John Galt The main character of the novel, John Galt is the man who dominates the action, though he doesn’t appear until two-thirds of the way through the novel. John Galt is the character who conceives, initiates, and carries to a successful conclusion the strike of the great minds that forms the core of the novel’s action. He is both the inventor of the motor and the “destroyer” that Dagny fears.
Dagny Taggart The novel’s heroine, Dagny Taggart is Galt’s most dangerous enemy but also the woman he loves. Dagny is a brilliant engineer/businesswoman who runs a transcontinental railroad expertly. Her strength of purpose and impassioned commitment to the railroad enables her to withstand the injustices of the looters’ regime and, by her prodigious productivity, inadvertently sustain that regime. She is the primary foe that Galt must defeat.
Hank Rearden Hank Rearden is the industrialist who runs the country’s finest steel mills. Through ten years of herculean effort, he has invented a new substance—Rearden Metal—that is vastly superior to steel. Hank is also Dagny’s colleague and lover through much of the story. He is the other great industrialist inadvertently propping up the looters’ regime and, consequently, also a danger to Galt’s strike. Rearden has uncritically accepted part of the looters’ code—the moral premise that an individual has the unchosen obligation to serve others. In order to experience the joy that he has earned, Rearden must liberate himself from the shackles of the self-sacrifice morality.
Francisco d’Anconia A friend and ally of John Galt, Francisco d’Anconia was the first to join Galt in going on strike and is an active recruiting officer for the strike. Francisco is the world’s wealthiest man, a brilliant copper industrialist who takes the disguise of a hedonistic playboy as a means of hiding his true intent: the gradual destruction of d’Anconia Copper and of the millions of dollars invested in it by American businessmen. A childhood friend of Dagny’s and her first lover, he pays the highest price for his role in the strike.
Ragnar Danneskjöld Like Francisco, Ragnar Danneskjöld is a friend of Galt’s who joins the strike at its inception. A brilliant philosopher who chooses to fight the looters as a pirate, he robs their ships and restores the wealth to the people who produced it. Danneskjöld is the opposite of Robin Hood: He robs the poor and gives to the rich—he takes from the parasitical and restores wealth to the productive.
Hugh Akston Hugh Akston is the greatest living philosopher and the last great advocate of reason—or “the first of their return.” He taught Galt, Francisco, and Ragnar at the Patrick Henry University, where he was head of the Department of Philosophy. He joins Galt’s strike in its early days, leading to the paradox of a great thinker earning his living as a short-order cook at an isolated diner.
Richard Halley Halley is the composer whose works Dagny loves. His music, boasting beautiful melodies and heroic themes, is rejected by a culture that worships depravity. He joins the strike when he comprehends the vast differences between the premises underlying his music and the ideas held by the men in power.
Midas Mulligan The most successful banker in the world, Mulligan owns the valley in a remote section of the Colorado Rockies to which the strikers retire. In the outside world, Mulligan was regarded as greedy and cold-hearted because he based his investments on productive ability, not on need. He joins the strike because he realizes that he loves being alive and that this love cannot be fulfilled in a society that enslaves his mind.
Ellis Wyatt Ellis Wyatt is an innovative entrepreneur of the oil industry. His discovery of a new method for extracting oil from shale rock initiates the economic boom in Colorado. The industries that grow up around Wyatt Oil are the last hope for the country’s prosperity. Wyatt is a defiant individualist who refuses to tolerate the destructive policies of the government. Rather than allow the rulers to slowly suck the blood from his business, he sets fires to his wells, resulting in the unquenchable “Wyatt’s Torch.”
The Colorado Industrialists These men, along with Wyatt, are responsible for the great prosperity achieved in Colorado. Andrew Stockton runs the country’s finest foundry. Lawrence Hammond is the last manufacturer on earth of superb automobiles, and Dwight Sanders is a genius of the aviation industry. Likewise, Ted Nielsen of Nielsen Motors and Roger Marsh of Marsh Electric are superb producers of motors and electrical appliances. However, all of them are destroyed by regulations the government imposes on Colorado. All of the Colorado Industrialists recognize the futility of attempting to produce under the socialist policies of the rulers and join Galt’s strike seeking freedom.
