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In 1957, Ayn Rand published her last and longest novel, Atlas Shrugged. It was probably the most provocative novel of the twentieth century. Despite mostly negative, often scathing, reviews (including one by Whittaker Chambers, then of National Review^[1]), the novel became a best-seller, and remains in print today—truly remarkable for a novel that runs to more than 1100 pages, has so many characters that one truly needs a scorecard to keep up with them, contains a speech that easily would require three hours to read out loud from start to finish, and, perhaps most problematic of all according to almost any recognized literary agent in practice today, takes the omniscient point of view and very often shifts point-of-view several times in a single scene. All these violations of literary convention virtually ensure that this novel would never sell today—certainly not as a first novel, and perhaps not even as a second novel from an author who, like Rand at the time, already had a word-of-mouth best-seller to her credit. And certainly any novel with so many features that most agents would consider "craft defects" should never stay in print for more than fifty years, as Atlas Shrugged has done.

What makes this novel so special? Why has it not only managed to remain in print for so long, but is now enjoying a resurgence in popularity (currently ranking 633rd in sales at Amazon.com)?^[2] What follows below is a review of the novel and an assessment of all the reasons for his success, not all of which have to do with the quality of the novel as an example of the novelist's craft.

The premise

Nathaniel Branden once said that Atlas Shrugged is a mystery story,

Indeed the novel has three mysteries that its heroes, Dagny Taggart and Henry Rearden, set out to solve:

1. "Who is John Galt?" More to the point, is "John Galt" more than a metaphor for economic decline and social breakdown? Is he, in fact, a real person?
2. Who invented an electrostatic motor and then destroyed his prototype and disappeared?
3. Why are so many creative and productive citizens—both businessmen and artists—suddenly retiring from their careers, and in some cases vanishing without a trace?

Those three mysteries are actually one, because John Galt is a real person, is the same as the inventor of the electrostatic motor, and in fact is the man responsible for all the retirements and disappearances. And behind that mystery lies another: Has society, in its seemingly unswerving march toward socialism, finally provoked those who actually make any society work to walk away from it—to, in effect, go on strike?

In the course of their separate investigations, and their attempts to keep things going for their own love of it, they each discover that John Galt had the right idea: that the time has come for the most productive people in their society to say, "Enough! We are on strike, and we will settle for nothing less than an end to this foolishness!" In the end, they don't so much succeed in any project of their devising, as join a project that one man started many years before. Their very act of joining is sufficient for the project to see its final fruition.

Features

Randall S. Ingermanson^[3] often says that a good novel, or dramatic script, requires "three disasters and an ending." Atlas Shrugged does not quite conform to this convention. In structure, Atlas Shrugged better resembles a three-act stage play (or a motion picture) than a conventional novel. This shouldn't surprise anyone, because Ayn Rand studied screenwriting in her native Russia and worked as a copy editor of screenplays in Hollywood. This, plus her unfamiliarity with literary convention, caused her to write two novels (the other was The Fountainhead) while following the conventions appropriate, not to novels, but to motion picture scripts.

Nevertheless, each of the two heroes of the novel does suffer three disasters. Dagny Taggart's three disasters are:

1. The destruction of Colorado, after she managed to rebuild a dilapidated railroad line,
2. The destruction of the Taggart Tunnel, and
3. Her realization that she was not ready to remain in Galt's Gulch, because she loved her work too much to leave it.

Henry Rearden suffers three disasters of his own:

1. The Equalization of Opportunity Act, that forces him to divest himself of some of his ore and coal mines,
2. Directive 10-289, under which he is forced to surrender the secret of his new metal to the public domain, and
3. Dagny Taggart's disappearance for one month, during which time he considers her dead.

Each of the heroes decides to "keep on keeping on" in the face of these disasters, until finally, as mentioned, they each realize that "keeping on" is the worst thing they each can do.

Indeed, very few heroes in literature are as well-developed and believable as Dagny Taggart and Henry Rearden. These heroes are not perfect—at least, not by conventional standards. (The only perfect people in the novel, even by Ayn Rand's own standards, are its three anti-villains, John Galt, Francisco d'Anconia, and Ragnar Danneskjold.) This novel is definitely for adults only, if only because the heroes (and two of the villains) occasionally do some very "adult" things that only an adult would understand. That said, the story clearly revolves around these two, as the villains continue to extort as much as they can from them (and from those like them who are the productive members of their society), and as the anti-villains attempt to recruit them, and ultimately succeed.

The villains are all clearly recognizable allegorical types. In one sense they are all the same type: anyone who believes that someone other than themselves owes them either a living or the means to be generous. In addition, each is a type of a specific sort of person in American politics or intellectual life. The situations portrayed in this novel no doubt seemed extreme in the year of its publication. They do not seem so extreme today, to anyone who watches current political events with any degree of care. And almost without exception, they are fully believable. (One of them does strain credulity by his actions, of which more below.)

The anti-villains are all meant to be ideal men, and in most ways they are. That they are anti-villains rather than heroes is precisely because they are ideal, single-minded in their joint and several purposes, and almost never given to making mistakes. (Ragnar Danneskjold and John Galt do each make one almost fatal mistake in the course of the novel, however.)

Best of all, the novel presents not only mystery but also suspense: Will Dagny Taggart and Henry Rearden succeed in unraveling the mystery? And if they do, how will they decide? What, indeed, is proper for them to decide?

The flaws

Nevertheless, this work is not without its flaws, of varying degrees of seriousness. As discussed elsewhere, many critics have found Rand's characters one-dimensional, her situations contrived, and her tone excessively "preachy," or whatever is the equivalent of a "preachy" tone for an atheist. The first objection is a quibble. Villains and even anti-villains are supposed to be one-dimensional; their very single-mindedness and refusal to deviate from their predetermined paths are what make them appear one-dimensional to casual observers. The novel's two heroes are anything but one-dimensional. Dagny Taggart and Henry Rearden experience the full range of emotion, from the highest exaltation to the lowest depression, and for good and clearly defined reasons.

Contrived situations include people behaving in a way that one would not normally expect (or be able to get away with), and sometimes new inventions with very little feasibility. Practically no critic has found any specific fault with four specific inventions that could fall into the category of science fiction:

1. John Galt's electrostatic motor,
2. Henry Rearden's new alloy of copper and iron,
3. The ultrasonic weapon of mass destruction known as Project X, and finally
4. The refractor-ray screen that provides concealment for Galt's Gulch.

(The novel does mention a fifth "weird" invention, that being John Galt's self-destruct mechanism that reduces the laboratory he keeps to ashes when the government men try to force its door. But that invention appears in only one scene, and only because Miss Rand did not want to complicate matters by simply saying that John Galt used a dynamite booby trap.)

No one has yet duplicated any of these inventions. But no one can definitely say that any of them would be impossible, either. Each one appears to have some basis in a well-documented scientific principle, or even (in the case of Project X) a practical application. (Ask your dentist, especially if you are an habitual tartar depositor.)

However, some of the situations do appear to be contrived. What I find contrived about the ending is not so much the attempt to persuade John Galt under torture to accept the "economic dictatorship" of the country, but first the breaking-off of the torture session when James Taggart suffers a nervous breakdown, and then the ridiculous ease with which Ragnar Danneskjold and the other members of his "spearhead group" are able to rescue John Galt unharmed, suffering no casualties other than a minor flesh wound to Henry Rearden's shoulder.

The political situations that Rand describes no doubt did seem contrived in the year of publication. Certainly Whittaker Chambers found them so. But neither Chambers, nor his employer William F. Buckley, nor perhaps even Rand herself could have conceived that almost every one of the destructive policies that she depicted are now in force or are about to come into force. This is probably the greatest single reason why reprint sales of Atlas Shrugged are as high as they are today. Perhaps the only policy or project that has not come to pass is Project X—but many people fear that the United States government today does have something as potentially destructive as Project X, though perhaps not based on an ultrasonic mass pulverizer as Rand describes.

With regard to this last: Rand said that the minor villain, Dr. Robert Stadler, has his basis in J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the Manhattan Project. But Robert Stadler finds himself forced to recite an absurd speech in praise of Project X, and then in the end attempts to seize control of Project X, only to die in a struggle over its control system with one who has already had the same idea and beaten him to it. That anyone as eminent as J. Robert Oppenheimer would actually behave this way is very difficult to imagine.

Many of the actions of the anti-villains seem similarly contrived. How Ragnar Danneskjold came in possession of a ship fast and powerful enough to become the terror of the high seas, and even to conduct a shore bombardment, is never explained. This is a fault that Rand shares with Jules Verne, who also created at least two villains who each commanded a seemingly impregnable ship. But in Atlas Shrugged the problem is worse: How and where does Ragnar Danneskjold recruit his crew? One does not recruit a privateer crew merely by canvassing the ranks of a limited number of creative people who decide, individually, to withdraw from society. Any ship's crew consists of highly-trained specialists. This is especially true of the crew of a ship of war. Logistics would, in addition, present a constant challenge. True, Danneskjold might retrofit any ship he acquired with an electrostatic powerplant, in which case fueling would be a moot point. But how could he assure himself a continued and sufficient supply of ammunition? Does he trade and traffic with dealers in hijacked armaments? Anyone having such dealings would be at constant risk of betrayal, dealing as he necessarily would be with men who had already decided to betray their own countries for hard currency. Perhaps those arms dealers would be immune to any inducement that any People's State could offer them, because the People's States would never pay them in anything approaching a hard currency. Or perhaps someone at Galt's Gulch was able to mass-produce the artillery shells that his guns fired. Or perhaps not. No such armaments manufacturer was mentioned in the two chapters devoted to Dagny Taggart's stay in the Gulch.

Or perhaps the solution to this riddle comes from the activities of Francisco d'Anconia. He still owns the D'Anconia Copper Company, and for all that anyone knows, perhaps Francisco himself recruited a privateer crew, commissioned a ship, had it retrofitted for war, and allowed Ragnar Danneskjold to take command at the opportune moment. But this begs the question of how Francisco could aid and abet Ragnar Danneskjold for twelve years and remain undetected.

Moreover, Francisco d'Anconia's other activities also appear contrived. Apparently he seduces many women, but at the last moment refuses to be intimate with them. Do none of them compare notes on his activities? Are they all so embarrassed at the prospect that the "great Latin lover" rejected them and only them that they never communicate to one another and find out that the "Latin lover" pose is a total sham?

Which brings us to the affair between Dagny Taggart and Henry Rearden. This affair is worse than mere fornication and is in fact adultery. True, the two of them break their relationship in the end, but only because Dagny Taggart finds, in John Galt, an even stronger personality than Henry Rearden turned out to be (which is not to detract from Henry Rearden in any way). Henry Rearden never reconciles with his wife Lillian and indeed simply walks away from his marriage. By thus demeaning the concept of marriage, Rand also weakens the foundations of Dagny's later relationship with John Galt.

Lastly, the novel does strike an overly "preachy" tone. Ayn Rand was, in life, a very angry person, and this anger shows in all her work. It shows especially in Atlas Shrugged. That the novel succeeds despite this tone is chiefly because Rand speaks for many of her readers and is able to make them just as angry as she is at the "looters' system," at Project X, and at all the rest. But this is known as "preaching to the choir." Such a tone is not likely to cause the archetypes of her villains to search their own hearts or to wonder whether they are in fact pursuing an ideology likely to precipitate a real-life John Galt to call just such a strike as the novel depicts. As a result, one will either love this novel or hate it. The critical reception that the novel has had bears this out.

The content and its sources

Literary criticism as currently practiced very often suffers a credibility problem. This problem stems from a decision to castigate a novel's content in the guise of citing alleged failures of craft. Certainly when Granville Hicks said that the novel was "written out of hate," or when Whittaker Chambers said that every page of the novel tells its readers to go to a gas chamber, they were not confining their criticisms to craft. Their objections are to content and only to content, for only the content, and their vehement objection to it, could provoke them to such emotional displays. (And let it be known that critics who write phrases such as these are in fact conforming to the very stereotype that Ayn Rand invents, an act that further harms their credibility.)

But one cannot ignore content completely, because content is at least as important as craft in making a novel a good or bad choice.

The content of Atlas Shrugged is a prize example of content that is "ahead of its time." As has been mentioned here and elsewhere, no reader of Atlas Shrugged could have predicted, at the time of its publication, that any American administration in real life would behave with the near-total flight from reality that characterizes the Thompson administration, or have the kind of villains in it with whom Mr. Thompson surrounds himself. For that reason, no one would have thought that any reasonable person, even a conservative, would consider himself provoked to the kind of drastic actions taken and recommended by John Galt and Francisco d'Anconia, let alone the violent reaction of Ragnar Danneskjold.

Today the Thompson administration appears, in many respects, to be reflected in the Barack Obama administration. Furthermore, the TEA Party movement is a manifestation of an attitude very close to that taken and fostered by John Galt: that perhaps the most productive citizens of our society really ought to "go on strike" and see how long the rest of society could live without them. Thus far, one can see the wealthiest residents of many States within the United States moving out of those States strictly on account of recently enacted rises in tax rates, broadening of taxable categories of income or purchases, and the like. The establishment of a hidden "society within a society" like Galt's Gulch (but without the fantastic inventions associated with it), or even the establishment of the multiple armed camps following John Galt's speech, might indeed come next if current trends continue without arrest.

Nevertheless, the content of this novel is almost critically flawed in one important respect. This flaw pervades Rand's entire philosophy, and is the one thing that even Whittaker Chambers did not discuss in nearly as much detail as is required.

Ayn Rand grew up in a Russia dominated first by the Russian Empire, and the Russian Orthodox Church, and then by the Bolshevik Revolution and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Nathaniel Branden, in The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand,^[4] described Russia as

Rand was secular, no doubt, because the Russian Orthodox Church presented the worst possible witness to her at a time when the country of her birth was going through a profound social upheaval. That the member of that Church who had the most profound influence on the events of that period was Grigoriy Rasputin, alone speaks volumes.

The problem with that, which Branden also missed, is that she came out of this experience not believing in God. Indeed Rand consistently portrayed people of faith in her novel as in league with the socialists, and behaving in a fashion that any serious student of the Bible would recognize as unbiblical. Indeed, all practitioners of Christianity actually practice a misguided form of their religion known as liberation theology, the notion that Jesus Christ was the First Great Socialist Rebel.^[5]

Never once in Atlas Shrugged does she give any details to substantiate her portrait of people of faith. One might infer where she formed that mistaken impression: from the decision by the early Christian church to form a commune and to have all its members contribute all of their property to it, and the summary divine execution of Ananias and Sapphira when they attempt to cheat the Church by withholding some of their gains from it while pretending to be surrendering everything. (Acts 4-5 ) This argument assumes that the Church intended this to be a model for all of society, and specifically for government policy. One cannot make this inference, because this early experiment in communism appears only once. It also ignores the experiences of the Pilgrims, who experimented with this very sort of communism, saw it fail spectacularly and tragically, and abandoned it in favor of capitalism, with highly salutary results. And finally it implies that Jesus came to this world in order to achieve the greatest economic good for the greatest number. Jesus came on no such Mission as that: he came to redeem people from sin, not from poverty. He also said that the poor would always exist, at least until His Second Coming.

That, throughout the history of socialist movements, those same movements have denounced all religion, calling it, as Karl Marx famously called it, "the opiate of the masses," seems never to have made an impression on Rand.

Worse than this lapse is Rand's refusal to believe in any form of redemption. This is why not one of the villains in this piece ever follows Dagny Taggart's challenging, perhaps even wounding, but ultimately sensible advice:

And it is why two of the arch-villains in the piece, James Taggart and Lillian Rearden, go down to ignominious defeat rather than ever recognize the error of their ways. James Taggart suffers a complete psychic collapse, while Lillian Rearden—well, come to think of it, no one knows what happens to Lillian Rearden. She expresses a fear of being condemned to "stinking, hall-bedroom poverty," but one senses that worse things than that can happen to a person like her when society goes further than mere economic depression and into anarchy.

One need not actually care what happens to James Taggart; in a very real sense, he gets what's coming to him. But Lillian Rearden is another matter. Lillian is, by Rand's own account, supposed to be a type of the literary and political crowd at The New Yorker magazine, a magazine that she held in utter contempt. That's fine, as far as it goes. But regardless of that, Lillian is still Henry Rearden's wife. He did marry her, and he needs to deal with that.

One must ask, first of all: why did Henry Rearden marry that woman to begin with? What could have attracted him to a woman like Lillian, who never once demonstrated any appreciation for him as a businessman and inventor, or even as a fellow human being? One could almost ask why Lillian married Henry, but Lillian is, after all, a minor villainess. Henry is supposed to be smarter than that. Is he, then, a type of all businessmen who mistakenly marry what are known as "trophy wives," thinking to enjoy intimacy but finding out, too late, that they have locked themselves into relationships with women with whom they have nothing in common? Indeed, Lillian Rearden criticizes Henry for precisely such a motive: she was the "Rearden Wife," a woman with whom Henry might not even have been in love when he married her.

The final solution to that problem is not satisfactory: Henry Rearden simply walks away from Lillian. True, he also walks away from his mother and brother. But if one cannot choose one's relatives, one does choose one's spouse. Marriage is too important for anyone to enter into it as lightly as Henry Rearden appears to have done—and divorce is a breach of contract, pure and simple. And as such it is the very sort of "reality faking" that John Galt condemns and will not even permit in the society of which he is the nominal mayor.

Perhaps this shows Ayn Rand's general contempt for the institution of marriage. (Indeed, Whittaker Chambers commented that Dagny never falls pregnant by any of the men with whom she is intimate, and concluded that Ayn Rand just flatly didn't like children.) Why, then, does Ragnar Danneskjold marry the actress Kay Ludlow? Why does John Galt marry Dagny? And if marriage as an institution is something to be so casually walked away from, how can we know that either of those two marriages will last?

Ironically, Henry Rearden offers what could have been the proper solution. When his mother asks him whether he is incapable of forgiveness, he replies,

At first glance that might seem an impossible condition thrown out as a rhetorical device. But this need not be the case. Suppose, for example, Lillian Rearden, after her tryst with James Taggart, had realized in that moment how low she had sunk, and how utterly foolish she was to place her trust in the ideology and system that James Taggart represented? Might she not then have sought redemption in exactly the manner that Henry Rearden suggests she might? Would she not then have sought to warn him that the government had no intention of making a phony tax lien go away, but instead sought to drain him dry and even started a riot at his mills to make their point? She might even have tried to protect him physically at a critical moment, only to die in the process. Such a death would have been rich with irony, seeing that the one time that she decided to be genuinely loyal to someone other than herself, the very pseudo-victims that her intellectual allies championed ended in murdering her.

But perhaps that would have interfered with what sometimes appears to be Rand's chief purpose: to target a particular class of politicians and intellectuals for the most ignominious punishment she can devise, with virtually no prospect of redemption. One, and only one, character achieves any sort of redemption. That character is the young man known variously as the "Wet Nurse" and "Non-Absolute." Sadly, he achieves his redemption only by dying and by giving a last warning to the man he has come to admire. But more to the point, as Rand herself admitted, the redemption of "Non-Absolute" developed by accident. She intended that "Non-Absolute" be a throw-away character, and he ended in giving one of the most powerful "anti-looter" testimonies that the novel contains. If you want to see a powerful, gut-wrenching statement of what is wrong with "democratic socialism," don't try to find it in that abstruse three-hour speech by John Galt; instead, look for it in the scene in which "Non-Absolute," now called by his first name of Tony, gives his dying warning to Henry Rearden.

Perhaps if Rand had developed Lilian Rearden with the same care with which she developed the Wet Nurse, a more satisfactory solution to the problem of Henry Rearden's relationships would have been possible. Not only that, but it would have been an even more powerful indictment of the pseudo-intellectual social set that she represented than even the portrait of her doing her worst. This would have been especially true if Lillian had died in that riot, and Henry had had the chance to mourn the woman he once had loved, and metaphorically had one last chance to meet again.

But in addition to being a member of a condemned class, Lillian Rearden was, in essence, Ayn Rand's own rival for Henry Rearden's affections—because Dagny Taggart, by Rand's own account, is Ayn Rand, without the faults (especially the moderate obesity) that Rand acknowledged possessing, with great lamentation. Lillian Rearden is, then, a romantic rival, and must therefore be destroyed. This, then, is a example of allowing one's personal likes and dislikes to cloud one's professional judgment. This is yet another violation of the philosophical precepts that Rand is trying to expound. This is also a fault that plagued Miss Rand repeatedly in real life, with disastrous results.

Henry Rearden casts Lillian aside for another reason, the same reason for which Dagny Taggart casts him aside for John Galt. And that reason is that Ayn Rand never believed in monogamy. The Objectivist theory of love and sex, as attested by Nathaniel Branden and expounded by Rand herself, has no place for the idea that anyone would have one mate for life. Branden himself, in his own treatise on romantic love, stated that the best idea was "serial monogamy," in which a person might have multiple partners in his or her lifetime, though not more than one at a time. Rand took the concept further: she stated that any person would always attempt to find the best intimate partner that he or she could find, and that no person would have any better grounds to expect a spouse to remain loyal "as long as they both should live" than would any businessman to expect a customer to maintain consistent brand loyalty. As some students of Objectivism, discussing this very work, have stated, "love is a free market."

The problem with this idea, as a piece of practical advice, is twofold. For one thing, it ignores the high emotional cost of ending a relationship, and even suggests that a perfectly (and coldly) rational being should be able to break off a relationship without cost. For another, it makes no provision for the rearing of children. Perhaps the Objectivist ideal would entail the automatic granting of custody to the mother, and the vesting in the mother with full authority and responsibility for any children whom she might bear. Thus the relationship of a mother to her children might be construed as similar to the relationship between a doe and her fawns. But this analysis suggests that fathers are totally unnecessary participants either in childrearing or as family providers.

Ayn Rand never once addressed this issue in any of her essays, nor did Branden or any of her associates. In Atlas Shrugged, Rand ignores the children question completely: Dagny Taggart never has any children by any of her three lovers.

Spoilers end here.

Current popularity

As mentioned, Atlas Shrugged is enjoying vastly resurgent popularity today. The most probable reason for this has everything to do with the politics and policies of the administration of President Barack Obama. Those policies have provoked a series of spontaneous protests, called the TEA Parties, at which many participants have expressed the thought that Ayn Rand was in fact correct in her predictions, except that she made those predictions more than half a century too early and at a time when no one could have imagined that the United States government would ever behave in so potentially destructive a fashion. Such is the depth of feeling on the part of these activists that a new proverb has now appeared in American political discourse: "to go Galt," which might mean to call a strike of the men of the mind, exactly as John Galt did, even if the strike plans are limited to John Galt's original orders: that those who can, retire and live off their savings, with the rest taking the lowest jobs that they can find.

This popularity has also prompted renewed discussion of a motion picture based on the novel, a project that some Hollywood watchers have suggested might become "Hollywood's first anti-bailout movie."^[6]

Will the novel continue in its popularity? Might it be one of many catalysts for another political realignment? Time and events alone will tell.

Signature

--TerryH^Talk 21:14, 8 May 2009 (EDT) Revised and supplemented by TerryH^Talk 15:27, 18 May 2009 (EDT)

References

v • d • e Atlas Shrugged Background Chronology · Historical context Heroes Dagny Taggart · Henry Rearden Anti-villains John Galt · Francisco d'Anconia · Ragnar Danneskjöld Villains James Taggart · Wesley Mouch · Floyd Ferris · Mr. Thompson · Robert Stadler · The strikers Hugh Akston · William Hastings · Richard Halley · Midas Mulligan · Judge Narragansett · Ellis Wyatt · Quentin Daniels Memorable episodes Directive 10-289 · Project X Memorable places and organizations Galt's Gulch · State Science Institute · Taggart Transcontinental Railroad · Taggart Bridge · Taggart Tunnel · Twentieth Century Motor Company Reviews Internal · External Motion picture adaptations Atlas Shrugged, Part 1