That's an excellent question Rich. I too have wondered at the significance of Cheryl's suicide. She tried so hard to become what she perceived as an equal to James, never realizing he wasn't who she thought he was. I have wondered if the shock of finally finding out just who he was and how wrong she had been in her choice, not her highest value, that she just temporarily lost herself. It is also interesting to me that neither Cheryl or Hank were married to the people they thought they were when they married them, and they had different reactions to the betrayals of their spouses. If she had gone back to Dagny that night, things possibly would have been different for her.

I will be very interested in seeing other people's view of this event.

Like Eddie Willers, whose fate was left indeterminate, Cheryl Brooks Taggart is an average person. She was a shopgirl, not a genius stuck in a clerical job. Hers was a world where a new lipstick is the difference between self-esteem and humiliation. Having worked as a waitress, Rand knew that world. She spoke of it in defending capitalism. Capitalism, it is charged, gives millions [now billions] of dollars to manufacturers of lipstick while scientific geniuses go unrewarded, After dealing with the obvious point, Rand returned to the importance of lipstick to the shopgirl.

John Galt said that he would kill himself rather than see Dagny tortured. Howard Roark was willing to go to prison in the name of the nation that - had it condemned him - no longer existed. Cheryl could not live in a world of social workers.

Dagny, Hank, and the others, could put the social workers and social planners in context. Cheryl could not because she lacked the intellectual ability. It is not immoral to have an IQ of 95. In fact, 85% of Americans think that they are of above average intelligence; and I suppose that applies all the more here in the Gulch. I assure you: some of the most popular contributors here with the best credentials give evidence of statistically normal intelligence. They remain moral people, as was Cheryl. She could not survive in the world of the looters.

The death of Cheryl Brooks Taggart was Rand's judgment that collectivism destroys the people it claims to benefit.

Cheryl was a tragic character. Her actions in the year of her marriage to Jim demonstrate a capable and focused intelligence, and her drive to "learn everything that Mrs. James Taggart is expected to know and to be" demonstrated a drive to rise to what she saw as a better place in the world, a place with educated and cultured people, people of worth and accomplishment. Her disillusionment when she discovered that the people in her new world were no better than the people of her old world -- just with more money and better clothes -- was profound.

The last evening of Cheryl's life is a carefully-crafted arc. After being a minor note in the novel, she is given an entire chapter and we realize that she is one of the good guys, a heroine on the wrong track [she's looking for love in all the wrong places.] After the excitement of her wedding, she worked, she achieved, she found her achievements mocked, and she started questioning all of her premises. She had reached a point of indifference in the months after their marriage, and her reaction to Jim's unexpected early return that evening was the same -- quiet, subdued. His boasting about the pending nationalization of d"Anconia Copper jars her and her brief meeting with Dagny raises her spirits, only to come back and find Jim in flagrante delicto with a women whom Jim then boasts was Mrs. Henry Reardon.

After Jim strikes her and she runs in panic, I don't think she ever recovers from the shock. The narrative of her flight sounds like a mind in a tailspin. "No exit -- her shreds of awareness were saying, beating it into the pavements in the sound of her steps -- no exit...no refuge...no signals...no way to tel destruction from safety, or enemy from friend. .... No! -- was the only conscious word in her brain -- no! -- no! -- no! -- not your way, not your world -- even if this "no is all that's to be left of mine." Her final scream is "an animal scream of terror".

This is one of several moments of intense, even desperate, emotion in the novel, but it is wrenching on a gut level beyond, for example, the burning of Ellis Wyatt's oil fields or the destruction of the Taggart Tunnel. It foreshadows the attack on Rearden's factory and the death of the Wet Nurse

Rockymountpirate summarizes my view on this exactly and raises an interesting question: Why was Hank's reaction different.

Regarding why Cheryl had to die, it was the dubble whammy of finding out Jim was a creep and then running into people presenting themselves as offering succor but who were just like Jim. It's consistent with the theme of the book that even the best people will give up in a world where mooching second-handers are in charge. I do not think she's encouraging a collapse of society or individuals' suicide. Rather, she's saying look at the dark place something that on the surface sound nice can lead to.

Cherryl was a heroine, a crystal-clear representation of Rand's
complete adoration of the average people -- like Eddie Willers --
who do not lie to themselves, who are honest and have integrity,
who make this world run. . the fact that she chose to end
her life told me that she could not endure the agony of
finding that reality was so incredibly distorted that she
could not make sense of it. . she gave up. . it was awful;;;
it made me cry, but I can relate -- hell, it makes me cry NOW.

Do Not Give Up, Folks!!! -- john
.

I feel certain I have heard Ayn Rand explain in an interview, or maybe in a Q&A session somewhere (I can't direct you to it right now, but I will if I find it).
She modeled the Cheryl marriage on a real life example, a philosopher I think, who believed in altruism and married a woman he was not interested in, but who he felt would benefit most from being married to him. It resulted in a hit to the woman's self-esteem, and eventually she committed suicide.

I have been somewhat troubled by Cheryls death for years. For a long time I assumed that she found herself in a trap created by James that she didn't know how to get out of. In the movie(and book) at the shop when Cheryl first meets James she expresses admiration at his creation of the John Galt Line, unaware that he didn't do any of it. Jim of course took the credit. When she finally realized none of it was true and that James was indeed the hollow tree described in the first chapter of the book it was just too much for her( no matter her IQ) to deal with. I know it goes much deeper that this, but that is how I have looked at it. I just wonder how many good people end up either drugged up or alcoholics or dead when they realize the depth of the deception.

I have also thought of another character in a differ-
ent novel who has a certain similarity: Catherine
Halsey in The Fountainhead. Catherine is also
destroyed by the most evil villain in the novel, Ells-
worth Toohey. Wanting to be a virtuous person, but mistaking altruism for virtue and selfishness
for evil, she finds herself becoming dishonest,
hypocritical, nasty, and "selfish" (in a worse way
than she had expected); and Toohey tells her
that she has just made the "most selfish speech" he has heard in his life. "To hell with
everybody, as long as I'm virtuous," he des-
cribes her attitude. When he gets done with her,
she looks as if she has "been run over by a
tank." And when Peter Keating jilts her, that
takes the last prop from under her. However, I
don't want to equate the two. I have much more
respect for Cherryl; at least, when she finds her
idol going against her values, it is he whom she
denounces, rather than her values.--I feel real
pity for Catherine, but also a certain amount of
contempt (at least, for the way she has become
in her last appearance, in the scene with Keat-
ing). I feel respect for Cherryl, and sympathy
for her in her distress.

I would like to add one observation that I think has been missed in the discussion: The roles in Victorian upper class life were that the husband dealt with 'reality' but the wife did not. A woman was supposed to be raised to be an Innocent, someone who has never had to deal with harsh reality. Her function, with respect to her husband, was that she was supposed to represent a Safe Harbor. She was someone who would always stick up for him and side with his views...because all she knew of the world was what he told her and therefore his perspective was hers as well. She was a perpetual child to his adult.

These archetypes, already quite prevalent and well established in our society, outline the roles that James wanted himself and Cheryl to play - and which Cheryl initially played to perfection. James' ego flourished under this attention, which thought him greater than his sister. When Cheryl's own personal growth and increased maturity and knowledge shattered the roles, James lashed out and Cheryl's nascent strength was destroyed.

Tragedy.

Jan

It represents the death of innocence to me. And of regular people who are worker bees and innocent who feel totally helpless in resolving the conflict of living in an evil world. I related so much to Cheryl and I still do. It may seem emotional, but some of us Objectivists do not possess all of the answers and are not the giant "doers" and "producers" of the world.

I say her death represents a complete disgust with the state of human nature and the world. The existence of one or two rational people wasnt enough to keep her sense of life alive.

I can actually understand where she was at. I feel the same things myself sometimes. When I am surrounded by all this entitled socialistic manipulation crap, I want to just escape and be alone. Its also not quite as bad today as it was in AS. But the number of people who actually think and are rational is quite a small percentage of the population here in the USA. Thats one reason I read a lot of the posts on the Gulch. I can do it in the quiet of being apart from the entitled socialism of today

Show of hands please. How many of you have almost given up in every sense of the word, and all it would take is one or two more disasters caused by an insane world before you'd go Cheryl? That would take a lot of courage on your part to admit such a thing. How many who raised their hands felt renewed when they read Atlas or Fountainhead, and no longer felt quite so down. Perhaps an upswing at the bottom? I could go chapter by chapter, pointing out how A.R. burns down the straw dogs of incorrect premises and points out the way out of the madness that has taken over the world in the story, and has since taken over the world in reality. Amazing how rationality feels like a cleansing shower.

Good question. And good suggestion. Dagny could have saved her.
Also, I have never forgiven Rand and Dagny for just abandoning Eddie Williers, with whom I most identify: I can't run a railroad (or much of anything else) but I know right from wrong.
Even if we're just followers, we are followers of the right, of reason and liberty.

I believe that, at a certain point; the character comes to life and the writer takes on the journey of their fate as the unvealer, as the eye of which we behold how their fate unfolds.

All of her characters were extremely realistic, and she spent countless hours, months and sometimes even years developing each one.

Cheryl committed suicide for the simple reason that she felt at a loss about everything she believed in, which was much more than the honor and dignity of her husband. No, her entire world turned on her and well; she ended up realizing that she was on the wrong side and not the right after all. Her own dignity drove her to do what in some cultures is considered quite honourable; keeping one´s honor by ending one´s own life.

I believe her death represents the end of a farse, and for the character the ultimate escape from the winding wrong-turned road she ultimately realises she´s taken, to her surprise and due to deceit. A weak character or a very proud one, that too is left for each of us to decide.

Great Work

My take on her death (after 3 readings of the book) is that she was left with the impression that the whole world was turning into the evil that Jim Taggart represented. Her last thoughts concluded that even Dagny, the most powerful and truthful person she knew, was going to be swallowed up and destroyed by this world and Cheryl simply could not bring herself to try to survive in such a world.

I fell for Cheryl from our first meeting of her, having once been a Cheryl in our world of Dr Jekyll \Mr Hyde's, I knew her story would not end well. She was sweet and innocent, believed in all her naivety that James was her salvation. Once she realized how indifferent he was to both her and all others, she was lost, with no allies. She had no where to run and nothing left of her former self. This is not an easy point in life to return from. She saw herself at the bottom of the barrel and simply could not endure the fight back up to the top. Imagine an average person gets the opportunity to hang out with their idol, the actor, athlete, or artist, gets to spend real quality time with that person, I would be willing to bet after the realization of the truth of their oftentimes pathetic existence, life would change for them. Some can use the experience and evolve, be better people with a new outlook on life. Others will crumble in the reality and raw truth. Cheryl was the latter.

I'm curious: did Cheryl kill herself in the movie? (I haven't seen part 3 yet.) In the book, Rand led us through Cheryl's thought process and emotional state so that her suicide made some kind of sense, but I never could see a way to portray it in action that wouldn't seem just insane.

James was weak. He really could not do anything or make decisions for himself when Dagny left.

Perhaps it was to underscore the utter evil of Jim
Taggart and others like him. If she had gotten a
divorce and a big settlement, the evil might not
have impressed the reader as being so serious.
Cherryl thought that Dagny, also, was doomed.
A person without such an explicit philosophy
like the strikers, might not have the strength to
survive that situation .

Cheryl was an idol worshipper. She and the Wet Nurse (the other idol worshipper) are both enthralled by advancement, but before they can achieve it, they meet tragic ends at the hands of the looters and moochers. It was her placing her faith in James that destroyed her. Rand was showing that faith (the belief in things without evidence) is ultimately destructive and to survive you need to have beliefs based in truth and facts. When James was shown to be just another looters and was using Cheryl as a way to bolster his self esteem, Cheryl's worldview fell away. She had thought she had gotten away from the moochers of her past, only to have married another. This ultimately shatters her, and while she could have gone to Dagny to help her put her life back together, she believes that Dagny is going to have enough problems fighting her battles with the looters that she doesn't want to add to her burden. She has seen the reality of the world and realises she is ill prepared to survive and see jumping to her death as the only way out.

A pure liquid metal dipped into a bath of crud does not remain pure for long. This was the reality Cheryl found intolerable.

Do you mean "feel" as in an emotion or "feel" as in think?