Atlas Shrugged – Day 089 – pp. 952-961
They’re going to the main signal tower. She consults with the tower director. He starts making calculations.
How are they going to move the train?
Manually. (An idea spurred on by the plans of the looters maybe?)
They’re going to hand everyone a lantern, manually forward instructions to all the signal posts, hand crank the track switches.
Taggart Trans has reverted to what rail travel was like possibly before Nat Taggart.
So she’s standing before all the men in the terminal. All the men who no longer think. Who no longer hold their own minds. Who either never had it, or have been forced to suppress their intellect long enough that they’ve fallen into a stupor.
She stands on the landing of the tower forcefully announcing what’s about to happen. In her formal dress from dinner looking like some kind of smokin’ hot, Randian superhero goddess.
And looking out into the faces of the crowd of mindless laborers she sees…
John Galt!!!
Ah Ha!!! Now she knows how he knows everything. He’s been working for her for ten years now. As a laborer in the tunnels under the Taggart offices.
Rand goes into a couple pages of romantic revelation that I really didn’t get. Culminates with Dagny’s realization of the sacrifice that Galt’s made. (Yeah, still not buying into the romance as objectivism thing.)
Anyway, she leaves, walking down one of the tunnels. And we get into some more of Rand’s romantic fantasy.
“You will follow me…” she’s thinking.
And, whaddya think? Yeah, he followed her.
“The next span of moments was like flashes of light in stretches of blinded unconsciousness… the moment when she felt his mouth on hers . . . [next page] she found herself lying on the broken sandbags, she saw the long, tight gleam of her stocking, she felt his mouth pressed to her ankle, then rising in a tortured motion up the line of her leg. . .”
This is going to be a short summary, because, for some reason, I’m tired of Ayn Rands romantic idealism.
After they get done doing the deed, Galt explains this is how he knew everything about her. That night, when she saw the figure outside the John Galt offices — it was him, not Hank. He almost broke his oath that night and came in.
Well isn’t he breaking his oath now???
Yeah, he knew about Hank Rearden. Banging her all the while he was miserably longing for her in the tunnels. Went to catch a glimpse of him at an industrialists conference. He realized that he should have been who Hank was. And then realized the fight that Hank was forwarding. And suddenly he became accepting of their affair.
Ah ha! A page later, he admits he’s breaking his oath. But he understands the consequences of what he’s doing. How his presence could somehow be leaked out to the looters. Says he’s willing to risk it and pay whatever the costs. (Don’t know what he can afford on a railroad laborer’s salary. They don’t accept gold in this world.)
Is she ready to go with him?
“I think they’re crumbling and that I’ll win. I can stand it just a little longer.”
“True, it’s just a little longer — not till you win, but till you learn.”
He’s going back to be a human lamp post. They can’t see each other ever again in this world. But he leaves her with the escape plan.
“…when you’re ready to quit, don’t tell them, just chalk a dollar sign on the pedestal of Nat Taggart’s statue — where it belongs — then go home and I’ll come for you in twenty-four hours.”
And he’s off. And she’s emotionally torn.
All this “he’s loved her from afar” crap is getting to me. It doesn’t fit with the reason for it. A more romantic motive might be a class difference, or a familial thing (like Romeo & Juliet or the Hatfields and McCoys). But this giving up … what? … an industrialist ideal — held between two industrialists? … for the sake of Dagny, suffering as a laborer to be near her.
What’s keeping them apart is her unwillingness to give up her industrialist ideals to fight on in the real world. I don’t know. It’s not even like democrat vs republican. It’s two of the same people who share the same ideas, just disagreeing on how to execute. I can suffer as much romance as the next guy, but it’s got to be something. And that story line ain’t it.
I listened to La Boheme last night for the 237th time. That’s romance!!! Ayn Rand, meet Giacomo Puccini!
And another thing. You know, you can create a character so brilliant, so virtuous, so handsome that he can actually make you hate him. Not like out of jealousy. But out of the fact that he’s not real and actually starts to detract from the story.
There’s nobody in the world like John Galt. I’m sorry. Maybe some people come close, but once you peel back a few layers, I doubt it. We’re all more like Jimmy Taggart. Not nuts but complex.
Anyway. That’s the end of Chapter V.