Submissions for #FirstLineFriday#2 are officially closed now. My thanks to all who emailed me with their guesses. Today, I’m sorry to say we have only one winner: John Howell. Congratulations, John, and thanks so much for pointing out to me that the correct spelling is “John Galt,” and not “John Gault.” (Let’s just pretend that’s why nobody else got this one right. 😀 😀 😀 )
John’s Author Page can be found HERE
And now, here’s the answer to today’s quiz:
“Who is John Galt?” is the opening line from Atlas Shrugged, written by Ayn Rand in 1957.
Rand’s fourth and final novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing.[1] Atlas Shrugged includes elements of science fiction, mystery, and romance, and it contains Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism in any of her works of fiction. The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is “the role of man’s mind in existence”. The book explores a number of philosophical themes from which Rand would subsequently develop Objectivism. In doing so, it expresses the advocacy of reason, individualism, and capitalism, and depicts what Rand saw to be the failures of governmental coercion.
The book depicts a dystopian United States in which private businesses suffer under increasingly burdensome laws and regulations. Railroad executive Dagny Taggart and her lover, steel magnate Hank Rearden, struggle against “looters” who want to exploit their productivity. Dagny and Hank discover that a mysterious figure called John Galt is persuading other business leaders to abandon their companies and disappear as a strike of productive individuals against the looters. The novel ends with the strikers planning to build a new capitalist society based on Galt’s philosophy of reason and individualism.
Atlas Shrugged received largely negative reviews after its 1957 publication, but achieved enduring popularity and ongoing sales in the following decades. After several unsuccessful attempts to adapt the novel for film or television, a film trilogy based on it was released from 2011 to 2014. These films were critical and box office failures. (BTW, I read it when it came out and didn’t much like it myself, but I was only 13, and I doubt I really understood it in any depth.)
WHAT AMAZON SAYS:
Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus: a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.
Who is John Galt? When he says that he will stop the motor of the world, is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he have to fight his battles not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves?
You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the amazing men and women in this book. You will discover why a productive genius becomes a worthless playboy…why a great steel industrialist is working for his own destruction…why a composer gives up his career on the night of his triumph…why a beautiful woman who runs a transcontinental railroad falls in love with the man she has sworn to kill.
Atlas Shrugged, a modern classic and Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism—her groundbreaking philosophy—offers the reader the spectacle of human greatness, depicted with all the poetry and power of one of the twentieth century’s leading artists.
Buy Atlas Shrugged HERE
By the way, for those who didn’t see the answer that popped up under the first post, it was 1984 by George Orwell. And that wraps up both efforts for this week. Sorry for the confusion, but happy we at least had one winner. I’ll be back in two weeks, if the bridge don’t go, an’ the creek don’t rise. Hope to see you then!
A rural East Texas road in winter 
Somewhere in the southwestern United States 
Made it myself. Not accepting commissions at this time.
Image courtesy of bigstock.com 
The Write Stuff 