Resumo de Atlas Shrugged

Atlas Shrugged is perhaps the most eloquent literary presentation of the beauty, necessity, and superiority of the capitalist economic system. Ayn Rand creates an entire world in which each event and character embodies her philosophic ideas and message. The plot is an illustration, a translation of Rand?s logic into a complex story that envelops and guides the reader right through to its triumphant conclusion.

Dagny Taggart, the main protagonist, is a brilliant, motivated woman who sees only boundless potential for human achievement in her world. She is a woman who trades value for value, and who does not believe in sympathy or hopelessness.

Her world is dramatically challenged when a mysterious "destroyer" begins taking down the leading industrialists of America, those who comprise the roots of the nation?s power and who are behind its very functioning and survival. The destroyer is determined to end the vicious cycle of the weak, those who lack drive, desire, responsibility, and hope, taking advantage of the vibrant life-force and production of the ones like Dagny, who continuously seek greater human achievement and glory.

As the looters change the economic environment from one of valuable competition into one of meaningless associations, laws with endless exceptions, and a government that abides by nothing that is concrete, it becomes increasingly impossible for the industrialists to function as they used to. More and more crucial leaders fall to the destroyer at the times they are most needed, and Dagny is faced with the decision to surrender and join them, and let the looters have the world of death they are bringing on, or to relentlessly search for all possible ways of keeping her Taggart Transcontinental Railroad, and her world, alive.

Dagny chooses according to her limitless confidence in herself and others, leading her into a fight to remain functional, as well as to stay true to herself, as long as possible, even if it must be under the tyranny of the looters.

Rand presents the consequences of this choice, revealing her philosophy of bringing capitalism from its knees, criticized as selfish and held under the rules of those who reap what others sow, up to its full height and glory, as free from anything that does not abide by the reality of cause and affect, of value for value, of progress and reward as a result of work and determination.

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