Transfiguring the Novel: The Literary Revolution in Atlas Shrugged

Author’s note: For those who have not yet read Atlas Shrugged but intend to, this essay will spoil the suspense of reading the novel for the first time.

Since its 18th-century inception, the novel has been properly glorified for its potential scope. It is not confined in place or time, as is drama, and does not require the performing arts as an intermediary. Since the novel is not limited to physical conflict but includes psychological action, it can provide profound insight into the inner lives of its characters. Nor is the novel restricted by such requirements of language as meter and rhyme, as is great poetry. The novel is, consequently, the most intellectual art form, containing vistas as expansive as the human mind itself, curtailed solely by the limits of a novelist’s imagination. It is an art form that can transport a reader from a character’s innermost private thoughts to the most grand-scale, globe-shaking physical conflict—and dramatize the causal link between the two. A skilled novelist can weave into his story a blend of thought and action, reason and emotion, past and present events, an individual protagonist and a sweeping array of supporting characters. In short, the novel is unique among art forms in its potential to dramatize the full range of human experience.

Ayn Rand actualized that potential.

This author knows of no other fictional work that is so thoroughly integrated on so vast a scale as Atlas Shrugged. The novel is a concordant literary synthesis of every essential element of human life.

Although Atlas Shrugged famously dramatizes a revolutionary philosophy, it is first and foremost a work of extraordinary artistic imaginativeness. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the novel from a literary perspective, focusing on its unparalleled artistic merits.

The Plot-Theme

Atlas Shrugged tells the story of a man who vows to “stop the motor of the world”—and then does. It is the story of an ancient, historic, virtually timeless evil that is destroying the world; and of a man who identifies the cure—one that consists of hastening the world’s demise in order to revitalize it from its deathbed. It is the story of Adam, of Aeneas (whose line established Rome), of Brutus of Troy (legendary founder and namesake of Britain)—of a first man who gazed on the earth afresh, who begot a civilization, and became a patriarch. But it is also the story of Prometheus, who, in Ayn Rand’s telling, withdrew his fire “until the day when men withdraw their vultures.”1

Atlas Shrugged is first and foremost the story of a strike. It shows what happens when the men of the mind, the real producers or creators of value—the inventors, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, and industrialists—withdraw from a world that persecutes them.

This is what Ayn Rand called the novel’s “plot-theme,” the essence of the story, the factor integrating the plot and the abstract meaning conveyed thereby. “A ‘plot-theme’ is the central conflict or ‘situation’ of a story—a conflict in terms of action, corresponding to the theme and complex enough to create a purposeful progression of events.” Whereas Atlas Shrugged’s theme is “the role of the mind in man’s existence,” its plot-theme, which integrates the story’s events to this theme, is “The men of the mind going on strike against an altruist-collectivist society.”2

The hero, John Galt, states:

“There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in human history. Every other kind and class have stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable—except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race. Well, their turn has come. Let the world discover who they are, what they do and what happens when they refuse to function. This is the strike of the men of the mind. This is the mind on strike.”3

The United States government has devolved into a statist regime and is becoming increasingly dictatorial by the month. (The rest of the globe has already plunged into collectivist totalitarianism.) The thinkers, the workers fundamentally responsible for making modern civilization possible—the philosophers, the writers and artists, the scientists, the inventors, the entrepreneurs—are increasingly stifled and expropriated by the socialist rulers—in Ayn Rand’s terminology, the “looters.” The thinkers allegedly have a duty, an unchosen moral responsibility, to carry on their backs their less talented and less enterprising brothers and sisters, without regard for their own well-being. The dominant moral code of altruism, of selfless service to others, demands their sacrifice to the collective.

With the last desperate effort of exhausted, overburdened giants, the great thinkers, like the legendary Atlas, stagger under their earth-supporting load. The intellectuals and moralists propping up the looters’ regime impose their altruist-collectivist code on the American people and struggle to extirpate the last remnants of egoism and individualism—the commitment to an individual’s inalienable right to his own life, mind, and pursuit of his own happiness—from American culture. With the proliferation of altruist-collectivist dogma in the culture, the enormity of the injustice being perpetrated on the thinkers has not been identified.

John Galt identifies it. His solution is not armed revolution—but passive withdrawal. He goes on strike, and, over a period of years, takes with him the most brilliant and creative minds of American society.

But a few geniuses hold on, held to their professions by the love of their creative work. Such giants as Dagny Taggart, vice president of operations for Taggart Transcontinental Railroad, and Hank Rearden, head of Rearden Steel, prop up the looters’ moribund regime by means of their superlative productivity. Galt, therefore, has to battle Dagny, Rearden, and a few other such holdouts in order to bring the altruist-collectivist society to its knees. The most arduous conflict inherent in Galt’s strike is not strikers versus the statist regime; it is strikers versus the productive giants who remain, thereby keeping the regime afloat.

Every aspect of the vast panorama that is Atlas Shrugged is integrated around the plot-theme of the strike, a principle vital to the novel’s artistic synthesis. But other features of the novel are equally essential to its plot structure. For instance, in Atlas Shrugged, as in perhaps no other story in world literature, the main character—John Galt—is behind the scenes for a full two-thirds of the story. In the author’s unprecedented plot structure, the hero utterly dominates the action while neither the narrators nor the reader are even aware of his existence. He is cryptically spoken of as a kind of modern legend, but only the strikers know that he is real.

Galt, for years, necessarily carries out his plan clandestinely; for if the government knew of his activities, he would be incarcerated—at best. The story is largely narrated by the two primary holdouts—Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden—who are aware of neither his existence nor his strike. The result is that through much of Atlas Shrugged—although important events occur at the observational level, apparent to the narrators and therefore the reader—the story’s most important actions occur at a non-observational level, unbeknownst to the narrators and the reader. In understanding this story, a sharp distinction must be drawn between the seen and the unseen, between appearance and reality (the latter pair representing not a metaphysical dichotomy, but a superbly-crafted literary device).

The secret activities of the hero and the covert nature of the strike account for a key element of the novel’s plot: the unfolding of a grand-scale mystery. Why are all of the country’s leading thinkers suddenly retiring and vanishing? Where are they going? What is causing the exodus that is leaving the world bereft of its brains? Is someone behind it? If so, what is his motive?

Two key plot elements contribute to the mystery at the heart of Atlas Shrugged: the collapse and the question.

Modern industrial civilization is collapsing. Industrial output and freight volume are dropping year by year. The main line transcontinental track of the Taggart system, the country’s most productive railroad, is dangerously deteriorated—and the railroad cannot find a reliable source of steel with which to replace it. Stores are going out of business. The country sinks inexorably into grinding poverty. Much of the observed action, especially in the first two parts of the story, involves the narrators’—primarily Dagny’s and Rearden’s—attempts to revitalize American industrial life.

But they are haunted by a question. As a sign of despair, of pessimistic resignation, and of passive acceptance of their fate, increasing numbers of Americans ask the question—to them hopelessly unanswerable—“Who is John Galt?” Neither they nor the reader knows who Galt is or even whether he exists, and nobody knows where the question came from. But as Americans see a capitalist world of creativity and wealth crumbling around them, as they observe the world’s freest nation sinking into the morass of statism, as they fail to understand the causes of the demise and lose hope that they will ever identify them—they lapse bitterly into skepticism and pessimism. The question is posed in moments of despair, as a form of the query, “What can one do?” The unstated answer is: nothing. They hold that mankind has entered its endgame—and all is lost. A second Dark Age irresistibly creeps upon them.

Rearden and especially Dagny despise what the question signifies: the skeptical belief that knowledge is impossible, and consequently, the pessimistic conviction that action is hopeless. They battle such forlorn attitudes brilliantly and steadfastly—and their pro-mind, pro-industry, pro-life struggle draws them inexorably into the heart of the mystery.

Other advanced nations around the globe collapsed after becoming totalitarian “peoples’ states” (as in real life the postwar, East European states sank into the abyss after the Communist conquest). But the United States remains a mixed economy, not yet fully collectivized. The producers still retain primary control over their steel mills, railroads, and the like, despite the heavy regulations imposed on them by the looters. Nevertheless, the economy is collapsing, the most ominous sign of which is the sudden resignation and disappearance of countless key producers—bankers, doctors, composers, philosophers, and industrialists. The disappearances accelerate the collapse and raise questions that the men and women of the country are unable to answer.

Dagny comes to suspect the existence of a destroyer, a creature of monumental evil who deliberately promotes man’s destruction by stripping the world of its leading thinkers and creators. Although she does not come face-to-face with the destroyer until late in the novel, her first meeting with him is not the reader’s. The reader has encountered this shadowy person previously as a nameless, minor railroad worker with whom Dagny’s assistant, Eddie Willers, occasionally dines. Eddie, however, has no idea as to the worker’s full identity—and the reader discovers it only later, with Dagny. Over one meal, Eddie recounts Dagny’s suspicions to this worker whom he trusts:

“You see, she doesn’t think its happening by chance or accident. She thinks there’s a system behind it, an intention, a man. There’s a destroyer loose in the country, who’s cutting down the buttresses one after another to let the structure collapse upon our heads. Some ruthless creature moved by some inconceivable purpose. . . . No, she cannot guess his purpose. She says that nothing on earth could justify him. . . . She says that if she found the destroyer, she’d shoot him on sight—she’d be willing to give her life if she could take his first and by her own hand . . . because he’s the most evil creature that’s ever lived, the man who’s draining the brains of the world.”4

Atlas Shrugged is a murder mystery, but whereas in most murder mysteries the perpetrator is a physical killer, a literal murderer, in this novel the killing is metaphorical, involving the protagonist’s hastening of modern civilization’s collapse or “death.” But more intriguing than the strike and its consequences are the moral issues these raise. In most mysteries the perpetrator is a clear-cut villain. Here, for most of the story, the primary narrator, Dagny, suspects the perpetrator’s existence, but has no clue regarding either his motive or his plan for an ultimate renaissance. Consequently, the discerning reader wonders not merely about a perpetrator’s existence but also about his intentions and his moral status: Is such a perpetrator a villain or a hero—a destroyer or a savior? At the level of the seen, the destructive consequences of his actions might lead one to believe that he is a villain. After the events of the unseen action have bubbled inevitably to the observational surface, however, it becomes clear that he is in fact a towering hero.

Atlas Shrugged dramatizes a profound theme: the role of the mind in man’s existence. Rand’s story shows—both by means of the mind’s presence and by means of its absence—that every value on which human life depends is a product of the reasoning mind; and, as a crucial social corollary, that, in order to function, the mind requires political-economic freedom. When the men of the mind are present in a society, operating under conditions of freedom, they create new metals, original methods of extracting oil, revolutionary motors. When the mind is suppressed, however, the fountainhead of man’s creativity and progress is no longer operative, and human society collapses into barbarism and destitution—as under Communism in the 20th century.

Although the profound truth of this theme is philosophically groundbreaking, Ayn Rand’s literary feat is the skillful means by which she dramatizes her theme, the manner in which she integrates it throughout her story. The essential means by which she achieves this synthesis is through the story’s dramatic dualism: the “scabs” and the strikers; the seen action and the unseen; the collapse and the nascent renaissance; the outer world and Atlantis, the hidden bastion of the strikers; the mind’s absence and its presence. A world (literally) losing its mind not-so-gradually collapses under its cognitive loss. “There’s not a single mind left on Taggart Transcontinental,” Dagny bitterly observes.5 But in Atlantis, as in the freer past of the outer world, the mind flourishes unrestrained, and all of its advances—Galt’s motor, Ellis Wyatt’s innovative means of extracting oil from shale, and many others—can operate freely to the immense improvement of human life.

Ayn Rand’s story and theme mirror real-life. Both history and current events show that the politically freest societies and eras have known great advances in philosophy, the arts, science, and technology. Classical Athens, the 18th-century Enlightenment, and the northern states of 19th-century America are merely three examples. Conversely, the periods of tyranny—such as ancient Sparta, Dark Age Europe, and the Soviet Union—where the freethinking mind was threatened with incarceration, torture, and execution, witnessed widespread brutality, mass murder, and abysmal suffering. But no nonfiction account, regardless of how historically detailed or philosophically profound, could drive home this theme with the power of Ayn Rand’s novel. The unparalleled clarity and impact of Atlas Shrugged’s theme bear eloquent witness to the glory of art and to the literary genius of Ayn Rand.

Integrative Techniques

Although, as Ayn Rand herself points out, “the crucial attribute” of a novel is its plot, a novelist may use other techniques to convey his theme, which, if woven seamlessly into his story, can prove highly effective. In a short essay, it is possible only to hint at the breadth of literary integration that Ayn Rand achieves in Atlas Shrugged. It will suffice to examine briefly four of the literary techniques she employs to amplify her plot-theme of the great thinkers on strike and, consequently, her theme of the mind’s role in man’s life. These are: symbolism, irony, recasting Greek mythology, and an original device that can best be termed the juxtaposition of opposites.

Symbolism

As a literary device, a symbol is an object that suggests a level of meaning beyond the literal. The American flag, for example, is such an object: It is not merely a piece of red, white, and blue fabric; rather, it stands for the principle of an individual’s inalienable right to his own life. Properly used, symbols add layers of meaning to a story, and although Ayn Rand masterfully dramatizes meaning by showing it through a story’s events, she effectively wields symbolism as a secondary technique.

Rand uses five main symbols in Atlas Shrugged: the oak tree, the calendar, the bracelet, Wyatt’s Torch, and the sign of the dollar.

The oak tree stood tall on the Taggart estate along the Hudson River in upstate New York, where Dagny and Eddie spent their childhood summers. To Eddie, it stood for strength, indomitable power, and Gibraltar-like permanence. But when lightning strikes it, Eddie sees inside a “thin gray dust, it had rotted, decayed, died—at its center its heart had rotted away long ago.”6 Likewise, when he walks into the offices of Taggart Transcontinental, into the heart of the seemingly robust railroad, he finds in the person of its corrupt president, James Taggart, the same decay. The oak tree symbolizes the way creeping decay can infest the heart of a living power, rotting it from within until, in time, its vitality has been sapped, its insides have been eaten away, and nothing remains but an empty shell where once had been vibrant life. This is the state of the railroad and, more broadly, of modern civilization, pushed to their deathbeds by the malignance of the altruist-collectivist code. The illness and its intellectual causation, symbolized by the oak tree, constitute everything Galt’s strike is designed to remediate.

The calendar is erected by the mayor of New York and stands high above the city’s streets, reminding its citizens of the date. But the sense it evokes in the conscientious Eddie Willers is that “your days are numbered.” Dagny, for example, sees the calendar when glancing up from work that had been devoted exclusively to “racing from emergency to emergency, of delaying the collapse of a railroad. . . .” With the pace of the collapse ever accelerating, the calendar seemingly counts down the days and the hours until doomsday. The calendar symbolizes the approaching apocalypse, whose onset is hastened by the strike.7

The bracelet is the first object formed from Rearden Metal, a new alloy created by Hank Rearden that is as superior to steel as steel is to iron. It represents an enormous technological achievement. But Rearden presents it to his wife, Lillian, an envy-riddled, venomous witch, who makes no rational, productive effort in life and seeks only to destroy those who do. Upon receiving the bracelet, she remarks: “A chain . . . appropriate, isn’t it? It’s the chain by which he holds us all in bondage.”8 In fact, Lillian’s comment is in polar opposition to the truth; and this chapter—“The Chain”—raises the question: Who is in bondage to whom? Lillian’s weapon against her value-achieving husband is the guilt-inducing altruist ethics, which she and others in Rearden’s family use to harness his power, siphon his wealth, and thereby make possible their mode of living death. The bracelet in the form of a chain symbolizes the moral code that keeps Hank Rearden enslaved to his wife, his mooching family, the looting politicians, and, in general, any of the leeches who condemn him for his productivity while enjoying the fruits of his labor. Rearden is the cardinal example of the towering hero that Galt’s strike is designed to avenge and unleash: the prodigious producer reduced to guilt, misery, and bondage by the altruist ethics that the bracelet represents.

Wyatt’s Torch is an ineradicable flame in the heart of the Rockies that twists in the wind over the remains of Ellis Wyatt’s oil wells—which he blew up rather than surrender to the expropriating looters. Wyatt’s action is the rebellious gesture of a great, untamable free thinker who will not permit himself to be plundered or enslaved. The mind does not function under compulsion, and Wyatt’s Torch symbolizes the disastrous consequences of attempting to violate this principle—the same lesson hammered home by Galt’s strike. (Fittingly, the flame is the last sight on earth for the doomed, pillaging irrationalists whose train violently wrecks inside the Taggart Tunnel.)

The sign of the dollar is the only unambiguously positive symbol in the book. Whereas the others represent either evil or the struggle of good men to triumph over it, the dollar sign, emblematic of the currency of the United States of America, stands for the capacity of free men to produce material abundance. Such production—as Francisco d’Anconia, a brilliant industrialist and Galt’s first ally in the strike, points out—is fundamentally the work of the mind:

“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions—and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.”9

The dollar sign symbolizes two principles for Ayn Rand: the integration of mind and body—the ability of rational thought to understand nature’s laws and to thereby produce material wealth in service of man’s bodily life; and the absolute necessity of political-economic freedom as the social condition of such immense productivity. The centuries-long rejection of these philosophical principles is the fundamental reason impelling Galt’s strike.

Ayn Rand’s technique of employing symbolism is instructive; she does so only as an adjunct to her primary method of expressing meaning: dramatization. For example, before introducing the symbolic bracelet, the story’s events show Rearden’s struggle to create his new metal, his pride in it and in his person, the vicious assaults Lillian launches on his values, and her relentless use of the self-sacrificial code to manipulate him into unremitting servitude. Because the reader has observed these events that illustrate the enslaving essence of altruism, the bracelet in the form of a chain becomes an effective image of the shackling bondage to others in which Hank Rearden exists. Both dramatization and symbolism are methods of bringing conceptual content to the perceptual level. But dramatization is the primary method: Only when meaning is expressed in action can its essence become perceptually recognizable by way of a symbol.

Irony

Irony in literature is incongruity between the apparent meaning of a scene or statement and its actual meaning. As already indicated, Atlas Shrugged as a whole is a single, integrated, sustained exercise in literary irony. This is inevitable because of the multiple action levels, the duality between appearance and reality. Since Dagny and the other narrators know nothing of the strike, they interpret the disappearances, the collapse, and the haunting question as inimical to man’s life on earth. But to those privy to the strike, the meaning of these events is positive, for the events actually establish cultural groundwork for the intellectual-moral-political renaissance that, for the first time, will make possible the full flourishing of human life on earth.

The all-encompassing global irony integrated into the very essence of the plot produces a riveting stream of brilliantly ironic scenes and passages. Consider just one example: Eddie Willers talks to the nameless worker (John Galt)—a genius who secretly invented a new motor that could transfigure technological development but who left it to molder on a scrap heap as part of his strike. Eddie tells him of the railroad’s reconstruction of its vital Rio Norte Line in the industrialized state of Colorado. Explaining the railroad’s difficulty acquiring new locomotives, Eddie exclaims: “Motive power—you can’t imagine how important that is. That’s the heart of everything. . . . What are you smiling at?”10

Notice that the meaning of this scene is opposite to Eddie’s understanding—and to the first-time reader’s. He (and the reader) thinks that he is making casual remarks about the railroad to a worker who cannot fully comprehend them. He has no idea that he is being adeptly pumped for information by the man responsible for hastening the collapse of both the railroad and industrial development in general. More deeply, he does not suspect that he is talking to the man who has redefined the meaning of “motive power” in both physics and philosophy by designing a revolutionary motor and by identifying the rational mind as the motive power of human society—the motor of the world. This is the man to whom Eddie says: “Motive power—you can’t imagine how important that is.”

Francisco d’Anconia is a walking embodiment of irony that accounts for much of the charming, bitter gaiety of his character—and for his immense appeal. In one scene, for instance, Dagny tells Francisco—her former lover and a brilliant industrialist who is now seemingly squandering his prodigious gifts and wealth as a worthless playboy—of her plans for reconstructing the Rio Norte Line, adding that it will be renamed the John Galt Line. He warns her not to do it and asks her what she likes about the name. She replies:

“I hate it! I hate the doom you’re all waiting for, the giving up, and that senseless question that always sounds like a cry for help. I’m sick of hearing pleas for John Galt. I’m going to fight him.”

He said quietly, “You are.”

“I’m going to build a railroad line for him. Let him come and claim it!”

He smiled sadly and nodded: “He will.”11

Both the reader and Dagny think that she is fighting merely the increasing despair of American society and the forlorn attitude of resigning oneself to defeat. She speaks of John Galt in a figurative sense—as a symbol of the nameless, faceless, causeless doom that everyone dreads. But Francisco, a primary recruiting agent for the strike, sees beyond the level of appearance to the underlying reality and grasps the actual meaning of the words and events. He knows that Dagny’s line will be destroyed—not primarily by the looters, much less by an unidentifiable, amorphous destructive power—but specifically by Galt’s strike. Consequently, he speaks of John Galt in a literal sense.

Dozens of similar scenes could be adduced, but these suffice to illustrate the point.

Recasting Greek Mythology

Ayn Rand references five Greek myths in Atlas Shrugged: Phaethon, Prometheus, Atlantis, Odysseus and the Sirens, and Atlas. In each case she reworks their stories, integrating them with her plot and theme.

In the original Greek myth, Phaethon, son of Apollo, mishandles the chariot of the sun, thereby threatening to ignite both heaven and earth. Despite the innocence of Phaethon’s error, Zeus kills him with a thunderbolt. Upon his tomb were carved the words: “Here Phaethon lies who drove the Sun-god’s car. Greatly he failed, but he had greatly dared.” In Ayn Rand’s retelling, Phaethon is the subject of an opera by the composer, Richard Halley. In this version Phaethon is not a reckless youth mercilessly killed by Zeus but a hero who “in ambitious audacity attempted to drive the sun across the sky.” In Halley’s opera, Phaethon is not killed—he succeeds. As with any rational man daring to explore, to discover, and to seek out new challenges, a world of achievement and success is open to him.12

In another myth, Prometheus gave the gift of fire to man—making man more powerful and god-like. For this transgression, Zeus punished Prometheus by means of a vulture eternally gnawing at his liver. In Atlas Shrugged, Francisco says to Dagny, “John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains—and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures.” Francisco recasts the Prometheus myth into a perfect description of the strike. The Promethean men of the mind have brought every type of life-serving advance to man, only to be punished with shackling enslavement in accordance with the altruist morality. Rather than submit to such injustice, the Prometheans cast off their shackles and withdraw from society until men relinquish their murderous code.13

In Plato’s Timaeus, Atlantis was an island of mighty heroes that sank beneath the sea from cataclysmic earthquakes and was forever lost to men. In Ayn Rand’s retelling, Atlantis is a valley of mighty heroes—of rational achievers—founded by John Galt in the remote mountains of Colorado and accessible only to those who choose to live by rigorous application of their most conscientious thinking. John Galt states:

“Observe the persistence, in mankind’s mythologies, of the legend about a paradise that men had once possessed, the city of Atlantis or the Garden of Eden or some kingdom of perfection, always behind us. The root of that legend exists, not in the past of the race, but in the past of every man. You still retain a sense—not as firm as a memory, but diffused like the pain of hopeless longing—that somewhere in the starting years of your childhood, before you had learned to submit, to absorb the terror of unreason and to doubt the value of your mind, you had known a radiant state of existence, you had known the independence of a rational consciousness facing an open universe. That is the paradise which you have lost, which you seek—which is yours for the taking.”14

Notice that in John Galt’s words, the legend has only cognitive-psychological reality, for the source of the myth lies in the role, and the abandonment, of the mind in men’s lives. But now, in the secret valley occupied by Galt and his allies, Atlantis has existential reality, as well. Indeed, given the eventual success of the strike—and the widespread understanding and acceptance of reason, egoism, and individualism that will follow—human society as such can be transformed into a shining world of freedom and prosperity—into “a radiant state of existence.”

In Greek mythology, the Sirens are a trio of sea nymphs whose song is of such beauty that it lures unsuspecting sailors to death on their rocky coasts. In The Odyssey, Odysseus, warned by Circe, has his sailors plug their ears with wax and then lash him securely to the mast. Once safely out of earshot, Odysseus is released. In Ayn Rand’s version, Roger Marsh, president of Marsh Electric, vows to “have himself chained to his desk, so that he wouldn’t be able to leave it, no matter what ghastly temptation struck him.” Confronted with Galt’s insights, Marsh chooses to end his existence as a sacrificial lamb, and to put his mind exclusively in service of his own life. He goes on strike. In Homer’s story, Odysseus survives the Siren call; he does not go to his death. In Rand’s version, Roger Marsh succumbs to the call and flourishes; he goes to his life. In the original, the Sirens lure men to a lethal fate. In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt lures men to a joyous existence.15

In the original myth, Atlas, brother of Prometheus, is a titan condemned in perpetuity by Zeus to carry the world on his shoulders, to gasp and suffer so that others may survive. In the Greek version, Atlas is “to bear on his back forever the cruel strength of the crushing world and the vault of the sky. Upon his shoulders the great pillar that holds apart the earth and heaven, a load not easy to be borne.”16 As the central mythical allusion of Atlas Shrugged, this legend trenchantly and pithily captures the story’s thematic essence. Francisco, recruiting Rearden—the most prodigious producer on earth, the greatest of the few Atlases who are left to prop up the world—asks the steel magnate:

“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 his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?”

“I . . . don’t know. What . . . could he do? What would you tell him?”

“To shrug.”17

The mythical allusion explains the core of the novel’s meaning: The men of the mind are the Atlases who carry the world on their shoulders. But they are not their brothers’ slaves; they have a right to their own lives and to the pursuit of their own happiness. It is not their moral responsibility to suffer and die so that others can live. They should shrug off the burden of the altruist-collectivist creed that sacrifices them to society, and proceed to guiltlessly pursue their own values in service of their own joy. Armed with Galt’s momentous insight, this is what the men of the mind finally do.

The Juxtaposition of Opposites

Throughout Atlas Shrugged, in keeping with her primary method of dramatizing meaning, Ayn Rand sequentially presents scenes that lay the universe of the men of the mind side-by-side with that of the arrant emotionalists who repudiate rationality: the universe of the producers, and that of the looters. For the discerning reader then, the operative principle becomes res ipsa loquitur—the thing speaks for itself. He comprehends, at least implicitly, the contrast that Ayn Rand shows him.

Several scenes brilliantly showcase this technique, but one representative passage will serve to illustrate it. In the chapter “The Exploiters and the Exploited,” the possible legislative passing of the Equalization of Opportunity Bill hangs over the heads of Rearden and the country’s other great industrialists. In the name of “anti-greed,” the legislature threatens to ban individuals from owning more than one business, thereby putatively creating more economic opportunities for those “less advantaged.” Rearden understands that, in practice, this means he could not own ore mines and other industrial concerns that produce materials vital to steelmaking, leaving those companies in hands less productive than his, thereby threatening his access to raw materials.

In this context, in consecutive scenes, two individuals come to Rearden’s office independently, each requesting a favor: Rearden’s mother to plead for a job for his younger brother, Philip; and Mr. Ward of the Ward Harvester Company of Minnesota, to ask for five hundred tons of steel.

Mrs. Rearden, his first visitor, is the prototypical example of a neurotic, manipulative mother, who attempts to control her son by accusing him of “selfishness” for refusing to obey her demands. The essence of her plea is that Rearden’s brother, Philip—a whining moocher—is unhappy subsisting on alms; he needs a job to feel that he deserves the charity he receives from Rearden. Rearden responds:

“But he knows nothing about the steel business!”

“What has that got to do with it? He needs a job.”

“But he couldn’t do the work.”

“He needs to gain self-confidence and to feel important.”

“But he wouldn’t be any good whatever.”

“He needs to feel that he’s wanted.”

“Here? What could I want him for?”

“You hire plenty of strangers.”

“I hire men who produce. What has he got to offer?”

“He’s your brother, isn’t he?”

”What has that got to do with it?”

At the end of their dialogue, he turns his mother away empty-handed: “If I gave a job to Philip, I wouldn’t be able to face any competent man who needed work and deserved it.”18

Mr. Ward, his next appointment, owns a company that is failing because he cannot procure sufficient quantities of steel. Rearden, as the sole remaining reliable steel manufacturer in the world, represents his last chance. Mr. Ward says:

“I don’t know what reason to offer you as to why you should want to make an exception in my case. But there was nothing else for me to do, except close the doors of my plant for good, and I”—there was a slight break in his voice—“I can’t quite see my way to closing the doors as yet . . .”

A short time later, he states:

“If it’s a question of money, I’ll pay anything you ask. If I could make it worth your while that way, why, charge me any extra you please, charge me double the regular price, only let me have the steel.” He adds: “So I’ll say that what I need the steel for is to save my own business. Because it’s mine. Because if I had to close it . . . oh well, nobody understands that nowadays.”

In the midst of Mr. Ward’s appeal, Rearden’s secretary, the relentlessly efficient Gwen Ives, bursts into his office, informing him that the legislature has just passed the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. Mr. Ward, realizing the terrible damage such a law does to Rearden’s business, discreetly rises to leave.

“Sit down!” Rearden snapped fiercely.

Mr. Ward obeyed, staring at him.

“We had business to transact, didn’t we?” said Rearden . . . “Mr. Ward, what is it that the foulest bastards on earth denounce us for, among other things? Oh yes, for our motto of ‘Business as usual.’ Well—business as usual, Mr. Ward!”19

Mr. Ward gets his steel in ten days.

Mrs. Rearden and Mr. Ward each plead with Rearden to grant them aid. But, there, all similarity ends. The two characters embody, in the simple act of requesting favors from Hank Rearden, not merely opposing moral codes but, more profoundly, contradictory philosophical systems in full. As a result, the reader is presented with clear-cut dramatizations of contrasting universes.

In one universe, need is the primary consideration: The incompetent Philip Rearden needs the material and psychological well-being that comes from holding a job, and expects someone to give it to him whether or not he is deserving. In the other universe, values are the primary factor: Mr. Ward loves the business that he effectually runs and will do anything within his power to save it. In one universe, alms are expected, harming the person who gives them; in the other, values are traded for values, benefiting all parties involved. In one universe, mercy—the granting of the unearned—is the dominant moral principle. In the other, justice reigns supreme: Rearden could not face qualified men who deserved work if he gave a job to Philip—and Mr. Ward does not request the unearned but offers to pay Rearden double for the steel he requests. In one universe, helplessness should be rewarded; in the other, productivity: “I hire men who produce,” Rearden states. “What has he got to offer?” In one universe, individuals are helpless; they need to be taken care of by others—and socialism is the proper political-economic system. In the other, individuals are independent; they can effectively care for themselves—and capitalism is the proper system.

In one universe, man is a weak, inefficacious, whining creature, with a few aberrations as the rare exceptions. In the other, he is a rational, creative, life-promoting producer. One universe is governed by emotions: “You have no pity, no feeling for your brother, no compassion for his feelings,” complains Mrs. Rearden. The other is ruled by reason—only facts matter: “. . . he couldn’t do the work. . . . he wouldn’t be worth a nickel to me,” Rearden accurately points out. In one realm, consciousness is primary, and its desires supersede facts: “He needs to gain self-confidence and to feel important. . . . He needs to feel that he’s wanted.” In the other, existence does not bend to whim, and the men who produce the goods human life requires never deny or evade facts, no matter how unpleasant. “Do you know what it’s getting to be like, out in Minnesota, when the farmers can’t get tools, when machines break down in the middle of the harvest season, and there are no parts, no replacements . . . nothing but Mr. Orren Boyle’s colored movies about . . . [steel making],” Mr. Ward states forthrightly. In one universe, reality is social; people—their needs, their wants, their desires—are everything. In the other, reality is nature: its laws, its facts, its undeviating, unbending survival requirements. One realm is ruled by whim—and people, to be commanded, require merely sufficient pull in Washington. But the other is ruled by immutable natural law—and nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. In one universe, men need only to desire; in the other, their survival requires them to think.

Ayn Rand here, and in similar sequences, shows the reader, by means of vividly dramatic scenes woven into the tapestry of a world-shaking conflict, entire philosophical systems in action—and in conflict. Neither Rearden, nor his mother or Mr. Ward, is a philosopher—and none of the three thinks or speaks in these intellectual terms. Nevertheless, their actions and their dialogue, understood in the full context of the plot, convey a tremendous depth of meaning. How many literary geniuses—perhaps Shakespeare, Hugo, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy—could integrate such profound insights into a scene in which characters request economic favors of a steel manufacturer? Surely, such giants are a handful in number.

Observe that Ayn Rand deploys such literary techniques, never as ends in themselves, but only insofar as they advance the presentation of her theme and plot-theme. Such a profound integration of diverse elements, it must be granted, is rare and ranks Ayn Rand among the most skilled novelists. Not surprisingly, Atlas Shrugged’s characters further integrate and embody her theme.

Characterization

Atlas Shrugged is peopled with unique and fascinating characters. For example, in all of world literature, is there a heroine who combines the moral courage, practical efficacy, and femininity of Dagny Taggart? Her strength of character is revealed throughout the story; and her magnanimity of spirit shines, when, for instance, she takes under her protection her sister-in-law, Cherryl Brooks, the guileless sales clerk who innocently marries James Taggart, one of the most reprehensible of the looters. In terms of the principles constituting the heart of this novel, Dagny’s character reminds us that if the mind, not manual labor, is the fundamental source of economic production, then a woman can be as qualified as a man to manage heavy industry.

Ragnar Dannesjkold—one of Galt’s earliest allies—is an utter original, a philosopher-pirate who steals from the thieving poor to give to the productive rich. In a gripping passage, Ragnar risks his life to return to Rearden a portion of the income tax that Ragnar has reappropriated from the looters—telling him that he seeks to destroy the time-honored image of Robin Hood. Only Ayn Rand could have created such a character—and written such a scene. Ragnar’s character drives home the point that force backed by the mind will always overmatch brute force.

Francisco d’Anconia is a modern swashbuckler whose unquenchable gaiety of spirit has captivated millions of readers, and is the man many of whom—including this writer—believe Dagny should have chosen as her husband. But Dagny’s preference for the monumentally-brilliant Galt hardly leaves Francisco bereft of major values; for, in addition to the exalted self-esteem he derives from his own abilities and achievements, he forms a bond with his “greatest conquest,” Hank Rearden, that can only be described as a nonromantic love relationship. Rearden, also a productive giant, is likewise a fascinating character—a man of supreme integrity, who is tormented by his mistaken acceptance of the mind-body split in philosophy, and of the altruist moral code. Rearden’s liberation from these life-thwarting creeds—achieved largely through Francisco’s ministrations—is one of the most moving elements of the novel. Rearden’s character shows that, although the commitment to a full, consistent use of one’s mind does not make one infallible or impervious to error, it does provide a mechanism to correct even life-threatening mistakes. Francisco’s character exemplifies the principle of reason-emotion integration—that intellect is not a dry, unsociable, or “nerdy” trait, that a robust emotional life is not a result of whim-driven mindlessness, and that the actualization of man’s potential for unclouded joy requires the implementation of unwavering reason.

In addition to these and other positive characters, Ayn Rand created several memorable villains for Atlas Shrugged. James Taggart, for example, is a clinically fascinating study in the psycho-epistemology of evil. The author meticulously details the evasions, the self-deceptions, and the wall of denials he erects between his conscious awareness and a reality implacably opposed to his whims. He is a counterpart to another superb Ayn Rand villain: The Fountainhead’s Ellsworth Toohey. Depicted as complacently aware of his own evil, Toohey is a highly stylized creation: He is the distilled essence of the self-sacrifice morality, stripped of all the psychological defenses that, in reality, would shield him from recognition of his own evil. Taggart complements Toohey in Rand’s study of evil: His is the psychologically realistic portrayal of a consistent altruist. His internal contortions, denials, and self-deception constitute verisimilitude—journalistic accuracy—in chronicling the psychological life of a monster. This is what, in real life, a Toohey would be; this, one imagines, was the inner life of a Hitler, a Stalin, a Mao, a Pol Pot. Taggart’s character embodies the unvarnished nature of unmitigated evil: the baleful maleficence that inevitably results from the repudiation of the mind and reality for flagrantly wanton irrationalism.

Dr. Robert Stadler, a fictional embodiment of Plato’s philosophy, is yet another magnificent blackguard. He is the man who considers himself too profound a thinker for concern with this life; who made brilliant discoveries in the study of cosmic rays; who believes that theoretical science and, presumably, all serious cognition study lofty abstractions far above this world—in effect, a transcendent “World of Forms.” Like Platonists throughout history, Dr. Stadler maintains that the common man has neither the ability nor the inclination to concern himself with such serious intellectual issues. In a free society, he holds, the intellect would be left without support and consequently bereft; the great minds must therefore rule the masses in a “benign dictatorship,” and paternalistically impose wisdom upon them.

Dr. Stadler, a brilliant physicist, is driven remorselessly by the internal logic of this code first to set himself up as a kind of Grand Duke of Science, heading the governmentally-enforced State Science Institute—and then to seek a literal fiefdom as the brutal ruler of Project X, a weapon of mass murder that the government creates in the middle of rural Iowa. Dr. Stadler, at least initially, is a man of mixed premises and values—a scientific genius and superb achiever who holds a profoundly mistaken philosophy—who, because he never corrects his inner contradictions, devolves into a vicious power luster. His character represents the consistent extreme of an intellectual split between the theoretical and the applied, between abstract ideas and real-life practice, between a higher realm of pure thought and this world, between mind and body, and, ultimately, between thinking and living. Dr. Stadler’s fatal flaw is that he divorces the reasoning mind—mankind’s survival instrument—from all considerations of survival.

Conclusion

Atlas Shrugged represents a watershed in the history of world literature. Whether one examines the novel in terms of the dramatization of its plot-theme, the employment of literary techniques, or its myriad characters, one is impressed by the systematic integration its author has achieved. All of its elements are seamlessly woven into a literary synthesis unified by its plot-theme—the men of the mind on strike—and in turn by its general theme: the role of the mind in human life.

Atlas Shrugged fully actualizes the enormous literary potential inherent in the novel form. Ayn Rand has demonstrated—shown, not told—what the novel is capable of. Her actions dramatize this principle in the manner that her characters’ actions dramatize the principle constituting Atlas Shrugged’s specific theme. In the wake of this masterwork, the future of the novel, and of literature more broadly, has been altered immensely for the better.

About Andrew Bernstein

Andrew Bernstein holds a PhD in philosophy from the Graduate School of the City University of New York and taught philosophy for many years at SUNY Purchase. He is the author of Capitalism Unbound: The Incontestable Moral Case for Individual Rights (2010), Capitalist Solutions (2011), and, most recently, Heroes, Legends, Champions: Why Heroism Matters (2020).

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