Analysis of Atlas Shrugged

Critique of Atlas Shrugged


The novel, Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, is a book about the importance of the mind to man’s existence. It is the story of what may happen if man ceases to employ reason in his life. Set in the United States, in an unknown future, the heroine is Dagny Taggart, vice-president of Taggart Transcontinental railroad. Power-hungry bureaucrats implement socialist legislation, causing the country to fall into a depression. Throughout the story, Dagny fights to keep the “looters” from destroying her railroad. She struggles to find “the destroyer,” the one who is convincing the “men of mind” to disappear. In the end, after he and the other strikers have won, she realizes that the destroyer is truly the embodiment of what she thinks an ideal person should be. Dagny demonstrates the motif that gender does not limit human greatness. She is an example of a domineering woman shown in a positive leadership role.
Dagny leads Taggart T...