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.
