Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand－French78部落格

"Atlas," the largest sculptural work at Rockefeller Center in New York City, by Lee Lawrie and Rene Chambellan, in the Art Deco style. (1936)

Main article: Atlas Shrugged

Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, was published in 1957. Due to the success of The Fountainhead, the initial printing ran to 100,000 copies, and the book went on to become an international bestseller. Sales of Atlas Shrugged remained strong in subsequent decades, and it has been cited by many interviewees as the book that most influenced them. Since 2000, sales have climbed to new records, and it now sells almost 200,000 copies annually. (See Popular interest and influence, below.)

The theme of Atlas Shrugged is "the role of the mind in man's existence—and, as a corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest." It advocates the core tenets of her philosophy of Objectivism and expresses Rand 's admiration for human greatness. The plot involves a dystopian United States of America in which industrialists and other creative individuals go on strike and retreat to a mountainous hideaway where they build an independent free economy. The hero describes the strike as "stopping the motor of the world" by withdrawing those contributing the most to the nation's production, creativity, and thinking. By this strike, they aim to demonstrate that without "the men of the mind," the economy would collapse and society fall apart. The novel includes elements of mystery and science fiction, and deals with other diverse issues as wide-ranging as sex, music, medicine, politics, philosophy, industry, and human ability. Atlas Shrugged contains Rand 's most extensive statement of Objectivism of any in her works of fiction, including a lengthy monologue delivered by the novel's hero, John Galt.