When was atlas shrugged set

Francisco d'Anconia at one point claims that "There are seven million people in the city of New York, at present. Also, traffic lights are still mechanical, as one of them "screeched" while changing.

It's seen as very odd - practically unheard-of - for a woman to run a major corporation. Add comment. There is no real need to assume an Alternative History. I saw no evidence that Ayn Rand was familiar with this genre or wrote in it. I think that the book represents her perception of the situation of the late s and early s and where she thought it was going. In the British Labor Party won power and launched the Welfare State, nationalised the Health Service, nationlised coal mines and public transportation - and was heavily supported economically by the United States.

Similar things were happening in several other European countries which got American aid under the Marshall Plan. I think that is quite enough to understand where she got the idea of a world of "People's States" getting economic support from the US.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Was Atlas Shrugged set in the future or the present?

Ask Question. Asked 3 years, 4 months ago. Active 2 years, 5 months ago. Viewed 1k times. These, along with the widespread use of radio and various other facts, seems to suggest the lifestyle of people living in the s right around the time of the novel's publication , That being said, is Atlas Shrugged an "alternative history" of sorts, or is it set in the future or near future?

Improve this question. Add a comment. Atlas Shrugged is an impassioned defense of the freedom of man's mind. But to understand the author's sense of urgency, we must have an idea of the context in which the book was written. Twentieth-century culture spawned the most oppressive dictatorships in human history. The Fascists in Italy, the National Socialists Nazis in Germany, and the Communists — first in Russia and later in China and elsewhere — seriously threatened individual freedom throughout the world.

Ayn Rand lived through the heart of this terrifying historical period. In fact, when she started writing Atlas Shrugged in , the West had just achieved victory over the Nazis. For years, the specter of national socialism had haunted the world, exterminating millions of innocent people, enslaving millions more, and threatening the freedom of the entire globe.

The triumph of the free countries of the West over Naziism was achieved at an enormous cost in human life. However, it left the threat of communism unabated. Ayn Rand was born in Russia in and witnessed firsthand the Bolshevik Revolution, the Communist conquest of Russia, and the political oppression that followed.

Even after her escape from the Soviet Union and her safe arrival in the United States, she kept in close touch with family members who remained there. But when the murderous policies of Joseph Stalin swallowed the Soviet Union, she lost track of her family.

From her own life experiences, Ayn Rand knew the brutal oppression of Communist tyranny. During the last days of World War II and in the years immediately following, communism conquered large portions of the world. Soviet armies first rolled through the countries of Eastern Europe, setting up Russian "satellite" nations in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and elsewhere.

Shortly thereafter, communism was also dominant in Cuba, on America's doorstep. In the s and s, communism was an expanding military power, threatening to engulf the free world. This time period was the height of the Cold War — the ideological battle between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union ruled its empire in Eastern Europe by means of terror, brutally suppressing an uprising by Hungarian freedom fighters in The Russians developed the atomic bomb and amassed huge armies in Eastern Europe, threatening the free nations of the West.

Like the Nazis in the s, communists stood for a collectivist political system: one in which an individual is morally obliged to sacrifice himself for the state. Intellectual freedom and individual rights, cherished in the United States and other Western countries, were in grave danger.

Foreign military power was not the only way in which communism threatened U. Collectivism was an increasingly popular political philosophy among American intellectuals and politicians.

In the s, both national socialism and communism had supporters among American thinkers, businessmen, politicians, and labor leaders. The full horror of Naziism was revealed during World War II, and support for national socialism dwindled in the United States as a result. Many American professors, writers, journalists, and politicians continued to advocate Marxist principles.

When Ayn Rand was writing Atlas Shrugged, many Americans strongly believed that the government should have the power to coercively redistribute income and to regulate private industry. The capitalist system of political and economic freedom was consistently attacked by socialists and welfare statists. The belief that an individual has a right to live his own life was replaced, to a significant extent, by the collectivist idea that individuals must work and live in service to other people.

After New York, our other major setting is Colorado. In contrast to New York, Colorado starts out as a booming, energetic place, best characterized by the exciting and successful train ride Dagny takes on the opening day of her John Galt Railroad Line. But Colorado soon falls victim to the economic depression and urban decay sweeping through the rest of the country. The setting shifts after this.

We began with Colorado contrasting to New York and we end with Atlantis, incidentally in Colorado, contrasting to the rest of the country. Atlantis is the name of Galt's secret hideaway, and it seems like some sort of heaven on earth compared to the rest of America. Everything in Atlantis is prosperous, peaceful, and beautiful. This includes the buildings, the landscape, and the people living there.

For a book so concerned with philosophy, it's no mistake that Atlantis is an idyllic community, the headquarters of Galt's moral strike. New York, on the other hand, is a central location for the bad business and government plaguing the country, and it shows signs of physical decay accordingly. The last thing to talk about in terms of setting is time period.

This book reflects a sort of alternate universe s America. As in real s America, we see a lot of gender inequality: most women don't have jobs and they suffer from sexism.