Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, which is a fiction based novel published by Signet

Book in 1957. It includes elements of science fiction, mystery, romance and most extensive
statement of objectivism. In doing so, it expresses the advocacy of reason, individualism, and
capitalism, and depicts what Rand saw to be the failures of governmental coercion. The book is
divided into three parts, with ten chapters in each part. The main story of this novel revolves
around Taggart Transcontinental and the lead characters are Dagny Taggart, Henry(Hank)
Rearden, John Galt and James Taggart. The major characters of this novel are mainly divided
into two groups, protagonists and antagonist. Major protagonists are Dagny Taggart, Hank
Rearden, John Galt, Francisco d’Anconia, Eddie Willers, Ragnar Denneskjold. Likewise
antagonists are James Taggart, Lillian Rearden, Dr. Floyd Ferris, Dr. Robert Stadler, Wesley
Mouch and many more secondary characters.

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, the
booming industrial areas of Colorado. The country economical condition was worst ever and
men were out of work and are destitute. She intended to provide Colorado the train service it
requires, but her brother James Taggart, president of Taggart Transcontinental, tried to block
her from getting new rails from Rearden Steel, the last reliable steel manufacturer. James
wanted to do business with the Associated Steel, which was run by his friend Orren Boyle.
Dagny wanted 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 didn't want to accept responsibility for using it. Dagny, who
studied engineering in college, has seen the results of Rearden's tests. She took the
responsibility and ordered the rails made of Rearden Metal.

During the economy downfall, mysterious phenomenon of talented men retiring and
disappearing occurred as Owen Kwllogg, one of the bright employees resigned his job. Mc
Namara, who was supposed to renovate the Rio Norte Line, retires unexpectedly. Dagny was
futile by the question “Who is John Galt?”

The crisis for Taggart Transcontinental had worsen when the railroad's San Sebastian Line was
nationalized by the Mexican government. The millions of dollars line 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 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 losses on the San Sebastian Line, uses his political friendships to
influence the vote of the National Alliance of Railroads. The Alliance passed, what was known
as the "Anti-dog-eat-dog rule," prohibiting "cutthroat" competition. The rule put the superb
Phoenix-Durango Railroad out of business, which gave them a golden opportunity to rebuild the
Rio Norte Line quickly.

Dagny asked Francisco what his purpose was in building the worthless Mexican mines. He told
her that it was to damage d'Anconia Copper and Taggart Transcontinental, as well as to cause
secondary destructive consequences. Dagny was dumbfounded by his answer. After this
conversation, Francisco appeared at a celebration for Hank Rearden's wedding
anniversary.Rearden’s brother believed that the strong were morally obliged to support the
weak.

Along with myriad problems, Dagny and Rearden built the Rio Norte Line and Rearden
designed an innovative bridge for the line that takes advantage of the properties that his new
metal possesses. The State Science Institute tried to bribe and threaten Rearden to keep his
metal off the market, but he wouldn't give in and then issued a statement devoid of factual
evidence that alleged possible weaknesses in the structure of Rearden Metal. Taggart stock
crashed, the contractor quitted, and the railroad union forbidden its employees to work on the
Rio Norte Line when Dr. Robert Stadler refused to defend Rearden Metal even though he knew
its value. Dagny took a leave of absence, form her own company, and built the Rio Norte Line
on her own. She signed a contract saying that when the line would be successfully completed,
she'd turn it back over to Taggart Transcontinental and named it as the John Galt Line in
opposition of the general doubt that surrounds her.

Rearden and the other businessmen of Colorado invested in the John Galt Line. The
government passed the Equalization of Opportunity Bill that prevented an individual from
owning companies in different fields. The bill prohibited Rearden from owning the mines that
supplied him with the raw materials he needed to make Rearden Metal. However, he created a
new design for the John Galt Line's Rearden Metal Bridge. Dagny completed construction of the
Line ahead of schedule. They both rode in the engine cab on the Line's first train run, which was
a resounding success. Rearden and Dagny had dinner at Ellis Wyatt's home to celebrate. After
dinner, they felt a strong sexual attraction, they made love for the first time and their sexual
intimacy was based on mutual admiration for each other’s qualities.

Dagny and Rearden took vacation and went together, reached at the ruins of the Twentieth
Century Motor Company's factory in Wisconsin, and they found 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 it was destroyed. Realizing its benefit in the transportation
industry, Dagny vowed to find the inventor. At the same time, she fought against new proposed
legislation. Various economic pressure groups, seeking to cash in on the industrial success of
Colorado, wanted the government to force the successful companies to share their profits.
Dagny knew that the legislation would put Wyatt Oil and the other Colorado companies out of
business, destroyed the Rio Norte Line, and removed the profit she needed to rebuild the rest of
the transcontinental rail system, but she was too weak to prevent the legislation. Dagny
continued her search finally found the widow of the engineer who ran the automobile company's
research department. The widow told her that a young scientist was working for her husband
invented the motor. She didn't know his name, but she provided a clue that leads Dagny to a
cook in an isolated Wyoming diner. The cook named, Hugh Akston, the world's greatest living
philosopher, told Dagny to forget the inventor of the motor because he won't be found until he
chooses.

Dagny discovered that Wesley Mouch, the new economic coordinator of the country, had issued
a series of directives that would result in the strangling of Colorado's industrial success. She
rushed to Colorado but her arrival was too late. Ellis Wyatt, in defiance of the government's
edict, set fire to his oil wells and retired. After a month, the situation in Colorado continued to
deteriorate and Several of the other major industrialists had retired and disappeared; nobody
knew where they had gone.

She continued her search for the inventor of the motor. She spoke to Robert Stadler who
recommended a young scientist, Quentin Daniels of the Utah Institute of Technology, capable of
undertaking the motor's reconstruction.

The State Science Institute ordered 10,000 tons of Rearden Metal for a top-secret project, but
Rearden refused to sell it to them. He sold to Ken Danagger, the country's best producer of
coal, an amount of Rearden Metal that the law deemed illegal. The day following the reception,
Rearden's wife discovered that he’s having an affair, but she didn't know with whom.
Manipulators who seek control over her husband, Lillian used guilt as a weapon against him. Dr.
Ferris of the State Science Institute told Rearden that he knew of the illegal sale to Ken
Danagger and would take Rearden to trial if he refused to sell the Institute, the metal it needs.
Rearden refused, and the government brought charges against him and Danagger. Dagny
raced to Pittsburgh to meet and convince Danagger to stay, but she was too late. Someone had
already met with Danagger and convinced him to retire. In a mood of joyous serenity, Danagger
told Dagny that nothing could convince him to remain. The next day, he disappeared.

Francisco visited Rearden and empathized with the pain he had endured because of the
invention of Rearden Metal. Francisco begun to ask Rearden what could make such suffering
worthwhile when an accident stroked one of Rearden's furnaces. They both raced to the scene
and work arduously to make the necessary repairs. Afterward, when Rearden asked him to
finish his question, Francisco said that he knew the answer and departed.

At his trial, Rearden stated that he didn't recognize his deal with Danagger as a criminal action
and, consequently, didn't recognize the court's right to try him. He said 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. Any how he was able
to convince the judges and they recognized the truth of what Rearden said and refused to stand
before the American people as open thieves. In the end, they fined Rearden and suspended the
sentence.

Wesley Mouch believed that Taggart could influence Rearden and he implied that a trade was
possible: If Taggart could convince Rearden to cooperate, Mouch would prevent the
government from forcing a cut in shipping rates. Taggart appealed to Lillian for help, and Lillian
discovered that Dagny Taggart was her husband's lover.

In response to devastating economic conditions, the government passed the radical Directive
10-289, which required that all workers should stay at their current jobs, all businesses
remained open, and all patents and inventions would be voluntarily turned over to the
government. When she heard the news, Dagny resigned from the railroad.

Dr. Floyd Ferris of the State Science Institute enforced Rearden to sign the certificate turning his
metal over to the government by threatening him to disclose his and Dagny affair to the public

Dagny has retreated to a hunting lodge in the mountains that she inherited from her father and
heard of the accident in Taggart making all transcontinental traffic impossible on the main track.
She rushed back to her duties, and rerouted all transcontinental traffic. She received a letter
from Quentin Daniels telling her that, because of Directive 10-289, he was quitting. Dagny
wanted to meet talk to Daniels.

On her journey, she met a hobo who was riding the rails. He used to work for the Twentieth
Century Motor Company. He told 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 man told her that as the years passed and they saw factories closed,
production dropped, and great minds retired and disappeared, they began to wonder if the
young engineer, whose name was John Galt, succeeded.

On her trip to west, Dagny's train was stalled when the crew abandoned it. She found an
airplane and continued on to Utah to find Daniels, but she learned at the airport that Daniels had
left with a visitor in a beautiful plane. Realizing that the visitor is the "destroyer," she gave
chase, flying among the most inaccessible peaks of the Rockies. Her plane crashed.

Dagny found herself in Atlantis, the hidden valley to which the great minds had gone to escape
from the dictatorial government. She found that John Galt did exist and that he was the man she
had been seeking in two ways: as the inventor of the motor and the "destroyer," the man
draining the brains of the world. All the great men she admired were there — inventors,
industrialists, philosophers, scientists, and artists. Dagny learned that the brains were on strike.
They refused to think, create, and work in a world that forces them to sacrifice themselves to
society. They were on strike against the creed of self-sacrifice, in favor of a man's right to his
own life. Dagny was in love with Galt, had a scab, the most dangerous enemy of the strike, and
Galt hadn't touch her — yet. She had the choice to join the strike and remain in the valley or
went back to her railroad and the collapsing outside world. She was torn, but she refused to give
up the railroad and returned. Although Galt's friends didn't want him to expose himself to the
danger, he returned as well, so he could be near at hand when Dagny decides she's had
enough.

When she returned, government had nationalized the railroad industry and controls it under a
Railroad Unification Plan. The government wanted 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 stated that she was Rearden's lover and that he signed his metal over to the
government only because of a blackmail threat and succeeded in warning the American people
about the ruthless dictatorship about government.

Because of the government's socialist policies Francisco d'Anconia destroyed his holdings and
disappeared because his properties worldwide were about to be nationalized. Meanwhile,
politicians used 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 were
diverted to a project run by the relatives of powerful politicians.

During an emergency breakdown at the Taggart Terminal in New York City, Dagny found that
John Galt was one of the railroad's unskilled laborers. She saw him in the crowd of men ready
to carry out her commands. After completing her task, Dagny walked into the abandon tunnels,
knowing that Galt would follow. They made love and had sexual relation, intimacy for the first
time, and he then returned to his mindless labor.
The government smuggled its men into Rearden's mills for strike. When Rearden rejected the
Steel Unification Plan, the government wanted to spring on him, they used the thugs they had
sent into his mills to start a riot. Francisco d'Anconia, under an assumed name, had taken a job
at Rearden's mills. He organized the workers, and they successfully defended the mills against
the government's thugs. Afterward, Francisco told Rearden the rest of the things, he wanted him
to know. Rearden retired, disappeared, and joined the strike.

Mr. Thompson, the head of state, was set to address the nation regarding its dire economic
conditions. But before he begun to speak, he was preempted and John Galt addressed the
nation instead. Galt informed citizens that the men of the mind were on strike, that they required
freedom of thought and action, and that they refused to work under the dictatorship in power.
The thinkers wouldn't return, Galt said, until human society recognizes an individual's right to
live his own life.

The government rulers were desperate. They searched for John Galt, wanted him to become
economic dictator of the country so the men of the mind would come back and save the
government, but Galt refused. Realizing that Dagny thought the same way that Galt did, the
government had followed her. Mr. Thompson made clear to Dagny that certain members of the
government feared and hated Galt, and that if they find him first, they might kill him. Terrified,
Dagny went to Galt's apartment to see if he was still alive. The government's men followed her
and took Galt into custody, and the rulers attempted to convince Galt to take charge of the
country's economy. He refused. They tortured him, yet still he refused. In the end, the strikers
came to his rescue. Francisco and Rearden, joined now by Dagny, assaulted the grounds of the
State Science Institute where Galt was held prisoned. They killed some guards and
incapacitated others, released Galt, and returned to the valley. Dagny and Galt were united.
Shortly after, the final collapse of the looters' regime occured, and the men of the mind were
free to return to the world.