I need some help guys, I am supposed to have read Atlas Shrugged by last week. My lazy ass hasn't gotten past page 150...

I need some help guys, I am supposed to have read Atlas Shrugged by last week. My lazy ass hasn't gotten past page 150. Have any of you read it and can give me a summary of what happened?

All is appreciated.

Thank you so much.

Communism is bad. Objectivism is good. That's it.

>All is appreciated.
>Thank you so much.
I haven't read it yet, but those good manners will probably get you some help tonight.

I like green eggs and ham
>Bumpity bump-bump

It all essentially relates to the title. Atlas, in Greek mythology, was punished with the burden of having to hold up the sky forever. Rand makes this connection to society by saying innovators like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. are holding up the sky, protecting the people, in a similar manner. The book criticizes liberal policies because when there is too much pressure on these individuals, just like Atlas, they will "shrug," allowing the sky to fall and the people to die. Kind of a dumb idea imo but that's basically it. Hope that helped.

Just go to sparknotes dot com

Thanks for the summary. Seems kind of shortsighted and selfish but I can see why it would appeal to some.

Rearden Metal and the John Galt Line are both successes despite Hank and Dagny having to fight excessive red tape. They then start fucking. Hank feels guilty for cheating on his wife, but his relationship with Dagny is more emotionally fulfilling than the one with his wife. Dagny doesn't give a fuck and acts like a mega slut. She and Rearden go on a vacation together and in the process stumble upon the mystery of a motor that can generate virtually free energy, but it's in such a state of disrepair that it can't be fixed or reverse engineered. Dagny tries to find the creator of the motor but with no success. Meanwhile successful and talented people from all levels mysteriously disappear.

Dagny's search eventually leads her to Galt's Gulch, an Objectivist utopia where John Galt has seduced all the best people to come live in secrecy in an Objectivist utopia. He was once an engineer who invented the miraculous motor when he worked at a factory that was inherited by three dirty commies who tried to commify it. Naturally, it failed miserably, but this incident twelve years ago was what convinced Galt to put his plan into action. Since then he's been working as an unassuming laborer at Taggart Transcontinental who's friends with Eddie Willers.Galt has convinced all the Great Men (none of whom disagree with his philosophy in the slightest detail) to go on strike against the society that doesn't appreciate them. Dagny refuses to join them because she still believes society can and should be saved, so she has to go back to the outside world. Also she falls in love with him and they start fucking.

Meanwhile Rearden is increasingly getting fucked by unreasonable government regulations. They send an annoying faggot who Rearden nicknames the Wet Nurse to make sure he's in compliance with everything, but Rearden gradually starts to see the guy as not so different from himself. Rearden is blackmailed into complying with the evil commie plans of his competitors on the threat that they'll reveal his relationship with Dagny, which he agrees to more out of concern for Dagny's reputation than his own. When Dagny gets back from Galt's Gulch and finds out about this, she publicly announces their affair, though ironically it's already over since she's now with Galt. Rearden is kind of bummed but when he finally meets Galt he admits that the guy is just so awesome he can't really blame her. His family become increasingly worried that he'll abandon them like the other industrialists who have gone missing, but it's clear they still don't care about him and only want to leech off him. Rearden's enemies also stage a union riot at his mills to discredit him. The Wet Nurse tries to stop it before it starts and Orren Boyle's thugs beat him. Rearden finds him on the side of the road and tries to save him, but it's too late. Before the Wet Nurse dies, he and Rearden confess that they totally love each other no homo and Hank finally learns his real name: Tony.

cont

James Taggart marries a qt shopkeeper named Cherryl Brooks who sees him as a romantic captain of industry, but he's very patronizing to her and is mostly using her to virtue signal (both to others and, as with all of Rand's villains, to try to fool himself). At first she sees his sister as a cold bitch, but later comes to appreciate her after becoming disillusioned with James. At their wedding Francisco D'Anconia overhears a comment about how money is evil and spergs out, going into a speech about how money is good because it represents intelligence and hard work etc. She's too pure for this world and when she realizes what an asshole James truly is she an heroes.

The incident with Tony is the final straw for Rearden, who finally goes Galt. Shortly after that, the president of the US is planning to give a big speech about what's wrong with the country and how he'll fix, but John Galt hijacks it with his super advanced technology to instead explain his philosophy and tell the world about the strike. After hearing Galt's speech, the public believes in his ability to fix things even if they don't understand or agree with his philosophy. President Thompson tracks down and arrests him. The villains try to force him come up with a plan to fix the economy, which is rapidly falling apart, but won't listen to his more radical suggestions like abolishing income tax, so he shuts down. They eventually get to the point of torturing him. At one point the torture device breaks down and Galt actually tells them how to fix it, the absolute madman. At that point James Taggart is just so blown away by how amazingly cool this guy is that he has a mental breakdown.

Some more minor plot threads: Robert Stadler is a great scientist and pretty much the only Great Man who doesn't end up joining the strike. He was also John Galt's professor at school. He's cool with working for the government as long as he gets to do science for its own sake. Later, he discovers to his horror that his theories have been used to develop a weapon of mass destruction. As the country starts to fall apart, he gets the bright idea to steal it for himself in order to claim power, but finds that some drunk politician has already done so and accidentally sets it off, killing them both.

The pirate Ragnar Danneskjold is actually a good guy who steals from the government and gives it to the rich. He characterizes himself as both a successor to Robin Hood (stealing from the thieves and giving back to those who earned it) and a reverse Robin Hood (since he's stealing from the needy and giving back to the rich). He also went to school with John Galt and Francisco D'Anconia.

cont

Finally, Dagny Taggart and the strikers break into the place where Galt is being kept, guns blazing, and free him. Dagny joins the strike at last, the railroad shuts down, and the country's economic collapse is complete. Unwilling to abandon it, Eddie Willers dies alone on an unmoving train, a bitter ending. But there's hope, as the inhabitants of Galt's Gulch are already planning to rebuild society from the ground up according to their own principles.