Posted on 06/13/2009 7:47:47 AM PDT by Publius
Synopsis
John finds Dagny awake and tells her he needs to re-calibrate the cloaking device. Dagny asks for her cane and tells him she will have his breakfast ready by the time he returns. While Dagny works in the kitchen, she is interrupted by a blonde Norseman, who upon John’s return, is introduced as Ragnar Danneskjøld.
Dagny serves breakfast, making sure that John does not help. She discovers that she is Francisco’s stand-in at the annual June 1st breakfast at Galt’s Gulch; Francisco hasn’t arrived, and no one knows why. Ragnar says he came very close to recruiting Hank Rearden, but John tells him to shut up in Dagny’s presence. She wants to know, but Ragnar follows orders. Ragnar tells of a flight carrying a huge amount of gold to the Mulligan Bank, to include gold credited to Dagny, and she hears a long lecture on the logic and methods used to calculate her golden refund. She is astonished to find that Ragnar is married to Kay Ludlow.
Upon Ragnar’s departure, Dagny decides not to accept the gold, but John tells her that a certain small portion of it will be deducted for her room and board. In staying for a month until her injuries heal, Dagny decides to work for her room and board by becoming John’s maid and cook.
Owen Kellogg arrives three days later and is shocked to see Dagny. He tells her that the world thinks her plane has crashed and that she is dead. He honored his pledge to find a job for Jeff Allen, who is now working for the railroad. He had also called Hank Rearden to give him the bad news.
Francisco arrives but says he has to leave almost immediately to search for Dagny. John suggests he go to the guestroom to meet a scab, and when he sees Dagny, he rushes to embrace her. He admits that he still loves her and that this valley should help her understand everything that was at stake. He tells her the story of the past twelve years, of pledging his life to John Galt, the disguise of the worthless playboy, and the plan to stop the motor of the world. He still loves her, even if she will only give herself to another. Returning to the living room, Francisco says he will not have to leave after all. The question arises of somehow letting people know that Dagny is alive, but John can’t permit it.
Visiting Francisco at his house, Dagny finds that he is anxious for the final collapse of d’Anconia Copper because then he can rebuild the company from the mine he has dug in the hills around Galt’s Gulch. Once she is healed, he will take her to see it. There is a momentary sense of desire, but they both let it lie.
Dagny discovers that John spends his evenings lecturing on physics. She tries to find where John spends the rest of the year, but he refuses to divulge. As he is out lecturing, Dagny finds herself wanting John to return; she yearns for his presence.
One night he comes home as she is resting and mentions the way she looked in her office. She wonders how he would have seen her there, but he still won’t talk about it. He admits he saw her for the first time ten years earlier in the underground warren of the Taggart Terminal. He had seen Dagny in formal evening dress giving orders in the tunnels, and he knew then that the abandonment of his motor was not the hardest price he would have to pay. Dagny remembers the event, a mess created by a new terminal manager. John admits that he had recruited the previous manager and every other critical person on the railroad; his goal was to make the railroad collapse.
As John goes to bed, Dagny tosses and turns. Francisco? Hank? No, she yearns for John Galt to come to her room and take her, but he doesn’t. However, she hears him pace the floor and light a cigarette. He can’t sleep either.
Richard Halley finishes a private recital for Dagny, and she is overcome with joy. Not many people have the same feeling for his music as Dagny, and that is payment enough for him. He appreciates the fact that she understands his music, that it is not simply a matter of feeling, but of feeling what he wanted her to feel. Dagny is sad that Halley’s music never leaves the valley, but Halley rejoices in the concerts he has played there; it is enough. Halley gives a profanity-laced lecture on why he is happier among businessmen than among other artists.
There is a reunion dinner of Hugh Akston’s star students, to include Ragnar’s wife Kay. Akston talks of their years at Patrick Henry University and how the penniless John Galt fit in with the other two men from the aristocracy. The first question that the young freshman John Galt had asked in a special class for postgraduates was one he would have been pleased to hear from a graduate student, a question Plato had forgotten to ask. They had majored in both physics and philosophy, and he and Robert Stadler had competed for them. Stadler had taken a fatal short cut in life by sanctioning the rule of the looters. Akston is proud that his “sons” made no concessions and that they became what they are.
Dagny and John explore Francisco’s mine in the hills above the valley. Becoming the consummate railroad professional, she suggests that Francisco stop using mule power and build a railroad to get his copper out. She asks for a pencil and paper and draws what she has in mind: a short narrow-gauge line with a tunnel and some trestles. But she stops in midstream as she realizes that she can’t give up her transcontinental railroad for this. John warns her that her commitment must be total; if she stays, she will have to hear about every wreck and disaster on her railroad as it dies. Dagny wonders how Francisco found her at her mountain cabin; he says that John had told him. Francisco asks Dagny to move in with him for her last week, but at Dagny’s request, John vetoes it; she has a job.
While shopping at Hammond’s, she and Hammond notice that a plane is trying to buzz the valley. Dagny runs to the airfield, looks into a telescope and discovers that the plane belongs to Hank Rearden. She runs onto the field and frantically signals to Hank, only to realize that he can’t see her.
Following dinner at Mulligan’s, Dagny is asked for her decision, but she asks for one more day. Mulligan says that only ten men are going back into the world, mostly to convert what they own and come back to Galt’s Gulch permanently. John shocks the men present when he says he may return to New York for one more year; the outside world is nearing open violence, and they don’t want John out there for the grand finale. Mulligan reminds him of failing infrastructure and of New York falling into starvation. When he mentions the coming collapse of the Taggart bridge over the Mississippi River, Dagny makes her decision: she is going back. She believes that men cannot be so blind as to abandon everything to destruction. The men think she’ll be back soon enough once she sees that her premises are faulty. John lists the conditions of her departure: secrecy as to the valley’s existence and no attempt to find it again.
At John’s house, Dagny confronts him about his decision. He is going back because Dagny will be there – and because he wants to be there when she decides to join the strikers. Dagny is not sure that day will ever come, but John is. She is to leave early the next morning.
Blindfolded, she rides in John’s plane as they depart Galt’s Gulch. They land on a deserted highway a mile outside a small town where there is a Taggart station. John tells her he’ll be the easiest man to find when she needs him. He takes off and flies away.
The Real Life Richard Halley
The model for Halley may have been the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, as suggested by some. But Halley’s profanity-laced lecture points more to the brilliant and irascible American composer Charles Ives, who had finally reached acclaim before his death in 1954 at age 79.
During the Thirties, Ives attended a concert of modern classical music in New York when he sat in front of a man who complained during the intermission that the music didn’t have any melodies he could hum. Ives turned around and hissed, “You goddamn sissy!” One can almost hear the voice of Richard Halley.
Discussion Topics
Last Spring, I was rooting for Obama to beat Hillary in the Primaries, because I figured that SHE was the one that would come in with guns blazing and turn us into a Socialist State. I thought that he was too much of a green-horn to be able to do much at all. I imagined that he would just keep the status quo going. Geez, was I wrong!
Actually, I firmly believe that if Hitlery were President, we’d be in much worse shape.
What we have to do is slow Obozo down, and then ensure that the LIEberal/Socialist/Marxist Bastards (and, some of them are Republican) lose big-time in 2010.
In the meantime, I sure hope there are a large number of smart Conservative thinkers/strategists plotting right now to undo everything Obozo has/is doing to destroy the USA.
No doubt, plenty of big government spenders & regulators all the way from the statist in chief down to dogcatcher. Charged with the mission of expanding their power base no matter what.
And y’know it goes back to the roots of the modern conservative movement in the immediate post-LBJ era. While the socialist left is ever expansive, the Republican answer for the 40+ years of the movement has been only to slow it. So at the core of the platform remains expansion of government. The last 12 years or so makes that clear enough.
I have been yelling at the television for 30 years, and especially the ‘93-’06 period when Republicans held significant power, that 99% of what they accomplish is borrowing or taxing to pay for pure unadulterated crap.
Ike was in the WH when I was born, and Reagan is the best man we’ve had there in my lifetime, but he shouldn’t have accepted even 25% of what he signed into law. That’s the bottom line </rant>.
So looking forward, I remain seeking honest devolution of government to it’s constitutional powers, and the expansion of personal opportunity that would naturally bring.
Who in the Republican (or any) party is running on that platform?
Not arguing for a Randian "Utopia of Greed" in the literal sense. Indeed, her writing seems to display an ignorance of our constitution, the enumerated powers, and the reasons we allow the government to have them - and simply argues her personal philosophy in a vacuum as a magical end to all that is wrong with society and government.
We know one size doesn't fit all or even most. Reading this book it's not evident that she does. It displays many of the problems we face today with remarkable foresight, but offers nothing to solve them that would actually work.
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