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Study Guide

Atlas Shrugged Study Guide & Plot Synopsis

This Study Guide consists of approximately 233 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Atlas Shrugged.
This section contains 1,289 words
(approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page)
Purchase our Atlas Shrugged Study Guide

Atlas Shrugged Summary & Study Guide Description

Atlas Shrugged Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis to help you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:

This detailed literature summary also contains For Further Study and a Free Quiz on Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

Atlas Shrugged Plot Summary

Preview of Atlas Shrugged Summary:

Part 1: Non-Contradiction

Atlas Shrugged opens in a devastated New York City with crumbling buildings, empty stores, and closed businesses. It is a vision of an impoverished country in a communist world system, which slowly but surely destroys national and foreign economy alike. As capable, productive workers and business owners are devastated by bureaucratic machinations, they begin to abandon the existing order one by one and mysteriously disappear In the meantime, the political and industrial parasites support each other and live off of the creative and productive "giants" who remain and must support them on their shoulders. The apathy of the people is summed up in a new slang expression, "Who is John Galt?" which conveys hopelessness, fear, and a sense of futility, as well as everything unachievable and imagined.

In the first part of the novel, Rand introduces several industries that keep the weakened communist system from failing. Taggart Transcontinental, the...
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This section contains 1,289 words
(approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page)
Purchase our Atlas Shrugged Study Guide
Copyrights
Atlas Shrugged from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.
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