This question ignores the purpose of GG, Dagny's values and the state of government in the novel.

Good point Herb. Starting a new railroad would probably have been admitting defeat in her eyes.

She did didn't she? It was called the John Galt line.

Dagny is a stubborn bitch -- in the best sense of the word. With her drive and understanding it would be uncharacteristic if she gave up, even to start a competition. There's a lot of Dagny in Ayn and vice-versa. Probably even more than Dominique.

Not only Dagny but Nat Taggart. The Willers family had served the Taggarts for as long as something called the Taggart Transcontinental Rail Road existed. Again, one does not give up a thing like that lightly.

I might possibly imagine someone rescuing him, however: Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, the real-life Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, acting on tips from that wagon train when it rolls into Phoenix. If any modern-day LEO would have "shrugged," Joe Arpaio would have been the one.

Except Rand didn't invent anyone like Sheriff Joe. She literally never could have imagined such a person.

Excellent analysis. Thanks Temlakos. It was interesting that she had Dagny finally realize shrugging was the only option but Eddie stayed. One more act of love for Dagny perhaps?

I think what the original poster means, is this: why did she not simply accept Francisco d'Anconia's offer of a contract to build a three-mile narrow-gauge line from Francisco's mine to the valley floor?

It's easy to imagine how that scene might have played out differently, had she decided it wasn't worth risking John Galt's life for her to indulge in some fantasy of "educating" a den of thieves:

John says, "You've decided, then?"

And she says, "Yes."

But she goes up to Midas and asks him for an appointment, at nine a.m. the next day, so she can claim the settlement account and negotiate a business loan. Then she asks Francisco for a letter of intent for that narrow-gauge line she had earlier proposed. She also asks Francisco for his word of honor that he will see to Hank Rearden's defection at the earliest opportunity. And maybe she offers Ragnar a commission to pull Eddie out.

But where then would have been the story? The story was really about Dagny Taggart and Henry Rearden separately concluding that the motives, morals, and loyalties of James Taggart and all the rest of that crew were completely foreign to them--foreign, as far as that goes, to anything properly human. And under no circumstances could a Dagny Taggart or a Henry Rearden negotiate with them.

Had Dagny quit the railroad after crash-landing in the valley, we would have had no story. One must wonder how artificial the decision might have been.

Then again: Dagny--and Henry Rearden, too--had to hit bottom, and realize they were hanging onto something, the meaning of which had ceased to exist. For Henry Rearden, that realization came to him on his long drive across New Jersey and back to Pennsylvania, after the abortive meeting with James Taggart, Floyd Ferris, Tinky Holloway, Wesley Mouch, and (as I think) Chick Morrison. The last tumbler of the steel safe fell when James Taggart, in that most Freudian of slips, said, "Oh, you'll do something!"

Dagny had a worse problem. She wanted to preserve the railroad as close to intact as possible--so that when the looters lost the battle, she'd have the railroad still in existence. The railroad also had tradition behind it. Rearden Steel was only as old as Henry Rearden's adult career, and not even as old as that. Taggart Transcontinental went all the way back to the American War Between the States. "From ocean to ocean forever." One does not give up a thing like that lightly.

That's what almost cracked Francisco d'Anconia. He had four hundred years of tradition, going clear back to the Spanish Empire and the Viceroyalty of Peru, to throw away.

Of course, John Galt's arrest brought Dagny around. Not so much the arrest itself, as her realization that the people who rode Taggart trains wouldn't lift a finger to help him. Francisco knew she would see that; hence his recruitment of her as a spy, with a cutout number to dial when the time came.

Eddie Willers, sadly, never realized it. He didn't want to surrender such achievement, either to the looters' government or to the inexorable inertia and potential energy of the great tumbling boulder, or snowslide, the American economy had by then become. "Don't let it go!" he cries.

Rand was a champion of justice above all. There was justice in what had to happen to Dagny, and how she had to suffer. To paraphrase Ray Collins as James W. Gettys in Citizen Kane, she needed more than one lesson. And she got more than one lesson. Happily for her and for John, she got the last lesson in time.

And there is justice in what we assume happens to Eddie. Never once able to consider independence, or to apply to himself to surviving a total social collapse, he falls victim to it. At least half the reviews and commentaries on AS I have ever read, assume Eddie dies on that track, lying prone in front of that crippled locomotive, and probably breathing his last even before the batteries give out on that loco's headlight.

Why did Dagny not quit until John Galt had to demonstrate the futility of waiting for the looters to come around, by placing himself into the looters' hands? Know that, and you'll also know why Eddie did not stick with Dagny when she offered to pull him out with her.

True. Working for another railroad was probably out of the question also. I don't think she could have competed against Taggert Transcontinental.

If Dagny started a really new line, she would have had to procure new rights of way and immense amounts of rail and ties. After that, she would need thousands of coolie (or other) laborers. then she would have to start competing with established lines. It would be a fairy tale; not a realistic story.

Did he abuse her or the business? If she came back to a man who abused her she would be like Hillary.

The story of Dagny is pretty common. People keep coming back to those who abuse them.

She went back though. I guess I was wondering if she could have done more to oppose James or if an argument could be made that she disliked his methods but accepted the benefits.

She did. It was called The John Galt Line.

You know what they say---that light at the end of the tunnel could be a train coming at you.

Good points. The time frame is important because as a woman her options were limited. I guess if she wouldn't consider shrugging she would not have left for any reason.

Things were worse for the other railroads and starting a new railroad would have been near impossible. She benefited in the short run by James' actions. I forgot that directive 10-289 made leaving a mute point and you're right that she tended to tune out the political noise.

She obviously struggled with the methods James used. I guess in the end her options were limited.

I think there was a huge component of her love for the family company and her desire to return it to its roots, as her ancestor had built it, to make the world be as it should be, and as she believed it had once been. The reason she did not leave Taggart Transcontinental (she was not truly leaving when she built the John Galt Line) is the same reason it took her so long to shrug.

It's been a while, but my understanding she had enough authority as VP that she thought she could restore the company from that position. She may also have had a share of ownership that was illiquid, so she had a vested interest in seeing the company recover. This responsibility without authority is frustrating to her. It leads her to convining the board to spin off a skunkworks, freed from the politics of the parent company, where she can try something risky without endangering the parent company's brand or political connections. She doggedly keeps trying to work around the politics, until she finally gives up. She feels like the world is twisting her arm to make her produce without realizing twisting her arms makes it harder for her to produce. They make "desertion" from a job illegal. But they'll look the other way for her b/c none of this is real rule of law. It's just a cabal of people in power who need someone they can cajole or scare into doing the actual work so they can "manage" things.

To me that's the whole point. She was so a preternaturally driven to produce and to ignore political BS. The point is even the most dogged producer will eventually shrug because it's difficult to make someone innovate at gunpoint.

Remember - if you were alive back then - or imagine what it was like, never having the question of "shrugging" being raised, anywhere, anytime in history. Is it in Aristotle? Nicole Oresme? Locke? Schopenhauer? Louisa May Alcott? Mark Twain? It had to be discovered. Rand hit on it first in a moment of brilliant insight. Then she proved her thesis. Her novel showed the intellectual path hewed by those who discovered this truth. For Galt, it was her own insight. For the others - McNamara, Halley, William Hastings (who took years struggling with the truth), Ken Dannager, and more - the truth had to be learned and absorbed, integrated, before it could be acted on.

You have benefited from Ayn Rand's struggle, and their story.

As for Rand herself, the story is that she was on the telephone with Isabel Paterson. The world had been shocked into awareness by The Fountainhead. But the movie was then five years in the past, the book ten. Everyone was waiting for Rand's next book. Fortune magazine hinted at it in 1952. They knew that she was working on a novel "about business" in the tone of The Fountainhead. Paterson said that Rand had to write another novel because her fans expect it. (Maybe she said "demand". It is in one of the biographies.) Anyway, Rand saw through it, as no one ever did. "They do? What if I stopped writing? What if all of the authors stopped writing?" And there it was.

No one had ever asked that question before.

Why did Dagny not quit? Why did Dagny smoke cigarettes?

It may be the reason her respect for Nat Taggert was such an important part of the story. It's hard to walk away from a family business. I think its fair to wonder why she didn't do more to stop him.

That's right, it was a leave. But she only returned to save it correct?

Very valid questions Rich. Seems to me questions many of us struggle with.

I worked in printing for 11 years before I finally decided to open my own company. I thought about it for a number of years because the company I was working for was not headed in a direction that I wanted to go. It still took me at least 5 years to make a move. Why? Many factors but likely the biggest was I was used to it. It was more comfortable to stay than leave. It is funny, from the day I left to start my own I did not miss the company at all. My life was so much easier even though it was all on my shoulders.