CliffsNotes on

Atlas Shrugged

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About the Author

Personal Background
Career Highlights
Rand’s Philosophy: Objectivism

About the Novel

Introduction
A Brief Synopsis
List of Characters
Character Map

Chapter Summaries and Commentaries

Part One: Chapter 1—The Theme
Part One: Chapter 2—The Chain
Part One: Chapter 3—The Top and the Bottom
Part One: Chapter 4—The Immovable Movers
Part One: Chapter 5—The Climax of the d’Anconias
Part One: Chapter 6—The Non-Commercial
Part One: Chapter 7—The Exploiters and the Exploited
Part One: Chapter 8—The John Galt Line
Part One: Chapter 9—The Sacred and the Profane
Part One: Chapter 10—Wyatt’s Torch
Part Two: Chapter 1—The Man Who Belonged on Earth
Part Two: Chapter 2—The Aristocracy of Pull
Part Two: Chapter 3—White Blackmail
Part Two: Chapter 4—The Sanction of the Victim
Part Two: Chapter 5—Account Overdrawn
Part Two: Chapter 6—Miracle Metal
Part Two: Chapter 7—The Moratorium on Brains
Part Two: Chapter 8—By our Love
Part Two: Chapter 9—The Face Without Pain or Fear or Guilt
Part Two: Chapter 10—The Sign of the Dollar
Part Three: Chapter 1—Atlantis
Part Three: Chapter 2—The Utopia of Greed
Part Three: Chapter 3—Anti-Greed
Part Three: Chapter 4—Anti-Life
Part Three: Chapter 5—Their Brothers’ Keepers
Part Three: Chapter 6—The Concerto of Deliverance
Part Three: Chapter 7—“This is John Galt Speaking”
Part Three: Chapter 8—The Egoist
Part Three: Chapter 9—The Generator
Part Three: Chapter 10—In the Name of the Best Within Us

Character Analyses

John Galt
Dagny Taggart
Hank Rearden
Francisco d’Anconia
James Taggart

Critical Essays

The Role of the Mind in Human Life
The Role of the Common Man in Atlas Shrugged: The Eddie Willers Story

Study Help

Quiz
Discussion Questions
Practice Projects

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Practice Projects

    1.    Stage a meeting between John Galt and the President of the United States. What would Galt say to him? How would the President respond? Create and enact a dialogue between the two. Perform the same activity with John Galt (or one of the novel’s other main characters) and a different world leader.

    2.    Design a Web site to introduce Atlas Shrugged to other readers. What will you say to interest them in the book’s story and ideas? Invite readers to post their thoughts regarding the novel.

    3.    Stage the following debates:

    a.    A debate with Galt and the strikers on one side and Dagny and the scabs on the other, regarding the best way to defend the freedom of the mind in a country that’s moving toward dictatorship.

    b.    A debate between advocates of socialism and admirers of capitalism regarding the most moral and practical political/economic system.

    4.    Discuss—don’t debate—what human society would be like if Galt’s philosophy was dominant. What if the beliefs of Hank Rearden, as portrayed early in the story, were dominant? What if the looters’ ideas were dominant? Whose ideas, if any from among the book’s characters, are most influential in the world today? What are the practical consequences of these ideas?

    5.    Hold a simulated Constitutional Convention in which you revise some parts of the United States Constitution (as Judge Narragansett does near the end of the book) in accordance with the principles of John Galt.

    6.    Write a newspaper editorial defending Galt’s principle of individual rights in opposition to the government’s latest violation of those rights.


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