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WHO IS JOHN GALT? 1957–1968
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Throughout the novel Hank Rearden serves as Rand’s object lesson,
her example of philosophy in the real world. Although rational in his
business dealings, in his personal life he is crippled by guilt and a feeling
of obligation toward his parasitic family. These feelings also keep
him toiling in an economy controlled by his enemies rather than joining
the strike. Only when Rearden realizes that rationality must extend to
all spheres of his life, and that he does not owe either his family or the
wider society anything, can he truly be free. Withdrawing the “sanction
of the victim,” he joins Galt’s Gulch. Dagny is a harder case, for she is
truly passionate about her railroad. Even after embarking on an affair
with Galt, she resists joining the strike. Only at the end of the novel does
she realize that she must exercise her business talents on her own terms,
not on anyone else’s. When she and Rearden fi nally join the strike, the
ending is swift. Without the cooperation of the competent, Rand’s bad
guys quickly destroy the economy. Irrational, emotional, and dependent,
they are unable to maintain the country’s vital industries and use
violence to subdue an increasingly desperate population. At the novel’s
end they have ushered in a near apocalypse, and the strikers must return
to rescue a crumbling world.
Outside of the academic and literary worlds Atlas Shrugged was
greeted with an enthusiastic reception. The book made Rand a hero to
many business owners, executives, and self-identifi ed capitalists, who
were overjoyed to discover a novel that acknowledged, understood, and
appreciated their work. The head of an Ohio-based steel company told
her, “For twenty-fi ve years I have been yelling my head off about the
little realized fact that eggheads, socialists, communists, professors, and
so-called liberals do not understand how goods are produced. Even the
men who work at the machines do not understand it. It was with great
pleasure, therefore, that I read ‘Atlas.’ ” 4 Readers such as this welcomed
both the admiring picture Rand painted of individual businessmen and
her broader endorsement of capitalism as an economic system. Atlas
Shrugged updated and formalized the traditional American affi nity for
business, continuing the pro-capitalist tradition Rand had fi rst encountered
in the 1940s. She presented a spiritualized version of America’s
market system, creating a compelling vision of capitalism that drew on
traditions of self-reliance and individualism but also presented a forward-looking,
even futuristic ideal of what a capitalist society could be.
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