Atlas Shrugged Fanatics discussion

I'd like to start a discussion about which parts of the book were your favorite and why. What was most meaningful to you? What inspired you? What changed your life?

After I read Atlas Shrugged my view on life changed forever. I saw people for who they really are and can now not tolerate people that try and get something from someone else's success. I myself realized there is no need to boast, for the man who boasts doesn't have anything to boast about and is riddled with insecurities. it taught me to never rely on anyone else when it came to wanting things in life and I now do not associate myself with anyone that can't be bothered to achieve what they want. People who are happy working in Tesco's for the rest of the lifes and complaining about it. I now cant deal with people who complain about situations that they themselves can change. Basically it's become my mantra for life.

The party at the Rearden house is my favorite part. I enjoy the interplay between Francisco, Hank and Dagny. Though other characters speak at this event, all of the meaning comes from these three and their relationships. It is echoed again at James Taggart's wedding. The three are moral pillars in an otherwise shifting mass of people. Rand did not squander these scenes, using them to develop the characters through their dialogue.

I think Francisco D'anconia is very intelligent and insightful about the world around him. He seems to be jaded towards the world, and is using his creativity to tamper with the lives of people that look up to him and are using his ingenuity for their own benefit. I think he knows that people don't have his best interest at heart because of jelousy, and he uses this as his motivation to screw them...I'm still learning about him, but kind of like him so far..although corrupted,for some reason I like his intentions...very interesting character.. still early though...could always change my mind later.

Mpress, in regard to your forming opinion about Franscisco, check your premises. :-)

I know my ideas about Francisco are premature.. I'm certainly curious to see what he's really made of. Can u elaborate on ur statement?

Nah, I don't give spoilers. All I can tell you is to reserve judgment on Francisco for awhile.

ok..thx. I respect that.. :)

I totally agree with you Nathan! n Mpress, you are in for a ride lady! enjoy it as the plot unfolds :)

Thanks Nibedita, I'm holding on for the ride, getting ready to be spun. Besides the originality of this book, what I really enjoy is that I can't anticipate what's going to happen next. :)

keep us posted on how u liking the spins :) till where did you reach btw??

Nibedita, I am in chapter VII Exploiters and the exploited

I like Francisco's translation of the evil of money --chapter Aristocracy of pull. What he describes applies true in many circumstances.

"My only goal is to make money"..."Yeah but you should not say it "
"We cant allow expansion of a company which produces too much"
I can just keep on quoting....

But my most fav part is where Rearden comes up with the final design for the bridge and the way dagny gets the design even before he has to explain it all...

I think I have to agree with Grace, those are probably my 3 favorite parts too. Particularly the end. To me, the end of the book was a great moment of hope and satisfaction.

3 chapters to go.. cant wait until I reach the end to see what happens.

another new found favorite. part 3 "this is john Galt speaking.. very deep... explains things that i sometimes feel, but cant express into words. will elaborate more once I finish the chapter :)

hmm..finally finished the book. the ending was not at all what I expected. not yet sure how I feel about the story. I guess I was looking forward to a different end to atlas shrugged..does anyone else feel this way?. after 6 months of reading...ironically I need more time to gather my thoughts... will certainly come back with discussion..

The courtroom scene is my favorite, because it is the demonstration of Francisco's statement:

"If you want to explode any vicious fraud, comply with it literally adding nothing of your own to disguise it's nature."

Mpress wrote: "another new found favorite. part 3 "this is john Galt speaking.. very deep... explains things that i sometimes feel, but cant express into words. will elaborate more once I finish the chapter :)"

I love it too. This is where all the underlying philosophy is laid out step by step. I've never understood the view that it's just a long, boring diatribe superfluous to the book. It's the core of whole thing.

I like his speech but I think it's too long. It could have been summarized. Too repetitive. Don't get me wrong, I love the book and the speech, it just should have been shorter.

For me it is very difficult to pick any one thing in the book that was my favourite, but if pressed I would say it would be in part 3, "The Concerto of Deliverance". That is the chapter immediately before, "This is John Galt Speaking". It is in this chapter that we get the final transformation of Henry Rearden - the sequence where he finally cuts free from the bonds of his family, the meeting with the pull peddlers (Mouch, Ferris, and the gang), the murder of the government stooge Tony (the Wet Nurse), and the final encounter with d'Anconia.

In roughly thirty pages there is a great summary of Randian thought in rapid succession that covers a massive amount of ground, and is an enjoyable read. Finally Rearden has had enough and goes on strike! But it is her assessment of education and what education has become that is especially striking for me. When Rearden is carrying the wet nurse's dead body and identifies the real murderers of the boy as not having been a mindless brute with a gun, but rather the boy's teachers, I stood up and cheered. Spot on!

As a home-schooling parent and one that is thoroughly involved in the education of my children is curious to me that Rand saw how bad off the education system was sixty years ago. Most people today don't see the state of education as problematic, yet she hit it out of the park in the fifty's. A truly brilliant thinker!

He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival ... yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child's education to the purpose of destroying his brain... Men would shudder, he thought, if they saw a mother bird plucking the feathers from the wings of her young, then pushing him out of the nest to struggle for survival-yet that was what they did to their children. Armed with nothing but meaningless phrases, this boy had been thrown to fight for existence, he had hobbled and groped through a brief, doomed effort, he had screamed his indignant, bewildered protest -and had perished in his first attempt to soar on his mangled wings. But a different breed of teachers had once existed, he thought, and had reared the men who created this country...

My favorite part, at least one of them, occurs when Dagney hears the breakman whistling a theme that she identifies as the work of Richard Halley, the composer of heroic music who mysteriously disappeared.
The breakman first identifies it as Halley’s Fifth Concerto, but when Dagny points out that Halley only wrote four concertos, he hastily takes it back and says he doesn’t remember the source of the theme.
This passage comes to mind because it was in reading it that I first began to realize that this book was something special.
The first of the three times that I’ve read Atlas Shrugged was in the late 50’s when I was in my early twenties. I bought it off a newsstand paperback bookrack. I’d never heard of the novel or its author, but was attracted by the cover and the descriptive blurbs and, I think I was impressed by the sheer size ---I believe it was the biggest paperback book I’d ever seen to that time.
I expected it to be some Dreiser-type novel despite the “stop the motor of the world” stuff.
But the phantom Halley theme gave a mysterious, gothic quality to the story, and then I saw that Dagny had the same individualistic attitudes I had---I realized this would be something I could especially identify with.
And the novel roared on like one of Dagny’s trains. I found that like another of my favorite novelists, Feodor Dostoyevsky, Ayn Rand used what some “literary” critics called “dime novel plotting.” And what the hell’s wrong with that? I read fiction basically for entertainment, and Atlas Shrugged, and The Fountainhead which I then read and have now read four times, are some of the most entertaining novels I’ve experienced. That they express a viewpoint I share only adds to the enjoyment, although I like a lot of works I disagree with.
I can’t say that reading Atlas Shrugged changed me, because I was born an individualist.
Individual freedom has always been a value for me, a basic attitude. No, not because of any metaphysical syllogistic arguments, but because of the way I am constituted. If it were logically demonstrated indisputably that a collectivistic society like than of Anthem, 1984, or Walden II was the system most conducive to happiness, I would still reject it as, in the words of Voltaire’s Good Brahmin speaking about ignorance, “I would want no part of that kind of happiness.”
The same with private property---I want my OWN STUFF and I’ll fight to keep it.
John LaCarna
Baton Rouge, La. ‘

Another of my favorite parts is where Jim Taggart says “I don’t see why you’re so eager to give a chance to Ellis Wyatt, yet you think it’s wrong to take part in developing an underprivileged country that never had a chance.”
And Dagney says “Ellis Wyatt is not asking anybody to give him a chance. And I’m not in business to give chances. I’m running a railroad.”
Jim says “I don’t see why we should want to help one man instead of a whole nation.”
Dagney says “I’m not interested in helping anybody. I want to make money.”

Pamela wrote: "The party at the Rearden house is my favorite part. I enjoy the interplay between Francisco, Hank and Dagny. Though other characters speak at this event, all of the meaning comes from these three a..."

I enjoyed this scene very much too! I am not quite finished with the book (about 200 pages left), but am glad there is a discussion group out here on GR. After I finish, I'll be on here more.