Please visit the official ARI (Ayn Rand Institute) website for more details. Here are this year’s topics copied over for your convenience:

ATLAS SHRUGGED—TOPICS
Select ONE of the following three topics:

1) A considerable part of the story of Atlas Shrugged deals with issues of justice. What is the account of justice that emerges in the novel? How does it compare to other, culturally-influential accounts of justice?

2) For each of the following passages from Atlas Shrugged, explain its meaning, its relation to the story, and its wider significance.

a) James Taggart: “I don’t know [what the phrase ‘Who is John Galt?’ stands for] … But the way people use it, they always seem to say it out of—”
Dagny Taggart: “Fear? Despair? Futility?”
James Taggart: “Yes … yes, that’s what it is.”
Dagny Taggart: “That’s what I want to throw in their faces!” [Part 1, Chapter VII]

b) Eddie Willers [to Dagny Taggart]: “We can’t fight it. It can’t be answered. We can’t demand a retraction. We can’t show them our tests or prove anything. They’ve said nothing. They haven’t said a thing that could be refuted and embarrass them professionally. It’s the job of a coward. You’d expect it from some con-man or blackmailer. But, Dagny! It’s the State Science Institute!” [Part 1, Chapter VII]

c) Francisco D’Anconia: “ … why is it that throughout man’s history the Nat Taggarts, who make the world, have always won—and always lost it to the men of the Board?”
Dagny Taggart: “I … don’t know.”
[Part 2, Chapter V]

3) An important early event in the novel is the destruction of the Phoenix-Durango. What factors make its destruction possible? How does this issue relate to the meaning and theme of Atlas Shrugged?