AtlasShrugged/TopicsOfNote

• Atlas

As told in AtlasShrugged, Atlas carried the world on his shoulders. But in the GreekMyths?, AtlaS? stands on the earth and holds up the sky. In the statues that represent Atlas, the big round thing on his back represents the heavens, which, because of the apparent circular motion of the planets around the earth, were conceived of as being round. Some tellings of the Atlas myth have him carrying both the earth and the heavens on his back, but this appears to be a modern retelling; further research might confirm this.

• Crime

Common street crime is conspicuously absent in /AtlasShrugged?. Characters walk the streets with no thought of being mugged or attacked.

• Lying

The sympathetic characters of /AtlasShrugged? do not tell lies. Even when they are clearly trying to conceal something, they do not rely on overt falsehood, even when it is obvious that they could do so without being found out. There are a few exceptions.

1. In /SectioN112 /BrakemaN tells /DagnyTaggart he does not recall the name of the song he was whistling or where he heard it.
2. In /SectioN141 /FranciscoDAnconia tells the press he came to /NewYork because of a hat check girl and the liverwurst at Moe's Delicatessan.
3. In /SectioN151 we learn /DagnyTaggart once lied to her mother about a cut to her lip that /FranciscoDAnconia had given her. This was the only lie she ever told.