John Galt Analysis

Ayn Rand’s ideology centralizes on the idea that total human individuality can only be obtained by means of reason, self-esteem, and total respect of our virtues. Atlas Shrugged ideal hero, John Galt, is the major example of objectivism and its complex layers. John Galt is the symbol of no guilt, no fear, no submission, no doubt. John Galt is the reality that lays behind any human; the use of reason and self-interest as the motor for the improvement of the world, and in consequence, the right to live by our own power of thinking. At the beginning of the novel Eddie Willers comes across a wanderer who asks this simple question: Who is John Galt? This phrase evokes an unnerving feeling of despair and desolation to society. The question has

James Taggart is stunned about it though Dagny claims his name as an uprising against "The impossible. The unattainable” (191). Nevertheless, who is she battling out against? John Galt or the moral code of society? Dagny Taggart represented his identity as an element of destruction as the structure that kept in place the economy was taken away piece by piece up until the world was only supported by her and Rearden. Yet her comprehension of John Galt was a grasp. At first there exists a correlation between John Galt as symbol of despair and desolation, yet it is the interpretation and the representation of that phrase that alternates its meaning. John Galt to the “non-A world” is the minuscule reminder that there exists another choice, the choice to guide human thinking towards reality, a reality that can only be achieve by reason. However, this phrase would only be an unheard cry of the individuals who “desire to live and recapture the honor of their soul” (956). Their plea would be disregarded and ignored because it is easier for society to give in their intellectual ability than live by their virtues. It is easier to live behind an illusion than comprehend they have been living on the chains of ignorance by their own will. When someone exclaims; who is John Galt? In reality that

The “non-existent world” cycles around the idea that being self-centered is a corruption of morality, because “any moral code must be designed not for you, but against you, no to further your life, but to drain it” (916). The society which lives by this moral code doesn’t look to achieve goals for their own purpose or desire, but they wait for the intellectuals to keep moving the train of life while they would benefit from their thinking process. John Galt became to the realization that it could not exists any form of life for him in the “non-A world”. His principles, virtues and values could not exists along the moral code of the looters because he would be placed “into a world where the price of his life is the surrender of all the virtues required by life” (924). There would be no life for him in a place where his identity would be used as a moral obligation. His soul would be exposed to the public like a unique jewel that everyone can touch and damage because they “have the right to do so.” As a result, John Galt stopped “the motor of the world” (619) when he realized he would work not for his own purpose and self-esteem, but as a slave of the people. The respect for his own mind was greater than anything else because without that reverence of himself he would be nothing but just