Posted on 05/23/2009 7:14:53 AM PDT by Publius
Synopsis
Dagny returns to her Manhattan apartment after her one month absence. Looking over the fogbound city, she yearns for the presence of that One Man she has never found, the man she yearned for the night the mysterious stranger lingered at the entrance of the John Galt Line’s offices.
The doorbell rings and it’s Francisco; he wants to talk to her about what happened and to convince her to leave the railroad to the looters. But she can’t; as long as there’s a railroad to run, she’ll be there to run it. Francisco tells her she will stop running the railroad the day she discovers that her work has been placed in the service of the One Man’s destruction. Dagny intends to force the looters to make terms with her, not the other way around, but Francisco tells her it won’t work. She believes she may come to beg Francisco’s forgiveness on her knees some day, but he says it won’t be on her knees. Until then she is his enemy; he will be working to destroy the railroad and her, not Jim or Wesley Mouch, and he will be working in the service of the One Man to whose purpose he has pledged his life. Francisco tells her the road to understanding leads to Atlantis, and Dagny now understands that Francisco is in league with The Destroyer.
Then Hank Rearden arrives. Hank is furious at Francisco’s presence in the apartment of his lover, and Francisco struggles to maintain the famous d’Anconia courtesy. Hank accuses Francisco of trying to add Dagny to his list of conquests. He is willing to accept Hank’s reproaches, but not in Dagny’s presence. Hank tells him to stay away from Dagny. Francisco is willing to give his word, and at that moment Hank realizes that Dagny was the women that Francisco had loved all along. Hank slaps Francisco, and it takes all of Francisco’s self control not to kill Hank Rearden on the spot. Dagny realizes in that moment that she is witnessing Francisco’s greatest achievement. As Francisco leaves, Hank wishes he could retract the last few minutes.
Dagny admits that Francisco was her only lover before him, and Hank reels from the knowledge. Dagny expects in that moment to be killed by Hank, or at least beaten, but instead he takes her brutally, as though to drive Francisco out of her body.
The building superintendent comes to deliver a letter to Dagny that he has been holding in her absence. It’s from Quentin Daniels, and it prompts her to grab the phone and call Utah in a panic. Daniels will not work under Directive 10-289, will not work for the looters, but intends to work on the motor for his own pleasure without accepting further remuneration from Dagny. She tells Hank that The Destroyer probably has Daniels and that she has met one of his agents. Then Daniels picks up the phone at Utah Tech. Dagny wants to meet with him in person and gets him to promise not to leave until she has spoken with him. Dagny calls Eddie Willers and asks him to place her private car on that evening’s Comet. Hank agrees to meet her in Colorado.
Eddie comes over to Dagny’s place to coordinate. He informs her that the railroad building effort is going well, even though it has been difficult to find the necessary men. Eddie had even asked Dan Conway to come out of retirement from his Arizona ranch, but he had refused. As Dagny packs, Eddie notices Hank Rearden’s robe in her closet and is floored; for a second he is afraid he will speak of his secret love for her.
After seeing Dagny off, Eddie sits down to dinner with the Anonymous Rail Worker in the corporate cafeteria and brings him up to date, to include Dagny’s mission to Utah to beat The Destroyer to Quentin Daniels. After hinting of his own feelings for Dagny, he lets slip that Dagny is sleeping with Hank Rearden. The Anonymous Rail Worker bolts from the room without further word.
Discussion Topic
Rand had a couple of influences on her dialogue that make Atlas Shrugged difficult to judge. For one thing, English was not her native language although she spoke it with a fluency that native speakers envy. On the other hand, she was a Hollywood scriptwriter - a very good one, by all accounts, used by no less than Hal Wallis (Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Gunfight At The OK Corral, Becket, Anne of the Thousand Days, etc, etc) as a "script-fixer." Serious lit cred, if you will. So I don't feel too bad applying the highest standards to her dialogue - she earned the right.
But you can tell that AS is a very personal novel to her in that her heroine now and again departs from Dagny-dom into Ayn-hood. And back again, often in the same passage. I mentioned Dagny's use of the word "syllogism" in a rather unlikely context last week - it was actually a minor departure and Rand would have gotten away with it if she hadn't ended the chapter on it, leaving it, and us, twisting in the lexical wind.
Some other minor bitches since I'm on the topic - she is inordinately fond of the word "perish," placing it in nearly everyone's mouth when the simpler "die" would have sufficed. And she is particularly fond of the word "torture," employing it to mean everything from mild psychological annoyance to electrodes...but let's not jump the gun there. That does nothing but remind the prurient among us of her sexual proclivities, and it's usually unjustified. More or less.
Now and then I catch myself thinking "Is this Dagny talking now, or Rand?" That's actually a testament to the strength of her writing - you couldn't do that if Dagny's character hadn't been developed to the point where it displays a high degree of internal consistency. That's a tough thing to maintain over the course of 1100 pages and despite my grumbling I'd be the first to admit that Rand does a pretty doggone good job of it.
Yeah. Doesn't really do much for the story (the ongoing affair with HR at least), but to illustrate something Rand had to say about sexual attraction, perhaps to justify her own legendary promiscuity. Something I believe is an impertinence and a needless distraction. The continuation of that story line might convince me I'm wrong, but I doubt it.
BTW I have caught up and I'm actually a couple chapters ahead. I picked up an audio version, which increases the time I can give to following the story. It is something like 53 hours of audio.
I never expected it to so perfectly illustrate the happenings of today.
Exactly. It's when the dialog is inconsistent with the character (and in the worst examples, inconsistent with any known human) that it feels like painting a house with a crescent wrench.
The parallels to today's events would of course be more precise in something from only 50 years ago, especially with FDR in recent memory at the time.
At the risk of sounding crude, Rand writes about sex as if she’d never gotten any...
The credit union's goal is to become self-sustaining by its fourth year, Kurz says. By definition, credit unions are not for profit, and excess income is returned to members through better interest rates and other services.
The non-profit designation may be construed as a negative but the truth is that they are more of a cooperative with profits being returned to the members. Non-profit doesn't infer giveaways. They are more in line with free market principals than the headline 'A new bank, Express Credit Union, aimed not at making profits but at helping people build financial stability' leads us to believe.
Yeah, I gotta wonder. Personally I never had much luck with the “I’m only interested in your mind, my dear,” approach. I mean, it’s almost like they heard that one before...
Funny thing is, the smart ones get INSULTED if you use that line.
:-)
I did that just to see if you were paying attention :-)
Not sure why I gigged you on it. Don’t normally play spelling police.
At least I know that my random error generator is still functioning.
Hmmm, a bank to serve the poor. Sounds like a great business model.
My wife tells me that I like to write fiction because it gives me the chance to put words into everyone’s mouths!
Bill, you mention her Christian imagery. I don’t know if this is mentioned earlier, but I can’t shake the similarity between the 3 Amigos (Galt, D’Anconia, and Danneskold) and the Holy Trinity (God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost, respectively). In this chapter we see Francisco sacrificing/being sacrificed in some sense. The only one of the 3 we really see in the real world working issues is Francisco, and you certainly have the feeling that his love for Dagney is not going to end well in the end. We saw Ragnar once, but the rest of his time is spent “out there”, unseen while doing his deeds. Francisco seems to be the one suffering in a real sense for what they’re doing.
Not exact, but it’s certainly close enough that I noticed it. Kind of ironic for the Objectivist.
Hmmm. And Francisco seems almost worshipful of Galt, where Galt’s attitude toward Francisco seems more affectionate/supportive/generous, but without the abject veneration.
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