James G. answered • 08/15/19
Brilliant copy editor and proof reader looking to help students
Atlas Shrugged is a utopia. By definition, a utopia is an idealized vision of reality. Indeed, Ayn Rand referred to herself as a Romantic writer, which she defined as follows:
“Man as a being who possesses the faculty of volition did not appear in literature until the nineteenth century. The novel was his proper literary form — and Romanticism was the great new movement in art. Romanticism saw man as a being able to choose his values, to achieve his goals, to control his own existence. The Romantic writers did not record the events that had happened, but projected the events that should happen; they did not record the choices men had made, but projected the choices men ought to make.” (Rand, 1971)
To answer your question, Atlas Shrugged was set in the present, not as an “alternative history,” but as an idealized version of reality as it ought to have been. John Galt, Francisco d’Anconia, Hank Rearden, and Dagny Taggart represent Ayn Rand’s vision of “man at his best.” By choosing their values against the grain of the society they lived in, they managed to control their own destinies, as opposed to their antagonists, embodied in James Taggart, Lillian Rearden, and Wesley Mouch, who relished in conforming to mediocrity. The antagonists in Atlas Shrugged, therefore, represent for Rand “man as a helpless being whose life and actions [are] determined by forces beyond his control.” (Ibid.)
