Nothing to Shrug About
Some of us remember our first reading of Atlas Shrugged like our first time behind the wheel of a car: intoxicating but inexplicably discomforting in spots. The 1,000-plus pages of Ayn Rand’s magnum opus positively pulse with the sorts of stuff that those of us in the freedom camp embrace: heroic capitalists, a strident anti-collectivist cant, and the unapologetic championing of individual rights.
Bereft of the clichéd working-class heroes popularized by the likes of Steinbeck, Atlas Shrugged is a sort of anti-Grapes of Wrath, and its protagonist, corporate titan Dagny Taggart, the very antithesis of the downtrodden Tom Joad types so beloved of fashionably leftist literati. Taggart, along with other super-capitalists featured in the novel, is driven, intelligent, and courageous, committed to expanding her business (in this case, a transcontinental railroad corporation) against any odds.
The novel has overtones of science fiction: The world of Atlas Shrugged is a sort of parallel universe where the American Congress and President have been replaced with a National Legislature and Head of State, and the People’s State of England is substituted for Great Britain. The industrial setting is curiously anachronistic, with factories organized along late-19th-century lines in a world whose technology is reminiscent of the early 1950s.
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