Atlas Shrugged

Dagny rides westward on the Comet, looking out at a country in decline. Towns blur past in ruin, factories shuttered, houses abandoned. The sound of the wheels, once rhythmic and energizing, now feels like a dirge. She stares out the window, watching farmland go fallow, and feels the silence press down around her. The train runs slower now, crawling across rails that were once symbols of human will. Dagny feels like she’s riding into a void, the last steward of civilization on a collapsing continent. She clings to motion itself as a last act of defiance—so long as the train moves, she has not lost.

When a conductor tries to throw a tramp off the train, Dagny intervenes and invites the man into her car. His name is Jeff Allen. He speaks with worn-out politeness and quiet intelligence. Over dinner, he tells her he once worked at the Twentieth Century Motor Company. He was there when the company’s heirs introduced a new moral system: workers would be paid not by merit, but by need. Each worker’s “necessities” were voted on in public meetings. Those deemed to need less were docked wages; those who claimed great need were awarded more. The system rewarded dishonesty and punished competence.

Allen describes how the factory’s moral structure broke down. The honest men stopped speaking up and were quietly bled dry. The dishonest flourished by exaggerating illness or hardship. Suspicion infected everything. Families turned on one another to win extra rations. Workers sabotaged themselves to appear needy. Ivy Starnes, the most ideological of the heirs, acted as the enforcer, judging who got what and taking pleasure in humiliating people she deemed proud. Eric Starnes played the part of friendly equal while hiding behind platitudes. The town descended into resentment, alcoholism, and despair. No one spoke of pride anymore—only of what they could extract.

Dagny listens, horrified. Allen says it was a young engineer who saw what was coming before anyone else. At the first meeting announcing the plan, this man stood up and said he would not work for such a system. He declared that he would “stop the motor of the world” and walked out. Nobody saw him again. As things worsened across the country—factories shutting down, power stations failing, cities darkening—people began to mutter his name. It was John Galt. Allen says that to those left behind, it felt like Galt had done it—had somehow made the world grind to a halt, not out of malice, but in an act of righteous refusal.

That night, the train comes to a silent stop. Dagny wakes in her car and realizes the crew has vanished—another frozen train. She searches the cars and finds Owen Kellogg sitting quietly, waiting. He says he’s headed west on a month-long vacation. Dagny asks for his help, and he agrees to walk with her to find a telephone. Before she leaves, she tells the passengers that Jeff Allen is now in charge. They whine and protest, but she shuts them down. No one volunteers to help. Dagny hands Allen her authority, tells him to keep order, and steps off the train into the dark with Kellogg beside her.

They walk in silence under a flat black sky. The rail beneath their feet feels like the last line tethering her to a vanished civilization. Dagny asks Owen why he left. He says he would only work again as a laborer—his mind is no longer for hire. When she presses, he says there are men he follows now who do not trade in guilt. He lights a cigarette marked with a gold dollar sign and offers her one. He explains what it means: a symbol of pride, of man’s right to his own achievement. She accepts it, though she does not yet understand the full weight of the gesture.

They reach a remote signal shack with a working phone. Dagny calls the Bradshaw dispatcher, who fumbles and stammers. He wants orders. She gives them. He says there are no protocols. She says she does not care. Eventually, he agrees to call a crew, but only after a long string of excuses and nervous pauses. Dagny hangs up, more exhausted than before, and realizes she cannot wait. She tells Owen she is going to the nearby airfield. He offers to stay behind and deliver messages. She tells him to hire Jeff Allen, if he wants to work, and to tell Hank what happened if she does not return. Then she vanishes into the night.

At the airfield, she finds a Sanders monoplane. She bribes the manager and, after exchanging minimal formalities, climbs into the cockpit. In the air, everything feels clean again. The world shrinks to engine noise, dials, and the endless dark ahead. She lands in Afton, Utah, only to learn that Quentin Daniels has already left—he took off moments ago, in another plane, with an unknown pilot. Dagny realizes instantly that this must be the destroyer. She climbs back into the cockpit and takes off, determined to follow him, refusing to let another man of ability vanish without a fight.

As Dagny flies eastward again, the rising sun catches the outline of the plane ahead of her—a black cross etched against orange sky. She follows it deep into the Colorado Rockies, where cliffs rise like walls and no visible airfield could exist. The man ahead begins a strange descent into a narrow mountain pass. Dagny chases him down, but the air grows dense, the ground elusive. The other plane disappears. Dagny’s controls stutter. A flash of white light bursts across her vision. Her engine dies. She’s falling. Her plane spins out of control, and as the grass below finally becomes visible, she braces for impact and mutters with bitter irony, “Oh hell! Who is John Galt?”