Galt's Gulch

Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 Chapter 2: The Chain

Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago to Books
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Summary: After ten years working on it, Hank Rearden (age 40) finished his wife’s bracelet out of the first pour Rearden Metal. Hank’s wife Lillian, his Mother, his brother Philip, and their friend Paul Larkin (age 53) all berated him for working too hard and for his selfish gift.

Start by reading the first-tier comments, which are all quotes of Ayn Rand (some of my favorites, some just important for other reasons). Comment on your favorite ones, or others' comments. Don't see your favorite quote? Post it in a new comment. Please reserve new comments for Ayn Rand, and your non-Rand quotes for "replies" to the quotes or discussion. (Otherwise Rand's quotes will get crowded out and pushed down into oblivion. You can help avoid this by "voting up" the Rand quotes, or at least the ones you think people should see, and voting down first-tier comments that are not quotes of the featured book.)

Atlas Shrugged was written by Ayn Rand in 1957.

My idea for this post is discussed here:

http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts...

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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    “What did they seek from him? – thought Rearden – what were they after? He had never asked anything of them; it was they who wished to hold him, they who pressed a claim on him – and the claim seemed to have the form of affection, but it was a form which he found harder to endure than any sort of hatred. He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignore all the things for which he could wish to be loved.”
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    • Posted by VetteGuy 8 years, 9 months ago
      HR clearly had the right concepts, he just needed someone to help him put all the pieces together (Fransisco, eventually). I kinda felt the same way when I read Atlas the first time ... A lot of it was stuff I already knew, at some level, just collected in a more coherent fashion than I had ever been able to.
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 8 months ago
    Lillian Rearden: She took the metal bracelet and held 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.”
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    • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 8 months ago
      This is the inspiration of the chapter title. The bracelet symbolizes the productive ability of Hank, and is a reminder to Lillian that moochers are dependent on producers. This is the bondage she despises...and fights.
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
    Discussion about the gift of the Rearden metal bracelet: “The intention’s plain selfishness, if you ask me,” said Rearden’s mother. “Another man would bring a diamond bracelet, if he wanted to give his wife a present, because it’s her pleasure he’d think of, not his own.”
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    • Posted by VetteGuy 8 years, 9 months ago
      As an engineer, I really identified with Rearden in this section. The bracelet was the most meaningful thing he could give (made from the first pour of Rearden Metal), but his wife couldn't appreciate it. My wife probably wouldn't appreciate it either, but I think she would recognize the intent, and I can just about guarantee she would not give it away. (IMHO, I have a much better wife than HR did).
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      • Posted by $ Susanne 8 years, 9 months ago
        That section actually, to me, had a very deep meaning - that what was valuable to one spouse (the pleasure of success of doing something, doing it right, and wanting to share it with the one person who should have loved, rather than disdained, hm) was a means for Lilian not to show she appreciated all the hard work and dedication (away from the family, etc.) he had to this project, and the triumph it was, but to use it to beat him up (some more) and denegrate him.

        Hank should have dumped her decades before - after all, she didn't just become that way in that scene. If my spouse gave ME something that precious, that special, I would have treated it as the heirloom and piece of history it was - And to me, something that represented such a significant portion and success of years of work would be far more precious than any old rock taken from the ground.

        And THAT. to me, shows the love held between Hank and Dagny (and makes me admire her all that much more), and to this day still makes me wonder why the story took its strange twist when she "fell" for JG.

        It was almost as if Dagny, not Lilian, was the conquistador in the book... having achieved the love of Frisco, having achieved the love of Hank, she then went after JG and achieved that love - from a sober, adult aspect not necessarily mature (or stablity-minded) behavior, and perhaps one of the few things I find fault with my personal hero of the book. But I'm diverging...
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        • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 9 months ago
          I have always seen Dagny as Rand's ultimate vision of herself,

          the intellectual "conquistador" steadily moving forward regardless

          of obstructions. . she sought, and achieved, every business and

          social / interpersonal goal she set for herself. -- j

          .
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    • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
      Note also, this is a prime example of what is later referred to as an inverted morality, the Code of Death. Everything has to be for anyone's pleasure but his own.
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    • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
      Note that she uses the "common" definition of the term 'selfishness,' not the way it is used in The VOS, as rational self-interest.
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      • Posted by VetteGuy 8 years, 9 months ago
        Yes, I frequently wish AR had used "self interest" instead of "selfishness" when describing the quality as a virtue. My upbringing, and even how my kids were raised, lends a negative connotation to "selfishness". As in "Share with your sister. Don't be selfish". If I had a buck for every time I heard (or said!) that, I could build my own Gulch, complete with invisibility shield!
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      • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago
        As explained in VOS it is is the common definition. Ayn Rand did not pander to connotations based on the opposite of her philosophy. Lillian Rearden was attacking her husband in the full meaning of his selfishness. The passage shows how destructive she was.
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        • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
          I think we disagree. I know she does not pander to the terms of foreign philosophies. But that does not mean that suddenly words only have one meaning or one connotation, or that Rand is no longer free to use terms with difference senses. I think Lillian, as part of the Code of Death crowd, is like most of our society today in that regard. Most people today use the term 'selfish' in the hedonistic sense, seeking the pleasure of the current momentary whim. This is common, and negative. Even Rand says this is negative. She, on the other hand, affirms 'selfishness' as a man pursuing his long-term, rational self-interest. Do you really think Lillian is using this Objectivist sense of "selfish"? I don't think so. Rand is telling a story. In this story, Lillian, like most of our inverted morality culture, is saying that Rearden is wrong because he was only thinking of himself, his pleasure in the moment. I just do not believe that Lillian was criticizing him for pursuing his rational self-interest.
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          • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago
            Lillian would not have known Ayn Rand's full meaning, but she did know what in her husband she feared and hated -- in addition to being a master of exploiting manufactured guilt. Hank Rearden's big breakthrough was when it no longer worked and he didn't care what she thought anymore.
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        • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 9 months ago
          Hmmm. Or perhaps Lillian was just leaning on the altruist side; not so much criticizing him for being "selfish" (whether in the sense of rational self-interest, or hedonistic momentary whim) as criticizing him for not being altruistic (not thinking of her first). I could go with that. In which case perhaps we don't really disagree, because this is a third possible interpretation.

          Here is another passage that, I think, could be interpreted in the same way. There is an equivocation over the term 'selfish.'

          James Taggart: Don't you ever think of anything but d'Anconia Copper?" Jim asked him once.

          d'Anconia: "No."

          "It seems to me that there are other things in the world."

          "Let others think about them."

          "Isn't that a very selfish attitude?"

          "It is." [P1C5]

          Jim is using the term to attack Cisco for not being altruistic; d'Anconia is using the term as a badge of honor for thinking of his rational self-interest. My point was that this is a play on words. I do not believe they are all using the term exclusively for "rational self-interest"; they are equivocating, using the word in different senses. It is clever.
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          • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago
            Lillian was trying to exploit and manipulate guilt, expecting him to concede to altruism through the usual moral intimidation. At the same time she understood very well, at least on an emotional level, what it was about him that she was attacking -- and that concrete target certainly was not a range of the moment aggressor and hedonist notion of selfishness, even though they all invoke that when they have to be more explicit. They don't dare concede anything more explicitly. Likewise for Taggart. They all know what they hate and resent but don't permit the concept of it and don't want it named.
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