CliffsNotes on

Atlas Shrugged

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Book Summary

Ayn Rand Biography

Early Life and Education
Career Highlights
Rand's Philosophy: Objectivism

About Atlas Shrugged

Introduction
The Cold War and Collectivism
An Appeal for Freedom
The Mind on Strike
Objectivism in Action

Summary and Analysis by Chapter

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

Character List

Character Map

Character Analysis

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

Critical Essays

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

Study and Homework Help

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Essay Questions
Practice Projects

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Study and Homework Help

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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