​Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is a sprawling dramatization of her objectivist philosophy, a work that venerates selfishness as a cardinal virtue while decrying altruism as a destructive force. The novel’s central narrative follows Dagny Taggart, a determined industrialist striving to keep her family’s railroad company afloat amidst societal collapse. What sets the text apart—both strikingly and problematically—is its moral absolutism: the heroes are rich, rational industrialists who embody brilliance, while the villains are cynical bureaucrats and collectivists, cloaked in the language of public good but ultimately parasitic and corrupt.