John Galt

When the company owner dies and his heirs decide to run the factory by the collectivist maxim, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", Galt refuses to work there any longer and abandons his motor.

While working incognito as a laborer for Taggart Transcontinental railroad, he travels to visit the key figures that he has not yet recruited, systematically persuading them to join the strike.

This strike is not revealed immediately within the story, but forms the backdrop of the novel as a mystery which protagonist Dagny Taggart seeks to uncover, with Galt as her antagonist.

Dagny had always had a concept of an ideal man "at the end of the railway", and her other lovers – Francisco D'Anconia and Hank Rearden – did not fit this image, however much she loved and respected both of them.

While in the valley, Dagny develops a romantic relationship with Galt, although it remains physically unconsummated – which is linked to her refusing to join the strike.

After she returns home to New York, Galt takes over the airwaves, delivering a lengthy speech that explains what he sees to be the irrationality of collectivism and offers his own philosophy (Ayn Rand's Objectivism) as an alternative.

Galt speaks against what he sees as the evil of collectivism and the idea that individuals must be responsible for each other, and says that should be replaced by voluntary association and adherence to rational self-interest.

Literature professor Shoshana Milgram traces the origins of the character to adventure stories that Rand read as a child, including the French novels La Vallée Mystérieuse and Le Petit Roi d'Ys.

Rand denied any connection to her friend John Gall, a conservative attorney, but did claim some inspiration came from her husband, Frank O'Connor.

Pulp fiction author Robert E. Howard, creator of heroes such as Conan the Barbarian, used a villain named John Galt in the tale "Black Talons" in 1933.

[4] English literature scholar Mimi Reisel Gladstein sees similarities to the figures of Arthur and Galahad from the Arthurian legends.

[5] Parallels have also been drawn to Captain Nemo, the anti-hero of Jules Verne's 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, who has likewise turned his back on "civilization" in self-imposed exile with a number of chosen allies, refusing to partake in a society he views as irreconcilably evil and oppressive.

"The book's hero, John Galt, also continues to live on", wrote journalist Harriet Rubin in a September 2007 article about the influence of Atlas Shrugged.

Steimel objected to an increase in the minimum wage, a measure which he said would "wreak havoc with the very individuals it is designed to help most – new entrants into the work force and new minority workers in particular".