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Just Who Is John Galt, Anyway?: A Carnivalesque Approach to Atlas Shrugged
- Journal of Ayn Rand Studies
- Penn State University Press
- Volume 17, Number 1, July 2017
- pp. 28-40
- Article
- Additional Information
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Based on a paper delivered at a conference devoted to carnivalesque studies, this article focuses attention on Rand’s masterwork, Atlas Shrugged. By utilizing the carnivalesque techniques of Menippean satire and the “dialogic” interplay of narrative voices, with trickster-heroes as the agents of social change, the author argues that Rand ruthlessly deconstructs the logic of command economies and models a society turned, as Bakhtin would say, “topsy turvy” in favor of pure free enterprise. In doing so, she also contests the political boundaries of a stereotypically left-wing genre whose scholars are also typically Marxian.