Atlas Shrugged – Day 071 – pp. 772-781
Francisco says:
This country was the only country in history born, not of chance and blind tribal warfare, but as a rational product of man’s mind. this country was build on the supremacy of reason — and , for on magnificent century it redeemed the world.
Indeed. The birth of the US was brought about by thinking men. Men who understood the dangers of unchecked power and the different guises that tyranny assumes. Our founding fathers. They had a vision. They brought that vision to life. And in the ensuing centuries, it has become corrupted by — what I’d say are inevitable forces of “civilized” society.
Yep. Maybe 50-some years ago Ayn Rand could write this. I wonder what she’d write today.
Then Rand makes a smooth yet somewhat — I don’t know — obscure . . . Hmmmmm — a smooth yet obscure transition to the romantic plot.
If we’re meant to be clear on her internal narrative, I’m not.
As Dagny and Francisco sit on the floor, she is having thoughts of him and what he’s meant in her life.
Then Rand suddenly cuts to dinner with Galt where Dagny is thinking about him. . .
“She could not give him up or give up the world — she thought, looking at Galt that evening.”
Rand notes some pangs of jealousy. Galt goes out every other night after dinner without telling her where and she’s entertaining all these thoughts, like people in love do, about where he’s going.
“. . .the dread that there might be a woman in his life. . . [or] the uglier dread; the sordid shape of self-sacrifice, the suspicion, not to be uttered about him that he wished to remove himself from her path and let its emptiness force her back to the man who was his best-loved friend.”
(Only Rand could come up with a “dread” like that. Turns out he’s only giving lecture. It’s what they all do during the month off.)
No. . . I think I’m getting it. Galt leaves and she paces the room thinking to herself
“I want him back –“
I guess I was confused about the “back” part. Did she mean Francisco or Hank? But “back” here doesn’t refer to getting something you once had back. It means she wants him back at the house. (Sometimes I really think Rand could do with a few thousand less words.)
She dozes off in a chair and when she wakes up — he’s back!
Galt starts to come clean about his feelings for her. He tells her about the first time he saw her. He knew she had to be made to join the cause. He started stealing all her best workers from Taggart Trans.
Dagny confronts him.
“You want to hole me here, don’t you?”
“More than anything else in the world.”
“You could hold me.”
“I know it.”
But holding her wouldn’t do.
“It’s your acceptance of this place that I want.”
So later she’s lying in bed wishing he’d come to her.
Let him come here, let him break, — let it be damned, all of it, my railroad and his strike and everything we’ve lived by! — let it be damned, everything we’ve been and are! –“
Ayn Rand – Drama queen. . .