Atlas Shrugged Short Summary

Atlas Shrugged is written by author Ayn Rand. The story is about events during an unspecified future time.

The Plot Overview

It starts with doom and fear. The world is in danger. The government oppresses the people, and the economy is collapsing. Two businesspeople might be able to help the economic situation. Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden. They team up to construct a railway to help transport supplies, and it becomes a success.

Talented individuals are disappearing, and a man named John Galt seems to be behind it. Dagny and Hank start a relationship and embark on a mission to find an investor who could help change their world. They look all over the country, and the bad nature of the country is evident to them in their journey.

The government passes some new laws that put more restrictions on the freedom of people. The laws target people in business and make their lives difficult. Industrialists keep disappearing, and Dagny decides to seek out whoever is destroying the world.

Hank, on the other hand, encounters a period of painful realizations about himself and his family. He receives help from Francisco, who previously dated Dagny but was connected to the ‘Destroyer.’ Dagny targets a scientist to encourage him not to quit his job or disappear and crashes the plane in the process.

When she wakes, she is in a secret hiding place, and John Galt is present among other strikers. She nicknames the place Atlantis. Galt is the inventor who had disappeared and also the Destroyer. He was rebelling against the oppressive powers whom he knew as looters.

Galt has loved Dagny for some time, and she starts falling for him as well. However, she cannot stay with them and wants to fight the government. She goes back and ends things with Hank. Hank joins the strike and goes to Atlantis.

Things worsen, and Galt addresses the people via radio and asks them to stop following the policies laid out. Galt gets captured and tortured soon after by their government. Dagny rescues him with the help of Hank, the other strikers, and they flee to Atlantis as the country’s economy crashes. In the end, Galt plans to fix the world with his fellow strikers.