SparkNotes: Atlas Shrugged: Quiz

1. What kind of company does Dagny Taggart run?

(A) A steel mill

(B) An automobile manufacturing plant

(C) A transcontinental railroad

(D) An oil company

2. What does the rhetorical question “Who is John Galt?” express?

(A) Hopelessness and futility

(B) A joy of living on earth

(C) Fear of mysticism and religion

(D) A yearning for identity and self-definition

3. What does Hank Rearden invent?

(A) The secret of eternal youth

(B) A motor capable of drawing power from static electricity in the air

(C) An alloy lighter than steel and twice as strong

(D) A new kind of smelter for copper

4. Who is the most powerful man in Washington?

(A) Jim Taggart, president of the nation’s largest railroad

(B) Wesley Mouch, head of the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources

(C) Hank Rearden, inventor of Rearden Metal

(D) Midas Mulligan, the nation’s richest banker

5. Why did Lillian marry Hank Rearden?

(A) She wanted to destroy him

(B) She admired his great capacity to produce

(C) She wanted to defy her elitist, socially conscious parents

(D) She pitied him

6. Why do Dagny and Rearden drive to the Twentieth Century Motor Company?

(A) They have heard that something very significant once happened there

(B) They wish to find the owner and ask him to return to the world

(C) They need to purchase machine parts, which are quickly becoming impossible to find

(D) They know that it is the only truly worthwhile factory still in operation

7. How does Dagny find a good engineer to reconstruct the static engine?

(A) She hires a gaunt, intelligent man she meets on the street

(B) She goes to Robert Stadler for help

(C) She pays Rearden to send over one of his own engineers

(D) She hires a young man who calls himself John Galt

8. Why does Dagny become Galt’s maid in the valley?

(A) She wants to pay off the damage she caused to his house

(B) Everyone must have a job in the valley

(C) She does not wish to use the bank account waiting for her in Mulligan Bank

(D) She wants to prove to Galt that she is domestically inclined

9. How does Rearden know Dagny has fallen in love with another man?

(A) When describing her relationship with Rearden over the radio, Dagny used only the past tense

(B) He smelled someone else’s cologne on her

(C) He received a letter from Lillian informing her of Dagny’s infidelity

(D) He secretly followed her into the valley

10. What is the intent of Directive 10-289?

(A) To freeze the economy in its current state

(B) To ease the government stranglehold on big business

(C) To bring John Galt to justice

(D) To eliminate competition from foreign companies

11. According to Francisco, what has replaced the Aristocracy of Money?

(A) The Aristocracy of Fraud

(B) The Kings of Comedy

(C) The Czar of the Bizarre

(D) The Aristocracy of Pull

12. Why did Francisco remain as head of d’Anconia Copper?

(A) He knew that Dagny would not forgive him if he quit

(B) He wished to save the company from ruin

(C) He had to deliberately destroy it, or it would stand for centuries

(D) He wanted to defy John Galt’s strict code

13. Why is Eddie Willers troubled to see Rearden’s robe in Dagny’s apartment?

(A) He thought that Rearden had long ago disappeared

(B) He has been in love with Dagny for years

(C) He knows that Dagny is now John Galt’s lover

(D) Rearden is an outspoken opponent of marital infidelity

14. What formula does Ragnar Danneskjold use to determine how much to deposit in his accounts for the victimized industrialists?

(A) The amount of money they will need to rebuild their companies after the strike

(B) The total sum of the taxes they paid to the federal government

(C) Their relative moral worth

(D) The losses they took under Directive 10-289

15. Why is the John Galt Line closed down?

(A) Its strong new rail is needed to patch up a transcontinental line

(B) Many clients and investors are afraid that Rearden Metal will not be able to support the weight of a freight train

(C) Dagny’s retirement destroys Taggart Transcontinental

(D) The Taggart Bridge collapses, and the company desperately needs Rearden Metal to rebuild it

16. What job has John Galt been doing all along?

(A) Furnace foreman at Rearden Steel

(B) Track laborer for Taggart

(C) Thug at the State Science Institute

(D) Cook at a small diner

17. Which ships does Ragnar Danneskjold sink?

(A) Those that carry foreign aid supplies stolen from America’s industrialists

(B) Those that do not fly a triangular white flag

(C) Those that carry pure gold

(D) Those that have never participated in war

18. Why did Richard Halley quit?

(A) His most beloved concerto was a failure

(B) Society only accepted his work because he had suffered

(C) He spotted John Galt watching one of his operas

(D) He could no longer find inspiration in a corrupt world

19. What is the Wet Nurse’s real name?

(A) Tony

(B) Frank Adams

(C) Hayes

(D) His name is never revealed

20. Who is John Galt?

(A) A brilliant inventor who accidentally inspired a revolution when he quit the Twentieth Century Motor company

(B) Eddie’s grease-stained cafeteria friend

(C) The destroyer

(D) All of the above

21. How does Mr. Thompson find John Galt?

(A) Dagny makes an angry phone call

(B) Robert Stadler suggests he have Dagny followed

(C) Wesley Mouch devises a scheme

(D) An ambitious young radio engineer traces the source of Galt’s broadcast

22. How does the Ferris Persuader work?

(A) By torturing the subject with sharp, random bursts of electricity

(B) By stripping the subject of resistance through a recently discovered chemical agent

(C) By invoking the subject’s pity with hundreds of pictures of human suffering

(D) By pure illusion, impressing in the subject a great, unfounded fear of torture

23. What does Jim Taggart finally realize he is motivated by?

(A) The desperate need to destroy greatness

(B) A sick, twisted pity for others

(C) Pure, blind greed for unearned money

(D) An unconfessed lust for his sister Dagny

24. Which of Halley’s concertos is played throughout the strikers’ valley?

(A) His Third Concerto

(B) His Fourth Concerto

(C) His Fifth Concerto

(D) His Sixth Concerto

25. Why does John Galt address the nation on the radio?

(A) He wants to explain the strike

(B) He wants to announce the availability of his motor

(C) He has accepted the job of Economic Dictator

(D) He is running for office

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