Evil Media: "And finish with a burp"

I'm moving my analysis of Atlas Shrugged over to a website, where it will be easier to digest it, and here, I'll just keep track of the dumbing down of America, the pandering to the lowest common denominator, the elevation of the "loser" to a position of likability.

I'm currently watching one of the shows I pretty much detest, The King of Queens. Just saw a commercial for a new game by Hasbro, called Scrabble Slam.

It's a card game similar to Upwords, only played with cards. "It's not hard," the commercial said reassuringly. And the final words of the commercial? "You finish with a burp!"

Jeez! Well...if boys get to burp while they play a game, maybe that will get them interested in spelling. Meanwhile, girls, who as per usual always do better than boys at school, until they learn that it's a bad thing to be smart, won't want to play the game, please god, because they see no fun in burping...so that will keep the two sexes apart for a while...

Atlas Shrugged Annotated: Chapter 1, Dagny Taggart

The chapter then segues to the main character, Dagny Taggart, brother of James Taggart, whom we have already met, and "shining light", "mentor" and "best friend" to Eddie Willers.

Rand starts out the first two paragraphs describing her physical appearance, clothing, attitude, and so on.

She kept her hands in the coat pockets, her posture taut, as if she resented immobility, and unfeminine, as if she were unconscious of her own body and that it was a woman's body.

She is seated in a train, it is night, she is listening to an uplifting symphony.

It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean, and left nothing but the joy of unobstructed effort.

That is Rand's philosophy in a nutshell. Music should be uplifting, man's ability to create is constructive and should be constructive, not destructive.

Turns out, Dagny is not actually listening to a symphony herself, it has only seemed that way in her mind, because she is so familiar with the work of its cmposer, Richard Halley. But she suddenly realizes that though it is Halley's music - his type of music is instantly recognizable, it's not something she's every heard before..and yet Halley was supposed to be dead. Also, the tune is being whistled by a brakeman.

She talks to the man. He says it's Halleys Fifth Concerto. She points out Halley only wrote four. "Of course," he says, quickly. I was forgetting.

Then Rand gets back to Dagny and her purpose. She, like Eddie WIllers, is a driven character. She will not procrastinate, she will not delay.

She had not slept for two night, but she could not permit herself to sleep; she had too many problems to consider and not much time: the train was due in New York early in the morning. She needed the time, yet wished the train would go faster; but it was the Taggart Comet, the fastest train in the country.

Dagny does indeed fall asleep, and when she wakes up its to find the Comet stopped. Turns out the train has been switched to a siding, and the train drivers and people stand and talk at the red light for an hour, instead of trying to figure out what the problem is.

The conductor spoke up. "I don't think we had any business being sent off on a siding, that switch wasn't working right, and this thing's not working at all." He jerked his head up at the red light. "I don't think the signal's going to change. I think it's busted."

"Then what are you doing?"

"Waiting for it to change."

an engineer points out the problem:

"We're not taking any chances. Whoever's responsible for it, he'll switch the blame to us if we move. So we're not moving until somebody tells us to."

It is not until after this scene that we learn who Dagny is. "Thats who runs Taggart Transcontinental. That's the Vice President in Charge of Operations."

Annotated Atlas Shrugged, Chapter 2: Jim Taggart

Author Ayn Rand has her character's appearance reveal their innermost thoughts...

James Taggart...had a small, petulant mouth, and thin hair clinging to a bald forehead. His posture had a limp, decentralized sloppiness, as if in defiance of his tall, slender body, a body with an elegance of line intended for the confident poise of an aristocrat, but transformed into the gawkiness of a lout.

Eddie Willers enters his office, and informs him that the Rio Norte line is failing. Trains are derailing every day. The tracks need to be relaid, but Taggart insists on waiting for steel from an incompetent businessman, Orren Boyle.

Taggart attempts to deflect blame by pointing out that his company is not the only one having problems. "It's a national condition - a temporary national condition."

Taggart refuses to deal with Rearden Steel. Hank Rearden is one of the main protagonists of Atlas Shrugged. He has created a new steel process, but is having trouble getting buyers because no one wants to risk his new process.

Taggart explains his obstinance this way:

"I resent your attitude. Orren Boyle will deliver that rail just as soon as its humanly possible. So long as he can't deliver it, no one can blame us."

And Eddie's answer is typical.

"Jim, what are you talking about? Don't you understand that the Rio Norte line is breaking up-whether anybody blames us or not?"

Another character is mentioned, Ellis Wyatt, owner of the Wyatt oil fields.

Reading Rand's description of Wyatt's accomplishment is interestig, in hindsight, compared with what goes on today with oil fields...

It's blood, thought Eddie Willers, because blood is supposed to feed, to give life, and that is what Wyatt Oil has done. It had shocked empty slopes of ground into sudden existence, it had brought new towns, new factories to a region nobody had ever noticed on any map. New factories, at a time when the freight revenues from all the great old industries were dropping slowly year by year; a rich new oil field, at a time when the pumps were stopping in one famous field after another, a new industrial state where nobody had expected anything but cattle and beets.

Taggart's reaction is typical:

"Ellis Wyatt is a greedy bastard who's after nothing but money. It seems to me that there are more important things in life than making money."

Taggart does some whining:

"I'm not so sure that his oil fields are such a beneficial achievement. It seems to me that he's dislocated the economy of the whole country. Nobody expected Colorado to become an industrial state. How can we have any security or plan anything if everything changes all the time?"

and

"Yes, I know, I know, he's making money. But that is not the standard, it seems to me, by which one gauges a man's value to society. And as for his oil, he'd come crawling to us, and he'd wait his turn along with all the other shippers, and he wouldn't demand more than his fair share of transportation-if it weren't for the Phoenix-Durango. We can't help it if we're up against destructive competition of that kind. Nobody can blame us."

"Does it matter that nobody blames us-when the road is falling apart?"

Eddie leaves Taggart's office, defeated. There'd been some more foreshadowing. Taggart mentions that things will work out when their Mexican branch begins to pay off... this angers Eddie who walks out --- we don't yet know why this should anger him.

In the anteroom, Eddie has a discussion with Pop, who merely reiterates the atmosphere that Rand had established at the beginning of the book. Businesses are failing, new products like typewriters don't last, etc.

James Taggart is one of Rand's characters who exhibits the problems of the world then, and the world today. He will not take responsibility for his own actions, he hopes for change rather than doing anything to bring that change about. We will learn more of his character in subsequent pages.

Atlas Shrugged Annotated, Ch 1, Childhood Ambitions

Eddie Willers, all grown up, has been a childhood friend of the Taggerts, and worships Dagny Taggart (whom we'll meet in the flesh shortly.) She is Rand's "everyman" the person who is not a genius, not a creator, but is willing to follow the people who are.

When he was asked [at the age of 10, by the "one precious companion of his childhood" - Dagny Taggart] what he would want to do, he answered at once, "Whatever is right," and added, "You ought to do something great...I mean, the two of us together."

"What?" she asked.

He said, "I don't know. That's what we ought to find out. Not just what you said. Not just business and earning a living. Things like winning battles, or saving people out of fires, or climbing mountains."

"What for?" she asked.

He said, "The minister said last Sunday that we must always reach for the best within us. What do you suppose is the best within us?

"I don't know."

"We'll have to find out."

She did not answer. She was looking away, up the railroad track.

Rand is an atheist, but when she does talk about religion (the Christian religion) she tries to point out that God would want people to reach for the heights, not cower in the darkness because they are sinners.

Next, Eddie arrives at the huge building that is Taggart Transcontinental. Taggart is a transportation conglomerate, run by, as we are about to see, Jim Taggart, Dagny's brother. Eddie pauses to admire the building...much like that oak tree of his childhood. It's different than the other buildings, no crumbling edges, no broken windows. "It would always stand there, thought Eddie Willers." is the last sentence of that paragraph.

More foreshadowing...

Atlas Shrug Annotated, Chapter 1. The great oak tree

More symbolism from Rand, as Eddie Willers continues to walk down the streets of New York City.

The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot on the Taggart estate. Eddie Willers, age seven, liked to come and look at that tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there.... He felt safe in the oak tree's presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it aws his greatest symbol of strength.

One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; it's heart had rotted away long ago...

Again Rand makes it clear that something is happening to New York, and by extension the United States. It seems powerful, but it's only a shell, with a rot inside. How surprised and disappointed Rand would be to see the United States of 2009, with our trillion dollar debt, our infrastructure crumbling after years of neglect...

Atlas Shrug Annotated, Chapter 1

More symbolism:

He turned a corner. In the narrow space between the dark silhouettes of two buildings, as in the crack of a door, he saw the page of a gigantic calendar suspended in the sky.

It was the calendar that the Mayor of New York had erected last year on the top of a building, so that citizens might tell the day of the month as they told the hours of the day, by glancing up a public tower.

In other words, Rand is not thinking of the calendar as a public convenience - one set up by a businessman, but rather as one set up by a government run entity. "Yes, people, you don't need to keep track of the day or time, we, the government, will tell you."

Eddie Willers looked away. He had never liked the sight of that calendar. It disturbed him, in a manner he could not explain or define.

More foreshadowing. "Your time is running out." The days of civilization are numbered, in this 1957 New York of Ayn Rand's...

And Rand continues to hammer this home subtly:

When he came to Fifth Avenue, he kept his eyes on the windows of the stores he passed. There was nothing he needed or wished to buy, but he liked to see the display of goods, any goods, objects made by men, to be used by men. He enjoyed the sight of a prosperous street; not more than every fourth one of the stores was out of business, its windows dark and empty.

Ayn Rand was Russian, and emigrated to the United States in 1926. Before that she had been part of a monied class whose family had been dispossessed by the Revolution, and she hated Communism with a passion. (Her novel We the Living is supposed to be semi-autobiographical.)

She found work during the Depression, married an actor, Frank O'Connor, and began to write.

So, in 1957, it seems she is mirroring a bit of what New York was like during the Great Depression...as New York of 1957 was surely just then undergoing the start of its business boom..

But the writing was on the wall for capitalism even then. Even at the time, many opponents of Roosevelt's "New Deal" thought that his policies were retarding America's recovery from the Depression, and that idea is even more prevalent today.

Purchase the Ayn Rand Library, and study Objectivism for yourself:

Atlas Shrugged Annotated: Chapter 1

Selected paragraphs from Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand, 1957) and their symbolism.

Chapter 1: The Theme

"Who is John Galt?"

The light was ebbing, and Eddie Willers could not distinguish the bum's face. The bum had said it simply, without expression. But from the sunset far at the end of the street, yellow glints caught his eyes, and the eyes looked straight at Eddie Willers, mocking and still-as if the question had been addressed to the causeless uneasiness within him.

"Who is John Galt?" is the theme that runs through the book.

Eddie Willers is a minor character in Atlas Shrugged. A loyal follower of the main character, Dagny Taggart. Notice that his first name is "Eddie," - Eddie is the diminutive of Edward...few people in power..at least in books, are called Eddie.

Author Rand goes on to set the scene... bums are all over the street, asking for dimes (that's be dollars, or food, today!) And, of course, this particular bum can now go and buy a cup of coffee for a dime. (At least author Rand thinks he'll drink coffee and not liquor.)

Eddie Willers dislikes the twilight, it's the time when he feels "this sense of dread without reason. No, he thought, not dread, there's nothing to fear: just an immense, diffused apprehension, with no source of object. ..."

The following paragraph is rife with symbolism:

The clouds and the shafts of skyscrapers against them were turning brown, like an old painting in oil, the color of a fading masterpiece. Long streaks of grime ran from under the pinnacles down the slender, soot-eaten walls. High on the side of a tower there was a crack in the shape of a motionless lightning, the length of ten stories. A jagged object cut the sky above the roofs; it was half a spire, still holding the glow of the sunset; the gold leaf had long since peeled off the other half. The glow was red and still, like the reflection of a fire: not an active fire, but a dying one which it is too late to stop.

The city is clearly dying...civilization is dying. Once a masterpiece, it is now faded and dirty.

Rand also shows the depths of Eddie's character:

He walked on, reminding himself that he was late in returning to the office. He did not like the task which he had to perform on his return, but it had to be done. So he did not attempt to delay it, but made himself walk faster.

The character of the Objectivist

1. Do not procrastinate. If you have an unplesant task to perform, do it first thing.