Posted on 01/24/2009 12:15:04 PM PST by Publius
Synopsis
Hank Rearden watches the first “heat” of steel for Rearden Metal poured at his mill. Then he walks home, fingering a chain of Rearden Metal in his pocket.
At home he is greeted by his mother, his wife Lillian, his brother Philip and his friend Paul Larkin. The group makes fun of the fact that his mind is back at the steel mill and complains that all he cares about is money. Lillian, in a catty way, asks Hank to set aside December 10 for a party for their wedding anniversary.. Hank tries to tell them about the big event at the mill, but they don’t care. He gives Lillian the chain, a bracelet, which is the very first thing made from that heat of Rearden Metal, while his mother makes fun of him. (The bracelet is to become a major plot point.)
Larkin takes Hank aside and tells him what a fine product he has but hints that there might be trouble. Hank has a bad press, is only interested in his steel and mills, and doesn’t care about public opinion. Larkin hints that there may be a problem with Hank’s lobbyist in DC but doesn’t go into detail. (This is Wesley Mouch, but he is not identified by name.)
Philip Rearden says he is spending his time raising money for the Friends of Global Progress, and he is upset that rich people have no social conscience. Hank tells Philip to go down to the mill tomorrow and pick up a check for ten thousand dollars. Philip barely thanks him and actually reproaches him for not truly caring about the underprivileged. Hank says he doesn’t care and was only giving the money to Philip to make him happy. Philip says that he has no selfish interest in the money – but he wants the money in cash so that Hank Rearden’s tainted name cannot be attached to it.
Larkin tells Hank that he shouldn’t have given the money to Philip, and Lillian sees the act as a display of Hank’s vanity. She likens the bracelet of Rearden Metal to a chain of bondage.
Hank Rearden’s Living Hell
The first chapter gives the reader a view into the lives of Dagny, Jim, Eddie and Taggart Transcontinental, while the purpose of the second chapter is to introduce Hank Rearden, his mill, his history and the nest of vipers he calls a family. One searches in vain for redeeming qualities, and one wishes that Hank had thrown the whole lot out on the street before the first page. The parasites who live off his wealth have no respect for the man who keeps them in food and gives them a roof over their heads. A highly successful man is an object of pity and contempt precisely because of his success.
The Real Life Rearden Steel Plant
In my youth, I recall a family outing to Pennsbury Manor, the ancestral home of William Penn and family near Morrisville, PA. Along the way, near the Pennsylvania Railroad’s (now Amtrak’s) Northeast Corridor rail line, I recall a large steel mill owned by US Steel. I don’t know if it’s still in operation, but its position with respect to Philadelphia is close to where Hank Rearden’s steel mill is located in the book.
Some Discussion Topics
We find that out later in a flashback so long it almost takes up an entire chapter. It's when Dagny meets the man who accidently coined the phrase.
Rand does seem to see the novel as a proscenium. The characters are all archetypes and meant to be that way. They step out of the play to approach the audience and declaim and then step back into the story. I am not sure it is effective, but that could just be me. I once was discussing this with a classical liberal type and I said that I liked the thesis of the book, but couldn’t stand the writing or the characters. He looked puzzled and said it was just the opposite for him.
As to the $10k, Hank doesn’t seem to care about the money. He is a Creator Archetype and cares more about his own creation. He didn’t care about the cause, either, but the money was nothing to him (and was perhaps about $60k in today’s money, not inconsequential) and he just seemed to want to shut Phillip up by giving to his cause. Of course, Phillip, being a Limousine Liberal, had to petulantly carp about Hank’s motivations. I was wondering just how much Phillip had contributed, assuming he has an allowance or access to a trust fund. Or, just how much actual work any of his group had ever done for anyone’s benefit, let alone to survive.
BTW, has anyone else noticed that all the Heros are lean, angular, tall and fit and all the Looters are soft, fat and slouch?
Nicely stated. Had they earned their money, they would have held a proprietary sense toward the money. It's theirs through the sweat of their brow. But if it's somebody elses, that's different.
That's where my tag line comes in. I filched it from Margaret Thatcher.
Voting for once a week.
Thanks for the post. I am enjoying the discussion very much.
“Thanks for the post. I am enjoying the discussion very much.”
I second this opinion. It’s like a really good literature class, one without the ex-hippie liberal instructor. :)
I hadn’t integrated “jealousy” into my assessment of the Rearden clan, but that is spot-on. Someone else thought that Rearden Mom had once been wealthy, or at least middle-class, and I say, “No Way!” I can’t remember if it is this chapter or later (no spoiler) where she gets all sanctimonious and acts like Hank’s successes are because of her rearing of him. She definitely does not act like she deserves wealth, and it sits on her rather uncomfortably.
Now, here is a thought that is new to me: How much younger is Philip Rearden? Young enough to imply that Hank had his father around him for at least part of his childhood. Did Hank go to work at age 14 when his father passed? Does it matter? He had to have gotten a work ethic from somewhere.
Please sign me up. And I’ll vote for weekly.
Two topics catch my whimsy at the moment - first, the bracelet and all it symbolizes, and second, the source of Philip Reardon's sense of entitlement.
The bracelet. It is, of course, a chain, and as a symbol of bondage it has already been pointed out that it cuts two ways - first, the bondage of the individual wearing it toward Reardon and second, the reverse of the same. Clearly he is a prisoner of his own feelings for family (however unmerited by any real return of love, but more of that later). Clearly those are the bonds he must break before he can contemplate a refuge in Galt's Gulch or the like.
But more to the point, it's a bracelet. What else would one expect him to make for his wife of a small batch of prototypical metal? At what point does one's insistence on thinking in symbols get in the way of communication rather than enhance it? I recall making this point in argument with an insistent feminist who was appalled at where the bracelet ended up - no spoilers, I promise - because she felt that Rand was challenging her conviction that the relationships between the sexes were purely a social construct. Rand was, actually, and when we get to that part of the book it's going to be a very interesting discussion.
That was quite a debate, actually - we touched on whether people think in symbols or words (yes, in her case the feminist was the postmodern) or whether they're really the same thing. I'm ashamed to admit I ended the debate by cheating, pointing out that she was wearing a charm bracelet at the time. When next I saw her the bracelet was off. I still feel a little bad about that.
Now, the sense of entitlement evidenced in Philip Reardon turns into one of the overarching themes of AS. It is simply this - it is, in actuality, a feeling of superiority, and it stems from the idea that all of them in the room have succeeded in making a living off Reardon's creation by doing things that he did not - marketing, on the more innocent hand, bribery and corruption on the other. (And isn't "Wesley Mouch" one of the great names in fiction? I mean, given...) This is, if you like, derivative wealth, but it is clear that Rand regards it as earnable only by virtue of the fact that the society that mandates its necessity is irremedially corrupt in doing so. That does not make it less necessary, or Reardon less innocent for either not realizing it or refusing to play by a set of debased rules.
His family's sense of superiority is, in Rand's terms, the same felt by a thief toward his victim. It is the same sense of superiority we see in media, celebrity, and politician in the present day, as if a cutpurse with a Harvard degree is inherently more deserving of the loot than the person who accumulated it, the moocher a superior creature to the taxpayer. Washington, D.C., is lousy with this specimen. Can anyone imagine Obama and Pelosi and Reid actually regarding a welder as their rightful employer, to whom they are accountable? Or as their inferior, to be led, cajoled, manipulated, and fooled?
We know, of course, Rand's answer to that, or rather we're about to find out.
My impression of those-who-don't-need-to-work are often involved in a lot of charity work - especially the women. And yet, the uber-rich (and I don't know for sure as I am not one of them) seem very empty at the soul level.
Meanwhile, I've met many people who have little themselves, yet are active in charity work and they are filled with joy. The most joyful ones are active in their church.
I think doing good for others to justify yourself is a dead end. Doing good for others to glorify God is what brings true joy.
Since she was an atheist, this point certainly won't come out, but she nailed the empty-souled rich very well.
The differences are, IMO, that the uber-wealthy women involved in charity work are into planning *functions* where the work is done by professionals and where a high ticket price raises the money, yet they never go out of their way to actually do anything for others unless it is to start a business exploiting the poor as labor so as to use that aspect to market their own designs, while the poor women actually do things like drive the elderly, paint someones house, clean for the disabled, take a dinner to a lonely housebound individual or cook and bake for a social to raise money for the church. They give of themselves and think nothing of it.
The poor women are joyous and the wealthy women are unfulfilled.
Rand writes of Heros and other Archetypes who worship the creative force in and of Man, the individual human being, not the human race. She is the apostle of selfishness as the highest good and disdains altruism. IMO, she goes beyond atheism and instead sets up the Productive Creator as the only human object worthy of homage. She called her philosophy Objectivism and perhaps it is that aspect, the objectification of archetypes, that causes her protagonists to be essentially cold, even if they are on fire with their own goals and aims.
Her anti-heros are empty, within her context, because they are not independent or filled with their own creative energy. They need other people to provide everything, emotionally and financially, while the Heros are complete unto themselves.
It is one of the aspects of her work that irritates me, as it is shallow and one-dimensional. She may do it to add intensity to her message, but, IMO, people are more complex than that, regardless of context.
I agree with your post. I just wanted to add that bit about Ayn Rand, the woman.
To people like Philip Reardon, the only valid contribution one can make to their fellow man is in the form of a handout. Just give them a fish instead of teaching them how to fish.
Instead, there is only scorn and reproach for the industrialists that create products that make life easier and enable people to “do for themselves”; no acknowledgment whatsoever that the goods and services they provided do contribute to the general welfare.
The extent of their wealth is in itself proof that people valued the services and the resulting opportunities their services provided and a lot of people were willing to exchange money for it.
Then there’s the chain itself. This was just a joke to Lillian, wasn’t it? She even used it to make Hank feel guilty!
The chain, that little palm-full of metal represented Hank’s hopes and aspirations and a LOT of effort. For that reason alone you’d think a wife would cherish it. That was the most hurtful part of the chapter. She would rather have had something glamorous. If she had believed in him, she might have considered the notion that many years hence, Reardon Metal would be everywhere and a part of daily life for many people and that bracelet would come to have great value in terms of its cultural significance, being the first thing made from Reardon Metal.
I beg to differ.
Hank has just experience the apex of years of hard work & self-sacrifice with the first pouring of Rearden Metal. I think he wants to try to draw his family members, in this case, Phillip, into his feeling of happiness at his achievement. He's looking for someway to connect with them, the chain bracelet for Lillian, the $10K donation to Phillip's charity. Hank thinks, "let's see him [Phillip], happy for once".
Hank also thinks "didn't I say that happiness is an agent of purification?" I think this implies that experiencing an emotion, in this case happiness, can be a form of soul cleansing, a sort of baptism.
BTW, has anyone else noticed that all the Heros are lean, angular, tall and fit and all the Looters are soft, fat and slouch?
The heros seem to be described more a statues, tall, cold, with out visible emotion. Hank's happiness is not visible to anyone else, though that could just be because they are s wrapped up in themselves.
"In former times, when the honor of work had some hold upon us, it was the practice of a maker to give his name to the product, and pride of family was linked up with the maintenance of quality. Whether it was New England ships or Pennsylvania iron or Virginia tobacco, the name of an individual usually stood behind what was offered publicly as a tacit assumption of responsibility.
But, as finance capitalism grew and men and property separated, a significant change occurred in names: the new designations shed all connection with the individual and became "General," "Standard," "International," "American," which are, of course, masks. Behind these every sort of adulteration can be practiced, and no one is shamed, because no one is identified; and, in fact, no single person may be responsible. Having a real name might require having a character, and character stands in the way of profit. The invented names have a kinship with the dishonest hyperboles of advertising."
-Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences
I vote for one post per week.
I think it is handouts given by Reardon and society at large that caused the attitude of his family toward him.
Look at what happens when people feed bears. The bears become dependent, lose their natural fear and will attack you if they want something you have. They don’t feel grateful. They feel bold and entitled. The same thing for inner city youths that grow up under wellare. They are dependent, but they don’t appreciate those whose taxes allow them to live under dependence and with no contribution on their part. In fact they will often kill you if there is something they want that you have.
I certainly want to pinch Phillip’s head off.
Good insights, Kitty. I missed that about Hank’s attempt to connect and his feeling happiness. Thanx. I need to reread that portion.
Yes, the heros are statues. I knew there was something I wasn’t getting about them.
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