All 15 Uses of

obscure

in

Atlas Shrugged

Ellis Wyatt's father had managed to squeeze an obscure living to the end of his days, out of the dying oil wells.†
Chpt 1.1 *

Ellis Wyatt did not wait for the court to decide whether the accident was an act of God, as James Taggart claimed, He transferred the shipping of his oil to the Phoenix-Durango, an obscure railroad which was small and struggling, but struggling well.†
Chpt 1.3

He had owned a cigarette factory once, but it had gone bankrupt, and he had resigned himself to the lonely obscurity of his little stand in the midst of an eternal whirlpool of strangers.†
Chpt 1.3

…only a deaf wall to batter, a wall of the most effective soundproofing: indifference, that swallowed blows, chords and screams-a battle of silence, for a man who could give to sounds a greater eloquence than they had ever carried-the silence of obscurity, of loneliness, of the nights when some rare orchestra played one of his works and he looked at the darkness, knowing that his soul went in trembling, widening circles from a radio tower through the air of the city, but there were no…†
Chpt 1.4

He looked like the hulk of an evangelist or a professor of esthetics who had spent years in contemplation in obscure museums.†
Chpt 1.7

The issue had hung in the balance; an obscure group of scientists had quietly forced a bill through its long way to the floor of the Legislature; there had been some public hesitation about the bill, some doubt, an uneasiness no one could define.†
Chpt 1.7

They drove through small towns, through obscure side roads, through the kind of places they had not seen for years.†
Chpt 1.9

She would have taken money from Jim now and run to hide in some obscure hotel for the weeks of their engagement-but he did not offer it.†
Chpt 2.2

Years before, Rearden had worked in an obscure steel plant in Minnesota, where it had been his job, after a blast furnace was tapped, to close the hole by hand-by throwing bullets of fire clay to dam the flow of the metal.†
Chpt 2.3

…rail of the Miami branch was in better condition than that of the Winston section, one had to remember, from a sociological viewpoint, that the Miami branch carried a much more important class of passenger traffic; therefore, the chief engineer suggested that Winston could be kept waiting a little longer, and recommended the sacrifice of an obscure section of mountain trackage for the sake of a branch where "Taggart Transcontinental could not afford to create an unfavorable impression.†
Chpt 2.6

They say that Orren Boyle seems to have known about that directive long ago, weeks or months in advance, because he had started, quietly and secretly, to reconstruct his furnaces for the production of Rearden Metal, in one of his lesser steel plants, an obscure little place way out on the coast of Maine, He was ready to start pouring the Metal the moment Rearden's extortion paper-I mean, Gift Certificate-was signed.†
Chpt 2.7

The man who retires from public life, to think, but not to share his thoughts-the man who chooses to spend his years in the obscurity of menial employment, keeping to himself the fire of his mind, never giving it form, expression or reality, refusing to bring it into a world he despises-the man who is defeated by revulsion, the man who renounces before he has started, the man who gives up rather than give in, the man who functions at a fraction of his capacity, disarmed by his longing…†
Chpt 3.7

I must remember where I am-thought Dagny, clenching her fists under the tablecloth, in the obscurity of a side table.†
Chpt 3.8

She had been placed at a table prominent enough to display her to the assembly, but obscure enough to keep her out of the line of Galt's sight, along with those who had incurred Galt's disfavor: with Dr. Ferris and Eugene Lawson.†
Chpt 3.8

…through four days and nights-while he drove down deserted highways, across a country collapsing into chaos, while he developed a monomaniac's cunning for obtaining illegal purchases of gas, while he snatched random hours of restless sleep, in obscure motels, under assumed names…… I'm Robert Stadler-he had thought, his mind repeating it as a formula of omnipotence…… To seize control-he had thought, speeding against the futile traffic lights of half-abandoned towns-speeding on the…†
Chpt 3.9

Definition:

(obscure as in: it obscured my view)
to block from view or make less visible or understandable

editor's notes: Although this meaning of obscure typically refers to seeing or understanding, it can also refer to situation where something makes something else harder to detect or as when a noise makes another noise difficult to hear. Similarly it can reference something overshadowing something else, as in "Her memory of her dog's death was obscured by her brother's death the next day."