|
|
| This website analyzes the work Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, published in 1957. It focuses on Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, and how it is employed throughout the book.
|
The copy used for this analysis is the Signet Book edition published in 1985.*
|
The book is 1084 pages long. It is divided into three parts. Each part has 10 chapters.
Part One: Non-Contradiction
Chapter 2: The Chain
Scenes
1. Hank Rearden
2. Hank Rearden, his mother, Lilian Rearden, Paul Larkin
Hank Rearden
The chapter begins at night, with a Taggart train speeding toward Philadelphia. It passes a steel mill.... Readen Steel...which has just poured the first heat for the first order of Rearden Metal, at the behest of Dagny Taggart.
Rand makes it clear once again what the Taggarts...and Reardens...of the world are faced with:
| A passenger, who was a professor of economics, remarked to his companion, "Of what iumportance is an individual in the titanic collective achievements of our industrial age?" Another, who was a journalist, made a note for future use in his column: "Hank Rearden is the kind of man who sticks his name on everything he touches. You may, from this, form your own opinion about the character of Hank Rearden. |
What may one conclude? That Hank Rearden is a proud man, capable of producing things, and who stands behind what he produces, putting his repuration on the line by putting his name on his products.
As Rearden walks home that night, he thinks of snapshops of his past, of his accomplishments, of the work he did to reach this moment.
Rand gives us another insight into what she considers an Objectivist work ethic. She's describing Rearden, age 14, just beginning work at a steel mill in Minnesota.
| He was trying to learn to breathe against the scalding pain in his chest. He, stood, cursing himself, because he had made up his mind that he would not be tired. After a wehile, he went back to his task, he decided that pain was not a valid reason for stopping. |
and Rand continues, with Rearden remembering his life, how he'd always had a purpose, and worked towards that purpose, that "All he remembered of those jobs was that the men around him had never seemed to know what to do, while he had always known."
and then we learn who Rand thinks should be the person for whom Rearden/for whom the Objectivist accomplishes all this:
| He felt nothing, except the desire not to move. He did not have the strength to feel - not even to suffer. He had burned everything there was to burn within him; he had scattered so many sparks to start so many things - and he wondered whether someone could give him now the spark he needed, now when he felt unable ever to rise again. He asked himself who had started him and kept him going. Then he raised his head. Slowly, with the greatest effort of his life, he made his body rise until he was able to sit upright with only one hand pressed to the desk and a trembling arm to support him. He never asked that question again. |
It is not someone outside who gives Rearden the will to live, to succeed, to create, it is himself.
Hank Rearden lives in a house with his mother, his younger brother (age 38) who has always been in "precarious health," (and who has therefore never worked, and his wife Lilian. When he returns to his home that night, he is carrying a bracelet made of Rearden Steel, the first ever in existence, which he intends to use to celebrate a proud moment by giving it to his wife. "It had taken ten years to make that bracelet. [That's the time it had taken him, and a small team of scientists working for him, to invent the metal, and then find a buyer for it.] Ten years is a long time."
Rearden enters the house, where we learn immediately, through dialogue, that his mother is a whiny woman, constantly putting him down (not quite the cliche of the Jewish guilt trip, but similar), his brother Philip is envious of him, his wife is constantly mocking him, and their friend Paul Larkin...is not quite as good a friend as Rearden needed.
The chapter is little more than Rand showing the reader what Hank Rearden has to put up with. But, he is naive, when it comes to interacting with other people. His actions seem to show them to be evil, but he can't believe that this could really be so.
| "You ought to learn to have some fun," said Philip. "Otherwise, you'll become dull and narrow. Single-tracked, you know. You ought to get out of your little private shell and take a look at the world. You don't want to miss life, the way you're doing."
Fighting anger, Rearden told himself that this was Philip's form of solicitude. He told himself that it would be unjust to feel resentment: they were all trying to show their concern for him - and he wished these were not the things they had chosen for concern.
"I had a pretty good time today, Phil," he answered, smiling -- and wondered why Philip did not ask him what it was. |
Rand has a similar scene for Rearden's wife, and his mother. They all act sneeringly towards him, nad Rearden always bends over backwards to think that that's just their way of showing their affection toward him.
Lilian lays a trap for him...she's giving a party three months from now...turns out its their wedding anniversary. Rearden only smiles.
| She could not have intended this as a trap, he thought, because he could escape it so easily, by refusing to accept any blame for his forgetfulness any by leaving her spurned; she knew that his feelings for her was her only weapon. Her motive, he thought, was a proudly indirect attempt to test his feeling and to confess her own. A party was not his form of celebration, but it was hers. It meant nothing in his terms, in hers, it meant the best tribute she could offer to him and to their message. He had to respect her intention, he thought, even if he did not share her standards, even if he did not know whether he still cared for any tribute from her. He had to let her win, he thought, because she had thrown herself upon his mercy. |
This is Rearden's flaw, Rand is pointing out subtly. This is the flaw of all Objectivists who let their better nature be blackmailed by those who are nothing but hangers-on -- they've thrown themselves on my mercy, they really do appreciate me, they just express it in an indirect manner."
Rearden presents his gift to her, proudly, and receives nothing but mocking in return, from both his mother, and less explicitly, from his wife. He sits down apart from the others, tiredly.
Paul Larkin comes to talk to him, laying "two moist fingers" on his arm. (A Rand hero would never have moist fingers...her villains, even just weak individuals...always!
Among other things, Larkin advises Rearden to be careful about his "man in Washington" his lobbyist. Rearden, naive to the ways of the business world still after ten years [he produces a good product, and knows his clients appreciate that], wants to know why. Larkin considers telling him (the audience is also not told) but then considers his duty discharged.
Rand illuminates Rearden's blindness again... the blindness of all Objectivists who let them be fastened on by parasites...or simply by people who underestimate their enemy:
| He paced the room, his energy returning. He looked at his family. They were bewildered, unhappy children-he thought-all of them, even his mother, and he was foolish to resent their ineptitude, it came from their helplessness, not from malice. It was he who had to make himself learn to understand them, since he had so much to give, since they could nwver share his sense of joyous, boundless power. |
He attempts to do so, but even when he fails, it doesn't seem to get through to him. He goes over to talk to his brother Philip, whom Rearden has supported all his life, sending him to college, giving him a place to live. He asks what Philip had been doing that day. Philip responds that, as a member of Global Friends of Progress, he's been talking to people, trying to get donations, but the selfish people refuse to give.
Rearden wants to make his brother happy. He tells him that he will give him the ten thousand dollars the program needs.
| Rearden stood looking at Philip, as if waiting.
Philip looked away, then raised his eyes and held Rearden's glance, as if engaged in a scrutiny of his own.
"You don't really care about helping the underpriveleged, do you?" Philip asked-and Rearden heard, unable to believe it, that the tone of his voice was reproachful.
"No, Phil, I don't care about it at all. I only wanted you to be happy."
"But that money is not for me. I am not collecting it for any personal motive. I have no selfish interest in the matter whatever." His voice was cold, with a note of self-conscious virtue. |
Phil then compounds the insult. He still want the money, but in cash, so his friends won't know that it comes from the "selfish Hank Rearden." Rearden agrees, although his feeling of contempt for his brother rises.
Larkin at least is shocked...he doesn't think, after that comment, that Phil should get the money. But Lilian speaks, and ends the chapter with her quote.
| Then Lilian's voice came, cold and gay: "But you're wrong, Paul, you're so wrong. What would happen to Henry's vanity if he didn't have us to throw alms to? What would become of his strength if he didn't have people to dominatre? What would he do with himself if he didn't keep us around as dependents. It's quite all right, really, I'm not criticizing him, it's just a law of human nature."
She took the metal bracelet and heldf it up, letting it glitter in the lamplight.
"A chain" she said. "Appropriate, isn't it? It's the chain by which he holds us all in bondage." |
Of course, consider it the other way round. What could Rearden have accomplished, if he didn't have his family hanging off him? And the chain? What is that chain, but how his dependents keep him in bondage.
Please continue to Chapter 3: The Top and the Bottom.
*Thanks to the copyright holders for allowing the use of a variety of passages from the book.
|
|
