FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Concerto of Deliverance

Sorry, I'm late, but this is the point in the AS timeline that I wanted to bring up an idea I had from the start: How would Hank's action have played out if he and Lillian had a child?

At this point, they had been married for 10 years. I could easily see Lillian, being the manipulative creature she is, likely would have let herself get pregnant as another means of control on Hank. Being wealthy, she knows or anticipates she doesn't have to deal with the nasty realities of runny noses or little bottoms.

But Hank is the real issue: would he have left? Would he have taken the child with him? In the real world, I'm pretty confident Hank would take the child with him. I can't see even the character of Hank Reardon of AS leaving his child behind to face destitution and starvation, esp since the child would be very young (< 10 yo). IMHO, Rand doesn't deal with the issue of children because a) her characters are ideal people, and she wants to focus on them. b) she had no real world experience herself and couldn't fit it into her philosophy. Which is too bad. How she would have dealt with the unearned, unconditional love, of a parent for their child would be interesting.

Interesting speculation. It does seem in Lillian's character although Lord only knows what sort of a mother she'd have been. Hank would certainly have been a stern and demanding father.

We brought it up in the discussion of Galt's Gulch (Chapter 22?) - one of the speakers is very specific that children and family aren't invited along, and we recall that Galt's first boss, the engineer at the Twentieth Century Motor Company, took his annual month there without his wife until he died. And yet there were two children in the Gulch, two little boys far too young to have acceded to the social contract that was Galt's oath, or even to have understood it. Were Hank in extremis maybe the kid, if he wasn't a little monster spoiled by public education into thinking that he was (as a Rearden scion) entitled to the world, might have been admitted. Or Rearden would find somewhere else. It isn't as if the Gulch is the only safe haven.

Could Hank have abandoned him? We're getting into spoiler territory here; suffice it to say that some of Rand's main characters seem to make more of an effort to protect their subordinates and dependents than do others, when at last their shoulders shrug. Whether a child would have come under that category is difficult to say.

One complication within Objectivist theory is that it presupposes independence on the part of persons who intend to follow its precepts. Children are a difficulty and an exception - Rand said so herself outside the novel - but what I envision is a sort of Heinlein-like moment at which the young person may either elect to become a citizen by invoking the Oath or...well, that's a difficulty. Live somewhere else? Accept some sort of non-citizen dependency such as a slave in ancient Greece? Starve? Suicide? The individual's freedom of choice there is limited by those choices available, and unless others are silly enough willingly to submit to the yoke of socialism that option might not be available. OTOH, judging by current society there might be no shortage of such earnest sheep. Best of luck to them, as long as it isn't on my back.

In reference to

Part 3

The Utopia of Greed

'The recaptured sense of her own childhood kept coming back to her whenever she met the two sons of the young woman who owned the bakery shop. She often saw them wandering down the trails of the valley - two fearless beings, aged seven and four.'

..."They represent my particular career Miss Taggart...

...You know of course that there can be no collective commitments in this valley and that families or relatives are not allowed to come here, unless each person takes the strikers oath by his own independent conviction... ...I came here to bring up my sons as human beings."

Seven and four, well within the timeline of the valley. Running her bakery was not the only thing she was doing.

As a contrast to the Bakers story, the testimony of the tramp to Dagny -

"...Now, if a baby was born we didn't speak to the parents for weeks. Babies, to us, had become what locusts are to farmers."

Since the Starnes choice was the antithesis of the Gulchers I think that children were indeed welcome in the valley. Those who had been corrupted through exposure to the outside world would have had to wait until they were able to make the choice on their own. Naturally occurring births and deaths along with disability are rare in Atlas Shrugged, possibly in an attempt to keep the novel at a reasonable length :-)

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