AbFab analysis! However, note how Dagny made her choice at an emotional moment. Her man was in trouble. Most of the time Rand’s characters are so one dimensional its pathetic. The sex scenes have less zip than your average 3rd rate porn flick.
Maybe one dimensional is the wrong term. Perhaps
“absolute” or black and white. And then the psychological mindset of the heroes. Have you ever seen more passive-aggressive people in your life? I also wonder if this where the liberals got the idea of victimology.
Serious about your analysis. Great. Can’t remember, did any of the characters limp?
parsy.
As for the sex scenes, well, it was 1957, after all. I did think the thing with Galt in the abandoned tunnel was pretty...ah, forceful...I mean, taking a chunk out of the guy with her teeth and all, tearing off the dress, down and dirty on the burlap sacks, concupiscent slurping echoing through the stone walls of a man-made cave. If Rand had placed the word "syllogism" in Dagny's mouth at that point I think I'd have burned the book and become a Carmelite monk. Well, there aren't any, but I would have if there were.
As for Dagny capping the guard, what the heck, it's only a week until that chapter and it's the last one. She shoots him offhand with a silenced pistol, coldly, bloodlessly, with less regard than one might shoot an animal (nearly Rand's exact words). Rand did trains very well, steel mills she brought to life, airplanes not so bad; gunplay she took out of 40's Westerns. It would have been a much rougher (and better, IMHO) novel if she had gone into the same detail about Dagny's victim spitting blood and exsanguinating on the floor as she did with Galt's little electrical S&M scene. As it is, the guard was a cardboard prop that fell with a thump when pushed. It bugged me. ;-)