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Synopsis

Setting

Atlas Shrugged is set in a dystopian United States at an unspecified time. 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."^[20] 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. Great Britain, for example, is now the "People's State of England", it is implied that the monarchy has been abolished, but Scotland is mentioned separately. There are also plot elements that 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.

Structure

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,” symbolizing what Rand referred to as “the Law of Identity”.^[21]

Plot summary

As the novel opens, protagonist Dagny Taggart, executive 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. 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 monopoly, which has made him into one of the richest and most powerful men in the world.

She meets Hank Rearden, a self-made steel magnate of great integrity, who 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. 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 who 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 gentleman - 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 naive, 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 often imploring heavy subjects, wherein the individual can find no answer. It sarcastically means, "Don't ask important questions, because we don't have answers."

As the reader proceeds, 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 dissolved into thin air, void of a single warning, leaving nothing behind except an empty office and his most successful oil well now spewing petroleum and fire high into the air. Each of these men prove to be absent despite a thorough search put on by the ever anxious politicians, who've now found themselves trapped within a government that has been "left-to-dry," by its leaders in business - utterly helpless without them.

Dagny and Hank find the remnants of a motor that turns atmospheric static electricity into kinetic energy, along with evidence that the "Atlases" of the world, its "prime movers", seem to be disappearing due to the actions of a figure she calls the "destroyer". While searching for the motor's creator, Hank and Dagny begin to experience the futility of their attempts to survive in a society that hates them and resents their motivation and their ability to create and achieve.

In the final section of the novel, Taggart discovers the truth about John Galt, who is leading an organized "strike" against those who use the force of law and moral guilt to confiscate the accomplishments of society's productive members. With the collapse of the nation and its rapacious government all but certain, Galt emerges to reconstruct a society that will celebrate individual achievement and enlightened self-interest, delivering a long speech (seventy pages in the first edition) serving to explain the novel's theme and Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, in the book's longest single chapter.^[22]