List of Atlas Shrugged characters

This is a list of characters in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged.

Contents

Major characters

The following are major characters from the novel.[1]

Protagonists

Dagny Taggart

Dagny Taggart is the protagonist of the novel. She is Vice-President in Charge of Operations for Taggart Transcontinental, under her brother, James Taggart. However, due to James' incompetence, it is Dagny who is responsible for all the workings of the railroad.

Dagny has three romantic relationships, each with a man of ability: Francisco d'Anconia, Hank Rearden, and John Galt. Galt marks the pinnacle of everything Dagny seeks in the world and is the kind of man alluded to in her youth when she imagines a man standing off in the distance, at the end of a great set of railroad tracks and all her struggles.

The essential drama of Dagny's character is her struggle to reconcile the life she lives and the railroad which she loves with the moral code of those who wish to destroy it. She believes these destroyers simply want to heap burdens upon her for the sake of others, which she has the ability to carry. Like Hank, she believes they want to live, but are too stupid and incompetent to realize how their duties and altruistic projects impede that goal. It is not until she sees the man most important to her in the world - John Galt - strapped to a torture machine, about to be killed by the looters (who recognize, too, that he is the only man who can save them from economic collapse), that she realizes that the moral code of the looters is one of death: they recognize what is good and necessary for life, but wish to destroy it anyway.

She is a typical Randian heroine, similar to Dominique Francon (The Fountainhead) or Kira Argounova (We the Living).

Francisco d'Anconia

Francisco d'Anconia is one of the central characters in Atlas Shrugged, and owner by inheritance of the world's largest copper mining empire. He is a childhood friend, and the first love, of Dagny Taggart.

A child prodigy of exceptional talents, Francisco was dubbed the "climax" of the d'Anconia line, an already prestigious family of skilled industrialists. He attended Patrick Henry University and was a classmate of John Galt and Ragnar Danneskjöld and student of both Hugh Akston and Robert Stadler. He began working at a young age, while still in school, proving that he could have made a successful career on his own merits without the aid of his family's wealth and power.

Francisco is one of the strikers and is slowly destroying the d'Anconia empire to put it out of the raiders' reach. His actions were designed both to "trap" looters into relying upon his worthless ventures in order to disrupt their schemes and to try to show the inevitable consequences of looting. He adopted the persona of a worthless playboy, by which he is known to the world, as an effective cover. However, he is forced to give up Dagny, knowing that she would not be ready to join the strikers. He remains deeply in love with her throughout the book, while also being a good and loyal friend of her other two lovers, Hank Rearden and John Galt.

His full name is Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia.

John Galt

Main article: John Galt

The enigmatic John Galt is the primary male hero of Atlas Shrugged. He initially appears as an unnamed menial worker for Taggart Transcontinental, who often dines with Eddie Willers in the employee's cafeteria, and leads Eddie to reveal important information about Dagny Taggart and Taggart Transcontinental. Only Eddie's side of their conversations is given in the novel. Eddie tells him which suppliers and contractors Dagny is most dependent on; these men are consistently the next to disappear. Later in the novel, the reader discovers this worker's true identity.

Before working for Taggert Transcontinental, Galt worked as an engineer for the Twentieth Century Motor Company. While there, he invented his generator that produces electricity from static electricity in the environment. His Prototype may or may not have been completed when he left due to the management deciding on a communistic pay system. This Prototype was found by Dagny when she and Hank Reardon made a trip to the long-closed Twentieth Century Motor factory. Dagney would hire Quenten Daniels to try to figure out how the machine worked.

Galt would take over the radio airwaves during Mr. Thompson's much heralded speech at the end of the book and give his great soliloquy.

Henry "Hank" Rearden

Henry (also known as "Hank") is one of the central characters in Atlas Shrugged. Like many of Rand's capitalist characters, he is a self-made man. He owns the most important steel company in the United States. He invents Rearden Metal, an alloy stronger than steel (with similar properties to stainless steel). He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Lillian, his brother Philip, and his elderly mother, all of whom he supports.

Hank Rearden knows something is wrong with the world but he is unable to define the problem. His friend, Francisco d'Anconia, helps him understand and by this mechanism the reader is also prepared to understand the secret when it is revealed explicitly in Galt's Speech. Rearden also serves to illustrate Rand's theory of sex. Lillian Rearden cannot appreciate Hank Rearden's virtues, and she is portrayed as being disgusted by sex. Dagny Taggart clearly does appreciate Rearden's virtues, and this appreciation evolves into sexual desire. Rearden is torn because he accepts the premises of the traditional view of sex as a lower instinct, but he responds sexually to Dagny, who represents his highest values. Rearden struggles to resolve this internal conflict, and in doing so, illustrates Rand's sexual theory.

Eddie Willers

Edwin "Eddie" Willers is the Special Assistant to the Vice-President in Charge of Operations at Taggart Transcontinental. He grew up with Dagny Taggart. His father and grandfather worked for the Taggarts, and he followed in their footsteps. He is completely loyal to Dagny and to Taggart Transcontinental. He is also secretly in love with Dagny. Willers is generally assumed to represent the common man: someone who does not possess the Promethean creative ability of The Strikers, but matches them in moral courage and is capable of appreciating and making use of their creations. He sticks it out with the railway to the bitter end, even when the old world is obviously collapsing and Dagny has shifted her attention and loyalty to saving the captive Galt. In the end, he stays with the broken-down Comet in the middle of the desert, like a captain going down with his ship. It is unclear whether or not the strikers or anyone else will return to save him.

Ragnar Danneskjöld

One of the original strikers, he is now world famous as a pirate. Ragnar attended Patrick Henry University and became friends with John Galt and Francisco d'Anconia while studying under Hugh Akston and Robert Stadler. Danneskjöld seizes relief ships that are being sent from the United States to The People's States of Europe. As the novel progresses, Danneskjöld begins to become active in American waters. Danneskjöld's action is to restore to other creative people the money, in gold, which was unjustly taken away from them—specifically, their income tax payments. He explains this is not altruism; his motivation is to ensure that once those espousing Galt's philosophy are restored to their rightful place in society, they will have enough capital to rebuild the world.

Kept in the background for much of the book, Danneskjöld makes a personal appearance when he risks his life to meet Hank Rearden in the night and hand him a bar of gold as an "advance payment" to encourage Rearden to persevere in his increasingly difficult situation. Danneskjöld is married to the actress Kay Ludlow; their relationship is kept hidden from the outside world, which only knows of Ludlow as a film star who retired and dropped out of sight. It is mentioned that some of the strikers have strong reservations about his way of "conducting the common struggle."

According to Barbara Branden, who was closely associated with Rand at the time the book was written, there were sections written describing Danneskjöld's adventures at sea, which were cut from the final published text.[2] In a 1974 comment at a lecture, Ayn Rand admitted that Danneskjöld's name was a tribute to Victor Hugo. The hero of Hugo's novel, Hans of Iceland, becomes the first of the Counts of Danneskjöld. In the published book, Danneskjöld is always seen through the eyes of others (Dagny Taggart or Hank Rearden), except for a brief paragraph in the very last chapter.

Antagonists

James Taggart

The President of Taggart Transcontinental and the book's most important antagonist. Taggart is an expert influence peddler who is, however, incapable of making operational decisions on his own. He relies on his sister, Dagny Taggart, to actually run the railroad, but nonetheless opposes her in almost every endeavor. In a sense, he is the antithesis of Dagny.

As the novel progresses, the moral philosophy of the looters is revealed: it is a code of stagnation. The goal of this code is to not exist, to not move forward, to become a zero. Taggart struggles to remain unaware that this is his goal. He maintains his pretense that he wants to live, and becomes horrified whenever his mind starts to grasp the truth about himself. This contradiction leads to the recurring absurdity of his life: the desire to destroy those on whom his life depends, and the horror that he will succeed at this. In the final chapters of the novel, he suffers a complete mental breakdown upon realizing that he can no longer deceive himself in this respect.

Lillian Rearden

The unsupportive wife of Hank Rearden. They have been married eight years as the novel begins. Lillian is a frigid moocher who seeks to destroy her husband. She compares being Rearden's wife with owning the world's most powerful horse. Since she cannot comfortably ride a horse that goes too fast, she must bridle it down to her level, even if that means it will never reach its full potential and its power will be grievously wasted. Lillian tolerates sex with her husband only because she is "realistic" enough to know he is just a brute who requires satisfaction of his brute instincts. She indicates that she abhors Francisco d'Anconia, because she believes he is a sexual adventurer.

As her motives become more clear, Lillian is found to share the sentiments of many other moochers and their worship of destruction. Her actions are explained as the desire to destroy achievement in the false belief that such an act bestows a greatness to the destroyer equal to the accomplishment destroyed. She seeks, then, to ruin Rearden in an effort to prove her own value.

Lillian achieves her goal to destroy Rearden's business, when she passes on information to James Taggart about her husband's affair. This information is used to persuade Rearden to sign the Gift Certificate (which delivers all the property rights of Rearden Metal to the looters) and thereby destroys his business. Lillian discovers that she can accomplish her goal to destroy the business but she can neither achieve the greatness she desires nor her goal to destroy Hank's character. She uses James Taggart for sex as victory and revenge against Hank and Dagny. This does give her the satisfaction she desires and she continues to manipulate Hank until he finally leaves her and joins Galt's strikers.

Dr. Floyd Ferris

Ferris is a biologist who works as "co-ordinator" at the State Science Institute. He uses his position there to deride reason and productive achievement, and publishes a book entitled Why Do You Think You Think? He clashes on several occasions with Hank Rearden, and twice attempts to blackmail Rearden into giving up Rearden Metal. He is also one of the group of looters who tries to get Rearden to agree to the Steel Unification Plan. Ferris hosts the demonstration of the Project X weapon, and is the creator of the Ferris Persuader, a torture machine. When John Galt is captured by the looters, Ferris uses the device on Galt, but it breaks down before extracting the information Ferris wants from Galt. Ferris represents the group which uses brute force on the heroes to achieve the ends of the looters.

Dr. Robert Stadler

A former professor at Patrick Henry University, mentor to Francisco d'Anconia, John Galt and Ragnar Danneskjöld. He has since become a sell-out, one who had great promise but squandered it for social approval, to the detriment of the free. He works at the State Science Institute where all his inventions are perverted for use by the military, including the instrument of his demise: Project X (Xylophone). The character was, in part, modeled on J. Robert Oppenheimer, whom Rand had interviewed for an earlier project, and his part in the creation of nuclear weapons.[3] To his former student Galt, Stadler represents the epitome of human evil, as the "man who knew better" but chose not to act for the good.

Wesley Mouch

The incompetent and treacherous lobbyist whom Hank Rearden reluctantly employs in Washington. Later in the novel, he becomes the country's economic dictator.

Secondary characters

The following secondary characters also appear in the novel.[4]

Notes

  1. ^ Characters are listed as "major" if they meet one of the following criteria:
    • they are listed as "major" characters in a widely available study guide, such as CliffsNotes, SparkNotes, or Gale's Novels for Students;
    • they are listed as "primary heroic" or "arch-villain" characters in Gladstein's The New Ayn Rand Companion;
    • they are the focus of an essay in a scholarly book about the novel, such as Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged or Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
  2. ^ Reedstrom, Karen. 1992 Interview with Full Context. Barbara Branden interview in Full Context, October 1992. Republished on barbarabranden.com. Retrieved 1 June 2007.
  3. ^ David Harriman, Journals of Ayn Rand, pp. 311-344, esp. 330-331.
  4. ^ Secondary characters are listed if they appear in character lists from any of the works used to establish the list of major characters above, but do not meet the criteria for "major." Minor characters who are not listed in secondary works are not listed here.
  5. ^ Barbara Branden (20 May 1986). The passion of Ayn Rand. Doubleday. p. 229. http://books.google.com/books?id=B-AEAQAAIAAJ. Retrieved 24 October 2010. 

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