Who Is Hank Rearden's Atlas Shrugged?

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Throughout Atlas Shrugged, Henry “Hank” Rearden, the genius inventor and owner of the Rearden Steel Company, struggles with the conflict between the innate individualism he possesses and the communization pushed upon him by the business culture he is intertwined with. The industrial and productive independence of Hank Rearden allows for his success in the industry and his hasty ascension in his field. As a young man, he labored intensely in the mines and disregarded bodily pain and suffering in favor of the heightened production that he achieved. This separated Rearden from his peers and allowed him to create the Rearden Steel Mill. While at his mill, Rearden creates a new type of metal that reflects his own durability, strength, and self-reliance. Hank …show more content…

Carnegie conceded to a more socialist mindset, proclaiming in his 1889 essay The Gospel of Wealth that “the best means of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise.” Carnegie has, by saying this, flown in the face of the individualism which he championed during his large accumulation of wealth. Andrew Carnegie’s legacy is at this point one of philanthropy. It is said that he gave away 90% of his net worth to charitable organizations. Carnegie is a prime example of the conflicts of individualism, which lends itself to the accumulation of wealth, and collectivism, which lends itself to the dispersal of wealth. Carnegie’s succumbing to philanthropy was not a result of public pressure, but instead his conscience. That is not to say that capitalism and self-reliance are inherently immoral, but instead, it is to say that the environment of American business Carnegie inhabited warped the ideals of a businessman built so firmly on the ideas of individualism. Unlike Carnegie, Hank Rearden found a solution to his conflict that relied more heavily on

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