'Atlas Shrugged Part I' - politcs as a movie, and not very good

The film "Atlas Shrugged Part 1," opened Friday night at the Fandango Galaxy cineplex in Carson City. The opening was overshadowed by the first-night celebration the V&T's No. 18 steam locomotive in "Water for Elephants," an average romance-plus-disaster film.

So what about "Atlas"? Well, it's hard to say anything about a film that is apparently going to be in three parts, No. 2 next year sometime. Hard to say anything good, easy to say how bad the "Part I" is. Critics (including this one) found little of value in the muddled Part I, although the no-name cast is pretty good. Audiences, on the other hand, overwhelming approved of "Part 1" by 85 percent (critics approved by 8 percent). Of course, the apparently biased audiences were bound to be approving as it fits the current Tea Party landscape with those who went to the movie were undoubtedly largely Ayn Rand fans and love her book "Atlas Shrugged," which is of course the basis of the new film hailing of business people and damnation of government. The movie is a hosanna to the conservative point of view, with about 12 in the audience when I caught the movie Saturday afternoon.

But how can you review just part of a movie? It's like judging a cherry pie while it's still in the oven, half-baked. With two parts to come we'll have to wait to finally rate the movie.

It's been years since I read the book, but if memory serves "Part I" is the first section of the novel, titled "Non-conformity." We enter the world of 2016 where gasoline is $40 a gallon, it's dystopia in the USA with the economy in ruins. Doesn't stop the wealthy and powerful from riding around in stretch limos, however, or dressing for a royal wedding with plenty of bubbly at all times.

We enter the world of James Taggart (Matthew Marsden, personified as playing with toy trains in his executive office), the playboy CEO of Taggart railroads, a family enterprise that was once one of the biggest is the country but has been allowed to crumble due to James' mismanagement. However, there's Dagny Taggart (Tayor Schilling), his sister who as COO keeps the trains running on time (shades of Mussolini).

She teams up with Henry "Hank" Rearden (Grant Bowler, the very effective hero type), whose company has come up with a superior kind of steel that Dangy wants to use to rebuild the Rio part of Taggart railroads. (She breaks off to found her own railroad in Colorado.)

Meanwhile, top executives start disappearing and the question "Who is John Galt" begins surfacing. Galt appears as a shadowy figure in fedora and overcoat at times and one is left to wonder whaaaa?

Then there's d'Anconia (Jsu Garcia), a shadowy entrepreneur who has been a lover of Dagny (back when) but now is a sinister element. And oil man Ellis Wyatt (Graham Beckei) as an oil man who apparently was ahead of his time with oil finds in Colorado, but then he disappears as well after hosting Hank and Dagny to dinner from which they become lovers --- Hank's wife Lillian (Rebecca Winsocky) doesn't think much of him and belittles him when possible. One excuse as good as another, I guess.

Well, the story goes on with government officials enacting a law that says no one can own more than one company (that's a weird thought) and that Colorado has to pay a special tax for the good of the country as a whole because Dagny;s new railroad is centered there. Sigh. Hank has to sell all his other businesses, of course, with James Taggart pulling the political strings.

Movie ends with Dagny on her knees crying out as Wyatt's oil fields go up in flames he set with firemen standing by and nobody noticing that Dagny is running around by the fires.

Wyatt left a sign reading, "I am leaving it as I found it. Take over. It's yours." And the movie fades out on that. With Dagny outlined against the flames. What comes next? We'll have to wait to next year. Think I can wait.

There are lots of lovely scenic shots of Colorado and the new Taggart bullet train riding the new Rearden rails ar 250 mph. But it doesn't add up to much unless you're a Tea Party type, I fear. Acting, as mentioned, is quite good with Taylor Schilling as Dagny a very tough business lady who dresses well and acts with a firm lip and haughty beauty.

Directing by Paul Johansson is crisp and the script by Brian Patrick O'Yoole serves and even premeditates actual events such as the discovery of a vast pool of oil in North Dakota while not making a lot of sense. But the movie ignores the real crisis that $40 a gallon gas would create in America. But that's quibbling. In reality this is political messages contrived as a movie. It'll sell with Tea Party folk, but other viewers will find it less than thrilling, despite the fine cast and beautiful scenery.
--- Sam Bauman

(A discussion of the major charters from the book is appended. Not needed to see the movie. It's from Wikipedia.)

Cast
See also: List of Atlas Shrugged characters
• Taylor Schilling as Dagny Taggart
• Grant Bowler as Henry "Hank" Rearden
• Matthew Marsden as James Taggart
• Graham Beckel as Ellis Wyatt
• Edi Gathegi as Edwin "Eddie" Willers
• Jsu Garcia as Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia
• Michael Lerner as Wesley Mouch
• Jack Milo as Richard McNamara
• Ethan Cohn as Owen Kellogg
• Rebecca Wisocky as Lillian Rearden
• Christina Pickles as Mother Rearden
• Neill Barry as Philip Rearden
• Patrick Fischler as Paul Larkin
• Sylva Kelegian as Ivy Starnes
• Jon Polito as Orren Boyle
• Michael O'Keefe as Hugh Akston
• Geoff Pierson as Midas Mulligan
• Armin Shimerman as Dr. Potter
• Paul Johansson as John Galt (only in Part 1 as silhouetted figure wearing a trenchcoat and fedora)

Directed by Paul Johansson
Produced by John Aglialoro,
Harmon Kaslow,
Bruce Wayne Gillies
Written by Brian Patrick O'Toole
Based on "Atlas Shrugged" by
Ayn Rand Running time 102 minutes, rated PG-13

Major characters
The following are major characters from the novel.
Dagny Taggart
Dagny Taggart is the protagonist of the novel. She is Vice-President in Charge of Operations for Taggart Transcontinental, under her brother, James Taggart. However, due to James' incompetence, it is Dagny who is responsible for all the workings of the railroad.

Dagny has three romantic relationships, each with a man of ability: Francisco d'Anconia, Hank Rearden, and John Galt. Galt marks the pinnacle of everything Dagny seeks in the world and is the kind of man alluded to in her youth when she imagines a man standing off in the distance, at the end of a great set of railroad tracks and all her struggles.

The essential drama of Dagny's character is her struggle to reconcile the life she lives and the railroad which she loves with the moral code of those who wish to destroy it. She believes these destroyers simply want to heap burdens upon her for the sake of others, which she has the ability to carry. Like Hank, she believes they want to live, but are too stupid and incompetent to realize how their duties and altruistic projects impede that goal. It is not until she sees the man most important to her in the world - John Galt - strapped to a torture machine, about to be killed by the looters (who recognize, too, that he is the only man who can save them from economic collapse), that she realizes that the moral code of the looters is one of death: they recognize what is good and necessary for life, but wish to destroy it anyway.

She is a typical Randian heroine, similar to Dominique Francon (The Fountainhead) or Kira Argounova (We the Living).

John Galt
Main article: John Galt
The enigmatic John Galt is the primary male hero of Atlas Shrugged. He initially appears as an unnamed menial worker for Taggart Transcontinental, who often dines with Eddie Willers in the employee's cafeteria, and leads Eddie to reveal important information about Dagny Taggart and Taggart Transcontinental. Only Eddie's side of their conversations is given in the novel. Eddie tells him which suppliers and contractors Dagny is most dependent on; these men are consistently the next to disappear. Later in the novel, the reader discovers this worker's true identity.

Ragnar Danneskjöld
One of the original strikers, he is now world famous as a pirate. Ragnar attended Patrick Henry University and became friends with John Galt and Francisco d'Anconia while studying under Hugh Akston and Robert Stadler. Danneskjöld seizes relief ships that are being sent from the United States to The People's States of Europe. As the novel progresses, Danneskjöld begins to become active in American waters. Danneskjöld's action is to restore to other creative people the money, in gold, which was unjustly taken away from them—specifically, their income tax payments. He explains this is not altruism; his motivation is to ensure that once those espousing Galt's philosophy are restored to their rightful place in society, they will have enough capital to rebuild the world.

Kept in the background for much of the book, Danneskjöld makes a personal appearance when he risks his life to meet Hank Rearden in the night and hand him a bar of gold as an "advance payment" to encourage Rearden to persevere in his increasingly difficult situation. Danneskjöld is married to the actress Kay Ludlow; their relationship is kept hidden from the outside world, which only knows of Ludlow as a film star who retired and dropped out of sight. It is mentioned that some of the strikers have strong reservations about his way of "conducting the common struggle."

According to Barbara Branden, who was closely associated with Rand at the time the book was written, there were sections written describing Danneskjöld's adventures at sea, which were cut from the final published text.[2] In the published book, Danneskjöld is always seen through the eyes of others (Dagny Taggart or Hank Rearden), except for a brief paragraph in the very last chapter.

Francisco d'Anconia
Francisco d'Anconia is one of the central characters in Atlas Shrugged, and owner by inheritance of the world's largest copper mining empire. He is a childhood friend, and the first love, of Dagny Taggart.
A child prodigy of exceptional talents, Francisco was dubbed the "climax" of the d'Anconia line, an already prestigious family of skilled industrialists. He attended Patrick Henry University and was a classmate of John Galt and Ragnar Danneskjöld and student of both Hugh Akston and Robert Stadler. He began working at a young age, while still in school, proving that he could have made a successful career on his own merits without the aid of his family's wealth and power.

Francisco is one of the strikers and is slowly destroying the d'Anconia empire to put it out of the raiders' reach. His actions were designed both to "trap" looters into relying upon his worthless ventures in order to disrupt their schemes and to try to show the inevitable consequences of looting. He adopted the persona of a worthless playboy, by which he is known to the world, as an effective cover. However, he is forced to give up Dagny, knowing that she would not be ready to join the strikers. He remains deeply in love with her throughout the book, while also being a good and loyal friend of her other two lovers, Hank Rearden and John Galt.
His full name is Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia.

[edit] is is a biologist who works as "co-ordinator" at the State Science Institute. He uses his position there to deride reason and productive achievement, and publishes a book entitled Why Do You Think You Think? He clashes on several occasions with Hank Rearden, and twice attempts to blackmail Rearden into giving up Rearden Metal. He is also one of the group of looters who tries to get Rearden to agree to the Steel Unification Plan. Ferris hosts the demonstration of the Project X weapon, and is the creator of the Ferris Persuader, a torture machine. When John Galt is captured by the looters, Ferris uses the device on Galt, but it breaks down before extracting the information Ferris wants from Galt. Ferris represents the group which uses brute force on the heroes to achieve the ends of the looters.

Wesley Mouch
The incompetent and treacherous lobbyist whom Hank Rearden reluctantly employs in Washington. Later in the novel, he becomes the country's economic dictator.

Henry "Hank" Rearden
Henry (also known as "Hank") is one of the central characters in Atlas Shrugged. Like many of Rand's capitalist characters, he is a self-made man. He owns the most important steel company in the United States. He invents Rearden Metal, an alloy stronger than steel (it is to steel what steel is to iron). He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Lillian, his brother Philip, and his elderly mother, all of whom he supports.
Hank Rearden knows something is wrong with the world but he is unable to define the problem. His friend, Francisco d'Anconia, helps him understand and by this mechanism the reader is also prepared to understand the secret when it is revealed explicitly in Galt's Speech. Rearden also serves to illustrate Rand's theory of sex. Lillian Rearden cannot appreciate Hank Rearden's virtues, and she is portrayed as being disgusted by sex. Dagny Taggart clearly does appreciate Rearden's virtues, and this appreciation evolves into sexual desire. Rearden is torn because he accepts the premises of the traditional view of sex as a lower instinct, but he responds sexually to Dagny, who represents his highest values. Rearden struggles to resolve this internal conflict, and in doing so, illustrates Rand's sexual theory.

Lillian Rearden
The unsupportive wife of Hank Rearden. They have been married eight years as the novel begins. Lillian is a frigid moocher who seeks to destroy her husband. She compares being Rearden's wife with owning the world's most powerful horse. Since she cannot comfortably ride a horse that goes too fast, she must bridle it down to her level, even if that means it will never reach its full potential and its power will be grievously wasted.
As her motives become more clear, Lillian is found to share the sentiments of many other moochers and their worship of destruction. Her actions are explained as the desire to destroy achievement in the false belief that such an act bestows a greatness to the destroyer equal to the accomplishment destroyed. She seeks, then, to ruin Rearden in an effort to prove her own value, but fails.

Lillian tolerates sex with her husband only because she is 'realistic' enough to know he is just a brute who requires satisfaction of his brute instincts. She indicates that she abhors Francisco d'Anconia, because she believes he is a sexual adventurer.

James Taggart
The President of Taggart Transcontinental and the book's most important antagonist. Taggart is an expert influence peddler who is, however, incapable of making operational decisions on his own. He relies on his sister, Dagny Taggart, to actually run the railroad, but nonetheless opposes her in almost every endeavor. In a sense, he is the antithesis of Dagny.

As the novel progresses, the moral philosophy of the looters is revealed: it is a code of stagnation. The goal of this code is to not exist, to not move forward, to become a zero. Taggart struggles to remain unaware that this is his goal. He maintains his pretense that he wants to live, and becomes horrified whenever his mind starts to grasp the truth about himself. This contradiction leads to the recurring absurdity of his life: the desire to destroy those on whom his life depends, and the horror that he will succeed at this. In the final chapters of the novel, he suffers a complete mental breakdown upon realizing that he can no longer deceive himself in this respect.

Dr. Robert Stadler
A former professor at Patrick Henry University, mentor to Francisco d'Anconia, John Galt and Ragnar Danneskjöld. He has since become a sell-out, one who had great promise but squandered it for social approval, to the detriment of the free. He works at the State Science Institute where all his inventions are perverted for use by the military, including the instrument of his demise: Project X. The character was, in part, modeled on J. Robert Oppenheimer, whom Rand had interviewed for an earlier project, and his part in the creation of nuclear weapons.[3] To his former student Galt, Stadler represents the epitome of human evil, as the "man who knew better" but chose not to act for the good.

Secondary characters
The following secondary characters also appear in the novel.[4]
• Hugh Akston is identified as "One of the last great advocates of reason." He was a renowned philosopher and the head of the Department of Philosophy at Patrick Henry University, where he taught Francisco d'Anconia, John Galt, and Ragnar Danneskjöld. He was, along with Robert Stadler, a father figure to these three. Akston's name is so hallowed that a young lady, on hearing that Francisco had studied under him, is shocked. She thought he must have been one of those great names from an earlier century. He now works as a cook in a roadside diner, and proves extremely skillful at that. When Dagny tracks him down, and before she discovers his true identity, he rejects her enthusiastic offer to manage the dining car services for Taggart Transcontinental.
• Jeff Allen is a tramp who stows away on a Taggart train during one of Dagny's cross-country trips. Instead of throwing him out, she allows him to ride as her guest. It is from Allen that she learns the full story behind the collapse of the Twentieth Century Motor Company, as well as a hint of John Galt's true background.
• Calvin Atwood is owner of Atwood Light and Power Company and joins the strike.
• Cherryl Brooks is a dime store shopgirl who marries James Taggart after a chance encounter in her store the night the John Galt Line was falsely deemed his greatest success. She marries him thinking he is the heroic person behind Taggart Transcontinental. Cherryl is at first harsh towards Dagny, having believed Jim Taggart's descriptions of his sister, until she questions employees of the railroad. Upon learning that her scorn had been misdirected, Cherryl puts off apologizing to Dagny out of shame until the night before she commits suicide, when she confesses to Dagny that when she married Jim, she thought he had the heroic qualities that she had looked up to - she thought she was marrying someone like Dagny. Upon realizing the nature of the moral code surrounding her, the apparent lack of escape for herself and the heroes she worships, and her unnamed desire to remove support from the machinations she abhors, Cherryl throws herself from a bridge to her death after witnessing her husband James Taggart sleeping with Lillian Rearden and after being beaten for showing James his code of death.
• Mayor Bascom is the mayor of Rome, Wisconsin, who reveals part of the history of the Twentieth Century Motor Company.
• Bill Brent is the chief dispatcher for the Colorado Division of Taggart Transcontinental, who tries to prevent the Taggart Tunnel disaster.
• Dr. Blodgett is the scientist who pulls the lever to demonstrate Project X.
• Orren Boyle is the head of Associated Steel and a friend of James Taggart. He is an investor in the San Sebastián Mines.
• Laura Bradford is an actress and Kip Chalmers's mistress.
• Kip Chalmers is a Washington man who has decided to run for election as Legislator from California. On the way to his campaign, the Taggart Transcontinental train that is carrying him encounters a split rail, resulting in the destruction of its diesel engine. His demands lead to a coal-burning steam engine being attached to his train in its stead and used to pull it through an eight-mile tunnel. The result is the suffocation of all passengers and the destruction of the Taggart Tunnel.
• Emma Chalmers, Kip Chalmers's mother, gains some influence after his death. Known as "Kip's Ma," she starts a soybean-growing project in Louisiana and commandeers thousands of railcars to move the harvest. As a result, the year's wheat crop from Minnesota never reaches the rest of the country, but instead rots in storage; also, the soybean crop is lost, having been reaped too early.
• Dan Conway is the middle-aged president of the Phoenix-Durango railroad. Running a railroad is just about the only thing he knows. When the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule is used to drive his business out of Colorado, he loses the will to fight, and resigns himself to a quiet life of books and fishing.
• Ken Danagger owns Danagger Coal in Pennsylvania. He helps Hank Rearden illegally make Rearden Metal, then later decides to quit and join Galt's strike moments before Dagny arrives to try to persuade him otherwise.
• Quentin Daniels is an enterprising engineer hired by Dagny Taggart to reconstruct John Galt's motor. Partway through this process, Quentin withdraws his effort for the same reasons John Galt himself had. Dagny's pursuit of Quentin leads her to "Galt's Gulch".
• Sebastian d'Anconia was the 16th (or 17th) Century founder of the d'Anconia dynasty. Escaped from Spain because of expressing his opinions too freely and coming in conflict with the Inquisition, leaving behind a palace and his beloved. Started a small mine in South America, which became the beginning of a mining empire and a new fortune (and a new palace). Eventually sent for his beloved who had waited for him many years. He is the role model which Francisco d'Anconia looks to, as Dagny Taggart looks to Nathaniel Taggart. Francisco remarks that their respective ancestors would have liked each other.
• Balph Eubank is called "the literary leader of the age", despite the fact that he has never sold more than three thousand copies of his books. He complains that it is disgraceful that artists are treated as peddlers, and that there should be a law limiting the sales of books to ten thousand copies.
• The Fishwife is one of the strikers, who earns her living by providing the fish for Hammond’s grocery market; she is described as having "dark, disheveled hair and large eyes", and is a writer. Galt says she "wouldn't be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind." According to Barbara Branden in her book The Passion of Ayn Rand, "The Fishwife is Ayn's Hitchcock-like appearance in Atlas Shrugged."[5]
• Lawrence Hammond runs Hammond Cars in Colorado, one of the few companies in existence that still produces top-quality vehicles. He eventually quits and joins the strike.
• Richard Halley is Dagny Taggart's favorite composer, who mysteriously disappeared after the evening of his greatest triumph. Halley spent years as a struggling and unappreciated composer. At age 24, his opera Phaethon was performed for the first time, to an audience who booed and heckled it. After 19 years, Phaethon was performed again, but this time it was received to the greatest ovation the opera house had ever heard. The following day, Halley retired, sold the rights to his music, and disappeared.
• Mrs. William Hastings is the widow of the chief engineer at the Twentieth Century Motor Company. Her husband quit shortly after Galt did and joined the strike some years later. Her lead allows Dagny to find Hugh Akston.
• Dr. Thomas Hendricks is a famous brain surgeon who developed a new method of preventing strokes. He joined Galt's strike when the American medical system was put under government control.
• Tinky Holloway is one of the "looters" and is frequently referred to and quoted by other characters in the story, but he has only has one major appearance: during the Washington meeting with Hank Rearden.
• Lee Hunsacker is in charge of a company called Amalgamated Service when takes over the Twentieth Century Motor Company. He files a lawsuit that eventually leads to Midas Mulligan and Judge Narragansett joining the strike.
• Gwen Ives is Hank Rearden's secretary.
• Owen Kellogg is Assistant to the Manager of the Taggart Terminal in New York. He catches Dagny Taggart's eye as one of the few competent men on staff. After seeing the sorry state of the Ohio Division, she decides to make him its new Superintendent. However, as soon as she returns to New York, Kellogg informs her that he is quitting his job. Owen Kellogg eventually reaches, and settles in, Galt's Gulch.
• Fred Kinnan is a labor leader and member of the looter cabal. Unlike the others, however, Kinnan is straightforward and honest about his purpose. Kinnan is the only one to openly state the true motivations of himself and his fellow conspirators. At the end of Galt's 3 hour speech, he expresses admiration for the man, as he says what he means. Despite this, Kinnan admits that he is one of the people Galt is out to destroy.
• Paul Larkin is an unsuccessful, middle-aged businessman, a friend of the Rearden family. He meets with the other Looters to work out a plan to bring Rearden down. James Taggart knows he is friends with Hank Rearden and challenges his loyalty, and Larkin assures Taggart that he will go along with them.
• Eugene Lawson heads the Community Bank of Madison, then gets a job with the government when it goes bankrupt.
• Mort Liddy is a hack composer who writes trite scores for movies and modern symphonies to which no one listens. He believes melody is a primitive vulgarity. He is one of Lillian Rearden's friends and a member of the cultural elite.
• Clifton Locey is a friend of Jim Taggart who takes the position of vice-president of operation when Dagny Taggart quits.
• Pat Logan is the engineer on the first run of the John Galt Line. He later strikes.
• Kay Ludlow is a beautiful actress and the wife of Ragnar Danneskjöld.
• Dick McNamara is a contractor who finished the San Sebastian Line. Dagny Taggart plans to hire him to lay the new Rearden Metal track for the Rio Norte Line, but before she does so, he mysteriously disappears. She later discovers that he has joined the strike and settled in Galt's Gulch.
• Cuffy Meigs is the Director of Unification for the railroad business. He carries a pistol and a lucky rabbit's foot, and he dresses in a military uniform, and has been described as "impervious to thought". Meigs seizes control of Project X and accidentally destroys it, demolishing the country's last railroad bridge across the Mississippi River and killing himself, his men, and Dr. Stadler.
• Dave Mitchum is a state-hired superintendent of the Colorado Division of Taggart Transcontinental. He is partially responsible for the Taggart Tunnel disaster.
• Chick Morrison holds the position of "Morale Conditioner" in the government.
• Horace Bussby Mowen is the president of the Amalgamated Switch and Signal Company, Inc. of Connecticut. He is a businessman who sees nothing wrong with the moral code that is destroying society and would never dream of saying he is in business for any reason other than the good of society. Dagny Taggart hires Mowen to produce switches made of Rearden Metal. He is reluctant to build anything with this unproven technology, and has to be cajoled into accepting the contract. When pressured by public opinion, he discontinues production of the switches, forcing Dagny to find an alternative source.
• Midas Mulligan is a wealthy banker who mysteriously disappeared in protest after he was given a court order to lend money to an incompetent applicant. When the order came down he liquidated his entire business, paid off his depositors, and joined Galt's strike. Mulligan's birth name was Michael, but he had it legally changed after a news article called him "Midas" in a derogatory fashion, which Mulligan took as a compliment.
• Judge Narragansett is an American jurist who ruled in favor of Midas Mulligan during the case brought against him by the incompetent loan applicant. When Narragansett's ruling was reversed on appeal, he retired and joined the strike. At the end of the novel, he is seen editing the United States Constitution, crossing out the contradicting amendments of it and adding an amendment to prohibit Congress from passing laws that restrain freedom of trade.
• Ben Nealy is a railroad contractor whom Dagny Taggart hires to replace the track on the Rio Norte Line with Rearden Metal. Nealy is incompetent, but Dagny can find no one better in all the country. Nealy believes that anything can get done with enough muscle power. He sees no role for intelligence in human achievement. He relies on Dagny and Ellis Wyatt to run things, and resents them for doing it, because it appears to him like they are just bossing people around.
• Betty Pope is a wealthy socialite who is having a meaningless sexual affair with James Taggart. She is deliberately crude in a way that casts ridicule on her high social position.
• Dr. Potter holds some undefined position with the State Science Institute. He is sent to try to obtain the rights to Rearden Metal.
• Dr. Simon Pritchett is the prestigious head of the Department of Philosophy at Patrick Henry University and is considered the leading philosopher of the age. He believes that man is nothing but a collection of chemicals, reason is a superstition, it is futile to seek meaning in life, and the duty of a philosopher is to show that nothing can be understood.
• Rearden's mother, whose name is not mentioned, lives with Rearden at his home in Philadelphia. She is involved in charity work, and berates Rearden whenever she can. She dotes on her weak son Philip Rearden.
• Philip Rearden is the younger brother of Hank Rearden. He lives in his brother's home in Philadelphia and is completely dependent on him. He is resentful of his brother's charity.
• Dwight Sanders owns Sanders Aircraft, a producer of high-quality airplanes, and joins the strike.
• Bertram Scudder is an editorial writer for the magazine The Future. He typically bashes business and businessmen, but he never says anything specific in his articles, relying on innuendo, sneers, and denunciation. He wrote a hatchet job on Hank Rearden called The Octopus. He is also vocal in support of the Equalization of Opportunity Bill.
• Claude Slagenhop is president of political organization Friends of Global Progress and one of Lillian Rearden's friends. He believes that ideas are just air, that this is no time for talk, but for action. Global Progress is a sponsor of the Equalization of Opportunity Bill.
• Gerald and Ivy Starnes are the two surviving children of Jed Starnes; together with their since-deceased brother Eric, they instituted a communistic payment-and-benefits program at Twentieth Century Motors which drove the company into bankruptcy. Gerald, a dying alcoholic, and Ivy, a pseudo-Buddhist ascetic, continue to insist that the plan was perfect and that the failure of their father's company was entirely due to the workers.
• Andrew Stockton runs the Stockton Foundry in Stockton, Colorado. When he joins the strike, he opens a foundry in Galt's Gulch.
• Nathaniel Taggart was the founder of Taggart Transcontinental. He built his railroad without any government handouts, and ran the business for no other reason than to turn a profit. He began as a penniless adventurer and ended up as one of the wealthiest men in the country. He never earned money by force or fraud, and never apologized for becoming wealthy and successful. He was one of the most hated men of his time. Dagny is often inspired by looking at a statue of Nat Taggart at the railroad headquarters.
• Mr. Thompson is the "Head of the State" for the United States. He is not particularly intelligent and has a very undistinguished look. He knows politics, however, and is a master of public relations and back-room deals. Rand's notes indicate that she modeled him on President Harry S. Truman, and that she deliberately decided not to call him "President of the United States" as this title has "honorable connotations" which the character does not deserve.
• Lester Tuck is the press agent for Kip Chalmers.
• Clem Weatherby is a government representative on the board of directors of Taggart Transcontinental. Dagny considers him the least bad of the government representatives, since he does have some real knowledge on the running of trains. She notices, however, that he is the least appreciated by his own bosses.
• The Wet Nurse (Tony) is a young bureaucrat sent by the government to watch over Rearden’s mills. Though he starts out as a cynical follower of the looters’ code, his experience at the mills transforms him, and he comes to respect and admire the producers. He is shot attempting to inform Hank Rearden about a government plot, but does succeed in warning Rearden just before he dies.
• Edwin "Eddie" Willers is the Special Assistant to the Vice-President in Charge of Operations at Taggart Transcontinental. He grew up with Dagny Taggart. His father and grandfather worked for the Taggarts, and he followed in their footsteps. He is completely loyal to Dagny and to Taggart Transcontinental. He is also secretly in love with Dagny. Willers is generally assumed to represent the common man: someone who does not possess the Promethean creative ability of The Strikers, but matches them in moral courage and is capable of appreciating and making use of their creations. He sticks it out with the railway to the bitter end, even when the old world is obviously collapsing and Dagny has shifted her attention and loyalty to saving the captive Galt. In the end, he stays with the broken-down Comet in the middle of the desert, like a captain going down with his ship. It is unclear whether or not the strikers or anyone else will return to save him.
• Ellis Wyatt is the head of Wyatt Oil. He has almost single-handedly revived the economy of Colorado by discovering a new process for extracting more oil from what were thought to be exhausted oil wells. When first introduced, he is aggressive towards Dagny, whom he does not yet know and whom he blames for what are, in fact, her brother's policies which directly threaten his business. When the government passes laws and decrees which make it impossible for him to continue, he sets all his oil wells on fire, leaving a jeering note: "I am leaving it as I found it. Take over. It's yours." One particular burning well that resists all efforts to extinguish it becomes known as "Wyatt's Torch". Later Dagny meets him in Galt's Gulch