ATLAS SHRUGGED

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ATLAS SHRUGGED

• A BOOK REVIEW BY
• NEERAJ SHARMA

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About The Author

• AYN RAND
• (1905-82)

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About The Author

• Novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand was born Alissa
  Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905 in St. Petersburg,
  Russia. Her family lived in a large, comfortable
  apartment above the chemist shop owned by her
  father.
• From her earliest years, the girl felt alienated
  from the dark, brooding atmosphere of Russia, but
  loved the bright world projected in stories
  appearing in foreign magazines. At age nine she
  made the conscious decision to become a writer.

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About The Author

• In February 1917 she witnessed the first shots of
  the Russian Revolution from her balcony. Soon, a
  communist gang nationalized her fathers shop.
  Almost overnight, her family was reduced to
  crushing poverty.
• Against the growing squalor of Soviet life, the
  young woman nurtured a burning desire to abandon
  Russia for the West. She obtained a passport to
  visit relatives in Chicago, and left Russia and
  her family in January 1926, never to return

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About the Book

• Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Russian-born writer
  and philosopher Ayn Rand, first published in 1957
  in theUSA and Rand's last work of fiction before
  concentrating her writings exclusively on
  philosophy. While The Fountainhead is usually
  labelled as Rand's most famous work, Atlas
  Shrugged is generally regarded as Rand's best
  work, her tour de force, and many Objectivists
  hold it to be the greatest novel of all time. Its
  theme (as stated by Rand) is "the importance of
  the individual's reasoning mind in human life."

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About the Book

• It is a highly philosophical and allegorical
  story that deals with themes of Rand's own
  Objectivism, though she was not yet known as a
  philosopher when it was written. Whether or not
  she had philosophical intentions, and to what
  extent or sense the novel is an allegory, are
  controversial subjects. In fact, the ideas behind
  the book, and their extremism, as well as its
  relative popularity have made it one of the most
  controversial novels of the 20th Century. It is
  also one of the longest novels ever written,
  totaling one-thousand pages or more (depending on
  the publication).

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ATLAS SHRUGGED
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Atlas Shrugged

• Atlas Shrugged is a story of a strike. A strike
  by the worlds best brains. A strike led by John
  Galt .A strike to ensure the stopping of the
  worlds motor. Every participant of the strike
  has his own story but has a common objective.in
  the book the group is referred to as Strikers
  .The book is set in the 1950s and tries to
  depict the collapse of the world as the strike
  gains momentum.

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The Characters
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Dagny Taggart

• The novels protagonist and vice president in
  charge of operations of Taggart Transcontinental.
  Dagny is Galts greatest love and worst enemy.
  Her brilliant management style and unwavering
  commitment to the railroad enable her to remain
  in the world of the lootersRands word for the
  people and government agencies that seize
  property from capitalistsand to keep her
  railroad running despite the growing chaos.

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Dagny Taggart

• In so doing, she continues to provide the looters
  with transportation that sustains their system.
  She mistakenly believes the looters are capable
  of reason and will understand their mistakes
  before it is too late. When she realizes the
  looters are in fact agents of death, she
  withdraws and is the last to join the strike.

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Hank Rearden

• The greatest of the nations industrialists,
  Rearden is a steel baron with an astonishing
  capacity to produce. He is also Dagnys lover for
  most of the novel. Rearden represents a threat to
  the strikers because he continues to fight for
  his mills and inadvertently props up the looters
  regime. His main flaw is his willingness to
  accept the looters idea that he is obligated to
  serve others. When he finally gives up this
  premise, he sees the looters system for what it
  is and joins the strike

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Francisco d'Anconia

• One of the central characters in Atlas Shrugged .
  To the world, he is a worthless millionaire
  playboy, owner by inheritance of the world's
  largest copper mining empire, the man behind the
  San Sebastian Mines .A childhood friend and first
  love of Dagny Taggart. , Francisco secretly
  joined the Strikers and began to slowly destroy
  the d'Anconia empire so the Looters could not get
  it. He adopted the persona of a worthless
  playboy, by which he is known to the world, as an
  effective cover.

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A Quote From Anconia

• 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 shoulders -- what would you tell
  him to do? I don't know. What could he do? What
  would you tell him? To shrug

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James Taggart

• Dagnys brother and president of Taggart
  Transcontinental. An inferior businessman, Jim
  excels at influence peddling and becomes highly
  skilled at manipulating the system. Though he
  claims to be motivated by both personal wealth
  and public service, his true motive is
  destruction of the productive. Jim carefully
  represses the nature of his depravity, but his
  final encounter with John Galt completely
  shatters his illusions.

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So Who Is John Galt ??
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This is John Galt speaking

• For twelve years you've been asking "Who is John
  Galt?" This is John Galt speaking. I'm the man
  who's taken away your victims and thus destroyed
  your world. You've heard it said that this is an
  age of moral crisis and that Man's sins are
  destroying the world. But your chief virtue has
  been sacrifice, and you've demanded more
  sacrifices at every disaster. You've sacrificed
  justice to mercy and happiness to duty. So why
  should you be afraid of the world around you?

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This is John Galt speaking

• Your world is only the product of your
  sacrifices. While you were dragging the men who
  made your happiness possible to your sacrificial
  altars, I beat you to it. I reached them first
  and told them about the game you were playing and
  where it would take them. I explained the
  consequences of your 'brother-love' morality,
  which they had been too innocently generous to
  understand. You won't find them now, when you
  need them more than ever.

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This is John Galt speaking

• We're on strike against your creed of unearned
  rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to
  know how I made them quit, I told them exactly
  what I'm telling you tonight. I taught them the
  morality of Reason -- that it was right to pursue
  one's own happiness as one's principal goal in
  life. I don't consider the pleasure of others my
  goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the
  goal of anyone else's life.

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This is John Galt speaking

• I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for
  what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing
  less than what I earn. That is justice. I don't
  force anyone to trade with me I only trade for
  mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has
  no place in a rational world. One may never force
  another human to act against his/her judgment. If
  you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also
  deny your right to your own judgment

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This is John Galt speaking

• And then there's your 'brother-love' morality.
  Why is it moral to serve others, but not
  yourself? If enjoyment is a value, why is it
  moral when experienced by others, but not by you?
  Why is it immoral to produce something of value
  and keep it for yourself, when it is moral for
  others who haven't earned it to accept it? If
  it's virtuous to give, isn't it then selfish to
  take?

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This is John Galt speaking

• Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has
  made you fear the man who has a dollar less than
  you because it makes you feel that that dollar is
  rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar
  more than you because the dollar he's keeping is
  rightfully yours. Your code has made it
  impossible to know when to give and when to grab.

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This is John Galt speaking

• Is it ever proper to help another man? No, if he
  demands it as his right or as a duty that you owe
  him. Yes, if it's your own free choice based on
  your judgment of the value of that person and his
  struggle. This country wasn't built by men who
  sought handouts.

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This is John Galt speaking

• Twelve years ago, I saw what was wrong with the
  world and where the battle for Life had to be
  fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted
  morality and that my acceptance of that morality
  was its only power. I was the first of the men
  who refused to give up the pursuit of his own
  happiness in order to serve others.

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This is John Galt speaking

• If you've understood what I've said, stop
  supporting your destroyers. Don't accept their
  philosophy. Your destroyers hold you by means of
  your endurance, your generosity, your innocence,
  and your love. Don't exhaust yourself to help
  build the kind of world that you see around you
  now. In the name of the best within you, don't
  sacrifice the world to those who will take away
  your happiness for it.

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Objectivism

• Objectivism holds that there is no greater moral
  goal than achieving happiness. But one cannot
  achieve happiness by wish or whim. Fundamentally,
  it requires rational respect for the facts of
  reality, including the facts about our human
  nature and needs. Happiness requires that one
  live by objective principles, including moral
  integrity and respect for the rights of others.
  Politically,.

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• Objectivists advocate laissez-faire capitalism.
  Under capitalism, a strictly limited government
  protects each person's rights to life, liberty,
  and property and forbids that anyone initiate
  force against anyone else. The heroes of
  Objectivism are achievers who build businesses,
  invent technologies, and create art and ideas,
  depending on their own talents and on trade with
  other independent people to reach their goals

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• Objectivism is optimistic, holding that the
  universe is open to human achievement and
  happiness and that each person has within him the
  ability live a rich, fulfilling, independent
  life. Through Objectivism Rand dramatized her
  ideal man, the producer who lives by his own
  effort and does not give or receive the
  undeserved, who honors achievement and rejects
  envy