FReeper Book Club: Atlas Shrugged, The Generator

A Publius Essay | 1 August 2009 | Publius

[Publius]

Part III: A is A
Chapter IX: The Generator

Synopsis

Dr. Robert Stadler flees New York by car, listening to the broadcast from the Wayne-Falkland Hotel. Following John Galt’s one sentence, the air goes dead and every radio station on the dial is off the air. He has been on the road four days and is now barreling through Iowa.

He had proved his uselessness to Mr. Thompson, who is now considering taking hostages to pressure Galt into working for the government. Dr. Stadler’s name is at the head of that list. Now Stadler is headed for the Xylophone, which he intends to seize to take control of part of America as his personal fiefdom. This is his revenge, not only on Thompson but on John Galt.

Harmony City, the home of Project X, is a beehive of activity, populated by armed men and armored trucks. A man lies at the gate – drunk, Stadler hopes. He is challenged by the guard who wants to know if Stadler is one of the old or one of the new. Stadler threatens his way past the guards into the mushroom-shaped building and finds that discipline is in short supply among the paramilitary group holding the site. An officer asks if Stadler is a Friend of the People, and he says he is he best friend the people have ever had. Identifying himself as the inventor of the Xylophone, he is taken through the building – and realizes that somebody has already put his plan into motion. His overbearing manner gets him in to see The Boss, who turns out to be Cuffy Meigs!

Drunk, sweating and pacing restlessly, Meigs issues orders to establish the People’s Commonwealth in Harmony City, now to be known as Meigsville. He is going to hold the region for ransom to the tune of half a million dollars for every five thousand people. If the money is not delivered by the next morning, he will activate the Xylophone.

Meigs is delighted to find that Stadler, who says he is going to take control, has come with neither weapons nor soldiers to back him up. They argue, and in a rage Meigs yanks a lever of the Xylophone. The building rises into the air, cracks open and collapses. Within a radius of a hundred miles, every standing structure disintegrates. The Taggart bridge over the Mississippi falls into the river while a passenger train is crossing. Meigs and Stadler die on the spot.

At the Wayne-Falkland, Mr. Thompson orders Galt back to his room under heavy guard. Chick Morrison resigns and flees. Wesley Mouch says that Galt absolutely must save them, and Ferris suggests that the State Science Institute has a tool that just might help – the Ferris Persuader. Thompson gives in, and Ferris tells Eugene Lawson to get the nation’s broadcast stations ready for a speech by John Galt in three hours.

Dagny leaves the hotel, runs to a phone booth and calls Francisco, updating him on the government’s plans. Francisco tells her to go home, change her clothes, pack, and meet him in forty minutes two blocks east of the Taggart Terminal. She follows his instructions and drops by the office just in time to hear that the Taggart bridge has collapsed. The Chief Engineer doesn’t know what to do. Dagny leaps to her desk like a prizefighter at the sound of the bell, picks up the phone – but then stops. She tells her Chief Engineer she doesn’t know what to do either. It is the moment: Dagny has finally shrugged. In the concourse of the Taggart Terminal, she uses her lipstick to write the Sign of the Dollar on the pedestal of Nat Taggart’s statue, even though John Galt will never see it. As she reaches the rendezvous point, she notices that New York is in a state of panic. Francisco reaches her on foot, and she recites Galt’s Oath: “I swear – by my life and my love of it – that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” They leave together.

The home of Project F is a small building, most of whose space is underground, that sits away from the State Science Institute’s main building. Sixteen men guard the building, oblivious to what is going on in the basement. Wesley Mouch, Jim Taggart and Dr. Floyd Ferris sit while a naked John Galt is strapped to a leather mattress and wired to a mechanism much like a generator, the Ferris Persuader.

Ferris orders Galt to become dictator and take control of the present system; Galt’s response is silence. Ferris orders the mechanic to turn up the current, and Galt arches in pain. They torture him in various combinations of current applied in different ways to sundry places. Jim wants more torture, but Galt is impassive in the face of it. Wesley Mouch breaks, begging for it to end, lest Galt’s death end in their own deaths. Ferris wants more than obedience, he wants acceptance. Jim just wants more torture.

Then the generator breaks down. No one knows how to fix it – except Galt, who gives them detailed instructions. The mechanic flees the room in horror as Galt laughs. Jim leaps to the generator and attempts to fix it; he wants to hear Galt scream. It is at that moment that James Taggart falls apart – because he sees what lies at the end of that fogbound alley, his hatred of existence. As he screams “No!”, Galt quietly answers “Yes”. Jim turns catatonic, and his friends remove him from the room. They tell Galt they intend to come back.

Discussion Topics

• In Starnesville, there were no thugs on horseback to claim the town as a fiefdom. Now Cuffy Meigs attempts to claim anything within a hundred miles of the Xylophone as his fiefdom, beating Dr. Stadler, who had the same idea. As economic and societal disintegration progress, what can one expect, and from which quarter?
• Dagny’s act of shrugging is the key moment of the novel. What was the tipping point that made her finally take Galt’s Oath?
• Dr. Ferris wants more than the mechanics of John Galt working for the looters’ government, he wants acceptance. He wants the Sanction of the Victim. Why?

  Next Saturday: In the Name of the Best Within Us

[Publius]

Check out a more recent film, “The Last Supper”, about a group of college liberals who invite conservatives to dinner, kill them and bury them in the back yard.

[whodathunkit]

Chapter twenty-nine now, entitled “The Generator.” It is a very short chapter, and one wonders if perhaps Rand was cheating a bit on her plan of thirty chapters.

Since the chapter was short, I'll use this opportunity to submit this graphic I modified (text as well) and seek opinions about the relevance and appropriateness to the story.

The unfinished pyramid is copied from a fifty dollar Continental note and was a precursor to the one on the Great Seal of the United States. Designed by Francis Hopkinson, a Delegate from New Jersey at the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

It is unclear why an 'unfinished' pyramid was selected and there have been many who profess the knowledge yet lack the proof of it's meaning.

I submit that, though most people see it as an unfinished work that has yet to be completed, perhaps it is an unfinished work that is _not_ to be completed. What if John Galt had been the pyramid builder and found out that the pyramid was neither his nor for his benefit? Would this unfinished pyramid be the result? The true pyramid builders who must have worked as slaves, had no choice but to complete their work. Had freedom been within their grasp, the unfinished pyramid would have been a symbol for freedom from slavery.

I see the Progressives coercing us to build a great social pyramid, to what end? The same end as the Egyptians? To serve a few? To those who would exclaim 'what a wonderful work' upon seeing the finished pyramid, I would simply ask "would you like to build one?"

To understand Rand I find it helpful to try to envision what I _don't_ see. What could be but isn't. I see the wasted effort that built the bottom of the pyramid, the effort that could have been used to improve the lives of the builders. The bottom of the pyramid consumed the lives of a generation, the next generation, seeing the errors of their logic, decided to Just Say NO!

I quote Henry David Thoreau from Walden (edited for brevity)

-----------------------------------------------

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil?.....

...Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? ... But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.

[TradicalRC]

I am also reminded of a related argument put forth by William James:

Skepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it isoption of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth thanchance of error—that is your faith-vetoer’s exact position. He is activelyplaying his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field againstthe religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hy-pothesis against the field. To preach skepticism to us as a duty until “suf-ficient evidence” for religion be found is tantamount therefore to tellingus, when in presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fearof its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it maybe true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect withone passion laying down its law. And by what, forsooth, is the supremewisdom of this passion warranted? Dupery for dupery, what proof is therethat dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear?

from The Will to Believe

[TradicalRC]

Rush (the rock group) was heavily influenced by Ayn Rand, I believe they dedicated one of their albums to her. Their lyrics certainly show it; the song “Trees” comes to mind.

[TradicalRC]

A little off topic but could you imagine writing Dagny into an episode of Sex and The City?

Funny, there was a show a few years back called Sisters and there was a Randian character on it called Simon Bolt.

[TradicalRC]

The symbol from the dollar bill (a Masonic symbol, I believe) makes its appearance in a book called The Illuminatus Trilogy which has a Dagnyesque character with it tattooed onto her chest, along with the phrase “Non Servium”. There is also a reference to a book called Telemachus Sneezed.

[TradicalRC]

As for the Thoreau. He should have just cut his hair and gotten a decent job. Walden is really overrated. To quote the ribald historian Richard Zacks:

"Thoreau's 'Walden, or Life in the Woods' deserves its status as a great American book but let it be known that Nature Boy went home on weekends to raid the family cookie jar. While living the simple life in the woods, Thoreau walked into nearby Concord, Mass., almost every day. And his mom, who lived less than two miles away, delivered goodie baskets filled with meals, pies and doughnuts every Saturday. The more one reads in Thoreau's unpolished journal of his stay in the woods, the more his sojourn resembles suburban boys going to their tree-house in the backyard and pretending they're camping in the heart of the jungle."

[sig226]

The whole paragraph with that quote is, I think, more enlightening.

She knew. She knew what they intended doing and what it was within them that made it possible. They did not think that this would succeed. They did not think that Galt would give in; they did not want him to give in. They did not think that anything could save them now; they did not want to be saved. Moved by the panic of their nameless emotions, they had fought against reality all their lives-and now they had reached a moment when at last they felt at home. They did not have to know why they felt it, they who had chosen never to know what they felt-they merely experienced a sense of recognition, since this was what they had been seeking, this was the kind of reality that had been implied in all of their feelings, their actions, their desires, their choices, their dreams. This was the nature and the method of the rebellion against existence and of the undefined quest for an unnamed Nirvana. They did not want to live; they wanted him to die.

I've known people like that since I was a young child. It's difficult for me to grasp the truth of their existence. They live to hurt others, not physically, but by inflicting as much harm as they can. Some were gossips, some were thieves, some were liars. They took pride in the accomplishment of hurting others, as if the power of destroying beauty around them was somehow superior to the pride of creating beauty. I'll never understand it, but to deny it would be to deny what's passed before my own eyes.

The two most evil men of Rand's time were Josef Zdugashvili and Adolf Schiklgruber. These were the failed altar-boy and the failed artist. Neither could create anything of value but they could steal and kill to affirm their self-righteousness. Cuffy Meigs and Floyd Ferris, reminiscent of Heinrich Himmler (failed chicken farmer) and Josef Mengele await those who acquiesce to brutality. Perhaps this is why Rand was so careful not to paint a tale of violence and woe. It would be too easy to compare such to the October Revolution and Kristallnacht. Doubtless there were Germans who thought of Caligula and told themselves that Adolf was not a drunk and he wasn't married to his sister. Stalin and Hitler didn't give a damn about the people at whom they preached the common good, they killed them by the millions and tossed their bodies into unmarked, mass graves.

It's interesting that Rand, as well as the tyrants of her time and the tyrants of her books, expressed no interest in religion. Rand's perspective seems to be that religion offered nothing for the present and no means of increasing achievement. I imagine she got her idea from the great unwashed who attended church weekly, rather than inventing motors and generators. She saw achievement as the highest possible goal. Her own ambitions and accomplishments were strong, but she forgets that, according to Judge Smails, the world needs ditch diggers, too.

Religion does not turn a person away from achievement any more than the lack of religion turns one away from being a decent human being. But she confuses the cliches of religion with the deeper currents. Most people really don't want to run railroads or steel mills. Rand mentions this a couple of times. She adds detail when Dagny tries to hire Hugh Akston as a chef, and when Dagny hires the man from Twentieth Century Motors. She takes notice of it with the railroad employees when they need a crew to run the first train across the new bridge on the John Galt Line. But mostly, her heroes measure their lives in terms of millions of pounds produced and thousands of miles of track operated.

It's okay if she wants to ignore religion, but she paints it with a broad brush. Most people don't want to think deeply about all the things that concern the world. This doesn't mean they won't do their jobs, and do them well. It simply means that they prefer to accept answers from someone who will not force them to contemplate the meaning of all existence.

"Father, how should I treat my neighbor who did this?" It may be a simple question that returns an answer that can be called a platitude, but it indicates a person who accepts that someone else has a deeper understanding of right and wrong. Rand heard only the platitudes. People have souls.

They did not want to live; they wanted him to die.

This is not a lesson from the Bible. It is an observation of the way some people chose to live.

[TradicalRC]

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how right wing you are: without God, conservatism is just another ideology. And counting the number of dead bodies piled up for the sake of ideologies, one may easily come to the conclusion that religion is a restraining force and that yes, we are in need of it. Witness by Whitaker Chambers was an interesting read.

[Tired of Taxes]

'of torn flesh and screaming pain that had once been a great mind'

Oddly, the above was my favorite line in the book. I think it stood out because Rand tended to go on and on with details everywhere else. But, she summed up Stadler's death poetically in that one perfect line which tells us: He used his intellect to serve the wrong people for the wrong reasons, and now he dies violently by the very thing he created.

[r-q-tek86]

Rush (the rock group) was heavily influenced by Ayn Rand, I believe they dedicated one of their albums to her. Their lyrics certainly show it; the song “Trees” comes to mind.

2112 is Rush's interpretation of Rand's Anthem

[whodathunkit]

As for the Thoreau. He should have just cut his hair and gotten a decent job. Walden is really overrated. To quote the ribald historian Richard Zacks:

(snip)...

"The more one reads in Thoreau's unpolished journal of his stay in the woods, the more his sojourn resembles suburban boys going to their tree-house in the backyard and pretending they're camping in the heart of the jungle."

Ahhh....

The joys of childhood. I was once a child myself!

What could be the authors motivation to portray ones zest for new experiences and wonderment of nature in such a negative manner?

One doesn't have to agree with everything in Walden, but to dismiss all of Thoreau's observances as childish is a mistake.

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

“Rush (the rock group) was heavily influenced by Ayn Rand”

Specifically, Neil Peart (their drummer and chief lyricist) was heavily influenced by Rand. In fact, “2112” is loosely based on Rand’s “Anthem,” with the protagonist finding a guitar instead of a light bulb. Rush also recorded a song called “Anthem,” but it has no connection to the book.

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

I guess I should read ALL the comments before posting my own! :)

[gracie1]

Where Rand misses in regard to religion is her dismissal of the concept of original sin. If you follow the logic of all of the social theories bantered about throughout the 20th century, if a perfect social construct could be devised, the men socialized under it would then be perfect themselves. An example of this is the New Soviet Man that Rand was obviously aware of. So what does she do be devise her own “perfect man” as she stated in an interview with Phil Donohue. So of all of these social theories, have any of them created the “perfect man”? What about that much touted New Soviet Man? Didn’t work out so good, did it. The truth of the matter is that ultimately man is tempted and eventually he succumbs. Just look at your 2 year old child for a demonstration of original sin. Tell them no cookies til dinner and they will push the chair to the counter as soon as your back is turned.

I think what Rand was condemning was the use of religion as a tool to control people, the church/state complex of Europe that produced hundreds of years of religious wars. The system of religiosity that man made religions consist of. Of course, I say all of this as a Christian, one who views Christianity as “God reaching down to man, not man trying to reach God”.

[gracie1]

I used to read the passage about the ant war to my sons when they were small. There is something to be said for taking time out to just observe and absorb.

[MtnClimber]

As this is about to come to an end, I just want to say how much I have enjoyed the analysis by Publius and Billthedrill and the comments that have added to the discussion. I hope the publication of this analysis is very successful and will possibly open some eyes. I am less than halfway optimistic that the politics of pull will fail. The parasites seem to be much larer than their prey. They have not thought about what will happen when there is no more prey to feast on. Poli-tics = many parasites. A 100 pound tick attached to a Chihuahua is only temporarily happy.

[Radix]

"...One early version of it had an engineer condemned to the guillotine watch two of his predecessors released by a malfunction in the dropping of the blade, ..."

Your post above brings to mind that scene in "Schindlers List" when that woman engineer was trying to manage things to make the Concentration Camp construction more efficient.

She got shot dead in the head, but her idea was a good one.

[r-q-tek86]

Anthem is still my favorite of the four novels Rand wrote. I used to read it in architecture school when I was stuck on a design. It always would inspire me... and, of course, 2112 was a regular in the tape rotation.

[woodnboats]

Where Rand misses in regard to religion is her dismissal of the concept of original sin.

On the contrary, gracie, I think Rand embraces the concept, only she doesn't accept it as sin.

I'm no student of religion (in fact, I'm as near an atheist as you can be while hedging my bet out of lack of proof), but my understanding of the original sin is that it was the renunciation of god-given instinctive (that is "perfect" qua human) behavior in favor of the "Knowledge of Good and Evil", with the corollary necessity to think and to choose.

As an atheist, of course the concept of "sin", that is acting against god, would be meaningless to Rand. Evil and wrong behavior are of course possible to an atheist, but "sin" per se is not.

I am not a theologian, nor do I play one on television (always wanted to, though).

Kirk