telling us what to buy? It's like the reverse of 2006's social satire A Day Without a Mexican, proposing that the American economic engine would be severely stalled if all the undocumented workers were to vanish. Under Rand's narrow line of thinking, the rich are that way because they are the best and brightest, the innovators. Nowhere in that equation does Rand leave room for the rich being rich due to lies, cheating, nepotism, and rigging the system for the continued benefit of a select few. I'm not meaning to begin a screed here, but I think the 2008 economic meltdown proved what happens when business is left to regulate itself. The economic collapse also proved that just because you've got some letters in your title (CEO, CFO, etc.) does not mean you're the smartest egg. Cronyism and a scoiopathic desire to look out for one's self-interest above all else is what brought the world on the brink of economic collapse. For me, recent history is a rejection of Rand's theories, not corroboration. Okay, soapbox put away. Atlas Shrugged the film seems almost like an unintended ironic statement on Ayn Rand's belief of the superiority of the individual. That's because movies are a profoundly collaborative medium, where many hands toil away to create a work of art. It is not the result of one man or woman but the results of hundreds of men and women working together, each knowing their role, playing their part, and working toward something greater than individual self-interest. Huh, how about that? It pretty much doesn't matter that Atlas Shrugged is a powerfully boring, braying, incoherent, tedious chore that is merely a message disguised as a movie. The intended audiences will more than likely hail the final product, ignoring "details" like the talky exposition-heavy dialogue, horrible acting, laughable special effects, and plodding pacing, and overall poor production. The Rand faithful are not going to this movie to be entertained, they are going to see their beliefs reflected upon the big screen. The overall quality of Atlas Shrugged is an afterthought to them. I just wish it wasn't an afterthought to the people making the movie. Nate's Grade: D

Originally posted here:

Atlas Shrugged: Part I (2011) - Rotten Tomatoes

This article is about the novel. For the film adaptations, see Atlas Shrugged: Part I or Atlas Shrugged: Part II.

Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the United States. Rand's fourth and last novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing.[4] Atlas Shrugged includes elements of romance,[1][2][3] mystery, and science fiction,[5] and it contains Rand's most extensive statement of Objectivism in any of her works of fiction.

The book explores a dystopian United States where many of society's most productive citizens refuse to be exploited by increasing taxation and government regulations and go on strike. The refusal evokes the imagery of what would happen if the mythological Atlas refused to continue to hold up the world. They are led by John Galt. Galt describes the strike as "stopping the motor of the world" by withdrawing the minds that drive society's growth and productivity. In their efforts, these people "of the mind" hope to demonstrate that a world in which the individual is not free to create is doomed, that civilization cannot exist where every person is a slave to society and government, and that the destruction of the profit motive leads to the collapse of society. The protagonist, Dagny Taggart, sees society collapse around her as the government increasingly asserts control over all industry.

The novel's title is a reference to Atlas, a Titan of Greek mythology, who in the novel is described as "the giant who holds the world on his shoulders".[6] The significance of this reference is seen in a conversation between the characters Francisco d'Anconia and Hank Rearden, in which d'Anconia asks Rearden what sort of advice he would give to Atlas upon seeing that "the greater [the titan's] effort, the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders". With Rearden unable to answer, d'Anconia gives his own response: "To shrug".

The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is "the role of man's mind in existence". The book explores a number of philosophical themes that Rand would subsequently develop into the philosophy of Objectivism.[7][8] It advocates the core tenets of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and expresses her concept of human achievement. In doing so, it expresses many facets of Rand's philosophy, such as the advocacy of reason, individualism, capitalism, and the failures of government coercion.

Atlas Shrugged received largely negative reviews after its 1957 publication, but achieved enduring popularity and consistent sales in the following decades.[9]

Rand referred to Atlas Shrugged as a mystery novel, "not about the murder of man's body, but about the murder and rebirth of man's spirit".[10] Her stated goal for writing the text was "to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and how viciously it treats them" and to portray "what happens to a world without them".[10] Nonetheless, when asked by film producer Albert S. Ruddy if a screenplay could focus on the love story, Rand agreed and said, "That's all it ever was."[1][2][3]

Rand remarked that the core idea for the book came to her after a 1943 telephone conversation with a friend, who asserted that Rand owed it to her readers to write a nonfiction book about her philosophy. Rand replied, "What if I went on strike? What if all the creative minds of the world went on strike?"[9] Rand then set out to create a work of fiction that explored the role of the mind in human life and the morality of rational self-interest,[11] by exploring the consequences when the people "of the mind" go on strike, refusing to allow their inventions, art, business leadership, scientific research, or new ideas to be taken from them by the government or by the rest of the world. The working title throughout her writing was The Strike, but Rand thought this title would have revealed the mystery element of the novel prematurely,[12] so she was pleased when her husband suggested Atlas Shrugged, previously the title of one of the chapters, as a better title for the book.[13]

To produce Atlas Shrugged, Rand conducted research on American industry, specifically the railroad industry, which forms a key element in her novel. Her previous work on a proposed (but never realized) screenplay based on the development of the atomic bomb, including her interviews of J. Robert Oppenheimer, was used in the portrait of the character Robert Stadler and the novel's depiction of the development of "Project X". To do further background research, Rand toured and inspected a number of industrial facilities, such as the Kaiser Steel plant, rode the locomotives of the New York Central Railroad, and even learned to operate the locomotive of the Twentieth Century Limited (and proudly reported that when operating it, "nobody touched a lever except me").[9][14]

Rand's self-identified literary influences include Victor Hugo, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Edmond Rostand, and O. Henry.[15] In addition, Justin Raimondo has observed similarities between Atlas Shrugged and the 1922 novel The Driver, written by Garet Garrett,[16] which concerns an idealized industrialist named Henry Galt, who is a transcontinental railway owner trying to improve the world and fighting against government and socialism. In contrast, Chris Matthew Sciabarra found Raimondo's "claims that Rand plagiarized... The Driver" to be "unsupported",[17] and Stephan Kinsella doubts that Rand was in any way influenced by Garrett.[18] Writer Bruce Ramsey observed, "Both The Driver and Atlas Shrugged have to do with running railroads during an economic depression, and both suggest pro-capitalist ways in which the country might get out of the depression. But in plot, character, tone, and theme they are very different."[19]

To persuade Rand to publish her novel with Random House, publisher Bennet Cerf proposed a "philosophic contest" in which Rand would submit her work to various publishers to judge their response to its ideas, so she could evaluate who might best promote her work.[20] Because of the success of Rand's 1943 novel The Fountainhead, the initial print run was 100,000 copies. It marked a turning point in her life, ending her career as novelist and beginning her tenure as a popular philosopher.[21]

Atlas Shrugged is set in an alternative dystopian United States at an unspecified time, in which the country has a "National Legislature" instead of Congress and a "Head of State" instead of President. Writer Edward Younkins noted, "The story may be simultaneously described as anachronistic and timeless. The pattern of industrial organization appears to be that of the late 1800s the mood seems to be close to that of the depression-era 1930s. Both the social customs and the level of technology remind one of the 1950s."[22] Many early 20th-century technologies are available, and the steel and railroad industries are especially significant; jet planes are described as a relatively new technology, and television is a novelty significantly less influential than radio. While many other countries are mentioned in passing, there is no mention of the Soviet Union, no reference to World War II or the Cold War. It is implied that the countries of the world are converting to big government statism, along vaguely Marxist lines, in references to "People's States" in Europe and South America. Plot elements also refer to nationalization of businesses in these "People's States", as well as in America. The "mixed economy" of the book's present is often contrasted with the "pure" capitalism of 19th century America, wistfully recalled as a lost Golden Age.

The novel is divided into three parts consisting of ten chapters each. Robert James Bidinotto noted "the titles of the parts and chapters suggest multiple layers of meaning. The three parts, for example, are named in honor of Aristotle's laws of logic... Part One is titled 'Non-Contradiction'... Part Two, titled 'Either-Or'... [and] Part Three is titled 'A Is A,' a reference to 'the Law of Identity'."[23]

Template:See alsoAs the novel opens, protagonist Dagny Taggart, the Operating Vice President of Taggart Transcontinental, a giant railroad company originally pioneered by her grandfather, attempts to keep the company alive during difficult economic times marked by collectivism and statism. While Dagny runs the company from behind the scenes, her brother, James Taggart, the railroad's President, is peripherally aware of the company's troubles, but will not make any difficult choices, preferring to avoid responsibility for any actions while watching his company go under. He seems to make irrational decisions, such as preferring to buy steel from Orren Boyle's Associated Steel, rather than Hank Rearden's Rearden Steel, despite the former continually delaying delivery of vital rail. In this as in other decisions, Dagny simply goes ahead with her own policy and challenges him to repeal it. As this unfolds, Dagny is disappointed to discover that Francisco d'Anconia, a true genius and her only childhood friend, first love, and king of the copper industry, appears to have become a worthless playboy who is destroying his family's international copper company, which has made him into one of the richest and most powerful men in the world.

Hank Rearden, a self-made steel magnate of great integrity, has recently developed a metal alloy called Rearden Metal, now the strongest and most reliable metal in the world. Hank chooses to keep the instructions to its creation a secret, sparking jealousy and uproar among competitors. False claims are made about the danger of the alloy and are backed by government agencies. As a result of this, pressure is put on Dagny to use conventional steel, but she refuses. Hank's career is hindered by his feelings of obligation toward his manipulative wife, mother, and ungrateful younger brother, who show no appreciation for everything he provides for them. Dagny also becomes acquainted with Wesley Mouch, a Washington lobbyist initially working for Rearden, whom he betrays. Mouch eventually leads the government's efforts in controlling all commerce and enterprise, intentionally destroying the common man's opportunity to build a largely successful, free-market business. The reader also becomes acquainted with Ellis Wyatt, the sole founder and supervisor of the successful enterprise Wyatt Oil. He is a young, self-possessed, hard-working man one of the few men still loyal to Dagny and Hank's efforts in pushing for a system of business free of government meddling and control.

While economic conditions worsen and government agencies continue to enforce their control on successful businesses, the nave, yet weary mass of citizens are often heard reciting the new, popular street phrase, "Who is John Galt?" This sarcastic phrase is given in response to what tend to be sincere questions about heavy subjects, wherein the individual can find no answer. It sarcastically means, "Don't ask important questions, because we don't have answers", or more broadly, "What's the point?" or "Why bother?"

Dagny begins to notice the nation's brightest innovators and business leaders abruptly disappearing, one by one, under mysterious circumstances, all leaving their top industrial businesses to certain failure. The most recent of these leaders to have vanished is Dagny's friend Ellis Wyatt, who, like the others, has suddenly disappeared into thin air with no warning, leaving nothing behind except an empty office and his most successful oil well now spewing petroleum and fire high into the air (later to be named "Wyatt's Torch"). Each of these men proves to be absent despite a thorough search put on by ever-anxious politicians, who have now found themselves trapped within a government that has been "left to dry", by its leaders in business utterly helpless without them.

In a romantic subplot, Dagny and Hank fall deeply in love. Rand refers to their love as a purer kind of love than the one that most men and women experience. These two people have a similar purpose in life, and they see in each other a kindred soul. In the universe of the novel, men and women with purpose are rare and, to an extent, deified thus making their love especially sacred. Hank (who is still married to another woman) goes on vacation with Dagny on a drive across the United States. They discover, amongst the ruins of an abandoned factory, an incomplete motor that transforms atmospheric static electricity into kinetic electricity. Deeply moved by the significance of a motor which has the potential to completely transform the world, Dagny sets out to find the inventor.

In addition to the inventor of the motor, Dagny also makes it her mission to find the reason so many important people keep disappearing. These two quests converge when Dagny flies to Utah to speak with a scientist she has working on reverse-engineering the motor. While still at the airfield, she discovers the scientist has just flown off with a mysterious man. Dagny follows the plane to where it mysteriously disappears, eventually crash-landing through a "ray screen" used to hide Galt's Gulch - the hidden Atlantis where John Galt has been bringing those he recruits. John Galt proceeds to explain the series of events which led to an organized "strike" against those who use the force of law and moral guilt to confiscate the accomplishments of society's productive members.

Unable to give up her railroad to destruction, Dagny leaves the valley as soon as she can. As the nation is collapsing, Galt follows Dagny back to New York City (where she learns he has been working in plain sight for her railroad as a lowly laborer), where he hacks into a national radio broadcast to deliver a long speech to the people (70 pages in the first edition), serving to explain the novel's theme and Rand's philosophy of Objectivism.[24] As the government begins to collapse following Galt's message, the leaders decide the only way to restore order is to capture Galt and force him to save them. While they succeed in following Dagny to him and subsequently taking him prisoner, they are unable to turn Galt, who is eventually freed in a rescue mission by a group of friends. While they are flying back to their hidden valley, they see the lights go out in New York City - the indication that their mission has been completed. The novel closes with a brief section where the strikers complete their preparations and Galt announces that they will return to the world.

The story of Atlas Shrugged dramatically expresses Rand's philosophy of Objectivism: Rand's ethical egoism, her advocacy of "rational selfishness", is perhaps her most well-known position. For Rand, all of the principal virtues and vices are applications of the role of reason as man's basic tool of survival (or a failure to apply it): rationality, honesty, justice, independence, integrity, productiveness, and pride each of which she explains in some detail in "The Objectivist Ethics".[25] Rand's characters often personify her view of the archetypes of various schools of philosophy for living and working in the world. Robert James Bidinotto wrote, "Rand rejected the literary convention that depth and plausibility demand characters who are naturalistic replicas of the kinds of people we meet in everyday life, uttering everyday dialogue and pursuing everyday values. But she also rejected the notion that characters should be symbolic rather than realistic."[23] and Rand herself stated, "My characters are never symbols, they are merely men in sharper focus than the audience can see with unaided sight. ... My characters are persons in whom certain human attributes are focused more sharply and consistently than in average human beings."[23]

In addition to the plot's more obvious statements about the significance of industrialists to society, and the sharp contrast it provides to the Marxist version of exploitation and the labor theory of value, this explicit conflict is used by Rand to draw wider philosophical conclusions, both implicit in the plot and via the characters' own statements. Atlas Shrugged portrays fascism, socialism and communism any form of state intervention in society as systemically and fatally flawed. In addition, positions are expressed on a variety of other topics, including sex, politics, friendship, charity, childhood, and many others. Rand said it is not a fundamentally political book, but a demonstration of the individual mind's position and value in society.[26]

Rand argues that independence and individual achievement enable society to survive and thrive, and should be embraced. But this requires a rational moral code. She argues that, over time, coerced self-sacrifice must cause any society to self-destruct.

Similarly, Rand rejects faith (that "short-cut to knowledge", she writes in the novel, which in fact is only a "short-circuit" destroying knowledge), along with any sort of a god or higher being. Rand urges the rejection of anything claiming "authority" over one's own mind apart from the absolute of existence, itself. The book positions itself against religion specifically, often directly within the characters' dialogue.

The concept "sanction of the victim" is defined by Leonard Peikoff as "the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the 'sin' of creating values".[27] Rand holds that evil is a parasite on the good and can only exist if the good tolerates it. Atlas Shrugged can be seen as an answer to the question of what would happen if this sanction were revoked. When Atlas shrugs, relieving himself of the burden of carrying the world, he is revoking his sanction.

Throughout Atlas Shrugged, numerous characters admit there is something wrong with the world that they cannot identify; frequently, they are struggling with the idea of sanction of the victim. We first glimpse the concept when Hank Rearden feels he is duty-bound to support his family, despite their hostility towards him; later, the principle is stated explicitly by Dan Conway: "I suppose somebody's got to be sacrificed. If it turned out to be me, I have no right to complain." John Galt vows to stop the motor of the world by persuading the creators of the world to withhold their sanction: "Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us", and, "I saw that evil was impotent... and the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it".

In Rand's view, morality requires we do not sanction our own victimhood. She assigns virtue to the trait of rational self-interest. However, Rand contends moral selfishness does not mean a license to do whatever one pleases, guided by whims. It means the exacting discipline of defining and pursuing one's rational self-interest. A code of rational self-interest rejects every form of human sacrifice, whether of oneself to others or of others to oneself.

Atlas Shrugged endorses the belief that a society's best hope rests on adopting a system of pure laissez-faire. Rand's view of the ideal government is expressed by John Galt, who says, "The political system we will build is contained in a single moral premise: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force", and claims that "no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality to think, to work and to keep the results which means: the right of property". Galt himself lives a life of laissez-faire capitalism as the only way to live consistently with his beliefs.

In the world of Atlas Shrugged, society stagnates when independent productive achievers are socially demonized and even punished for their accomplishments.[28] Independence and personal happiness had flourished to the extent that people were free, and achievement was rewarded to the extent that individual ownership of private property was strictly respected. This is in line with an excerpt from a 1964 interview with Playboy magazine in which Rand states "What we have today is not a capitalist society, but a mixed economy that is, a mixture of freedom and controls, which, by the presently dominant trend, is moving toward dictatorship. The action in Atlas Shrugged takes place at a time when society has reached the stage of dictatorship. When and if this happens, that will be the time to go on strike, but not until then."[29]

Rand characterizes the actions of government employees in a way that is consistent with public choice theory, describing how the language of altruism is used to pass legislation that is nominally in the public interest (e.g., the "Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule", and "The Equalization of Opportunity Bill") but which in reality serves special interests and government agencies at the expense of the public and the producers of value.[30]

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter."[31]

Francisco d'Anconia, Atlas Shrugged

Rand's heroes must continually fight against "parasites", "looters", and "moochers" who demand the benefits of the heroes' labor. Edward Younkins describes Atlas Shrugged as "an apocalyptic vision of the last stages of conflict between two classes of humanity the looters and the non-looters. The looters are proponents of high taxation, big labor, government ownership, government spending, government planning, regulation, and redistribution."[32]

"Looters" confiscate others' earnings by force ("at the point of a gun") and include government officials, whose demands are backed by the implicit threat of force. Some officials are merely executing government policy, such as those who confiscate one state's seed grain to feed the starving citizens of another; others are exploiting those policies, such as the railroad regulator who illegally sells the railroad's supplies for his own profit. Both use force to take property from the people who produced or earned it.

"Moochers" demand others' earnings on behalf of the needy and those unable to earn themselves; however, they curse the producers who make that help possible and are jealous and resentful of the talented upon whom they depend. They are ultimately as destructive as the looters destroying the productive through guilt, and appealing to "moral right" while enabling the "lawful" looting performed by governments.

Looting and mooching are seen at all levels of the world Atlas Shrugged portrays, from the looting officials Dagny Taggart must work around and the mooching brother Hank Rearden struggles with, to the looting of whole industries by companies like Associated Steel and the mooching demands for foreign aid by the starving countries of Europe.

One of the novel's heroes, Francisco d'Anconia, indicates the role of "looters" in relation to money itself:

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?... Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or the looters who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? ...Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into bread you need to survive tomorrow. ...Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values... Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account Overdrawn.'"[31]

"Through Dagny's associations... Rand illustrates what a relationship between two self-actualized, equal human beings can be... Rand denies the existence of a split between the physical and the mental, the desires of the flesh and the longings of the spirit."[33]

In Atlas Shrugged, characters are sexually attracted to those who embody or seem to embody their values, be they higher or lower values by Rand's standards. Characters who lack clear purpose find sex devoid of meaning. This is illustrated in the contrasting relationships of Hank Rearden with Lillian Rearden and Dagny Taggart, by the relationships of James Taggart with Cherryl Brooks and with Lillian Rearden, and finally in the relationship between Dagny and John Galt.

Adultery is committed by three characters throughout the course of the novel. The first and predominate act is that of Hank Rearden, who sleeps with Dagny after the opening of the John Galt Line, to celebrate the success of his metal and her determination to have the line built. The affair continues for some time - even including a cross-country vacation for the two - until Hank's wife finds out; his wife does not want to divorce him, but instead wants to maintain her image as Mrs. Rearden and allows the affair to continue until Hank manipulates the judicial system to obtain a divorce. Later in the novel, as Mrs. Rearden knows the divorce will be processed shortly, she has sex with Dagny's brother James (who is also married, and despises Hank), as an act of revenge for them both against him. Having caught them, James' wife proceeds to commit suicide. Yet adultery is never addressed on moral grounds; the sex is addressed on its own, either as celebration of accomplishment or as an act of revenge.

Technological progress and intellectual breakthroughs in scientific theory both figure prominently in Atlas Shrugged, leading some observers to classify Atlas in the genre of science fiction. Writer Jeff Riggenbach notes, "Galt's motor is one of the three inventions that propel the action of Atlas Shrugged", the other two being Rearden Metal and the government's sonic weapon, Project X.[34] Other fictional technologies included in the story are refractor rays (Gulch mirage), a sophisticated electrical torture device (the Ferris Persuader), voice activated door locks (Gulch power station), palm-activated door locks (Galt's New York lab), Galt's means of quietly turning the entire contents of his laboratory into a fine powder when a lock is breached, and a means of taking over all radio stations worldwide. Riggenbach adds, "Rand's overall message with regard to science seems clear: the role of science in human life and human society is to provide the knowledge on the basis of which technological advancement and the related improvements in the quality of human life can be realized. But science can fulfill this role only in a society in which human beings are left free to conduct their business as they see fit."[35]

Atlas Shrugged debuted on The New York Times Bestseller List at #13 three days after its publication. It peaked at #3 on December 8, 1957, and was on the list for 22 consecutive weeks.[9]

"Both conservatives and liberals were unstinting in disparaging the book; the right saw promotion of godlessness, and the left saw a message of greed is good. Rand is said to have cried every day as the reviews came out."

Atlas Shrugged was generally disliked by critics, despite being a popular success. The book was dismissed by some as "a homage to greed", while author Gore Vidal described its philosophy as "nearly perfect in its immorality".[10] Helen Beal Woodward, reviewing Atlas Shrugged for The Saturday Review, opined that the novel was written with "dazzling virtuosity" but that it was "shot through with hatred".[36] This was echoed by Granville Hicks, writing for The New York Times Book Review, who also stated that the book was "written out of hate".[37] The reviewer for Time magazine asked: "Is it a novel? Is it a nightmare? Is it Superman in the comic strip or the Nietzschean version?"[38] In the magazine National Review, Whittaker Chambers called Atlas Shrugged "sophomoric" and "remarkably silly", and said it "can be called a novel only by devaluing the term".[39] Chambers argued against the novel's implicit endorsement of atheism, whereby "Randian man, like Marxian man is made the center of a godless world".[39] Chambers also wrote that the implicit message of the novel is akin to "Hitler's National Socialism and Stalin's brand of Communism" ("To a gas chamber go!").[39]

The negative reviews produced responses from some of Rand's admirers, including a letter by Alan Greenspan to The New York Times Book Review, in which he responded to Hicks' claim that "the book was written out of hate" by saying, "...Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should."[40] Greenspan had read unpublished drafts of the work in Rand's salon at least three years earlier.[41] In an unpublished[42] letter to the National Review, Leonard Peikoff wrote, "...Mr. Chambers is an ex-Communist. He has attacked Atlas Shrugged in the best tradition of the Communists by lies, smears, and cowardly misrepresentations. Mr. Chambers may have changed a few of his political views; he has not changed the method of intellectual analysis and evaluation of the Party to which he belonged."

Positive reviews appeared in a number of publications. Richard McLaughlin, reviewing the novel for The American Mercury, compared it to Uncle Tom's Cabin in importance.[43] Well-known journalist and book reviewer John Chamberlain, writing in The New York Herald Tribune, found Atlas Shrugged satisfying on many levels: science fiction, a "Dostoevsky" detective story and, most importantly, a "profound political parable".[44][45] However, Mimi Reisel Gladstein writes that reviewers who have "appreciated not only Rand's writing style but also her message" have been "far outweighed by those who have been everything from hysterically hostile to merely uncomprehending".[46]

Former Rand friend, associate, business partner and lover Nathaniel Branden, to whom the book was originally dedicated, has had differing views of Atlas Shrugged in his life. He was initially quite favorable to it, praising it in the book he and Barbara Branden wrote in 1962 called Who is Ayn Rand?[47] After he and Ayn Rand ended their relationship in 1968, both he and Barbara Branden repudiated their book in praise of Rand and her novels.[48] As of 1971 though, in an interview he gave to "Reason" he listed some critiques, but concluded, "But what the hell, so there are a few things one can quarrel with in the book, so what? ATLAS SHRUGGED is the greatest novel that has ever been written, in my judgment, so let's let it go at that."[49]

But years later, in 1984, two years after Rand's death, he argued that Atlas Shrugged "encourages emotional repression and self-disowning" and that her works contained contradictory messages. Branden claimed that the characters rarely talk "on a simple, human level without launching into philosophical sermons". He criticized the potential psychological impact of the novel, stating that John Galt's recommendation to respond to wrongdoing with "contempt and moral condemnation" clashes with the view of psychologists who say this only causes the wrongdoing to repeat itself.[50] Rand herself, however, would not have regarded a novel as needing to portray such "ordinary" human interaction at all, even if an entire philosophy of life does need to address this.[51]

Template:DetailsOver the years, Atlas Shrugged has attracted an energetic and committed fan base. Each year the Ayn Rand Institute donates 400,000 copies of works by Ayn Rand, including Atlas Shrugged, to high school students.[10] According to a 1991 survey done for the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, Atlas Shrugged was situated between the Bible and M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled as the book that made the most difference in the lives of 5,000 Book-of-the-Month club members surveyed, with a "large gap existing between the #1 book and the rest of the list".[52] Modern Library's 1998 nonscientific online poll of the 100 best novels of the 20th century[53][54] found Atlas rated #1 although it was not included on the list chosen by the Modern Library board of authors and scholars.[55]

In 1997, the libertarian Cato Institute held a joint conference with The Atlas Society, an Objectivist organization, to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged.[56] At this event, Howard Dickman of Reader's Digest stated that the novel had "turned millions of readers on to the ideas of liberty" and said that the book had the important message of the readers' "profound right to be happy".[56]

The C-SPAN television series American Writers listed Rand as one of twenty-two surveyed figures of American literature, though primarily mentioning The Fountainhead rather than Atlas Shrugged.[57]

Rand's impact on contemporary libertarian thought has been considerable, and it is noteworthy that the title of the leading libertarian magazine, Reason: Free Minds, Free Markets, is taken directly from John Galt, the hero of Atlas Shrugged, who argues that "a free mind and a free market are corollaries".

The Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises admired the unapologetic elitism of Rand's work. In a private letter to Rand written a few months after the novel's publication, he declared, "...Atlas Shrugged is not merely a novel. It is also (or may I say: first of all) a cogent analysis of the evils that plague our society, a substantiated rejection of the ideology of our self-styled "intellectuals" and a pitiless unmasking of the insincerity of the policies adopted by governments and political parties... You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you."[58]

Acclaim has not been unanimous. Nobel Prize-winning economist and liberal commentator Paul Krugman alluded to an oft-quoted quip[59] by John Rogers in his blog: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."[60]

"I know from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 C.E.O.'s that Atlas Shrugged has had a significant effect on their business decisions, even if they don't agree with all of Ayn Rand's ideas."

In the late 2000s, the book gained more media attention and conservative commentators suggested the book as a warning against a socialistic reaction to the finance crisis. Conservative commentators Neal Boortz,[61] Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh[62] have offered high praise of the book on their respective radio and television programs. In 2006 Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas cited Atlas Shrugged as among his favorite novels.[63] Republican Congressman John Campbell said for example: "People are starting to feel like we're living through the scenario that happened in [the novel]... We're living in Atlas Shrugged", echoing Stephen Moore in an article published in The Wall Street Journal on January 9, 2009, titled "Atlas Shrugged From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years".[64]

The sales of Atlas Shrugged have since then sharply increased, according to The Economist magazine and The New York Times. The Economist reported that the fifty-two-year-old novel ranked #33 among Amazon.com's top-selling books on January 13, 2009 and that its thirty day sales average showed the novel selling three times faster than during the same period of the previous year. With an attached sales chart, The Economist reported that sales "spikes" of the book seemed to coincide with the release of economic data. Subsequently, on April 2, 2009, Atlas Shrugged ranked #1 in the "Fiction and Literature" category at Amazon and #15 in overall sales.[65][66][67] Total sales of the novel in 2009 exceeded 500,000 copies.[68] The book sold 445,000 copies in 2011, the second-strongest sales year in the novel's history. At the time of publication the novel was on the New York Times best-seller list and was selling at roughly a third the volume of 2011.[69]

A film adaptation of Atlas Shrugged was in "development hell" for nearly 40 years.[70] In 1972, Albert S. Ruddy approached Rand to produce a cinematic adaptation. Rand agreed that Ruddy could focus on the love story. "That's all it ever was," Rand said.[1][2][3] Rand insisted on having final script approval, which Ruddy refused to give her, thus preventing a deal. In 1978, Henry and Michael Jaffe negotiated a deal for an eight-hour Atlas Shrugged television miniseries on NBC. Michael Jaffe hired screenwriter Stirling Silliphant to adapt the novel and he obtained approval from Rand on the final script. However, in 1979, with Fred Silverman's rise as president of NBC, the project was scrapped.[71]

Rand, a former Hollywood screenwriter herself, began writing her own screenplay, but died in 1982 with only one-third of it finished. She left her estate, including the film rights to Atlas, to her student Leonard Peikoff, who sold an option to Michael Jaffe and Ed Snider. Peikoff would not approve the script they wrote, and the deal fell through. In 1992, investor John Aglialoro bought an option to produce the film, paying Peikoff over $1 million for full creative control.[71]

In 1999, under Aglialoro's sponsorship, Ruddy negotiated a deal with Turner Network Television (TNT) for a four-hour miniseries, but the project was killed after the AOL Time Warner merger. After the TNT deal fell through Howard and Karen Baldwin obtained the rights while running Phillip Anschutz's Crusader Entertainment. The Baldwins left Crusader and formed Baldwin Entertainment Group in 2004, taking the rights to Atlas Shrugged with them. Michael Burns of Lions Gate Entertainment approached the Baldwins to fund and distribute Atlas Shrugged.[71] A draft screenplay was written by James V. Hart[72] and re-written by Randall Wallace,[73] but was never produced.

In May 2010, Brian Patrick O'Toole and Aglialoro wrote a screenplay, intent on filming in June 2010. Stephen Polk was set to direct.[74] However, Polk was fired and principal photography began on June 13, 2010 under the direction of Paul Johansson and produced by Harmon Kaslow and Aglialoro.[75] This resulted in Aglialoro's retention of his rights to the property, which were set to expire on June 15, 2010. Filming was completed on July 20, 2010,[76] and the movie was released on April 15, 2011.[77] Dagny Taggart was played by Taylor Schilling and Hank Rearden by Grant Bowler.[78]

The film was met with a generally negative reception from professional critics, getting an 11% (rotten) rating, however audience and user reviews rate it at a 74% rating, on movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes,[79] and had less than $5 million in total box office receipts.[80] The producer and screenwriter John Aglialoro blamed critics for the film's paltry box office take and said he might go on strike.[81]

However, on February 2, 2012, Kaslow and Aglialoro announced Atlas Shrugged: Part II was fully funded and that principal photography was tentatively scheduled to commence in early April 2012.[82] The film was released on October 12, 2012.[83] Critics gave the film a 5% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 19 reviews, while audiences gave the film an 84% rating.[84] Film critics were not impressed with the film based on several reviews: one reviewer gave the film a "D" rating;[85] while another reviewer gave the film a "1" rating (of 4).[86]

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The story of Atlas Shrugged takes place in the United States at an unspecified future time. Dagny Taggart, vice president in charge of operations for Taggart Transcontinental Railroad, seeks to rebuild the crumbling track of the Rio Norte Line that serves Ellis Wyatt's oil fields and the booming industrial areas of Colorado. The country is in a downward economic spiral with businesses closing and men out of work. Other countries in the world have become socialist Peoples' States and are destitute. Colorado, based on Wyatt's innovative method of extracting oil from shale, is the last great industrial center on earth. Dagny intends to provide Colorado the train service it requires, but her brother James Taggart, president of Taggart Transcontinental, tries to block her from getting new rails from Rearden Steel, the last reliable steel manufacturer. James wants to do business with the inefficient Associated Steel, which is run by his friend Orren Boyle. Dagny wants the new rail to be made of Rearden Metal, a new alloy that Hank Rearden developed after ten years of experiment. Because the metal has never been tried and has been denounced by metallurgists, James won't accept responsibility for using it. Dagny, who studied engineering in college, has seen the results of Rearden's tests. She accepts the responsibility and orders the rails made of Rearden Metal.

Worsening the economic depression in the U.S. is the unexplained phenomenon of talented men retiring and disappearing. For example, Owen Kellogg, a bright young Taggart employee for whom Dagny had great hopes, tells her that he is leaving the railroad. McNamara, a contractor who was supposed to rebuild the Rio Norte Line, retires unexpectedly. As more great men disappear, the American people become increasingly pessimistic. Dagny dislikes the new phrase that has crept into the language and signifies people's sense of futility and despair. Nobody knows the origin or exact meaning of the question "Who is John Galt?," but people use the unanswerable question to express their sense of hopelessness. Dagny rejects the widespread pessimism and finds a new contractor for the Rio Norte Line.

The crisis for Taggart Transcontinental worsens when the railroad's San Sebastian Line proves to be worthless and is nationalized by the Mexican government. The line, which cost millions of dollars, was supposed to provide freight service for the San Sebastian Mines, a new venture by Francisco d'Anconia, the wealthiest copper industrialist in the world. Francisco was Dagny's childhood friend and her former lover, but she now regards him as a worthless playboy. In this latest venture, d'Anconia has steered investors completely wrong, causing huge financial losses and a general sense of unrest.

James Taggart, in an attempt to recover the railroad's losses on the San Sebastian Line, uses his political friendships to influence the vote of the National Alliance of Railroads. The Alliance passes what's known as the "Anti-dog-eat-dog rule," prohibiting "cutthroat" competition. The rule puts the superb Phoenix-Durango Railroad, Taggart Transcontinental's competitor for the Colorado freight traffic, out of business. With the Phoenix-Durango line gone, Dagny must rebuild the Rio Norte Line quickly.

Dagny asks Francisco, who is in New York, what his purpose was in building the worthless Mexican mines. He tells her that it was to damage d'Anconia Copper and Taggart Transcontinental, as well as to cause secondary destructive consequences. Dagny is dumbfounded, unable to reconcile such a destructive purpose from the brilliant, productive industrialist Francisco was just ten years earlier. Not long after this conversation, Francisco appears at a celebration for Hank Rearden's wedding anniversary. Rearden's wife Lillian, his mother, and his brother are nonproductive freeloaders who believe that the strong are morally obliged to support the weak. Rearden no longer loves and cannot respect them, but he pities their weakness and carries them on his back. Francisco meets Rearden for the first time and warns him that the freeloaders have a weapon that they are using against him. Rearden questions why Francisco has come to the party, but Francisco says that he merely wished to become acquainted with Rearden. He won't explain his presence any further.

Although public opinion and an incompetent contractor are working against them, Dagny and Rearden build the Rio Norte Line. Rearden designs an innovative bridge for the line that takes advantage of the properties that his new metal possesses. The State Science Institute, a government research organization, tries to bribe and threaten Rearden to keep his metal off the market, but he won't give in. The Institute then issues a statement devoid of factual evidence that alleges possible weaknesses in the structure of Rearden Metal. Taggart stock crashes, the contractor quits, and the railroad union forbids its employees to work on the Rio Norte Line. When Dr. Robert Stadler, a brilliant theoretical scientist in whose name the State Science Institute was founded, refuses to publicly defend Rearden Metal even though he knows its value, Dagny makes a decision. She tells her brother that she will take a leave of absence, form her own company, and build the Rio Norte Line on her own. She signs a contract saying that when the line is successfully completed, she'll turn it back over to Taggart Transcontinental. Dagny chooses to name it the John Galt Line in defiance of the general pessimism that surrounds her.

Rearden and the leading businessmen of Colorado invest in the John Galt Line. Rearden feels a strong sexual attraction to Dagny but, because he regards sex as a demeaning impulse, doesn't act on his attraction. The government passes the Equalization of Opportunity Bill that prevents an individual from owning companies in different fields. The bill prohibits Rearden from owning the mines that supply him with the raw materials he needs to make Rearden Metal. However, Rearden creates a new design for the John Galt Line's Rearden Metal Bridge, realizing that if he combines a truss with an arch, it will enable him to maximize the best qualities of the new metal.

Dagny completes construction of the Line ahead of schedule. She and Rearden ride in the engine cab on the Line's first train run, which is a resounding success. Rearden and Dagny have dinner at Ellis Wyatt's home to celebrate. After dinner, Dagny and Rearden make love for the first time. The next day, Rearden is contemptuous of them both for what he considers their low urges, but Dagny is radiantly happy. She rejects Rearden's estimate, knowing that their sexual attraction is based on mutual admiration for each other's noblest qualities.

Dagny and Rearden go on vacation together, driving around the country looking at abandoned factories. At the ruins of the Twentieth Century Motor Company's factory in Wisconsin, they find the remnant of a motor with the potential to change the world. The motor was able to draw static electricity from the atmosphere and convert it to usable energy, but now it is destroyed.

Realizing how much the motor would benefit the transportation industry, Dagny vows to find the inventor. At the same time, she must fight against new proposed legislation. Various economic pressure groups, seeking to cash in on the industrial success of Colorado, want the government to force the successful companies to share their profits. Dagny knows that the legislation would put Wyatt Oil and the other Colorado companies out of business, destroy the Rio Norte Line, and remove the profit she needs to rebuild the rest of the transcontinental rail system, but she's powerless to prevent the legislation.

Dagny continues her nationwide quest to find the inventor of the motor, and she finally finds the widow of the engineer who ran the automobile company's research department. The widow tells Dagny that a young scientist working for her husband invented the motor. She doesn't know his name, but she provides a clue that leads Dagny to a cook in an isolated Wyoming diner. The cook tells Dagny to forget the inventor of the motor because he won't be found until he chooses. Dagny is shocked to discover that the cook is Hugh Akston, the world's greatest living philosopher. She goes to Cheyenne and discovers that Wesley Mouch, the new economic coordinator of the country, has issued a series of directives that will result in the strangling of Colorado's industrial success. Dagny rushes to Colorado but arrives too late. Ellis Wyatt, in defiance of the government's edict, set fire to his oil wells and retired.

Months later, the situation in Colorado continues to deteriorate. With the Wyatt oil wells out of business, the economy struggles. Several of the other major industrialists have retired and disappeared; nobody knows where they've gone. Dagny is forced to cut trains on the Colorado schedule. The one bright spot of her work is her continued search for the inventor of the motor. She speaks to Robert Stadler who recommends a young scientist, Quentin Daniels of the Utah Institute of Technology, as a man capable of undertaking the motor's reconstruction.

The State Science Institute orders 10,000 tons of Rearden Metal for a top-secret project, but Rearden refuses to sell it to them. Rearden sells to Ken Danagger, the country's best producer of coal, an amount of Rearden Metal that the law deems illegal. Meanwhile, at the reception for James Taggart's wedding, Francisco d'Anconia publicly defends the morality of producing wealth. Rearden overhears what Francisco says and finds himself increasingly drawn to this supposedly worthless playboy. The day following the reception, Rearden's wife discovers that he's having an affair, but she doesn't know with whom. A manipulator who seeks control over her husband, Lillian uses guilt as a weapon against him.

Dr. Ferris of the State Science Institute tells Rearden that he knows of the illegal sale to Ken Danagger and will take Rearden to trial if he refuses to sell the Institute the metal it needs. Rearden refuses, and the government brings charges against himself and Danagger. Dagny, in the meantime, has become convinced that a destroyer is loose in the world some evil creature that is deliberately luring away the brains of the world for a purpose she cannot understand. Her diligent assistant, Eddie Willers, knows that Dagny's fears are justified. He eats his meals in the workers' cafeteria, where he has befriended a nameless worker. Eddie tells the worker about Dagny's fear that Danagger is next in line for the destroyer that he'll be the next to retire and disappear. Dagny races to Pittsburgh to meet with Danagger to convince him to stay, but she's too late. Someone has already met with Danagger and convinced him to retire. In a mood of joyous serenity, Danagger tells Dagny that nothing could convince him to remain. The next day, he disappears.

Francisco visits Rearden and empathizes with the pain he has endured because of the invention of Rearden Metal. Francisco begins to ask Rearden what could make such suffering worthwhile when an accident strikes one of Rearden's furnaces. Francisco and Rearden race to the scene and work arduously to make the necessary repairs. Afterward, when Rearden asks him to finish his question, Francisco says that he knows the answer and departs.

At his trial, Rearden states that he doesn't recognize his deal with Danagger as a criminal action and, consequently, doesn't recognize the court's right to try him. He says that a man has the right to own the product of his effort and to trade it voluntarily with others. The government has no moral basis for outlawing the voluntary exchange of goods and services. The government, he says, has the power to seize his metal by force, and they have the power to compel him at the point of a gun. But he won't cooperate with their demands, and he won't pretend that the process is civil. If the government wishes to deal with men by compulsion, it must do so openly. Rearden states that he won't help the government pretend that his trial is anything but the initiation of a forced seizure of his metal. He says that he's proud of his metal, he's proud of his mills, he's proud of every penny that he's earned by his own hard work, and he'll not cooperate by voluntarily yielding one cent that is his. Rearden says that the government will have to seize his money and products by force, just like the robber it is. At this point, the crowd bursts into applause. The judges recognize the truth of what Rearden says and refuse to stand before the American people as open thieves. In the end, they fine Rearden and suspend the sentence.

Because of the new economic restrictions, the major Colorado industrialists have all retired and disappeared. Freight traffic has dwindled, and Taggart Transcontinental has been forced to shut down the Rio Norte Line. The railroad is in terrible condition: It is losing money, the government has convinced James Taggart to grant wage raises, and there is ominous talk that the railroad will be forced to cut shipping rates. At the same time, Wesley Mouch is desperate for Rearden to cooperate with the increasingly dictatorial government. Because Rearden came to Taggart's wedding celebration, Mouch believes that Taggart can influence Rearden. Mouch implies that a trade is possible: If Taggart can convince Rearden to cooperate, Mouch will prevent the government from forcing a cut in shipping rates. Taggart appeals to Lillian for help, and Lillian discovers that Dagny Taggart is her husband's lover.

In response to devastating economic conditions, the government passes the radical Directive 10-289, which requires that all workers stay at their current jobs, all businesses remain open, and all patents and inventions be voluntarily turned over to the government. When she hears the news, Dagny resigns from the railroad. Rearden doesn't resign from Rearden Steel, however, because he has two weeks to sign the certificate turning his metal over to the government, and he wants to be there to refuse when the time is up. Dr. Floyd Ferris of the State Science Institute comes to Rearden and says that the government has evidence of his affair with Dagny Taggart and will make it public dragging Dagny's name through the gutter if he refuses to sign over his metal. Rearden now knows that his desire for Dagny is the highest virtue he possesses and is free of all guilt regarding it, but he's a man who pays his own way. He knows that he should have divorced Lillian long ago and openly declared his love for Dagny. His guilt and error gave his enemies this weapon. He must pay for his own error and not allow Dagny to suffer, so he signs.

Dagny has retreated to a hunting lodge in the mountains that she inherited from her father. She's trying to decide what to do with the rest of her life when word reaches her that a train wreck of enormous proportions has destroyed the famed Taggart Tunnel through the heart of the Rockies, making all transcontinental traffic impossible on the main track. She rushes back to New York to resume her duties, and she reroutes all transcontinental traffic. She receives a letter from Quentin Daniels telling her that, because of Directive 10-289, he's quitting. Dagny plans to go west to inspect the track and to talk to Daniels.

On the train ride west, Dagny rescues a hobo who is riding the rails. He used to work for the Twentieth Century Motor Company. He tells her that the company put into practice the communist slogan, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," a scheme that resulted in enslaving the able to the unable. The first man to quit was a young engineer, who walked out of a mass meeting saying that he would put an end to this once and for all by "stopping the motor of the world." The bum tells her that as the years passed and they saw factories close, production drop, and great minds retire and disappear, they began to wonder if the young engineer, whose name was John Galt, succeeded.

On her trip west, Dagny's train is stalled when the crew abandons it. She finds an airplane and continues on to Utah to find Daniels, but she learns at the airport that Daniels left with a visitor in a beautiful plane. Realizing that the visitor is the "destroyer," she gives chase, flying among the most inaccessible peaks of the Rockies. Her plane crashes.

Dagny finds herself in Atlantis, the hidden valley to which the great minds have gone to escape the persecution of a dictatorial government. She finds that John Galt does exist and that he's the man she's been seeking in two ways: He is both the inventor of the motor and the "destroyer," the man draining the brains of the world. All the great men she admires are here inventors, industrialists, philosophers, scientists, and artists. Dagny learns that the brains are on strike. They refuse to think, create, and work in a world that forces them to sacrifice themselves to society. They're on strike against the creed of self-sacrifice, in favor of a man's right to his own life.

Dagny falls in love with Galt, who has loved and watched her for years. But Dagny is a scab, the most dangerous enemy of the strike, and Galt won't touch her yet. Dagny has the choice to join the strike and remain in the valley or go back to her railroad and the collapsing outside world. She is torn, but she refuses to give up the railroad and returns. Although Galt's friends don't want him to expose himself to the danger, he returns as well, so he can be near at hand when Dagny decides she's had enough.

When she returns, Dagny finds that the government has nationalized the railroad industry and controls it under a Railroad Unification Plan. Dagny can no longer make business decisions based on matters of production and profit; she is subject to the arbitrary whims of the dictators. The government wants Dagny to make a reassuring speech to the public on the radio and threatens her with the revelation of her affair with Rearden. On the air, Dagny proudly states that she was Rearden's lover and that he signed his metal over to the government only because of a blackmail threat. Before being cut off the air, Dagny succeeds in warning the American people about the ruthless dictatorship that the United States government is becoming.

Because of the government's socialist policies, the collapse of the U. S. economy is imminent. Francisco d'Anconia destroys his holdings and disappears because his properties worldwide are about to be nationalized. He leaves the "looters" the parasites who feed off the producers nothing, wiping out millions of dollars belonging to corrupt American investors like James Taggart. Meanwhile, politicians use their economic power to create their own personal empires. In one such scheme, the Taggart freight cars needed to haul the Minnesota wheat harvest to market are diverted to a project run by the relatives of powerful politicians. The wheat rots at the Taggart stations, the farmers riot, farms shut down (as do many of the companies providing them with equipment), people lose their jobs, and severe food shortages result.

During an emergency breakdown at the Taggart Terminal in New York City, Dagny finds that John Galt is one of the railroad's unskilled laborers. She sees him in the crowd of men ready to carry out her commands. After completing her task, Dagny walks into the abandoned tunnels, knowing that Galt will follow. They make love for the first time, and he then returns to his mindless labor.

The government smuggles its men into Rearden's mills, pretending that they're steelworkers. The union of steelworkers asks for a raise, but the government refuses, making it sound as if the refusal comes from Rearden. When Rearden rejects the Steel Unification Plan the government wants to spring on him, they use the thugs they've slipped into his mills to start a riot. The pretense of protecting Rearden is the government's excuse for taking over his mills. But Francisco d'Anconia, under an assumed name, has taken a job at Rearden's mills. He organizes the workers, and they successfully defend the mills against the government's thugs. Afterward, Francisco tells Rearden the rest of the things he wants him to know. Rearden retires, disappears, and joins the strike.

Mr. Thompson, the head of state, is set to address the nation regarding its dire economic conditions. But before he begins to speak, he is preempted, cut off the air by a motor of incalculable power. John Galt addresses the nation instead. Galt informs citizens that the men of the mind are on strike, that they require freedom of thought and action, and that they refuse to work under the dictatorship in power. The thinkers won't return, Galt says, until human society recognizes an individual's right to live his own life. Only when the moral code of self-sacrifice is rejected will the thinkers be free to create, and only then will they return.

The government rulers are desperate. Frantically, they seek John Galt. They want him to become economic dictator of the country so the men of the mind will come back and save the government, but Galt refuses. Realizing that Dagny thinks the same way that Galt does, the government has her followed. Mr. Thompson makes clear to Dagny that certain members of the government fear and hate Galt, and that if they find him first, they may kill him. Terrified, Dagny goes to Galt's apartment to see if he's still alive. The government's men follow her and take Galt into custody, and the rulers attempt to convince Galt to take charge of the country's economy. He refuses. They torture him, yet still he refuses. In the end, the strikers come to his rescue. Francisco and Rearden, joined now by Dagny, assault the grounds of the State Science Institute where Galt is held captive. They kill some guards and incapacitate others, release Galt, and return to the valley. Dagny and Galt are united. Shortly after, the final collapse of the looters' regime occurs, and the men of the mind are free to return to the world.

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Book Summary

Rand was born in Russia in 1905, and saw her family driven to the brink of starvation by the Soviet revolution. The experience left her with a deeply felt scepticism for socialism and the notion of altruism. With her arrival in America, a land famous for its pioneering spirit and celebration of the single-minded genius, she was inspired to formulate a new way of thinking about work and achievement. Filled with admiration for entrepreneurs such as Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, Rand began work on her magnum opus, through which she would champion competition, creativity and the role of the mind in mans existence.

The heroic characters who rise to the top in Atlas Shrugged espouse Rands philosophy of objectivism: the determined pursuit of personal happiness and the development of unfettered capitalism. Her philosophy would, she was certain, make America and therefore the world great again. Atlas Shrugged remains a controversial text, both for its ideas about economics and industry, and for its popularity among libertarian movements around the world. Whichever side of the fence one is on and no one remains sitting on it for long after reading this novel one cannot deny the sheer scale of Rands ambition: she pulls at the roots of mans existence and derives radical, original solutions.

The book saw a huge surge of popularity during the recent financial crisis, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in the first few months of 2009 alone. Never far from discussions of economics and industry, the events of Atlas Shrugged seemed strangely prescient, and it has again become a vital text as people seek to question the role of government, and how a new financial future can be built outside of subsidies and handouts. Often called the most influential book in America after the Bible, Rands epic still regularly tops the polls when readers are asked to vote for the best novel of the 20th century.

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Atlas Shrugged | Folio Society

Author of Plot Synopsis:Robert James Bidinotto

Atlas Shrugged is structured in three major parts, each of which consists of ten chapters. The parts and chapters are named, and the titles typically suggest multiple layers of meaning and implication.

The three parts of the book are each named in tribute to Aristotle's laws of logic.

Part One is titled "Non-Contradiction," and appropriately, the first third of the book confronts two prominent business executives, Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden and the reader with a host of seeming contradictions and paradoxes with no apparently logical solutions.

Part Two, titled "Either-Or," focuses on Dagny Taggart's struggle to resolve a dilemma: either to continue her battle to save her business or to give it up.

Part Three is titled "A Is A," symbolizing what Rand referred to as "the Law of Identity" and here, the answers to all the apparent contradictions finally are identified and resolved by Dagny and Rearden, and also for the reader.

The tale is told largely from the point of view of Dagny, the beautiful, superlatively competent chief of operations for the nation's largest railroad, Taggart Transcontinental. The main story line is Dagny's quest to understand the cause underlying the seemingly inexplicable collapse of her railroad and industrial civilization and simultaneously, her tenacious, desperate search for two unknown men: one, the inventor of an abandoned motor so revolutionary that it could have changed the world; the other, a mysterious figure who, like some perverse kind of Pied Piper, seems purposefully bent on luring away from society its most able and talented people an unseen destroyer who, she believes, is "draining the brains of the world."

A major subplot follows steel titan Hank Rearden in his spiritual quest to understand the unknown forces that are undermining his career and happiness, and turning his talents and energies toward his own destruction.

In the shoes of Dagny and Rearden, we gradually learn the full explanation behind the startling events wreaking havoc in their world. With them, we come to discover that all the mysteries and strange events of the story proceed from a single philosophical cause and that Ayn Rand poses a provocative philosophical remedy for many of the moral and cultural crises of our own world.

The time is the late afternoon of September 2. The place: New York City. But it's not quite New York City as we know it.

It's a city in the final stages of decay. The walls of skyscrapers, which once towered sharp-edged and clean into space, are cracked, soot-streaked, and crumbling. Hundreds of storefronts, even on once-prosperous Fifth Avenue, are boarded up and empty. Along the littered sidewalks, street lights are out, windows are broken, and beggars haunt the shadows.

Eddie Willers walks these desolate streets, feeling a sense of dread he can't explain. Perhaps it's the newspapers, which are filled with ominous stories. Factories are closing and the nation's industrial infrastructure is falling apart. The federal government is assuming dictatorial emergency powers. Meanwhile, rumors circulate about a mysterious modern pirate ship on the high seas, which sinks government relief vessels...

As Eddie approaches the Taggart Transcontinental Building headquarters of the great railway system where he works as Dagny Taggart's assistant he ponders the system's latest train wreck...the steady decline of its shipping business...and the puzzling loss of its last workers of competence and ability. In fact, these days it seems that everywhere, the great scientists, engineers, and businessmen are either retiring, or simply vanishing...

Abruptly, a beggar steps from a darkened doorway and asks for spare change. As Eddie digs through his pockets, the beggar shrugs in resignation, and mutters a popular slang expression. It's a phrase whose origins no one knows, but which somehow seems to summarize all the feelings of pain, fear, and guilt now gripping the world. The beggar's words give voice to Eddie's own mood of dread and despair:

"Who is John Galt?"

These words from the nameless beggar to Eddie open the first chapter, and also close it hinting at the basic mystery of the plot. Only at the end of the novel do we realize that the reasons for the disintegrating world, for the disappearing men of ability, and for the motives of men such as the story's villains, all lie in the answer to that single question: "Who is John Galt?"

We meet Dagny Taggart en route to New York by train. She is roused from sleep by the sound of a young brakeman whistling a compelling tune. When she asks about it, he replies casually that it's Richard Halley's Fifth Piano Concerto. She is startled: she knows that Halley had quit composing and mysteriously dropped out of sight after writing only four concertos. She confronts the brakeman on this, and he abruptly reverses himself, saying he misspoke; but Dagny senses that he's trying to hide something.

She returns to her office, the battleground where she is fighting to save the family business that her brother, system president James Taggart, seems hell-bent on destroying. Like the rest of industrial society, her railroad is falling apart as its most talented and able men inexplicably quit and disappear. But while Dagny struggles to salvage dying branches of the crumbling system, from Jim she gets only a bewildering evasiveness, a whining resentment of decision-making responsibility, and furtive hostility toward men of achievement. Over Jim's heated objections, Dagny decides to replace the crumbling Colorado track with new rail made from Rearden Metal, Hank Rearden's untested but revolutionary new alloy. At day's end, she receives an appointment from one of the system's most promising young men, Owen Kellogg. He surprises her by quitting, without explanation, despite her offer to promote him to head the Ohio division. Asked why, he answers only, "Who is John Galt?"

On a deserted road, Hank Rearden walks home from work on the day he has just poured the first heat of Rearden Metal. In his pocket is a chain bracelet the first thing ever made from the Metal: a gift for his wife, Lillian.

Rearden is serenely confident in his work, but bewildered by the irrationality of people around him. When he gives Lillian his gift, she and his family mock it as an act of selfishness. This response is nothing new: though dependent on him economically, his family constantly belittle his achievements and values. Yet Rearden silently tolerates their hostility. We are left wondering exactly who is chained to whom, and why.

As he ponders the mystery of his family, family friend Paul Larkin warns him vaguely, almost apologetically, about the loyalty of his Washington lobbyist, Wesley Mouch. Rearden wonders what Larkin is driving at. Unknown to Dagny and Rearden, James Taggart has been conspiring with Mouch, Larkin, and rival steel company president Orren Boyle, to use their political pull to pass laws that will crush a competing regional railroad in Colorado, and eventually cripple Rearden's steel operations as well.

The destruction of the regional railroad forces Colorado oil man Ellis Wyatt, whose oil fields fuel the nation, to ship with Taggart Transcontinental instead. But the Colorado line of Taggart system is in total disrepair. Wyatt issues Dagny an angry ultimatum: either be ready to handle all his freight within nine months, or face economic ruin. "If I go," he vows, "I'll make sure that I take all the rest of you along with me."

Enter Francisco d'Anconia, the brilliant, spectacularly successful owner of the d'Anconia Copper company, and Dagny's former lover. Years before, he had abruptly ended their relationship without explanation. Then newspapers began to report that the incomparable creative genius that she'd once loved had become an irresponsible international playboy.

When Mexico suddenly nationalizes Francisco's copper mines, everyone is stunned to learn that they were empty of copper and utterly worthless. Knowing that Francisco would never make a poor investment, Dagny suspects that he had concocted the whole debacle. When she challenges him about it, Francisco gaily confirms that he had expected the nationalization and had consciously let himself lose millions, simply in order to ruin his major investors, including Jim Taggart and Orren Boyle. He adds, without elaboration, that his ultimate target for ruin is Dagny herself.

At a wedding anniversary party for Rearden and his wife, a pack of prominent intellectuals invited by Lillian loudly damns all the values and virtues that Hank Rearden embodies: reason, independence, self-interest, and pride in productive achievement. Only Francisco d'Anconia, the contemptible playboy, dares to approach Rearden respectfully and thank him for those virtues. Rearden is mystified yet privately grateful.

When Rearden refuses to sell all rights to Rearden Metal to the State Science Institute, they retaliate with a public statement questioning the safety of the metal. This causes work on the Colorado rail line to grind to a halt. Dagny implores renowned physicist Dr. Robert Stadler, who heads the Institute, to retract the indefensible statement. But Stadler refuses, fearing that a public reversal would put his Institute in a bad light. "What can you do when you have to deal with people?" he says.

To justify his cynicism, he tells her about his three most promising students years ago, when he taught physics at Patrick Henry University. One, Ragnar Danneskjold, became a pirate who robs government relief ships. A second, Francisco d'Anconia, became a worthless playboy. And the third dropped out of sight, not even making a name for himself; but before leaving, damned Stadler for launching the State Science Institute.

To continue work, Dagny forces Jim to temporarily "sell" her their Colorado branch line as separate company. She names it "The John Galt Line," in defiance against the widespread despair that the popular catch-phrase symbolizes. However, without warning, the conspirators' secret machinations result in a new antitrust law that forces Rearden to surrender ownership of many of his subsidiaries, including his ore mines.

Still, despite enormous opposition and obstacles, Dagny and Rearden complete the John Galt Line before the deadline Ellis Wyatt had given them. To prove the safety of Rearden Metal, they ride in the locomotive on the first run to Colorado. As the train speeds triumphantly across America, the two silently share their victory over years of adversity and irrationality. And with each passing mile, the undercurrent of sexual tension grows between them.

That night, at Ellis Wyatt's home, Rearden's wall of reserve finally cracks, and the two begin a secret, passionate affair. But Dagny is disturbed by Rearden's derisive comments about their immorality. His words suggest an inner conflict yet to be resolved.

They decide to take a vacation together. Driving through Wisconsin towns that have reverted to preindustrial primitiveness, they happen upon the empty ruins of the 20th Century Motor Company a once successful factory that had been destroyed by worthless heirs who implemented a socialistic pay scheme. There Dagny makes a startling discovery: a few remnants of a revolutionary motor that had once converted static atmospheric electricity for human use. But there's no clue as to its inventor, how his machine worked or why he would have abandoned so monumental an invention.

Upon their return to New York, they find that political pressure groups are clamoring for even more laws to punish success and productivity. While Rearden works feverishly to get the ore he needs, Dagny begins a private search around the country for the inventor of the motor. The trail from the 20th Century Motor Company leads her from one parasitical heir to another, until she learns that the inventor had been the brilliant young assistant of the factory's chief engineer. But she can't learn his name.

In despair, she enters a local diner, where she is amazed to find Dr. Hugh Akston a once-great philosopher at Patrick Henry University flipping hamburgers. He refuses to explain why he left his profession, or his current presence in so lowly a job. He also admits that he knows who invented the motor, but refuses to reveal his name. Instead, he tells Dagny that while she won't find him, someday he will find her.

Akston who, like Stadler, had taught Francisco and Ragnar Danneskjold at Patrick Henry University concludes by giving her the same advice that Francisco once had: if she finds it inconceivable that such a motor would be abandoned, or that a great philosopher would work in a diner, she should remember that contradictions can't exist in nature and that she should therefore check her premises. "You will find that one of them is wrong."

Returning to New York, Dagny learns of a new series of dictatorial directives. These limit companies' productive output to the average of their competitors, order them to provide all consumers "a fair share" of their products on demand, forbid them permission to relocate, and outlaw quitting one's job. A heavy new tax is placed on Colorado industries in order to help needier states. These directives will cripple Taggart Transcontinental, rob Hank Rearden and the bondholders of the John Galt Line, but she realizes with horror destroy Ellis Wyatt.

Dagny remembers Wyatt's grim ultimatum and races by train to try to reach him. But she arrives to find the fields of Wyatt Oil ablaze and Wyatt's handwritten message:

"I am leaving it as I found it. Take over. It's yours."

In the wake of the new directives, the nation's oil industry has collapsed, and like Wyatt, many other Colorado industrialists vanish.

Dagny meets again with Stadler, asking him to read the fragmentary notes left behind by the inventor of the motor in order to try to learn his identity. Stadler is amazed but angry because the unknown genius had decided to work for industrial applications rather than pure theory, and piqued because the man had never approached Stadler personally to share his path-breaking theories. Viewing the remnant of the motor, Stadler mockingly expresses his resentment of practical achievements.

A man nearby mutters, "Who is John Galt?" and Stadler remarks that he knew a John Galt once: a mind of such brilliance that, had he lived, the whole world would be talking about him.

"But the whole world is talking of him," Dagny points out.

Disturbed, Stadler dismisses it all as a meaningless coincidence. "He has to be dead," he says with a curious emphasis.

The government saddles Rearden Steel with a young spy named Tony, whose job is to watch Rearden for compliance with government regulations. Rearden nicknames the boy his "Wet Nurse." Shortly after Tony warns him about his uncooperative attitude, Rearden is approached again by the State Science Institute this time with orders to supply Rearden Metal for a mysterious "Project X." He refuses, inviting the Institute to take the metal by force, if they wish. The Institute messenger reacts to this prospect with undisguised horror.

Rearden realizes that somehow, to succeed in their schemes against him, his enemies need his own voluntary cooperation. At the same time, he begins to sense that what he feels for Dagny reflects not the worst within him, but the best.

By now, Dagny has concluded there is a "destroyer" deliberately removing achievers from the world for some inconceivable reason. As for the motor, she hires a brilliant young scientist in Utah, Quentin Daniels, to rebuild it if he can.

Rearden secretly sells Rearden Metal to coal magnate Ken Danagger a transaction made illegal by the directives. The disturbing thought occurs to him that his only pleasures, at work and in his romantic life, must be kept hidden, like guilty secrets. He wonders why. Meanwhile, Lillian, whom he has ignored for months, begins to suspect that he is having an affair. She demands that he accompany her to Jim Taggart's wedding, and out of a dead sense of marital obligation, Rearden agrees.

Jim has been engaged to a nave young clerk named Cherryl, who admires him for what she believes is his genius in running the railroad. Jim basks in her blind adulation, and maliciously enjoys the awkwardness of her attempts to become socially poised.

Their wedding is attended by a corrupt cross-section of the culturally prominent and politically connected. Mistakenly thinking she is defending a heroic husband against an enemy, Cherryl confronts and insults Dagny. Across the room, Lillian approaches Jim, hinting that her control over her husband is available for trade. Then Francisco enters, crashing the party. After embarrassing Jim, he approaches Dagny, telling her it appears that John Galt has come to claim the railroad line she named for him. To a dowager's remark that "money is the root of all evil," he gives an impromptu speech defending money-making on moral grounds, as a symbol of achievement, free trade, and justice.

Francisco approaches Rearden and admits that his words were intended for him, to arm him morally for self-defense. Rearden is grateful until Francisco reveals that he's deliberately destroying d'Anconia Copper, precisely to harm the looters who are profiteering on his abilities. Rearden recoils in horror. Then Francisco lets it be known, loudly, that his company is in trouble. As the news sweeps the crowd, many of whom are d'Anconia investors, the wedding party breaks up in panic.

After the party, Lillian confronts Rearden with her suspicion that he's having an affair, presumably with some tramp. Rearden admits to an affair, but refuses to identify his mistress or to stop seeing her. For reasons he can't fathom, though, Lillian refuses to divorce him.

Soon afterwards, Rearden is visited by Dr. Floyd Ferris of the State Science Institute. Ferris threatens him with jail for selling Rearden Metal to Ken Danagger unless he agrees to sell it to the State Science Institute as well. Glimpsing a flaw in this blackmail scheme, Rearden once again refuses.

In the Taggart cafeteria, Eddie opens his heart to a long-time confidante, a lowly worker of his acquaintance whose name he has long forgotten. He reveals Dagny's suspicions about the "destroyer," her fear that Ken Danagger will be the next to go, and her intention to visit him at once to prevent that from happening.

When Dagny arrives at Danagger's office, he is in a meeting with someone else. After a long delay, the other man leaves, unseen, by the rear entrance and Dagny enters to find she's too late. Danagger informs her that he's quitting. Like Kellogg and Akston, he won't explain why. She realizes that she's just missed "the destroyer," but Danagger reassures her that nothing she can say would have mattered anyway. Then Dagny spots a cigarette butt in his ashtray: it bears the imprint of the gold dollar sign.

The day after Danagger's disappearance, Francisco visits Rearden at his mills. He begins to explain to him that by continuing to work under these dictatorial circumstances, Rearden is granting a moral sanction to the looters, a sanction they need from him in order to destroy him. Rearden begins to understand when they are interrupted by a furnace emergency in the mills. They work side by side to resolve the crisis, but the moment is lost; Francisco decides it's not yet time to discuss things further.

At their Thanksgiving dinner, Lillian tries to dissuade her husband from taking the witness stand at his trial the following day, informing him that he has no moral right to protest. But Rearden startles them all by rebuking his brother for insulting him. They notice that he seems to have a new confidence and he notices that this seems to disturb them. Meeting later with Dagny, he informs her that she'll have all the Rearden Metal she needs, laws be damned.

At his trial, Rearden acknowledges his actions with Danagger but refuses to accept that they were in any way immoral. Instead, borrowing from Francisco's words, he gives a rousing moral defense of his right to produce for his own sake, bringing the audience to cheers and leaving the judges speechless. Instead of jailing him, they seem panicked and give him a suspended sentence. Rearden smiles, beginning to grasp the concept of "the sanction of the victim."

Drawn by curiosity about Francisco's incongruous reputation as a playboy, Rearden visits him, finding him working on blueprints. Francisco admits that his reputation has been mere camouflage for a secret purpose of his own. Denying that he has been promiscuous, he explains the moral meaning of sex. But unknowingly, he is also addressing Rearden's own private sexual conflicts. Feeling a growing comradeship, Rearden reveals he's just placed a huge, urgently needed order with d'Anconia Copper.

Horrified, Francisco leaps to the phone then stops. In obvious anguish, he solemnly swears to Rearden "by the woman I love" that, despite what is about to happen, he remains Rearden's true friend.

Soon after, the d'Anconia ships carrying copper to Rearden are sunk by Ragnar Danneskjold. Rearden is overwhelmed by a sense of personal betrayal. He realizes that Francisco somehow knew of the sinking in advance, could have stopped it but didn't.

It is Rearden Steel's first failure to deliver an order on time. The delay in the Rearden Metal shipment to Taggart Transcontinental starts a devastating economic chain reaction, holding up trains, spoiling shipments of food, forcing farmers to go bankrupt and factories to shut down, causing deteriorating bridges across the Mississippi to close and leaving the famous Taggart Bridge as the river's last crossing point.

Meanwhile, coal that Taggart Transcontinental desperately needs is diverted to foreign aid; the government censors newspaper stories of the disasters and their causes; and the top floors of buildings are shut down to conserve fuel. Rearden is forced to make deals with hired gangs to mine coal at night in abandoned mines.

With Colorado industry now in shambles, the Taggart Transcontinental board of directors meets to formally close the John Galt Line. In exchange for permission to shut down the line, a government bureaucrat prods them to raise all Taggart worker wages. They try to nudge Dagny into stating openly the final decision to close the line; but following Rearden's example from the trial she refuses to help them and grant a moral sanction for their actions, by taking the responsibility to venture an opinion. They finally put the matter to the inevitable vote.

Francisco is waiting for her afterwards. "Have they finally murdered John Galt?" he asks softly. He comforts her at a nearby caf. Then he asks her why it is that heroic builders, like the railroad's founder, Nat Taggart, have always lost battles with pale cowards such as those on Taggart's board. As she ponders this, he reflects aloud, almost abstractly, about how his ancestor, Sebastian d'Anconia, had to wait 15 years for the woman he loved... Dagny is astonished at this tacit confession, but replies coldly by asking him why he has hurt Hank Rearden. Francisco answers solemnly that he'd have given his life for Rearden except for the man to whom he had given it.

Then, noticing the familiar graffiti carved in the tabletop, he adds: "I can tell you who John Galt is...John Galt is the Prometheus who changed his mind." After being torn by vultures for bringing men fire, Francisco says, Galt "withdrew his fire until men withdraw their vultures."

In Colorado with Rearden, Dagny supervises the aftermath of the Line's closure: scavenging machines from closed factories, watching towns emptying, seeing refugees crowd the last departing trains.

Meanwhile, eager for more Washington influence, Jim conspires with Lillian to deliver Rearden to the bureaucrats. Lillian finds that her husband is traveling home by train under a phony name, presumably with his mistress. When she meets the train to confront them, she sees him not with some cheap slut, but with Dagny Taggart.

Lillian is devastated and terrified. She grasps now why her grip on her husband is failing, and simultaneously, his unapologetic demeanor at his trial: Dagny has empowered her husband to reject guilt.

"Anybody but her!" she cries to him in terror. But Rearden is indifferent to her efforts to make him feel guilty or give up Dagny. In Lillian's vile insults against Dagny, Rearden suddenly realizes that hers had been his own view of sex. Though Lillian tells him she won't divorce him, he feels at last liberated and guiltless. Still, Lillian senses that he wants the affair to be kept secret and that, she realizes, may be used as a weapon.

Without warning, the government issues a Directive 10-289, a regulatory measure that seizes total control of the entire economy, and orders all existing economic arrangements to be frozen in place. All patents on inventions are to be turned over to the government in the form of Gift Certificates. In addition, to stop people of talent from disappearing, the law forbids anyone from quitting his job.

It's the last straw for Dagny, who throws the newspaper into James Taggart's face and resigns. She leaves for the Taggart lodge in the country, letting only Eddie know her whereabouts. But Rearden stays behind, confident that he can dynamite the new directive simply by refusing to comply with the order to surrender his patents to Rearden Metal.

In response to the directive, a mood of quiet rebellion sweeps the nation. Each day, more people fail to show up for work. Even Rearden's "Wet Nurse" is indignant, and vows to look the other way if Rearden chooses to break laws. Meanwhile Lillian mysteriously disappears on a vacation trip.

On a spring morning, Dr. Floyd Ferris arrives at Rearden's mills. He reveals that the government has been tipped off by Lillian of Rearden's affair with Dagny. If Rearden won't sign the Gift Certificate transferring Rearden Metal to the government, Ferris will expose the affair in the media, sullying Dagny's reputation in scandal. Rearden suddenly realizes much more about the motives of his enemies and about the moral premises that have caused such conflict in his life. But refusing to let Dagny bear the consequences of his own mistakes, he signs the Gift Certificate.

In the wake of these events, Eddie Willers bares his soul to his friend in the cafeteria. He also lets slip that Dagny has gone off to stay at the Taggart lodge.

Furious at Lillian's betrayal, Rearden orders his attorney to get him a divorce and to leave her with no alimony or property. He moves to an apartment in Philadelphia. Walking home from his mills one evening, he is confronted by a man who presents him with a bar of gold. The man reveals that he's Ragnar Danneskjold; that the gold represents wealth looted from Rearden, and forcibly reclaimed by Ragnar from the looters. Rearden finds that he can't condemn Ragnar for his actions, and even helps the outlaw elude pursuing police.

At the Taggart railroad tunnel through the Rockies, a waiting diesel engine is commandeered by the government to allow a bureaucrat to tour the country. This leaves only coal-burning engines on the track. Despite a strict system rule against entering the tunnel with smoky coal-burner, plus the fact that the tunnel's signal and ventilation systems are malfunctioning, a politician demands that his own train be allowed to proceed through. All the responsible supervisors have quit the Colorado division, leaving decision-making authority to incompetents. Bullied by the politician, each in turn from James Taggart on down passes the buck, leaving the final decision to proceed to a green young dispatcher. Abandoned by his superiors, the boy signs the order for the train to enter the tunnel. Miles inside, the crew and passengers are overcome by fumes, as a military train loaded with explosives rushes into the tunnel from the other end. They collide in a cataclysmic explosion that destroys the tunnel.

At the Taggart lodge, Dagny receives a surprise visit from Francisco. He tells her why she was right to quit and reveals that, for the same reason, he has deliberately been destroying d'Anconia Copper since the night he left her, twelve years before. Dagny begins to see Francisco in a new light...when the radio abruptly brings news of the tunnel explosion. Horrified, she abandons Francisco and she rushes back to New York.

After a grueling day dealing with the emergency, Dagny returns to her apartment where once again she is visited by Francisco. By now she is immune to his arguments, but aware that he's part of the "destroyer's" conspiracy. Suddenly the door opens and Hank Rearden is standing there, the key to Dagny's apartment in his hand.

Rearden demands to know why Francisco is present. Devastated by his realization of Dagny's affair, yet maintaining rigid self-control, Francisco answers, "I see that I have no right to ask you the same question." Enraged by what he believes has been Francisco's betrayal of their friendship, Rearden says, "I know what they mean...your friendship and your oath by the only woman you ever-"

They all suddenly know what this means. Rearden steps forward and demands, "Is this the woman you love?" Looking at Dagny, Francisco answers, "Yes." Rearden slaps him across the face. Retaining iron control, Francisco bows and takes his leave.

Dagny then reveals to Rearden that Francisco had been her first lover. Rearden suddenly wishes desperately that he hadn't reacted as he had. In this private turmoil, they are interrupted by a message from Quentin Daniels: a letter of resignation. He refuses to continue working under Directive 10-289. Dagny phones him in Utah and begs him to meet with her first. Daniels gives his word that he'll wait for her visit.

When Rearden leaves, she summons Eddie to take instructions as she packs for the trip. Eddie notices a man's dressing gown in her closet bearing Hank Rearden's initials. Crushed with jealousy, Eddie realizes for the first time just how much Dagny has meant to him. That evening in the cafeteria he pours out his heart to his workman friend. He mentions that Dagny is on her way to try to talk Daniels out of quitting his work on the motor and then blurts out his discovery that she is sleeping with Rearden. At this news, the worker seems unaccountably stricken, and rushes out.

Dagny races by train across the country to her meeting with Daniels when she has a chance encounter with a hungry tramp. He explains that he once had been a machinist at the Twentieth Century Motor Company. One day the firm's heirs instituted a socialistic pay plan, based on the principle that everyone should work "according to his ability," but be paid "according to his need." In practice, this meant that workers of ability were punished with longer hours, and forced to support "needier" workers the lazy and incompetent with compensation sufficient to fulfill all their alleged needs. Within months, everyone was hiding his abilities, but claiming a profusion of "needs" and production plummeted until the factory went bankrupt.

The plan, the tramp continues, had been approved at a mass meeting of the workers. After the vote, a young engineer stood and said, "I will put an end to this, once and for all...I will stop the motor of the world." Then he walked out. As the years passed, factories closed, and the economy ground to a halt, the tramp and his fellow workers wondered about the young engineer and began to ask the despairing question now on everyone's lips. "You see," he tells Dagny, "his name was John Galt."

Dagny's journey is interrupted when the train's crew deserts at night in the middle of nowhere. She is surprised to see Owen Kellogg the young man who had refused her job offer riding the train, en route to a "month's vacation." Kellogg accompanies her up the track on foot to phone for help and along the way, Dagny discovers that he too is part of the conspiracy. After arranging for help to come to the stalled train, she commandeers a small plane at a nearby air field and flies alone to Utah to her meeting with Daniels. But upon arriving at the airport, she is told that Daniels has just left with another man, in a plane that has just taken off.

Determined not to lose Daniels to the "destroyer" spiriting him away, Dagny takes off again and races after the distant lights of the other plane. The long chase takes them over the wildest stretches of the Colorado Rockies. Unexpectedly, the stranger's plane begins to circle and descend over impossibly rugged mountain terrain, vanishing behind a ridge. When she reaches the spot, she sees nothing below but a rocky, inaccessible valley between granite walls: no conceivable place for a landing, yet no sign of the other plane. She descends but still sees nothing. Her altimeter shows her dropping yet strangely, the valley floor seems to be getting no closer.

Suddenly there is a blinding flash of light, and her motor dies. Her plane spirals downward not into jagged rocks, but toward a grassy field which hadn't existed a second before. Fighting to control the plane, she hears in her mind the hated phrase, not in despair, but this time in defiance: "Oh hell! Who is John Galt?"

When she opens her eyes, Dagny is staring up at the proud, handsome face of a man with sun-streaked brown hair, and green eyes that bear no trace of pain, fear, or guilt.

"What is your name?" she whispers in wonder.

"John Galt...Why are you so frightened?" he asks.

"Because I believe it," she answers.

Galt carries the injured woman away from the wreck. He explains that her plane had penetrated a screen of rays projecting a refracted image, like a mirage, intended to camouflage the valley's existence. The ray screen had killed her plane's engine.

He carries her past a small house, where the sound of a piano is lifting the chords of Halley's Fifth Concerto. It's Halley's home, Galt explains. They reach a ledge above the valley; a small town spreads below. Nearby, commanding the valley like a coat of arms, stands a solid gold dollar sign three feet high "Francisco's private joke," he says.

A car pulls up, and its two occupants approach. She recognizes Hugh Akston. The other man is introduced as Midas Mulligan the world's richest financier, who had also vanished years ago.

Smiling, Akston tells her that he never expected that when they next met, she be in the arms of the inventor of the motor. Astounded, Dagny asks if the story of his walking out of the Twentieth Century Motor Company is true, and Galt confirms it.

"You told them that you would stop the motor of the world," she says.

"I have."

Then he drives her around the valley, where she encounters others who have abandoned her world: Ellis Wyatt...Quentin Daniels...Dick McNamara, her former contractor...Ken Danagger.

Galt stops the car outside a lonely log cabin; above the door is the d'Anconia coat of arms. She gets out, staring at the silver crest, remembering the words of the man she had once loved. "That was the first man I took away from you," Galt says.

He ends the tour at the town's powerhouse, where his motor brings the valley its electricity. On it is an inscription: I SWEAR BY MY LIFE AND MY LOVE OF IT THAT I WILL NEVER LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER MAN, NOR ASK ANOTHER MAN TO LIVE FOR MINE. Galt explains that it's the oath taken by every person in the valley. Recited aloud, the words also are the key to unlocking the door.

That night they attend dinner at Mulligan's home, with several of the prominent men who had vanished from her world. Each explains his reasons for quitting.

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Synopsis of the Plot of Atlas Shrugged

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil,Atlas Shruggedis Ayn Rands magnum opus: a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thrillernominated as one of Americas best-loved novels by PBSs The Great American Read.

Who is John Galt? When he says that he will stop the motor of the world, is he a destroyer or a liberator?Why does he have to fight his battles not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves?

You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the amazing men and women in this book. You will discover why a productive genius becomes a worthless playboy...why a great steel industrialist is working for his own destruction...why a composer gives up his career on the night of his triumph...why a beautiful woman who runs a transcontinental railroad falls in love with the man she has sworn to kill.

Atlas Shrugged, a modern classic and Rands most extensive statement ofObjectivismher groundbreaking philosophyoffers the reader the spectacle of human greatness, depicted with all the poetry and power of one of the twentieth centurys leading artists.

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Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand - Google Books

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This year, the Ayn Rand Institute held a weekly online reading group for Atlas Shrugged called The Atlas Project. Please select your level of familiarity with this program:

How interested are you in learning more about Ayn Rands ideas?

How likely would you be to participate in a video contest on Atlas Shrugged compared to writing an essay?

An important early event in the novel is the destruction of the Phoenix-Durango. What factors make its destruction possible? How does this issue relate to the meaning and theme of Atlas Shrugged? In your answer, consider what Rand has to say in her 1962 essay The Pull Peddlers.

Capitalisms defenders usually appeal to the public good as the moral justification of capitalism. Contrast this approach to defending capitalism with Ayn Rands approach in Atlas Shrugged. In your answer, consider what Rand has to say in her 1965 essay What Is Capitalism?

Francisco dAnconia and his teacher, Hugh Akston, advise more than once: Check your premises, because contradictions do not exist. Identify at least two major apparent contradictions that the heroes of Atlas Shrugged encounter, and explain, with reference to the novel, what premises they need to check and correct in order for them to understand that these contradictions do not exist.

Have you checked to ensure that all personally identifiable informationhas been removed from your essay?

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Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest Ayn Rand Novels

Whether Ms. Jolie, who has called herself something of a Rand fan, will bring the novels heroine, Dagny Taggart, to life on screen, or merely wind up on a list with other actresses who sought or were sought for the role including Barbara Stanwyck, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch, Farrah Fawcett and Sharon Stone remains to be seen. Until now, at least, no one in Hollywood has figured out a formula that promises both to sell popcorn and to do justice to the original text, let alone to the philosophy that it hammers home endlessly, at times in lengthy speeches. (The final one is 60 pages long.)

But Mr. Baldwin said he believed that Mr. Wallace and the rest of their team were up to the task. We all believe in the book, and will be true to the book, he said.

Easier said than done. Published in 1957 and set in the near future, Atlas Shrugged plots the collapse of American society after thinkers, industrialists, scientists, artists and other innovators Rands kind of people go on strike and disappear, refusing to contribute to a collectivist world. Dagny, a railroad heiress, tries to save the country from starvation and total collapse, while falling in love with the mysterious John Galt, who she later learns was the man who started the strike. The novel ends after an apocalypse.

During Rands lifetime, her Objectivism, which celebrates rational self-interest and capitalism, was widely dismissed by academia and disparaged by both the political right and left. The reviews for Atlas Shrugged were not much kinder. It howls in the readers ear and beats him about the head in order to secure his attention, Granville Hicks wrote in The New York Times, and then, when it has him subdued, harangues him for page upon page. It has only two moods, the melodramatic and the didactic, and in both it knows no bounds.

Yet Atlas was a best seller. Six million copies have been sold over the years, and it remains a popular title, particularly among college students, according to Penguin Group, its publisher. Many of those copies wind up on shelves on Wall Street, where the book has been affectionately referred to as the Bible of selfishness.

Hollywood took notice of the novels popularity from the start, but Rand refused to consider movie offers: she had been burned, she felt, by the experience of turning her earlier (and, at 720 pages, comparatively short) novel, The Fountainhead, into the 1949 film starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal.

Rand had adapted it herself, but she battled with the director, King Vidor, over changes to her screenplay. In the end a single line was cut from a six-minute speech by Coopers character, Howard Roark, reportedly leaving Rand embittered by the experience. She vowed that Warner Brothers would not be permitted to adapt Atlas unless the studio recut The Fountainhead, returning the edited line to its rightful place, said her biographer Jeff Britting.

In 1972, 15 years after the novels publication, Mr. Ruddy, fresh from producing The Godfather, decided to make a run at Rand, who was already in her late 60s. Atlas Shrugged, lets face it, was probably the most important novel of the 20th century that was never a film, he said.

Rands agents warned him to expect rejection, he said, but reluctantly set up an appointment. He recalled meeting her in a room with one small love seat and many empty chairs. Mr. Ruddy, 6-foot-4, squeezed in next to the petite aging writer on the small couch and commenced to woo her.

I knew from Atlas Shrugged that she dug men, that she was a lusty woman, he recalled in a telephone interview. We start talking. Its instant love. Before long, he said, Rand was telling him, in her heavy accent, I want you to do Atlas Shrugged.

Mr. Ruddy said he warned Rand that it was not her ideas that interested him. Forget philosophy, he said. The abstract of the story is quite lovely: the power and the sustainability of the great individual, of the creative person, of the entrepreneur. Rand, he said, thought that was brilliant, because thats how she saw her book, as a story first.

Mr. Ruddy said he looked past most of her eccentricities; she insisted on flying only by private plane, for example, because she feared that if the Russians found out that she was on a commercial airliner, theyd hijack it, he said.

But Mr. Ruddy refused to grant Rand final script approval, and their courtship quickly broke off. Its a fools game to spend a lot of money and time only to have her say, I think you should take this out, he said. So, he recalled, he told Rand that he would wait for her to drop dead and then make the movie on his own terms.

With Mr. Ruddy out of the picture, Rand began fielding new offers from movie and television producers. In 1978 Henry Jaffe and his son Michael negotiated a deal for an eight-hour mini-series on NBC. Michael Jaffe, now a partner at Jaffe/Braunstein Films, obtained script approval for Rand, and they hired Sterling Silliphant, the screenwriter of the Sidney Poitier movie In the Heat of the Night, to adapt Atlas Shrugged. Rand was unsatisfied with his script; she called Mr. Silliphants writing too naturalistic and drew a line at his insertion of the word just into a single line of dialogue. (Mr. Jaffe, in an interview, took up Rands defense: It made the sentence become ambiguous, he said. Her characters didnt say ambiguous things.)

Yet it was a regime change at NBC specifically Fred Silvermans ascension to the network presidency that killed the project in 1979. The network suddenly viewed Atlas Shrugged as too burdened with philosophy, its characters as too black-and-white, its subject too ponderous.

At the end of her life Rand tried to write her own script, as she had done for The Fountainhead, but she died with only a third of her hoped-for mini-series finished.

Rand left her estate to a longtime student, Leonard Peikoff, who eventually sold an option to Michael Jaffe and Ed Snider, a friend of Rands who owned the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team. But Mr. Peikoff refused to approve the script they developed. Leonard had huge problems with it, Mr. Jaffe said. He wasnt Ayn. But he wanted to exercise her control.

Other producers came and went, and in 1992 a New Jersey investor and Objectivist, John Aglialoro, bought an option to make Atlas Shrugged, eventually paying Mr. Peikoff more than $1 million in exchange for full creative control.

Under Mr. Aglialoros sponsorship a succession of writers and producers developed at least four scripts. One writer was Mr. Peikoffs ex-wife, Cynthia Peikoff, who had been Rands typist. Some of the scripts, she said, were too sci-fi, others reduced the novels characters to caricatures, and she was told that her own attempt was no better than workmanlike.

In 1999 Mr. Ruddy resurfaced, cutting a deal with TNT for a four-hour mini-series version. A dream come true, he called it at the time. But a threatened actors strike delayed production, and the project was dropped after AOL and Time Warner merged.

Then 9/11 worsened the climate for films with apocalyptic visions. I could have stayed with it and kept pushing it, Mr. Ruddy said. But now people start jumping out of their seats when a building blows up.

Mr. Ruddys exit opened the door to the Baldwins, who optioned the rights to Atlas Shrugged from Mr. Aglialoro while running the billionaire Phil Anschutzs Crusader Entertainment. (Mr. Baldwin, oddly enough, had once been a ticket manager for Mr. Sniders Flyers.) James V. Hart, who had written Contact, developed a draft of the first installment of a three-movie series, but the Baldwins could land neither stars nor financing.

There was also some thought that Mr. Anschutz, whose movies are often designed to accommodate a religiously devout audience, may have lost enthusiasm for the project when he learned that Rand was an outspoken atheist, but an Anschutz spokesman called this a misunderstanding. In any case, when the Baldwins left Crusader in 2004 to set up their own production company, they took the rights to Atlas Shrugged with them

Last spring in a twist that might have amused Rand and Mr. Anschutz, the latest deal for an Atlas Shrugged film project had its inception during Mass at the Church of the Good Shepherd, in Beverly Hills.

Mr. Baldwin said that a fellow parishioner, Michael Burns the vice chairman of Lions Gate approached Mr. Baldwin and his wife right under the nose of the priest, whispering to them about the rights to Rands novel and asking to meet right away.

Mr. Burns who remembered the conversation taking place outside, after Mass said he had first read Atlas in high school and has given as many as 100 copies as gifts over the years.

I think it solidified my capitalistic thinking, in that I believe very strongly that people are generally selfish, but that selfishness can ultimately benefit many, many people, Mr. Burns said.

The Baldwins used Mr. Harts script to interest Ms. Jolie in the project, through her manager, Geyer Kosinski. (Mr. Kosinski said Ms. Jolie declined to comment.) Together the Baldwins, Mr. Burns and Mr. Kosinski, who is also to be one of the producers, quickly approached Mr. Wallace about a new adaptation. And in what Mr. Wallace called an uncanny coincidence, he had recently read Atlas for the first time, when he and his college-age son had swapped their favorite books.

The challenge, Mr. Wallace said, was immediately tempting. As for how he is distilling Rands novel and its Castro-length monologues to a two-hour screenplay, Mr. Wallace insisted he had the material under control and was on course to deliver a finished draft this month.

I can pretty much guarantee you that there wont be a 30-page speech at the end of the movie, he said. I have two hours to try to express what Rand believed to an audience, and my responsibility is not only to Ayn Rand, but to the audience, that this be a compelling movie. More people will see the movie than will read Atlas Shrugged. And the movie has to work.

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Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand - Movies - The New York Times

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Railroad owner Dagny Taggart and steel mogul Henry Rearden search desperately for the inventor of a revolutionary motor as the U.S. government continues to spread its control over the national economy.

Country: United States

Duration: 111 min

Quality: HD

Release: 2012

IMDb: 5.4

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Actors of "Atlas Shrugged 2"

Characters of "Atlas Shrugged 2"

Directors of "Atlas Shrugged 2"

John Putch

Birthdate: 27 July 1961, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, USA

Creators of "Atlas Shrugged 2"

Brian Patrick O'Toole

Birthdate: 2 May 1963, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Critic Reviews of "Atlas Shrugged 2"

October 15, 2012

Seriously, if this is the best promotion of itself that the free market can manage, it really would benefit from the help of a Ministry of Culture or something.

October 15, 2012

Director John Putch struggles to find balance or generate a single spark from the clunky mix of romance, political diatribe and thriller.

October 15, 2012

The producers are going to have to hire a better director if they want moviegoers to be curious enough about this Galt guy to buy a ticket for the presumptive third and final chapter.

October 13, 2012

It's consistent with its predecessor as a somewhat awkward translation of Ayn Rand's 1957 novel to our current era, handled with bland telepic-style competency.

October 13, 2012

A disaster as a film, Atlas also is laughable in its presentation of Rand's ideology.

October 13, 2012

If the novel Atlas Shrugged is ultimate libertarian porn, then the first two installments of the screen adaptation are soggy softcore.

May 03, 2015

A greedy billionaire's most feverish nightmare realized with all the amateurish panache of a daytime soap opera.

June 09, 2013

There are ironic footnotes in cinema history because they champion the free market yet fail miserably in it.

November 05, 2012

The Bad Boys II of ****ty propaganda films, morally and aesthetically corrupt yet compulsively watchable in the broad strokes. Somewhere, in heaven, Eisenstein is laughing. Hard.

October 19, 2012

The film's excruciating unwatchability transcends politics.

October 19, 2012

Atlas won't be the only one to shrug off this tiresome load.

Gallery of "Atlas Shrugged 2"

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Atlas Shrugged 2 (2012) Full Movie Watch in HD Online for ...

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideasexplored in a literary work.The Importance of the Mind

The strike of the mind led by John Galt demonstratesthis central theme of the novel. When the best creative minds aresystematically removed from the world, their importance is laidbare. Without the great thinkers, society spirals quickly downward.The economy collapses, and irrational looters seize power. Randsbelief in the central importance of the mind opposes the prevailingwisdom that labor is responsible for prosperity. As the events ofthe novel show, the mind enables creation and innovation and powersthe engine of the world. Labor alone cannot achieve productivityand prosperity without the guidance of the mind.

Rand sets out to demonstrate through the novels actionwhat happens when governments follow socialist ideas. She arguesthat when men are compelled, through collectivisms forced moralcode, to place the needs of their neighbors above their own rationalself-interest, the result is chaos and evil. Incentive is destroyed,and corruption becomes inevitable. The story of the Twentieth Century MotorCompany illustrates this brilliantly. After the plant adopted amethod in which workers were paid according to perceived needs andordered to work based on perceived ability, the workers became depravedand immoral, each seeking to show himself or herself as most needyand least skilled. The plant failed, and the community was destroyedby mistrust and greed. For Rand, any economic or political planbased on sacrifice of the individual for the group leads to chaosand destruction.

Rand rejects the mind-body dichotomy that is central tomany philosophies and religions. She opposes the idea that the thoughtsand achievements of the mind are pure and noble, but the desiresof the body are base and immoral, and she presents Dagny as a character whoalso rejects the idea. Dagny is proud of her sexuality and sees herphysical desires flowing logically from the evaluations and rationalityof her mind. At first, Rearden accepts the mind-body split. His transformationoccurs when he comes to integrate the two facets of himself intoa rational whole.

Dr. Stadler represents another aspect of this mind-bodydichotomy. He sees the pure science of the mind as removedfrom practical affairs and wonders why the mind that made the motorwould bother with practical applications. For him, the mind is cutoff not just from the body but from practical life. Again, Dagnyrepresents the integrated whole when she concludes that the motorsinventor worked within the reality of practical life because heliked living on earth.

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SparkNotes: Atlas Shrugged: Themes

Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who Is John Galt? is a 2014 American science fiction drama film based on Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. It is the third installment in the Atlas Shrugged film series and the sequel to the 2012 film Atlas Shrugged: Part II, continuing the story where its predecessor left off. The release, originally set for July 4, 2014,[4] occurred on September 12, 2014.[1] The film used a completely different cast and crew from the first two in the series. [5]

The owner of the 20th-century Motor Company has died and his children have taken over, with a new plan to operate the company: that everyone work as hard as he can, but that salaries be "based on need". A lab engineer named John Galt objects and announces, "I'll stop the motor of the world."

Twelve years later, the economy of the United States spirals downward. Shortages have grounded airlines and returned the railroads to dominance; over-regulation has led to financial disaster. Galt seems to be behind the disappearances of corporate executives and other experts. The latest disappearance is that of Dagny Taggart, the executive officer of the largest railroad company, Taggart Transcontinental. She had chased Galt in a private plane and crashed hers.

Dagny has reached Galt's Gulch, and Galt himself rescues her from the crashed plane. She meets several "disappeared" achievers, such as banker Midas Mulligan, who say they quit after coming to believe that government was enslaving them. On the outside, government develops a classified new weapon called "Project F" and nationalizes the railroads, including Taggart Transcontinental.

The public grows increasingly frustrated with the central planning, comes to view Galt as the solution, and holds rallies calling for him to reform the government. Thompson, the Head of State,[6] offers Galt a job in the government, but Galt rebuffs the offer. Later, the government tortures Galt using the power of "Project F". However, others from the gulch arrive to free him and they escape back to their refuge.

In an interview with Bill Frezza of Forbes, the producer John Aglialoro mentioned that the film would include a short dialogue between the heroine Dagny Taggart and a priest, a character which he said Rand struggled with and ultimately cut out of the original book.[8] This scene did not appear in the final cut.

A month prior to the release of Part I, Aglialoro suggested that Part III might be made into a musical.[9] In 2013 he promised to create "something closer to the book," and predicted that critics would pan the film.[10] In a YouTube promotional piece where organizers discussed the film, he asserted that it was vital for the team to have a director who is professional, collaborative, and knows Rand's work: "I don't care if I've got to fire five directors that's fine. We're going to get it right."[11]

The film was directed by J. James Manera, whose experience included directing a documentary in 2010 and a 1996 episode of the television show Nash Bridges.[12] The cinematographer was Gale Tattersall.

David Kelley, founder of The Atlas Society and an expert on the philosophical themes of Atlas Shrugged, consulted on the script, as he did for Parts I and II.[13]

As with the second part, a new set of actors was cast to play the major characters.[14] Former Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul, and network commentators Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, played themselves giving responses to John Galt's speech.[15]

The trade press reported that filming began in January 2014,[1] after the film posted on Facebook that its target start date was Autumn 2013.[16] The budget was partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign that raised $446,907 against a goal of $250,000.[17]

On July 9, 2014, a sneak preview was shown at the Anthem Film Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada.[18]

The film opened on September 12, 2014 on 242 screens and grossed $461,179 during its opening weekend.[19] Total gross was $851,690 against a budget of $5,000,000.[3]

The film holds a 0% at review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 10 reviews for an average rating of 1.4/10.[20] On Metacritic, the film has a 9/100 rating based on 7 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike".[21] Alan Scherstuhl of the Village Voice wrote: "Rand's parable is meant to showcase just how much our world needs the best of us, but this adaptation only does so accidentally by revealing what movies would be like if none of the best of us worked on them."[22]

Writing for the Austin Chronicle, Louis Black said "In 1949, when Warner Bros. filmed The Fountainhead, Rand threatened to burn down the studio if they compromised her novel. I'd like to think that if she were alive she'd be looking for lighter fluid for this one."[5]

Atlas Shrugged: Part III was nominated for Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel at the 35th Golden Raspberry Awards.[23]

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Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who Is John Galt? - Wikipedia

Galt is the most important character in the novel andthe driving force behind its action. The strike that he conceives,organizes, and carries out is the books central, defining event.But his identity remains a mystery until two-thirds of the way throughthe novel, lending him a mythical stature. In Galt, Rand has setout to present man in his most ideal form. She describes him asphysically beautiful, profoundly brilliant, and enormously accomplished.Not only has he been able to develop a revolutionary motor, he hasalso created a philosophy of reason and become a statesman capableof leading the worlds most talented men. Most importantly, Galtis unwaveringly rational and deals directly with the objective factshe encounters. In him, rationality and emotion are fully integrated. Thoughruled by reason, he is able to express and experience his emotionsas well. Just as Rand uses Dagny to shatter the mind-body dichotomythat separates physical pleasure from higher thought, she employsGalt to reject the split between reason and emotion.

Galt represents the main theme of the novel and of Randsphilosophy: the idea that the mind is the only means by which mancan achieve prosperity. The mind is the motive power that drivescivilization, just as the motor Galt develops can drive industry.Galt embodies the mind, and the question Who is John Galt? isnot only a literal question about the mysterious man who has disappeared,but a figurative question as well. The question asks whatis the mind? and what happens when the mind disappears? Galt knowsthat without his mind and the minds of the worlds great thinkers,the motive power of the world will be lost and the motor of theworld will stop.

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SparkNotes: Atlas Shrugged: John Galt

INTRODUCTIONby Leonard Peikoff

Ayn Rand is one of Americas favorite authors. In a recent Library of Congress/Book of the Month Club survey, American readers ranked Atlas Shruggedher masterworkas second only to the Bible in its influence on their lives. For decades, at scores of college campuses around the country, students have formed clubs to discuss the works of Ayn Rand. In 1998, the Oscar-nominated Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, a documentary film about her life, played to sold-out venues throughout America and Canada. In recognition of her enduring popularity, the United States Postal Service in 1999 issued an Ayn Rand stamp.

Every book by Ayn Rand published in her lifetime is still in print, and hundreds of thousands of copies of them are sold every year, so far totaling more than twenty million. Why?

Ayn Rand understood, all the way down to fundamentals, why man needs the unique form of nourishment that is literature. And she provided a banquet that was at once intellectual and thrilling.

The major novels of Ayn Rand contain superlative values that are unique in our age. Atlas Shrugged (1957) and The Fountainhead (1943) offer profound and original philosophic themes, expressed in logical, dramatic plot structures. They portray an uplifted vision of man, in the form of protagonists characterized by strength, purposefulness, integrityheroes who are not only idealists, but happy idealists, self-confident, serene, at home on earth. (See synopses later in this guide.)

Ayn Rands first novel, We the Living (1936), set in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union, is an indictment not merely of Soviet-style Communism, but of any and every totalitarian state that claims the right to sacrifice the supreme value of an individual human life.

Anthem (1946), a prose poem set in the future, tells of one mans rebellion against an utterly collectivized world, a world in which joyless, selfless men are permitted to exist only for the sake of serving the group. Written in 1937, Anthem was first published in England; it was refused publication in America until 1946, for reasons the reader can discover by reading it for himself.

Ayn Rand wrote in a highly calculated literary style intent on achieving precision and luminous clarity, yet that style is at the same time colorful, sensuously evocative, and passionate. Her exalted vision of man and her philosophy for living on earth, Objectivism, have changed the lives of tens of thousands of readers and launched a major philosophic movement with a growing impact on American culture.

You are invited to sit down to the banquet which is Ayn Rands novels. I hope you personally enjoy them as much as I did.

About the Books

Atlas Shrugged (1957) is a mystery story, Ayn Rand once commented, "not about the murder of mans body, but about the murderand rebirthof mans spirit." It is the story of a manthe novels herowho says that he will stop the motor of the world, and does. The deterioration of the U.S. accelerates as the story progresses. Factories, farms, shops shut down or go bankrupt in ever larger numbers. Riots break out as food supplies become scarce. Is he, then, a destroyer or the greatest of liberators? Why does he have to fight his battle, not against his enemies but against those who need him most, including the woman, Dagny Taggart, a top railroad executive, whom he passionately loves? What is the worlds motorand the motive power of every man?

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, and charged with awesome questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is a novel of tremendous scope. It presents an astounding panorama of human lifefrom the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy (Francisco dAnconia)to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction (Hank Rearden)to the philosopher who becomes a pirate (Ragnar Danneskjold)to the composer who gives up his career on the night of his triumph (Richard Halley). Dramatizing Ayn Rands complete philosophy, Atlas Shrugged is an intellectual revolution told in the form of an action thriller of violent eventsand with a ruthlessly brilliant plot and irresistible suspense.

We do not want to spoil the plot by giving away its secret or its deeper meaning, so as a hint only we will quote here one brief exchange from the novel:

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater the effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulderswhat would you tell him to do?"

"Idont know. Whatcould he do? What would you tell him?"

"To shrug."The Fountainhead (1943) introduced the world to architect Howard Roark, an intransigent, egoistic hero of colossal stature. A man whose arrogant pride in his work is fully earned, Roark is an innovator who battles against a tradition-worshipping society. Expelled from a prestigious architectural school, refused work, reduced to laboring in a granite quarry, Roark is never stopped. He has to withstand not merely professional rejection, but also the enmity of Ellsworth Toohey, leading humanitarian; of Gail Wynand, powerful publisher; and of Dominique Francon, the beautiful columnist who loves him fervently yet, for reasons you will discover, is bent on destroying his career.

At the climax of the novel, the untalented but successful architect Peter Keating, a college friend of his, pleads with Roark for help in designing a prestigious project that Roark himself wanted but was too unpopular to win. Roark agrees to design the project secretly on condition that it be built strictly according to his drawings. During construction, however, Roarks building is thoroughly mutilated. Having no recourse in law, Roark takes matters into his own hands in a famous act of dynamiting. In the process and the subsequent courtroom trial, he makes his stand clear, risking his career, his love, and his life.

The Fountainhead portrays individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in mans soul; it presents the motivations and the basic premises that produce the character of an individualist or a collectivist.The novel was made into a motion picture in 1949, starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, for which Ayn Rand wrote the screenplay. The movie, available on video, often plays on cable TV and at art-house cinemas, where it is always received enthusiastically.

We the Living (1936), Ayn Rands first and most autobiographical novel, is a haunting account of mens struggle for survival in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union. In a country where people fear being thought disloyal to the Communist state, three individuals stand forth with the mark of the unconquered in their being: Kira, who wants to become a builder, and the two men who love herLeo, an aristocrat, and Andrei, an idealistic Communist.

When Leo becomes ill with tuberculosis, Kira strives to get him the medical attention needed to save his life. But she is trapped in a society that regards the individual as expendable. No matter where she turns, she faces closed doors and refusals. The State tells her: "One hundred thousand workers died in the civil war. Whyin the face of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republicscant one aristocrat die?"

Kiras love for Leo is such that the price of saving his life is no object. To pay for sending him to a sanitarium, she becomes the mistress of Andrei Taganovwho is not only an idealist, but also an officer of the Soviet secret police. The gripping and poignant resolution of the love triangle is an indictment not merely of Soviet-style Communism, but of the totalitarian state as such.

During World War II, an Italian film of We the Living was produced without Ayn Rands knowledge. Largely faithful to the book, the film was approved by Italys Fascist government on the grounds that it was anti-communist. But the Italian public understood that the movie was just as anti-fascist as it was anti-communist. People grasped Ayn Rands theme that dictatorship as such is evil, and embraced the movie. Five months after its release, Mussolinis government figured out what everyone else knew, and banned the movie. This is eloquent proof of Ayn Rands claim that the book is not merely "about Soviet Russia."

After the war, the movie was re-edited under Ayn Rands supervision. The movie is still played at art-house cinemas, and is now available on videotape.

Anthem (1946), a novelette in the form of a prose poem, depicts a grim world of the future that is totally collectivized. Technologically primitive, it is a world in which candles are the very latest advance. From birth to death, mens lives are directed for them by the State. At Palaces of Mating, the State enacts its eugenics program; once born and schooled, people are assigned jobs they dare not refuse, toiling in the fields until they are consigned to the Home of the Useless.

This is a world in which men live and die for the sake of the State. The State is all, the individual is nothing. It is a world in which the word "I" has vanished from the language, replaced by "We." For the sin of speaking the unspeakable "I," men are put to death.

Equality 7-2521, however, rebels.

Though assigned to the life work of street sweeper by the rulers who resent his brilliant, inquisitive mind, he secretly becomes a scientist. Enduring the threat of torture and imprisonment, he continues in his quest for knowledge and ultimately rediscovers electric light. But when he shares it with the Council of Scholars, he is denounced for the sin of thinking what no other men think. He runs for his life, escaping to the uncharted forest beyond the citys edge. There, with his beloved, he begins a more intense sequence of discoveries, both personal and intellectual, that help him break free from the collectivist States brutal morality of sacrifice. He learns that mans greatest moral duty is the pursuit of his own happiness. He discovers and speaks the sacred word: I.

Anthems theme is the meaning and glory of mans ego.

About Objectivism

Ayn Rand held that philosophy was not a luxury for the few, but a life-and-death necessity of everyones survival. She described Objectivism, the intellectual framework of her novels, as a philosophy for living on earth. Rejecting all forms of supernaturalism and religion, Objectivism holds that Reality, the world of nature, exists as an objective absolutefacts are facts, independent of mans feelings, wishes, hopes, or fears; in short, "wishing wont make it so." Further, Ayn Rand held that Reasonthe faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by mans sensesis mans only source of knowledge, both of facts and of values. Reason is mans only guide to action, and his basic means of survival. Hence her rejection of all forms of mysticism, such as intuition, instinct, revelation, etc.

On the question of good and evil, Objectivism advocates a scientific code of morality: the morality of rational self-interest, which holds Mans Life as the standard of moral value. The good is that which sustains Mans Life; the evil is that which destroys it. Rationality, therefore, is mans primary virtue. Each man should live by his own mind and for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor others to himself. Man is an end in himself. His own happiness, achieved by his own work and trade, is each mans highest moral purpose.

In politics, as a consequence, Objectivism upholds not the welfare state, but laissez-faire capitalism (the complete separation of state and economics) as the only social system consistent with the requirements of Mans Life. The proper function of government is the original American system: to protect each individuals inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

Objectivism defines "art" as the re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value-judgments. The greatest school in art history, it holds, is Romanticism, whose art represents things not as they are, but as they might be and ought to be.

The fundamentals of Objectivism are set forth in many nonfiction books including: For the New Intellectual; The Virtue of Selfishness; Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal; Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution; Philosophy: Who Needs It; and The Romantic Manifesto. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, written by Ayn Rands intellectual heir Leonard Peikoff and published in 1991, is the definitive presentation of her entire system of philosophy.

ABOUT AYN RAND

Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905. At the age of nine, she decided to make fiction-writing her career. In late 1925 she obtained permission to leave the USSR for a visit to relatives in the United States. Arriving in New York in February 1926, she first spent six months with her relatives in Chicago before moving to Los Angeles.

On her second day in Hollywood, the famous director Cecil B. De Mille noticed her standing at the gate of his studio, offered her a ride to the set of his silent movie The King of Kings, and gave her a job, first as an extra and later as a script reader. During the next week at the studio, she met an actor, Frank OConnor, whom she married in 1929; they were happily married until his death fifty years later.

After struggling for several years at various menial jobs, including one in the wardrobe department at RKO, she sold her first screenplay, "Red Pawn," to Universal Studios in 1932 and then saw her first play, Night of January 16th, produced in Hollywood and (in 1935) on Broadway. In 1936, her first novel, We the Living, was published.

She began writing The Fountainhead in 1935. In the character of Howard Roark, she presented for the first time the Ayn Rand hero, whose depiction was the chief goal of her writing: the ideal man, man as "he could be and ought to be." The Fountainhead was rejected by a dozen publishers but finally accepted by Bobbs-Merrill; it came out in 1943. The novel made publishing history by becoming a best-seller within two years purely through word of mouth; it gained lasting recognition for Ayn Rand as a champion of individualism.

Atlas Shrugged (1957) was her greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel she dramatizes her unique philosophy of Objectivism in an intellectual mystery story that integrates ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics, and sex. Although she considered herself primarily a fiction writer, she realized early that in order to create heroic characters, she had to identify the philosophic principles which make such people possible. She proceeded to develop a "philosophy for living on earth." Objectivism has now gained a worldwide audience and is an ever growing presence in American culture. Her novels continue to sell in enormous numbers every year, proving themselves enduring classics of literature.

Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982, at her home in New York City.

Recollections of Ayn RandA Conversation with Leonard Peikoff, Ph.D.,Ayn Rand's longtime associate and intellectual heir

Dr. Peikoff, you met Miss Rand when you were seventeen and were associated with her until her death, thirty-one years later. What were your first impressions of her? What was she like?

The strongest first impression I had of her was her passion for ideas. Ayn Rand was unlike anyone I had ever imagined. Her mind was utterly first-handed: she said what no one else had ever said or probably ever thought, but she said these things so logicallyso simply, factually, persuasivelythat they seemed to be self-evident. She radiated the kind of intensity that one could imagine changing the course of history. Her brilliantly perceptive eyes looked straight at you and missed nothing: neither did her methodical, painstaking, virtually scientific replies to my questions miss anything. She made me think for the first time that thinking is important. I said to myself after I left her home: "All of life will be different now. If she exists, everything is possible."

In her fiction, Ayn Rand presented larger-than-life heroesembodiments of her philosophy of rational egoismthat have inspired countless readers over the years. Was Ayn Rands own life like that of her characters? Did she practice her own ideals?

Yes, always. From the age of nine, when she decided on a career as a writer, everything she did was integrated toward her creative purpose. As with Howard Roark, dedication to thought and thus to her work was the root of Ayn Rands person.

In every aspect of life, she once told me, a man should have favorites. He should define what he likes or wants most and why, and then proceed to get it. She always did just thatfleeing the Soviet dictatorship for America, tripping her future husband on a movie set to get him to notice her, ransacking ancient record shops to unearth some lost treasure, even decorating her apartment with an abundance of her favorite color, blue-green.

Given her radical views in morality and politics, did she ever soften or compromise her message?Never. She took on the whole worldliberals, conservatives, communists, religionists, Babbitts and avant-garde alikebut opposition had no power to sway her from her convictions.

I never saw her adapting her personality or viewpoint to please another individual. She was always the same and always herself, whether she was talking with me alone, or attending a cocktail party of celebrities, or being cheered or booed by a hall full of college students, or being interviewed on national television.

Couldnt she have profited by toning things down a little?

She could never be tempted to betray her convictions. A Texas oil man once offered her up to a million dollars to use in spreading her philosophy, if she would only add a religious element to it to make it more popular. She threw his proposal into the wastebasket. "What would I do with his money," she asked me indignantly, "if I have to give up my mind in order to get it?"

Her integrity was the result of her method of thinking and her conviction that ideas really matter. She knew too clearly how she had reached her ideas, why they were true, and what their opposites were doing to mankind.

Who are some writers that Ayn Rand respected and enjoyed reading?

She did not care for most contemporary writers. Her favorites were the nineteenth century Romantic novelists. Above all, she admired Victor Hugo, though she often disagreed with his explicit views. She liked Dostoevsky for his superb mastery of plot structure and characterization, although she had no patience for his religiosity. In popular literature, she read all of Agatha Christie twice, and also liked the early novels of Mickey Spillane.

In addition to writing best-sellers, Ayn Rand originated a distinctive philosophy of reason. If someone wants to get an insight into her intellectual and creative development, what would you suggest?

A reader ought first to read her novels and main nonfiction in order to understand her views and values. Then, to trace her early literary development, a reader could pick up The Early Ayn Rand, a volume I edited after her death. It features a selection of short stories and plays that she wrote while mastering English and the art of fiction-writing. For a glimpse of her lifelong intellectual development, I would recommend the recent book Journals of Ayn Rand, edited by David Harriman.

Ayn Rands life was punctuated by disappointments with people, frustration, and early poverty. Was she embittered? Did she achieve happiness in her own life?

She did achieve happiness. Whatever her disappointments or frustrations, they went down, as she said about Roark, only to a certain point. Beneath it was her self-esteem, her values, and her conviction that happiness, not pain, is what matters. I remember a spring day in 1957. She and I were walking up Madison Avenue in New York toward the office of Random House, which was in the process of bringing out Atlas Shrugged. She was looking at the city she had always loved most, and now, after decades of rejection, she had seen the top publishers in that city competing for what she knew, triumphantly, was her masterpiece. She turned to me suddenly and said: "Dont ever give up what you want in life. The struggle is worth it." I never forgot that. I can still see the look of quiet radiance on her face.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

The Fountainhead

We the Living

Anthem

a) "It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think."

b) "I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning."

c) "I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them."

Objectivism

Related Titles

Fiction in PaperbackAnthem (New York: Signet, 1961).Atlas Shrugged (New York: Signet, 1959).The Fountainhead (New York: Signet, 25th anniv. ed., 1968).Night of January 16th (New York: Plume, 1987).We the Living (New York: Signet, 1960).

Nonfiction in PaperbackCapitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: Signet, 1967).The Early Ayn Rand: A Selection from Her Unpublished Fiction(New York: Signet, 1986).For the New Intellectual (New York: Signet, 1963).Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: Signet, 1964).Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (New York:Meridian, 1999).The Romantic Manifesto (New York: Signet, 2nd rev. ed., 1971).The Virtue of Selfishness (New York: Signet, 1984).

On Ayn Rand and ObjectivismThe Ayn Rand Reader, edited by Gary Hull and Leonard Peikoff(New York: Plume, 1999).Journals of Ayn Rand, edited by David Harriman (New York:Dutton, 1997).Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, by Leonard Peikoff(New York: Meridian, 1993).

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Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - AbeBooks

1.Butwhat can you do when you have to deal with people?

This question is uttered on many occasionsby Dr. Stadler, first in Part One, Chapter VII. The question demonstrateshis and the looters belief that people are generally irrationaland must be dealt with in a manipulative or repressive manner. Stadlerbelieves most people are incapable of rational thought and mustbe told what is best for them. He believes they will support purethought only if it is government-sanctioned, and this is why hehas supported the creation of the State Science Institute. As thestory progresses, this view of people becomes a justification forthe increasing power of the government and its adoption of bruteforce. The question is also stated by Dr. Floyd Ferrisat the unveiling of Project X. While coercing Stadler to deliverhis speech praising the monstrous machine, Ferris reminds him thatat a time of hysteria, riots, and mass violence, the people mustbe kept in line by any means necessary. He underscores his messageby quoting the question Stadler himself is known for asking.

Francisco says this to Dagny in PartOne, Chapter VII, when she challenges him for squandering his talentas a worthless playboy. Dagny asks him how he can be such a paradox,how a man as capable, brilliant, and accomplished as he is can alsochoose to be a worthless playboy. It does not seem possible thathe can be both, and yet he seems to be. In asking her to check herpremises, Francisco suggests that it is indeed not possible. Hecannot be both things at once, because contradictions cannot exist.A thing is what it is, not something else entirely. Therefore, theremust be another answer that Dagny has not seen yet. Hugh Akston(who had been Franciscos teacher) says something similar to Dagnywhen she meets him at the diner where he works as a short-ordercook. He tells her this in response to her disbelief over why afamous philosopher would choose to work in a diner, or why a motorwith the power to revolutionize industry would be abandoned in ruins.He urges her to look beyond her assumptions in the search for an answerthat could make sense.

Francisco says this to Dagny in PartTwo, Chapter V, after they discover the words Who is John Galt?scratched into a table at a restaurant. She says there are so manystories about him, and Francisco tells her that all the storiesare true. Metaphorically speaking, they are, and Franciscos Prometheusstory is especially apt. Prometheus was a figure from Greek mythology.He was a titan who stole fire from the gods and brought it to mento improve their lives. In return, he was chained to a rock andtortured. Vultures ate his liver each day, only to have it growback at night to be eaten again. In Franciscos comment, Prometheus(personified by Galt) represents the great industrialists who haveprovided men with prosperity and improved their lives with theirinventions and products, but have received only condemnation andgovernment interference in return. These men, led by Galt, havedisappeared and taken their prosperity-generating minds (the firethey had provided) with them. They will no longer allow themselvesto receive torture as payment for their talents, and they will onlyreturn their talents to the world when they are no longer punishedfor bringing them.

This is the oath the thinkers recitewhen they join the strike and come to live in the valley; we firstencounter this oath in Part Three, Chapter I. No one may stay untilhe or she is willing to take the oath freely. Dagny first encountersit as an inscription on the building where Galts motor is kept.The words are so powerful that the sound of Galt reciting them opensthe locks of the buildings door. When Dagny sees the inscription,she tells Galt this is already the code she lives by, but she doesnot think his way is the right way to practice the code. He tellsher they will have to see which one of them is right. Later, whenit is clear that Galts way was right, Dagny solemnly recites theoath to Francisco in the Taggart Terminal just before they rescueGalt from the looters, in Part Three, Chapter IX. The strikerscode presents Rands belief in egoism, or the doctrine of rationalself-interest. Rand believes that individuals have an inalienableright to pursue their own happiness based on their own values andthat they must be free to pursue their own self-interest as theychoose. Under this code, people have no obligations to each otherbeyond the obligation to respect the freedom and rights of otherself-interested people.

This passage is part of the radio broadcastdelivered by John Galt to the people of America in Part Three, ChapterVII. The man he refers to is the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle,whose work had a profound influence on Rand and her philosophy ofObjectivism. The concept that A is A was put forth in AristotlesLaw of Identity, where he held that everything that exists has aspecific nature and a single identity. A can only be A; it cannotalso be B. For Galt (embodying Rands philosophy), this means thatthings exist: they are what they are regardless of the nature ofthe observer. Even if a person wants A to be something else or believesit should be something else, it is still A. The work of a personsconsciousness is to perceive reality in its objective sense, toidentify and recognize it as what it is, not to invent an alternatereality. Galt and the thinkers he represents are rational and perceivethe reality that is, while the looters try, through denial, coercion,and manipulation, to assert an alternate reality that cannot be.

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SparkNotes: Atlas Shrugged: Important Quotations Explained

Earlier this month the U.S. State Department disclosed that several Havana-based diplomats have experienced incidents which have caused a variety of physical symptoms. Secretary Rex Tillerson said the incidents began last fall, calling them health attacks.

They were not the good kind of health attacks. Symptoms have included severe hearing loss, headaches, and problems with balanceforcing some diplomats to return to the United States. We hold the Cuban authorities responsible for finding out who is carrying out these health attacks, Tillerson said.

His remarks came after a search for the cause of the symptomsalso reported among Canadian diplomats living in Cuban housingled some U.S. officials to conclude that the weapon is inaudible sonic waves.

This morning journalists at CBS reported that the diplomats medical records indicated that they had undergone audiological evaluations and a battery of other tests, and that there was documented concern for the possibility that they were targets of a type of sonic attack directed at their homes, which were provided by the Cuban government. The analysis coincides with reports from the Associated Press earlier this month: After months of investigation, U.S. officials concluded that the diplomats had been attacked with an advanced sonic weapon that operated outside the range of audible sound and had been deployed either inside or outside their residences.

Cuba has denied what would be an unprecedented breach of obligation to protect foreign diplomats, and not to blast them with acoustic energy. But exposure to sound waves would be a plausible explanation for this constellation of vague symptoms unified by a relationship to the inner ear.

It is indeed possible to weaponize energy waves with frequencies outside the range that the human ear can detect. The concept is not new, and it has a rich history in science fiction. Weaponization of sound was a plot point in the book that Secretary Tillerson has called his favorite, Ayn Rands 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged. In it, the federal science institute creates a weapon of mass destruction which deploys ultrasonic waves. The head of state uses the device to flatten a goat in a demonstration of power, and later to destroy the work of industrious private inventors, successfully stifling private-sector innovation.

The health effects of exposure to inaudible sonic waves are also real. In 2001 after residents of Kokomo, Indiana, began reporting symptoms including annoyance, sleep disturbance, headaches, and nausea, the U.S. National Institutes of Health investigated the issue. The result was a dossier on the toxicology of infrasoundacoustic energy with wavelengths of 17 meters or more. The agency couldnt pin down the cause of the Indiana residents symptoms as infrasound, but the report did confirm that infrasound can cause fatigue, apathy, hearing loss, confusion, and disorientation. In one study cited therein, volunteers exposed to industrial infrasound for just 15 minutes reported fatigue, depression, pressure in the ears, loss of concentration, drowsiness, and vibration of internal organs.

While infrasound would seem to be a possible and plausible mechanism of the health attacks in Cuba, CNN has also reported that some incidents were accompanied by audible noisesdeafeningly loud sound similar to the buzzing created by insects or metal scraping across a floor. The mechanism in that case would be less subtle. Deafeningly loud sound is so called because it either ruptures the eardrum or jolts the tiny bones of the middle ear.

At the same time, CNN also posits, The sophistication of the attack has led U.S. officials to suspect a third country is involved, perhaps seeking payback against the United States and Canada or to drive a wedge between those countries and Cuba, raising the possibility of operatives from Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, or Iran.

It's not clear why these attacks would qualify as sophisticated. Noise-induced hearing loss affects around one in four peopleonly, usually, its due to lower-level exposures over years, from attending concerts, shooting guns, and being too cool to cover ones ears when an ambulance screams past on the street. While the investigation in Havana unfolds, fascination with this sort of attack can be a reminder that it is worth arming ourselves in daily life against the more quotidian forms of sonic weaponry.

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What Are Sound Weapons? - The Atlantic