Atlas Shrugged – Day 070 – pp. 762-771
Cut to scene, Dagny’s at the airfield in Galt’s Gulch (that’s what they’re calling it.) Who gets off the plane but Owen Kellogg.
He brings back a bit of reality. It’s been three days since she’s been missing and the outside world thinks she’s dead. Harsh reality.
“She nodded slowly, grasping the events she had not thought of considering.”
Owen tells her the story of how he got off the Comet which was trudging along too slowly and hitchhiked through the night to be on time to catch Midas Mulligan’s ferry plane. “Ferry plane”?!? What the hell? Sounds like something from the future.
Then he tells her about his call to Hank Rearden.
Later she’s thinking about it all. She’s still torn. She want’s to go back and fight for it all. But she sees what’s being built around her and realizes its importance too.
She shuddered, closing her eyes, feeling as if she were guilty of double treason, feeling as if she were suspended in space between this valley and the rest of the earth, with no right to either.
Later with Galt, she asks if there’s any communication with the outside world. Nope.
“Not from here. Not during this month. Not to outsiders at anytime.”
And she’s having trouble looking Galt in the eye.
A bit later, she’s sitting in her room doing some of her domestic chores when she hears to door open.
It’s Francisco. He’s despondent. He has to leave.
Can you stand a shock? Francisco goes into the guest room and Galt closes the door behind them.
Well, that was Francisco’s problem. Why he was late. He’d been searching for Dagny’s remains. The sight of her is overwhelming and he drops to his knees and hugs her.
Then he goes into a typical Rand 2-page, 1-paragraph spiel about his love for her and now how she knows the truth. We’ve heard it before, so I’ll skip the whole thing. But there was one thing I want to mention.
When he talks about his leaving the real world, it was because of a realization that struck him.
“I saw that any man’s desire for money he could not earn was regarded as a righteous wish, but if he earned it, it was damned as greed –“
This brings to mind a kind of question I think some people struggle with about Ayn Rand. About her stand on charity and giving. I’ve come to the conclusion that she’s actually all for it. She’s all for doing whatever you want with the money you earn.
Hey, be like the “giving billionaires” and give it all away. Whatever.
Her view is just that people aren’t entitled.
I was listening to a recording on ARC-TV the other night that put Rand’s view of capitalism in some perspective. In it they talked about the word “altruism,” and how Rand stood against the idea.
By inference, we understand it to mean a charitable, giving nature. But by definition, the word is an ideology. A philosophy of life where the only good is to “live for the sole benefit of others.” (They broke it down in Latin. I forget.)
Anyway, that’s Rand’s beef. Charity, generosity, being kind to those less fortunate isn’t the sin. It’s being forced to accept it as a way of life. To surrender your life in the service of others.
Now some may see that as their calling. Like Mother Theresa. Fine. Nothing wrong with that. It’s the value you choose to give the world. But to interpret it as divine law – what is morally right – what we all must do is dead wrong.
People will say that it’s what Jesus Christ preached. I’m not sure. I happened to be listening in church the other day when they read from St Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians. What’d he tell them?
“For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” (2-Thessalonians 3:7-12)
How ’bout that?
Now I’m not a bible thumper. I certainly can’t quote chapters and verses. And I don’t want to turn this into a religious debate. But that passage struck me in church that day. Sometimes it pays to pay attention.
Anyway, back to Dagny’s room.
Francisco acclaims his love for her AND acknowledges that she’s moved on. That they can’t be together (like that) any more. Is there no limit to this guy’s nobility???
But there’s a twist brewing. (maybe)
As he tells her he accepts her love for Hank she thinks…
“But it isn’t — she thought – it isn’t he, and I can’t tell you the truth, because it’s a man who might never hear it from me and whom I might never have.”
She’s got the hots for John Galt?
They go back to the living room. Francisco’s transformed. Galt’s a little ambivalent. (Hots for Dagny?)
Slug accompanies Frisco back to his place. She admires the minimal accommodations. The only things he brought from the outside world was his family crest and two silver goblets belonging to his parents.
He tells her that d’Anconia Copper is done for in a couple months. And when he leaves, he’s going to work for d’Anconia Copper.
Huh??
He’s discovered a mine there on the mountain. Bought the property from Midas. Got things building already.
And then he says something profound.
I’ll pick that up tomorrow. . .