Ayn Rand said that the challenge in characterization is to present that which is essential to a certain kind of person, “while at the same time giving enough specific detail so that the character comes across as this particular human being.” In Romantic fiction the characters can be divided into the heroes and the villains—in Objectivist terms, the rational and the irrational. To differentiate villainous characters from one another, an author must choose for them different forms of irrational thought, action and statement. In Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand does this, in part, by using dialogue that includes textbook-quality examples of several logical fallacies. In this lecture, after an essentialized review of some common fallacies, Mrs. Peikoff will pull such examples right from the pages of Atlas. She will explain how putting different fallacies in the mouths of the novel’s various villains helps to develop their characterization. The result is a new perspective on Miss Rand’s classic work—and, at the same time, an entertaining mini-refresher course in logic.