Atlas Shrugged



""For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing, you who dread knowledge: I am the man who will now tell you.""

- John Galt beginning a very, very, very long speech.

It's Twenty Minutes Into the Future. The government is evil and stupid, intent on draining the decent, productive, people dry. The average Joe is clamped hard on the government teat, and happy about it. The people are Les Collaborateurs, busy gaming the system for every drop before it crashes, or self-deluded fools certain they can fix everything with just a LITTLE more control. There is no public resistance.

Worse, the few people who are still productive are disappearing, one by one. No one ever hears from them again, and their friends and relatives are left with nothing but a question:

"Who is John Galt?"

Welcome to the world of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

The title is based on a popular misconception that in Greek mythology Atlas carried the world on his back ; as Hank and Francisco discuss during the book, if he ever tired of carrying that weight on his shoulders, all he needed to do was shrug, and it would fall off. The working title for the novel, before its publication, was The Strike.

The book is most widely known for its condemnation of religion and altruism, as well as its support of free-market classical liberalism (which Rand called "Capitalism," although Marxists and Anarchists use the term "Capitalism" in a completely different sense). Other themes include its celebration of the individual and the argument that suffering is not a necessary part of the human condition.

For those that are interested in the technical details of Rand's ideas, there is a Useful Notes page on Objectivism (warning: RL politics/philosophy ahead).

A film adaptation of the book's first part was released on April 15th, 2011(income tax day) after decades in Development Hell. It has its own page, here.

An adaptation of the book's second part is already underway, with plans to release it on November 6th, 2012(election day).


 * Achilles in His Tent: The idea behind John Galt's strike.
 * Almighty Janitor: All of the strikers, including highly capable people, agree to take nothing but the equivalent of minimum-wage jobs in order to avoid contributing their minds to the looters' system. Notably, scientific genius John Galt works at Taggart Transcontinental as an unskilled railroad hand for ten years.
 * Alternate History: A possible explanation that has been proposed for importance of radios, trains, and the lack of post-WWII technology is that the timeline splits around the '30s when FDR is elected, resulting in decades of stagnation, and major events such as World War II never happened in this universe.
 * Ambition Is Evil: The book's villains think this. The protagonists repeatedly say the exact opposite: they consider the lack of ambition to be the ultimate evil. The latter point is one of the book's main Aesops.
 * America Saves the Day: Simultaneously averted and played straight. Averted in that in the world of the novel, the USA is well on track to becoming just like the People's States it regularly sends government aid to (and, by the end of the novel, American society has indeed collapsed). Two heroes (D'Anconia and Ragnar The Philosopher Pirate) are Argentinian and Scandinavian, respectively. Present in that all of the novel's heroes extol (what they refer to as) American values and the majesty of a country founded on the pursuit of individual happiness. By the end of the novel all the productive people are living in lovely Colorado.
 * Anti-Hero:
 * Although Rand intended her protagonists to be morally unassailable, even many people who agree with the book's message don't perceive them as pure heroes.
 * Dagny Taggart and Francisco D'Anconia are somewhere between Type III and Type IV, Hank Rearden is more of a Type II. John Galt is arguably a Type III, albeit only to his enemies.
 * Applied Phlebotinum: John Galt is a Gadgeteer Genius with cast-iron lungs; Galt's Motor, Galt's Gulch's Invisibility Cloak, Galt's Cool Plane... There's also Rearden "Miracle" Metal, and Project Xylophone (which also contains Explodium).
 * Arc Words: "How am I to know?","Check your premises", "Who are you to judge/think?", "He'll do something!" "The whole world should know his name!" -- "Who is John Galt?"
 * Atlantis: John Galt's preferred nickname for Galt's Gulch Mulligan's Valley.
 * Author Avatar:
 * Word of God (i.e. Rand herself) admits that she is the Fishwife in Galt's Gulch.
 * Rand also referred to her real life husband-at-the-time as "my John Galt".
 * Author Filibuster: As quote on the Author Filibuster Quotes page says, "Eventually the question you ask stops being 'Who is John Galt?' and becomes 'When will John Galt shut up?'" Atlas Shrugged has one of the longest examples in print, with 60 to 70 pages (depending on printing) of John Galt lecturing the entire world. There are other, shorter filibusters as well scattered through the book.
 * Author Tract: Arguably the Trope Codifier.
 * Badass Bookworm: Ragnar Danneskjold, the most fearsome pirate on the high seas, is also a philosophy major who enjoys reading Aristotle. He worked his way through college as a library clerk.
 * Balance Between Good and Evil: Actively averted: Rand's view was that evil is a parasite on the good of the world, which cannot survive without willing virtues to loot.
 * Beauty Equals Goodness: All of the protagonists and members of Galt's Gulch are described as being exceptionally attractive, while the villains are generally described as pudgy and watery eyed. To be fair, however, Rand might have been trying to say that being talented, hard working, and passionate makes you attractive, and not the other way around.
 * Betty and Veronica:
 * Hank Rearden and Francisco D'Anconia, with John Galt as Third Option Love Interest.
 * Rand also deconstructs the trope with the actress who joined the strike because she was typecast as the Veronica: - she was tired of having to play characters who were more interesting than the Betties in formula films while always losing to them in the end.
 * Big Damn Heroes: John Galt's rescue by Dagny, Hank, Frisco and Ragnar. Ragnar even crashes through a window, guns akimbo to ambush the guards.
 * Big Good: John Galt.
 * Bishonen: Francisco d'Anconia and Ragnar Danneskjold.
 * Brain Drain: This is John Galt's major plan: to drain ALL OF AMERICA
 * Brick Joke: Remember how Dagny returns from Galt's Gulch just in time to hear that the engines from their star line and the cars from a coal run were being appropriated to pick up a shipment of grapefruit? Two-hundred and fifty pages later, after the looters have captured Galt, it's mentioned that Mr. Thompson's doctor had prescribed him grapefruit juice to help with an "epidemic" of colds. And we learn of this because they just at that moment ran out of juice. Right up until the collapse, resources were put aside so the Head Of State could have grapefruit juice.
 * Broken Pedestal: Dr. Robert Stadler, brilliant and idealistic scientist who becomes just another part of the looters' machine.
 * Brother-Sister Team: Subverted with Dagny and James Taggart. While both are in major leadership roles at Taggart Transcontinental, it's Dagny who keeps the railroad running and James who keeps either harming its interests or advancing it through dishonest means.
 * Cain and Abel: James and Dagny Taggart; Phillip and Hank Rearden.
 * Character Filibuster: Quite a few. A three hour long speech appears verbatim, right before the climax. After that, the rest look like zingers.
 * Comically Small Bribe: Inverted. Mr. Thompson tries to offer John Galt what he thinks are comically large bribes to cooperate with the government, such as a billion dollars in gold and total economic power over the whole country. Galt points out that, in fact, such money and power would only be of value to him once he creates said value himself, making them completely worthless.
 * Completely Missing the Point:
 * After listening to Galt's three-hour long tirade about the evils of government interference in industry, the looters proceed to capture him and offer him the role of economic director, a job in which he will be free to run industry as he sees fit.
 * After Dagny returns from her idyllic sojourn in Galt's Gulch, James Taggart (who probably majored in Missing the Point) brags about how much money he has made the railroad in her absence. He gloats, because all Dagny ever cared about was making lucre. He "made" that money by pulling strings with his friends to get the government to give him outrageous subsidies and advantages. Dagny's... not impressed.
 * James...again, after his sister's dynamo performance on Bertram Scudder's radio program. When Cheryl asks him about Dagny's comments, James responds by attacking Scudder and pointing out that he has been kicked off the radio. Cheryl becomes quite exasperated.
 * Compliment Backfire:
 * Hank Rearden is thrown a banquet after the tremendous success of Taggart Transcontinental's Rearden Metal line, at which he is praised loudly for being someone who people desperately needs. He's not very impressed.
 * Composer Richard Halley joins the strike after the night his opera became a roaring success for the same reason.
 * Conspicuous Consumption: Francisco d'Anconia became famous for this after adopting his playboy persona. James Taggart also goes on a spree of this later on. Notably averted with most of the heroic characters, even very rich ones: they may purchase extremely expensive objects, but do this for their quality rather than showing off how rich they are.
 * Contemplate Our Navels: Many passages in the book are exactly this. Justified Trope given the genre.
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: Various villains, notably James Taggart and Orren Boyle. The heroes have also been accused, in-universe, of embodying this trope.
 * Corrupt Politician: Just about every politician in the book is either a weak, amoral slug or a deliberately destructive leech.
 * Crapsack World: Intellectuals such as Balph Eubank and Simon Pritchett like to present the world as one of these, a place where reason and logic are useless, man cannot achieve anything significant in the universe, and suffering is the essence of life. The general state of the world seems to imply that they are right, except that their insistence on treating those opinions as fact is causing them to become true. In contrast, the Strikers use Genius and Determination to Earn Their Happy Ending.
 * Daddy's Girl: There are interesting shades of this in Dagny's relationship with her father. Although he mainly gave to company to James, he knew from watching her childhood that she was the Taggart to run the railroads. In turn, Dagny admires her father for being a self-made, hardworking man, but also regrets that being born into his family made her success a little easier.
 * The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Dr. Stadler
 * Dead Air: After John Galt hacks the radio transmissions and delivers his speech, the other characters do anything to fill up the dead air afterward, but this is treated more as a Follow the Leader response of the radio producers that came before them.
 * Deadpan Snarker - Most of the good characters but particularly Dagny.
 * Deconstruction: The chapter detailing the fate of the Twentieth Century Motor Company is a deconstruction of the Marxist slogan "From Each According to Ability, To Each According to Need." Ultimately, the plot of the novel is intended to be a deconstruction of traditional (i.e. altruistic) moral principles.
 * Defeat Means Friendship:
 * The first guy to produce steel in Galt's Gulch is driven out of business when a better man joins the strikers. The beaten man happily works for the new steel producer, in a position which is a much better fit.
 * The winner himself tells Dagny that he looks forward to the day when Rearden joins the strikers: Hank will certainly beat him, but it'll be an honorable defeat.
 * Despair Event Horizon: Cheryl
 * Determinator:
 * Dagny, particularly in regards to how she finds Galt. She finds his plane, grabs her own, follows it until it seemingly dissapears into the side of a mountain, and follows.
 * Hank Rearden went through countless failures before he finally invented a successful version of Rearden Metal.
 * Developing Doomed Characters: Galt, the hero, doesn't show up in a major way for about 700 pages. He's in the first couple chapters, but it takes the looters about 400 pages before they really start to screw up society. That "early" portion of the book is devoted to introducing characters and establishing their personalities through extensive, extensive dialogue and flashbacks.


 * Do Not Adjust Your Set: Your radio set, anyway.
 * Don't Think, Feel: Deconstructed. The villains of the piece base their economic policies on emotionalism and feelings and (what they call) 'love for others'.
 * Doorstopper: It's nearly as long as the Bible, and is one of the longest fiction novels in English.
 * Double Standard: Within the world of the novel. Dr. Ferris lampshades this when he threatens Hank Rearden with the public revelation of his affair with Dagny, mentioning that Rearden's own "conquest" would be perceived as normal, even admirable by some, while Dagny would be seen as a slut and be totally dishonoured. The fear of tarnishing Dagny's good name is exactly what drives Rearden to cave in to the looters' demands. Possibly averted when Dagny proudly declares on public radio how she has been Rearden's mistress, and actually receives some admiration.
 * Driving Question: The Arc Words.
 * Dystopia Is Hard: The more Dystopian Edicts that are passed and the more control the government gain for the greater good, the more screwed up things become.
 * Egopolis: - Averted by Galt. Everyone else calls the hidden valley where the strikers are living "Galt's Gulch", but he calls it by its owner: "Mulligan's Valley". Played straight by the planned "Meigsville".
 * Electric Torture: Project F. Subverted in that once the machine breaks, none of the torturers know how to fix it. Galt calmly explains how to repair it, and a Eureka Moment ensues: they can't even hurt Galt without his assistance, and the Ubermensch does not want to play anymore! Cue the Villainous Breakdown!
 * Even Evil Has Standards: During the meeting to plan Directive 10-289, the question of what to do about any industrialists who are caught deserting is brought up. Dr. Ferris says that since the directive makes deserting a crime, it should be treated as treason, and perhaps the death penalty should be applied in such cases. Fred Kinnan instantly calls him out on it, and nobody ever brings up the thought again.
 * Inverted later in the book, when violating Directive 10-289 means that you can no longer be legally employed and doomed to a slow death by starvation.
 * Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: After capturing Galt, the various Looters try and talk him into helping them out. We see President Thompson's conversation at length, and it's clear he cannot understand anything Galt believes. The two talk past each other most of the time.
 * Evil Counterpart:
 * Hank Rearden and Orren Boyle. Hugh Akston and Robert Stadler. John Galt and Fred Kinnan.
 * Kinnan is particularly interesting: true to both this and Kinnan's trope, he's not just the only Looter who gives half a damn about his employees, he's the only one who's aware that they're going to lose. He emerges from a meeting with Galt saying that he enjoyed the conversation, particularly Galt's Brutal Honesty, and then calmly admits that as a career criminal like himself would be pointless in a world without regulations, he would be "the first one to go down the drain when (Galt) wins."
 * Fallen Mentor: Dr. Stadler was one of Galt, Danneskjold, and d'Anconia's mentors in college, and a confidant for Dagny.
 * Family-Unfriendly Aesop: Deliberately invoked, in-universe, as the book sought to argue against traditional definitions of morality. Specifically, it promotes selfishness as a virtue. It also argues for atheism and justifies sex as a moral triumph. Moral Guardians from all over the political spectrum flew into utter outrage these messages. Gore Vidal (leftist) said Rand's philosophy was "perfect in its immorality," and the National Review's Whittaker Chambers (former Communist who became a Christian conservative) said that from every page in this book he could hear a voice calling "to a gas chamber, go!" Thus, regardless of whether or not one agrees or disagrees with the aesops presented in Atlas Shrugged, they clearly fall under the category of "family unfriendly." Ayn Rand was no ally of traditional moral beliefs, after all. Furthermore, the book clearly indicates the opinion that someone being a member of family is no reason to love them, or respect them, in and of itself.
 * Fake Ultimate Hero: James plays this to Cherryl after they meet.
 * False Flag Operation: The siege of the Rearden Steel plant, which was planned to be passed off as a workers' riot to encourage Hank to accept the Steel Unification Plan.
 * Fascist but Inefficient: The looters' policies end up turning America into this, with critical resource shortages, riots, greatly increased unemployment rates, and trains not running on time all across the nation. By the end of the novel American society has pretty much collapsed.
 * Fiction 500: Too many examples. The Taggarts, the D'Anconias, Midas Mulligan, and Hank Rearden are a few. Ironically, John Galt is not one.
 * For Science!: Dr. Stadler supported the State Science Institute for the sake of freeing scientific research from the shackles of corporate funding. He started going downhill from there.
 * Gambit Pileup: Heavily implied to be occurring in this world especially when it is revealed that Wesley Mouch, at one point the most powerful man in the United States, is "the zero at the meeting point of forces unleashed in destruction against one another" -- that is, he's enough of a non-entity to satisfy rival factions trying to put their "friends" in important positions and keep their enemies out. Also occurs every other page between the "businessmen" who are incapable of earning an honest living helping each other and stabbing each other in the back as the plot demands.
 * Good Bad Girl: Dagny Taggart. She doesn't exactly have a world-beating sex drive, but she is absolutely guiltless about the sex she does have and has sex because she wants to have sex. She also engages in two relationships which would be considered morally controversial by some people's standards; first, a teenage passion with Francisco D'Anconia whilst they are underage, and second, an affair with married man Hank Rearden (which she gleefully rubs in his prudish wife's face).
 * Good People Have Good Sex / Good Adultery, Bad Adultery: Dagny's affair with married man Hank Rearden is portrayed as an exalted, beautiful and fulfilling relationship, wheras Hank's wife Lillian (a villain) believes Sex Is Evil and uses Hank's guilt over his fondness for sex to control and manipulate him. In contrast, James Taggart's one-night stand with Lillian is treated as disgusting, as those involved are doing so not out of their enjoyment of the act itself, but out of their (mistaken) belief that the act will somehow harm Hank Rearden. James actually calls Lillian "Mrs. Rearden" as he gets off.
 * Gotterdammerung: Rand saw the "men of the mind" as Gods...
 * Grail in The Garbage: The revolutionary, but abandoned, motor at the remains of the Twentieth Century Motor Company, which is a metaphor for the importance of reason as a whole and what the world of the novel has allowed to be done to it.
 * Have a Gay Old Time:
 * [Dagny saw that Rearden] "had the gayest smile she had ever seen."
 * The term gay is used frequently in Atlas Shrugged, including Hank Rearden proclaiming that “he liked to see people being gay, even if he didn't understand this kind of enjoyment”. This kind of enjoyment referred to the party his wife was throwing.
 * Dagny Taggart finds Francisco d'Anconia “sitting on the floor playing with his marbles”.
 * Many events and items (like Galt's motor) are queer.
 * Oh and Orren Boyle's personal spin doctor is overly fond of children.
 * Heel Realization: Taggart has one, then goes nuts, after realizing that he wants to break Galt's spirit even if it kills both Galt and himself.
 * Hero With Bad Publicity: Intentionally.
 * Hidden Elf Village: Galt's Gulch - Unbuilt. Although the valley is shielded from the outside world by Galt's hologram device, the strikers spend only one month out of each year there solely as a "vacation" from the corrosive mediocrity of the outside world, so that they can express themselves freely.
 * Hidden in Plain Sight: The tactic of the strikers. Many of them take menial jobs in "hell" (the world at large) and don't even bother to use fake names. John Galt works as a track laborer at Taggart Transcontinental for over a decade.
 * Hidden Villain: Subverted. Mr. Thompson is just as meaningless as all his lackeys.
 * Hobbes Was Right: Whenever a looter's utopian plan for a world without self-interest goes bad, they will claim the failure is due to this trope. The novel very much insinuates that Hobbes was wrong, and Galt deconstructs this trope in his speech when he mentions that those who damn humanity should have a good look at the moral code they are judging humanity by.
 * Holding Out for A Hero: One of the central themes of the book, the looters can't get anything done on their own. At one point, the government tries to force John Galt to help them. He says no.
 * Honor Before Reason: Eddie Willers' last-ditch expedition to re-establish transcontinental rail service. Dagny tries but fails to talk him out of it. This results in what may very possibly lead to a downer ending for Eddie, which can be considered a Family-Unfriendly Aesop.
 * Hope Spot: The immediate aftermath of the first ride on the John Galt Line. For a brief moment, it looks like Rearden, Dagny and Wyatt might well be able to save the country in spite of its leadership. Things don't work out that way, as Wyatt predicted.
 * Humans Are Special: John Galt's view is that humans are the only species that use reason to survive and achieve, as well as the only species to be capable of deliberate self-destruction. About half of Galt's Character Filibuster reads like a Patrick Stewart Speech about the virtues of human beings at their best.
 * Humanity On Trial: Averted. John Galt claims in his speech that the world is on trial, but humanity is not the defendant: Its moral code is. And how.
 * Hypocrite: The brothers who ran the 20th Century Motor Company into the ground. They preach equality and Communism but spend lavish amounts of money on parties and fancy cars. Interestingly, however, the most terrifying sibling executive was the sister, who was completely and totally sincere about her philosophy.
 * I Don't Pay You To Think: Directive 10-289, the "moratorium on brains," chains all existing employees to their jobs, with a potential penalty of jail for any that quit. If any do quit, anyway (or lose their job for other reasons), that job is then assigned to someone else by a government committee, regardless of that person's ability to actually do the job. "There had been a time when he had been expected to think. Now, they didn't want him to think. Only to obey."
 * I Just Want to Be Loved: Deconstructed and gender-flipped via James Taggart. He doesn't want to be loved for his money, his skills, the pleasure of his company... no, he wants to be loved for himself. Not for any benefit he can bring into one's life (after all, that would be selfish!). He wants to be loved for himself, or ultimately he wants to be loved for no reason at all.
 * I'm Not Here To Make Friends: "I don't give a damn about 'the public good'. I'm running a business."
 * Inferred Holocaust: Actually stated. When the lights of New York go out, Galt's Gulch is the last industrial power on Earth.
 * In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: Averted. John Galt claims that humanity has been acting to destroy itself for most of its history: however, this is not insinuated to be part of basic human nature, but a choice made based on the attempt to follow bad philosophies such as altruism and mysticism. He also claims that those whose nature is to destroy themselves, such as James Taggart, would have long ago if the productive hadn't kept enabling them.
 * Insult Backfire: Midas Mulligan, banker and striker; he legally changed his name from "Michael" when his enemies gave him the nickname.
 * Ironic Echo: Stadtler considers his greatest failure to be a student with "the kind of intelligence one expects to see, in the future, changing the course of the world" which "vanished without a trace into the great unknown of mediocrity." Rearden pessimistically says that if the creator of the super-motor was still alive, "The whole world would know his name by now." Ivy Starnes remembers the second man to quit when she took over Twentieth Century Motors, but not the first - "He wasn't anybody important." Akston slyly notes that though he knows the student Stadtler speaks of, but that "His name would mean nothing to you. He is not famous." The man's name? "Who is John Galt?"
 * It Amused Me: At first played straight, and later subverted, with Francisco d'Anconia who tells Dagny that the purposefully orchestrated San Sebastian disaster was “much funnier” than a recent divorce scandal. He also doesn't deny it when Dagny accuses of him “seeking a thrill” by destroying industry and swindling dumb investors.
 * It Is Beyond Saving: John Galt and his followers feel this way about America.
 * It's All About Me: Subverted. The good characters would swing from the chandelier to proclaim their own selfishness but seem to be the only characters in the story actually concerned with each other's welfare. The evil characters vocally proclaim themselves paragons of selflesness but actually only care about destruction.
 * It's All Junk: Hank Rearden, when he realizes and accepts that his company, Rearden Steel, is a lost cause.
 * I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
 * Deconstructed, but still played straight; Rand defined Romantic love as a capitalist exchange of values like any other; affection for affection, gratification for gratification. Under this definition, a Yandere would be just another Looter, gratifying themselves with their "beloved's" pain: - better to break it off cleanly. And one vertex of a love triangle breaking away before things are settled will only leave everyone bitter about what could have been.
 * Played straight with Rearden and Dagny. He doesn't seem that upset when he realizes Dagny's public confession of being his mistress refers to him in the past tense means she found someone else.
 * I Was Just Passing Through: This trope is virtually a way of life for the strikers.
 * James Bondage: Galt during his electrical torture scene.
 * Just Before the End: The entire book is the fall of industrial society.
 * "Just Joking" Justification: Lillian Rearden often uses this as her excuse after insulting Hank.
 * Just Like Robin Hood: inverted with Ragnar Danneskjold, kinda. He steals from the Government relief convoys to hasten the end and get hard currency for those whose property was taken so they can rebuild after the strike.
 * Just Plane Wrong: Averted by simply not getting too technical, right up until Dagny's crash, where she follows the other aircraft's "taillights" and clings to the "steering wheel." Also, she tends to "leap behind the wheel" and take off without any kind of preflight--which is not impossible, just inadvisable.
 * Kick the Dog:
 * Dr. Stadler admitting to Dagny that the State Science Institute is launching a smear campaign against Rearden Metal because it makes them look incompetent, and then deliberately choosing not to tell the truth about it because he believes that life in society means that someone always has to be sacrificed. He doesn't want it to be the Institute.
 * This is pretty much James Taggart's modus operandi whenever he appears.
 * King Incognito: John Galt spent his time out of the Gulch as an unskilled laborer at Taggart Transcontinental: - the same one Eddie Willers exposited to regularly.
 * Kirk Summation: Galt gives several while he's being held captive.
 * Latin Lover: Subverted with Francisco D'Anconia, who hails from Argentina and is a shameless womanizer...but only in his disguise while striking. Played straight in his relationship with Dagny, although even then she is only attracted to him for his talent.
 * Living Legend: Who is John Galt?
 * Lost World: Galt's Gulch, where industry produces miracles like it used to.
 * Love Dodecahedron: Revolving around Dagny.
 * Love Redeems: Subverted by James Taggart's courtship of Cherryl Brooks from the dime store.
 * MacGuffin:
 * The generator Dagny finds that can convert atmospheric energy into electricity and revolutionize the industrial world.
 * Wesley Mouch can arguably be called a human MacGuffin. While not appearing for an amazing length of time, he is able to stay prominent in the plot by being a giant hammer over the heads of the protagonists due to his new position.
 * Meaningful Name: In addition to the character last names being a sign of their personality, companies with the names of people strapped to them are usually good, while companies with names like National, United or Amalgamated are Obviously Evil(TM).
 * Messianic Archetype: Galt, complete with a Crucified Hero Shot as he's enduring Electric Torture at the hands of the villains. Subverted, since he's not acting out of altruism.
 * The Mole: Eddie Willers, unknowingly, in a way. He tells everything about what's happening with Dangy Taggart and Taggart Transcontinental to a man in a cafe, not realizing that man is John Galt.
 * Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: Averted. Several characters on the looter side have doctorates, such as Dr. Ferris (who is a biologist by training), Dr. Simon Pritchett, and Dr. Stadler. However, it is not insinuated that university education itself is bad: Fred Kinnan, the most clear-headed and honest of the looters, once says that he is clear on things "because he never went to college", but it's heavily implied that this is because the philosophy of the looters has taken over the education system in this world, not because intellectualism is bad on its own.
 * My Girl Is Not a Slut: Gender Flipped and subverted. After Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart's first sex scene, it is Hank that plays the "fallen woman" routine; he pleads for Dagny's forgiveness for "debasing himself by giving in to his low, animalistic desires". Dagny considers it utterly ridiculous that anyone could possibly hold such shame for being a sexual creature, and bursts out into laughter.
 * Name's the Same:
 * Dagny's brother has nothing to do with a Scottish detective who solves murders.
 * Or with a Scottish (well, actually Venusian) fighter pilot/secret agent/politician, either.
 * Never My Fault: Pretty much every unadmirable character in the book will refuse to take responsibility for things which they actually are responsible for. Contrast this with the heroes, who will take responsibility or downright abuse even when they morally shouldn't. The latter approach is treated much more favourably, but it's also insinuated that both these tropes are examples of refusing to acknowledge reality.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Dagny accidentally leads the Looters to Galt.
 * Non-Idle Rich: Most of the heroic businesspeople, such as Dagny Taggart, Midas Mulligan and Hank Rearden will be this, having already made millions of dollars but staying in business pretty much because they love doing it. The entire D'Anconia family also counts: although Francisco pretends to be a worthless playboy for a while as part of his cover when striking.
 * No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Subverted for Galt's Engine. He left all three behind at the Starnes Motor Company, and all it did was suggest that it existed. Looters(both high and common) tear up the engine and components for spare parts, and leave the papers to rot. Even when Dagny realizes what she has, almost all of the "engineers" she calls upon to study the remains refuse to believe it could work. Plans, prototypes and backups are only useful to people of the same degree of intelligence as their inventors.
 * Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Nukes may have not yet even been around when the idea behind Project Xylophone came together.
 * Omnicidal Maniac: Jim Taggart has a Villainous Breakdown when he realises that he is this.
 * People's Republic of Tyranny: By the end of the novel every country in the world sans the United States is a "People's State" (read: a communist dictatorship).
 * Pirate: Ragnar Danneskjold, who is also an Alternate Character Interpretation of Robin Hood that walks like a man.
 * Obstructive Bureaucrat: The world is just filled to the brim with these.
 * Obviously Evil: The evil characters are all physically grotesque with either bulbous nose or a potbelly or watery eyes or bad posture and have ridiculous names like Orren Boyle, Wesley Mouch and Tinky Holloway. The good characters by contrast are always tall, thin and handsome with haughty, angular faces and good posture. Subverted with Midas Mulligan, a good guy who is short and stocky and again with Dr. Ferris, the book's most evil vilain who is given no description other than being tall, thin and graceful.
 * Peace and Love Incorporated:
 * All of the villainous businessmen claim to be working only for "the public good", while in fact they are anything but. The heroic businessmen make no secret of the fact they are only out to make money: or so it seems. Most seem to actually be motivated more by the love of running a business well than anything.
 * Twentieth Century Motors under the leadership of the Starnes children is a notable example. The two brothers were pretty much hypocrites, but Ivy Starnes was quite sincere and had no interest in money. The workers found her to be the most loathsome of the three siblings.
 * People's Republic of Tyranny: Almost all of the non-U.S. countries have become "People's States" of some sort.
 * Pet the Dog: Dr. Stadler shows genuine interest in the motor which Dagny finds, and his speech about how he is so pleased to see a new, brilliant idea which is not his own is very touching. For a while it seems he may have some hope of redemption as he recommends a scientist who may be able to reconstruct it to Dagny...it didn't last though.
 * Propaganda Machine: The press, as seen starting with the campaign to slander Rearden Metal.
 * Proud Merchant Race: Galt's followers although the more scientifically inclined combine this with Proud Scholar Race.
 * Pulp Magazine: Many bits of the novel read a lot like an adventure from a pulp magazine of the era. Hidden valley utopias, unlikely scientific inventions, doomsday machines, villainous villains, heroic heroes, airplane chases, secret conspiracies . . . and Galt ends up looking a lot like Doc Savage.
 * Railroad Baron: Dagny and James Taggart.
 * Raygun Gothic: An adamantium like metal, portable X-Ray machines, and a Weapon of Mass Destruction powered by sound are several examples of the "futuristic" tech in Atlas Shrugged.
 * Redemption Equals Death: Tony the "Wet Nurse"
 * Rich Idiot With No Day Job: This is Francisco d'Anconia's Obfuscating Stupidity.
 * Sadistic Choice: The Tunnel Disaster is a series of these for everyone involved who was paying attention.
 * Science Is Bad: Various characters believe this, especially Balph Eubank who believes that machines have destroyed humanity's connection to the earth, to the point where women are now running railroads instead of raising children. Averted with Dr. Stadler, however: He has become a villain but this is only because he is using science to serve the looters.
 * Science Marches On: Trains and radios being impressively important, a copper-iron alloy is set to replace steel, palm-activated locks are popular...
 * Screw the Money, I Have Rules:
 * Hank Rearden turns down a large lump payment of government money for the rights to Rearden Metal, because he is proud of the fact that he invented it and of the honest money he could make with it.
 * Promising young scientist Quentin Daniels turned down Dr. Stadler's offer of a presumedly prestigious post at the State Science Institute due to his views on governmental involvement in science. When Dagny first meets him, he is working as night watchman at an abandoned technical institute.
 * Screw the Rules, I Have Connections: The bonds of "friendship" among the looters, a.k.a. the "Aristocracy of Pull".
 * Screw the Rules, I Have Money:
 * Hank Rearden resorts to this when he finally decides to divorce his wife Lillian.
 * Dagny does this to a couple of legislators during the construction of the John Galt Line. However, it is implied that the rules she is bribing to get around are just obstructive red tape. She also orders her employees to bribe any officials trying to hinder new track being laid around the Taggart Tunnel after its cave-in, but since the government has passed Directive 10-289 at that point she can't really be blamed.
 * Screw the Rules, I Make Them: The looters frequently resort to "public-spirited" laws with huge loopholes meant to hurt their enemies, like the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Rule" or Directive 10-289.
 * Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The job deserters after Directive 10-289.
 * Self Immolation: Subverted. When a government committee tries to get Hank Rearden to agree to participate in a Steel Unification Plan, he points out it's basically a scheme to confiscate his wealth in order to give it to his largest competitor, because it would force him to immolate his company by operating at a loss until he went bankrupt. When told that the measure was only temporary, Rearden points out, "There is no such thing as a temporary suicide."
 * Self-Made Man:
 * Hank Rearden, John Galt. Most of the minor heroic industrialists, such as the Starnes heirs' father, are also hinted or outright stated to be this.
 * Inverted by Orren Boyle, who likes to present himself as one of these but in fact got the majority of his head start using a hundred million dollar loan from the government.
 * Francisco d'Anconia abandons his wealth and secretly works at a copper mine for ten years, rising to run it, just so he can prove he could be one.
 * Serious Business: A whole philosophy and cult of personality sprang up around Ayn Rand and her literature. The philosophy itself is still going; the cult of personality has significantly waned (especially after she died).
 * Sex is Evil and I am Horny: Rearden says exactly this after his first time with Dagny, who promptly tells him he's being stupid.
 * Shut UP, Hannibal
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Very cynical in its appraisal of the motivations of high government officials who wish to exercise control over the country. However, Rand had a decidedly idealistic take on humanity as a whole, or at least human potential, and she also argued for a very benevolent conception of the world itself (i.e. she denied any person's joy need come at any other person's cost).
 * Smug Snake: If you're not a Striker or a Muggle, you're a Looter and smug about it. But especially Dr. Floyd "Why Do You Think You Think" Ferris.
 * Smoking Is Cool: Rand certainly thinks so. "Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips..." "When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind—and it's proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression." When someone lights up in the book, it's used as a metaphor by Rand for thinking. All the Strikers smoke - and the rare handmade cigarettes from Galt's Gulch, "stamped with the sign of the dollar", are a major plot device.
 * Stay in The Kitchen: The opinion of progressive-minded author Balph Eubank on the role of women. He sees Dagny's position of railroad executive as unnatural and wrong.
 * Steel Mill: The one at Rearden Steel headquarters is given some description. Unusually for the setting, it is described positively.
 * Strawman Political: Most of the villains.
 * Straw Loser: Lee Hunsacker, former wannabe big industrialist who sued banker Midas Mulligan for refusing to give him a loan he couldn't possibly pay back, hates everybody and everything for not "giving him a chance", and refuses to do the dishes.
 * Take That: Earns more than a few. The book itself throws the middle finger at Christianity, Marxism and all their intellectual and philosophical descendants (and antecedents, too). There are a handful of specific people targeted: several of the looters say "in the long run we're all dead," which is a verbatim quote from economist John Maynard Keynes. When President Thompson signs the most odious of the economic legislation, he says the government will keep trying different tactics until something works. Franklin Roosevelt said much the same thing when launching The New Deal.
 * Taking You With Me: Oil tycoon Ellis Wyatt sets his fields ablaze as a parting shot before disappearing.
 * Talking The Reader To Death
 * "The Reason You Suck" Speech: John Galt's Speech, three whole hours of uninterrupted castigating that no one can escape from.
 * Title Drop: Unintentional, with the novel being renamed as publication neared.
 * The Trickster: John Galt, Francisco d'Anconia and Ragnar Danneskjold.
 * True Art Is Angsty: In-universe example - Balph Eubank is a major proponent of this idea. It says something that no book of his has ever sold more than three thousand copies. So, he proposes a law which states that ten thousand copies is the maximum legal sale limit for any book...
 * True Art Is Incomprehensible: Once again seen in-universe. The preferred philosophy of modern academia in the book. During Lillian Rearden's party, a group of unadmirable pseudo-intellectual types gather and talk about how plot in fiction, and melody in music, are completely unnecessary.
 * Ubermensch: All of the heroes are or ultimately become this.
 * Uncle Pennybags: Hank Rearden is this to his mother and brother Phillip as well as to his friend, the unsuccessful businessman Paul Larkin. Unfortunately they all betray his generosity in one way or another - His mother and brother live off Rearden's money while making no effort to support themselves or even be nice to him, and Paul Larkin ends up betraying Rearden by forming a coalition with the looters which would legally force Rearden to sell Larkin his ore mines.
 * Unlucky Childhood Friend: Eddie Willers; Francisco d'Anconia.
 * Unperson: The dedication to Nathaniel Branden was removed in later printings of the book after his falling-out with Ayn Rand.
 * Unobtainium: Rearden Metal
 * Utopia Justifies the Means: The government, the public, the heroes. Pretty much everybody. Done intentionally.
 * The Vamp: Lillian Rearden, who we discover married Hank just to drive him to have an affair and break his spirit.
 * Viewers are Morons: In-universe: Dr. Floyd Ferris writes the propaganda piece Why Do You Think You Think? for the general public, whom he believes have the intellectual ability of "drunken louts", and Dr. Stadler agrees with his premise enough to not publicly protest his methods, even though Ferris has cited Stadler's own research, completely out of context, to prove his points. Stadler's agreement with this trope is also why he had the State Science Institute founded in the first place. Many regular people in this universe seem to play this trope straight, although it is also hinted that acting on it is actually causing it to become true.
 * Villain Ball: The looters' policies hurt the protagonists a lot, but hardly benefit the looters themselves. Especially egregious when several laws are passed as part of a plot to 'kill Colorado'.
 * Villain With Good Publicity: The looters in general.
 * We Can Rule Together: The looters try to make this offer to Galt at gunpoint after the speech. He points out that all they need to do to save their civilization is start releasing controls, but they refuse, saying that that's not his concern - they just want him to "do something", refusing to accept that their controls are what is causing civilization to collapse. By the end, they're torturing him to force him to become their leader.
 * What We Now Know to Be True: Galt's engine is called out as working on a new principle and proving several laws of physics to be false.
 * Who Are You: The final chapter of Atlas Shrugged does this with Ragnar Danneskjöld, who only has to say his name to inspire fear.
 * A World Half Full: Despite all the social and economic collapse, the world of the novel is really one of these, as it is clear that evil and suffering are completely unnecessary and will collapse in on themselves once the good stops feeding them.
 * World of Snark.
 * Worthy Opponent: Dagny's favorite type of people.
 * Writers Cannot Do Math:
 * A particularly egregious example. When the first train is riding on the John Galt Line, we are given the following bits of information, in three successive sentences:
 * The train passes a signal light 'every few seconds';
 * The distance between each signal light and the next is two miles;
 * The train is doing a hundred miles an hour.
 * Now, if the train is really travelling at a hundred miles an hour, it will take (3600/(100/2)) = 72 seconds to cover a distance of two miles, i.e. well over a minute. Then again, perhaps Ayn Rand had a different concept of 'a few seconds' than most people.
 * Ye Goode Olde Days: The Looters look at the collapse of industrial civilization with a degree of satisfaction as a return to these; Dagny is present as they comment on the stability of newformed Indian feudalism, and is horrified when none care about how many are suffering and dying for lack of modern necessities luxuries such as drinkable water.
 * You Fail Engineering Forever:
 * A diesel train is stated to have an average speed of one hundred miles an hour (yes, "average", not "maximum") on a track with lots of turns and steep grades. Compare with modern trains on routes through the Rocky Mountains, equipped with far more powerful and efficient locomotives, where an average speed of forty MPH is considered fast.
 * Even worse, Dagny and Hank find a wrecked 'electrical motor' in an abandoned factory and go on to discuss 'motors' at length. From their dialogue and internal monologue, it's obvious that they're actually talking about generators, which do the exact opposite of what motors do. And Dagny is supposed to have studied engineering in college.
 * Railroad rails should not be made of hard steel; the repeated flexing under the rolling wheels would lead to brittle fracture, making a harder steel a far worse alternative than current hot-rolled mild steel. Having an induction-hardened head will reduce wear, but the most important characteristic of a railroad rail is actually ductility, the ability to deform slightly under the load and spring back to its original shape.