Atlas Shrugged/Synopsis/Section 3A

=Atlas Shrugged, Part 3, Chapters 6-10=

Section 361: Part 3, Chapter 6, Section 1

 * Plot summary:
 * Hank finds out that the Steel Workers Union went to the Unificiation Board to demand a raise, and was denied. The mood in the mill becomes tense and there are some minor altercations. Hank finds it odd that he has had no part in any of this.
 * Hank is informed that there was a hearing about a tax issue, that he was found guilty, and that all his assets are frozen. He decides to do nothing. Then he is informed that it was all a mistake and will be rectified, although it will take a little time. He is asked to go to New York the evening of Nov 4th, which he agrees to. He knows there is a trap in all that has been happening, but does not yet see it.
 * His mother calls and asks to see him, insists that he come before going to New York. When he gets there, he finds that his mother has had Lillian living there as well. They beg him for money, he says he doesn't presently have any. He realizes that they hate him and want to destroy him. They let slip that they are worried that he will drop out. He realizes that Lillian only married him in order to try and break him, to corrupt him. They all want him to take care of them and try to use guilt and scorn to motivate him. But he realizes that they have just been using him, and tells them that he no longer cares about any of them, or what happens to them, and leaves.
 * In New York, he sees the Washington gang, who try to flatter him. They reveal their intentions for a Steel Unification Plan. Basically, they want him to hand over his profits to Orren Boyle, to run his mill at a loss and to put the last of his wealth into the mill. They want what he has left, and do not think beyond the present to the time when Hank will be broke. They just assume that Hank will figure something out, that he will save them all. Hank leaves.
 * On the way home, he comes to the mill. He finds a staged riot in progress. It was supposed to happen while he was still in New York, except that Hank left earlier than planned. The Washington gang wanted it to look like his workers were very unhappy and mistreated. But his workers defended the mill in an armed battle. One of Hank's furnace supervisors saw what was coming, got the workers ready and directed the battle. The Wet Nurse was part of the gang's plan but wouldn't go along so they shot him. As Hank tried to enter the mill via a back way, he finds The Wet Nurse, who has finally figured things out just as he is dying in Hank's arms. Hank enters the mill and is attacked by some stray thugs but is saved. It was the furnace supervisor who saved Hank, and who turns out to be Francisco. Hank is finally ready to hear what Francisco has to say.
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * Hank Reardon's apartment, in Philedelphia
 * Hank Reardon's house (where his mother and brother live)
 * The Wayne-Falkland Hotel in New York
 * Reardon Mills
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Hank Reardon
 * Hank Reardon's mother
 * Philip Reardon, Hank's brother
 * Lillian Reardon
 * Mr. Thompson
 * Dr. Ferris
 * Tinky Holloway
 * Jim Taggart
 * Claude Slagonhop
 * The Wet Nurse
 * The mill supervisor
 * Francisco d'Anconio

Section 362: Part 3, Chapter 6, Section 2

 * Plot summary:
 * Entry
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * Entry
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Entry

Section 371: Part 3, Chapter 7, Section 1
- - - -
 * Plot summary:
 * In a panic, Jim wakes Dagny at her apartment to tell her that Hank is gone, as are the top people at his mill. And the news is out. Dagny notes that people notice his absence more than they ever noticed his achievements. Businesses that rely on steel in turn start going out of business. Some of those people commit suicide.
 * Dagny gets a note from Hank, he has met John Galt, is aware that Dagny now loves John, and is ok with it.
 * She knows Galt works at Taggart Terminal but resists seeking him out.
 * Through railroad reports, Dagny is aware of escalating lawlessness around the country, news not mentioned in the papers.
 * The radio announces an important speech by Mr. Thompson to be on Nov 22, in a week.The speech is widely publicized.
 * Jim asks Dagny to come see Thompson at the studio, but promises he isn't trying to get her to participate and endorse the speech. At the studio, every main character is there. Jim had lied to her, they wanted her to join the discussion all along. But she refuses.
 * The head technician tells them they can't broadcast, some strange transmission is blocking and overpowering theirs, country-wide. At 8pm, instead of Thompson, John Galt speaks. The remainder of the section is his speech:
 * "I have deprived you of victims, and thus destroyed your world." I will tell you why you are perishing, you who dread knowledge.
 * You sacrificed justice to mercy, independence to unity, reason to faith, wealth to need, self esteem to self denial, happiness to duty.
 * I have withdrawn those who live by the mind. I have stopped your motor, deprived your world of man's mind.
 * We don't owe you, your need is no claim on us. We, the men of the mind, are on strike. On strike against self immolation, that life is guilt. You said we were evil, so we left. The battle has been whether your life belongs to god or to your neighbor. No one has told you that your life belongs to you.
 * Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Plants and animals can't decide, they just live by instinct.
 * Man has the power to act as his own destroyer, which is how he has acted through most of history.
 * Your own life must be your motive and goal, otherwise you are an agent of death.
 * Man's life is not the life of a mindless brute but of a thinking being. Not survival at any price since there is only one price that pars for man's survival: reason.
 * A doctrine that gives you as an ideal, the role of sacrificial anima seeking slaughter on the alter of others is giving you death as a standard.
 * Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it.
 * The purpose of morality is to teach you not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
 * Sweep aside those who preach that the highest virtue man can practice is to hold his own life as no value.
 * If you choose not to think, you default on existence and pass along the deficit to some moral man expecting him to sacrifice his good for the sake of letting you survive by your evil.
 * When a man declares "Who am I to know" he is declaring "Who am I to live".
 * You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island - it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him there try to claim that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will leap into his mouth.
 * Some paragraphs about
 * Rationality
 * Independence
 * Integrity
 * Justice
 * Productiveness
 * Pride
 * The symbol of all relationships among such men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is THE TRADER.
 * No man may INITIATE the use of physical force against others.
 * I have no benefits to seek from human vices: from stupidity, dishonesty, or fear.
 * Original Sin is supposed to be when man at of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
 * I am speaking to man the victim, not man the killer, the word that has destroyed you is sacrifice, the rejection of the good for the sake of the evil.
 * They wish you to sacrifice materially but they also wish you to sacrifice your values.
 * The mystics of spirit, the mystics of muscle
 * A is A, the identity principle.
 * They say, I want it, therefore it is.
 * The law of identity does not permit you to have your cake and eat it too. The corrallary to causeless in matter is the unearned in spirit.
 * Who pays for the orgy? Who causes the causeless? Who are the victims condemned to remain unacknowledged?
 * WE are, we, the men of the mind.
 * They proclaim that the only requirement for running a factory is the ability to turn the cranks of the machines, and blank out the question of who created the factory.
 * They are taking you back to darker ages than any your history has known. The goal is not the era of pre-science, but the era of pre-language.
 * Let the cannibal that snarls that the freedom of man's mind was needed to CREATE an industrial civilization, but is not needed to maintain it, be given an arrowhead and bearsking, not a university chair of economics.
 * To a savage, the world is not the unknown, but the unknowable.
 * He can count on nothing, he can only wish.
 * They proclaim that every man born is entitled to exist without labor and is entitled to receive his minimum sustenance with no effort on his part, as his due & birthright.
 * Every man, they announce, owns an equal share of the technological benefits created in the world.
 * Your gangs of mystics, of spirit and muscle, are fighting for power to rule you, you who have agreed to have no mind.
 * Society - all of it is the same performance for the same & only purpose: to reduce you to the kind of pulp that has surrendered the validity of your consciousness. But it cannot be done without your consent. If you permit it to be done, you deserve it.
 * A mystic, afraid to think, is left at the mercy of unidentified feelings. He struggles to hide from himself that the nature of his feelings is terror. His lust is to command, not to convince.
 * The forces let loose in your world today do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it. They do not want to succeed, they want you to fail. They keep running, trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself.
 * Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, against life and man.
 * It is a conspiracy of those who seek, not to live, but to GET AWAY with living. The professor who, unable to think, cripples the minds of his students. The businessman who, to protect his stagnation, takes pleasure in chaining the ability of his competitors. The eunuch who takes pleasure in the castration of all pleasure.
 * We are no longer there to save you from the effects of your chosen belief.
 * You have been living on borrowed time - and I am the man who has called in the loan.
 * Twelve years ago when I worked in your world, I discovered a source of energy available since the birth of the globe, but which men had not known how to use. I created a motor that would have made a fortune for me and those who hired me. Then one night at a factory meeting, I heard three parasites assert that my brain and my life were their property. That my right to exist was dependant upon satisfying their desires. I had no right to live by reason of my competency, their right to live was unconditional, by reason of their incompetence.
 * Then I saw what was wrong with the world, and that the only weapon of evil was the willingness of good to serve it.
 * I quit that factory and your world. I made it my job to warn your victims and to give them the method and the weapon to fight you.
 * Ask yourself how much you have invented and how much you make of others inventions.
 * When you clamor for public ownership of the means of production, you are clamoring for public ownership of the mind.
 * Did you want to know who is John Galt? I am the first man of ability who refuses to regard it as guilt.
 * I have done by plan and intention what has been done throughout history by silent default, gone on strike.
 * The Dark Ages were an era of intelligence on strike.
 * The road of human history was a string of blank-outs with only a few brief bursts of sunlight when the released energy of the men of the mind performed the wonders you gaped at, admired, and then promptly extinguished.
 * I have foreshortened the usual course of history and have let you discover the nature of the payments you had hoped to switch to the shoulders of others. Do not pretend that a malevolent reality defeated you - you were defeated by your own evasions.
 * But to those of you who still retain a love of your life I offer a chance to make a choice - be "moral" or live.
 * pg 965 - mentions he has spoken for two hours.
 * But the price is to start from scratch, reversing a costly historical error, to declare, "I am, therefore I'll think."
 * The three of us, Francisco, Ragnar, and myself started this and I am completing it. We resolved to avenge this country that was built on MY morality, but you failed to live up to it.
 * We will not return until the road is clear to rebuild this country, until the wreckage of the morality of sacrifice has been wiped out of our way.
 * The source of man's right is the law of identity.
 * No right can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, which means, the right of property.
 * The only proper functions of government are the police, the army, and the courts.
 * Look past the moment, you who fear to compete with men of superior intelligence. When you live in a society where men are free to trade the value of your work is determined not only by your effort but by the effort of the best productive minds around you.
 * When you work in a modern factory you are paid not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible (industrialist, investor, inventor, engineer, scientist).
 * It is the value of his time that the strong of intellect transfers to the weak.
 * Material products can't be shared, it is only the value of an idea that can be shared with unlimited numbers of men, making all sharers richer at no one's sacrifice or loss, raising the productive capacity of labor.
 * In proportion to mental energy spent, the inventor receives a small percentage of the value he created no matter what his material payment. But a janitor receives an enormous payment in proportion to his mental effort.
 * We dragged you out of your hovels but you called our palaces and yachts unfair.
 * We asked to deal with your minds, you chose to deal using your gun. Our answer was "May you be damned".
 * Some of you might please ignorance. But the guiltiest among you are those who had the CAPACITY to know. The intellects who create weapons are the unforgivable (Dr. Stadler).
 * To those who love life and the mind, I urge you to go on strike as I did.
 * If you have to stay among them, keep your inventions to yourself, as a captive should. If you have a chance to vanish into a wilderness beyond their reach, do so. We will return after the collapse, of the morality of sacrifice. Our city will act as a rallying point for such hidden refuges as you create.
 * The dollar sign will be our symbol.
 * In the name of the best within us....
 * My last words are to those heroes who still are held prisoner by their virtues and desperate courage. They hold you by your innocence, which gives them the benefit of the doubt (Dagny)
 * You can win this new world, by a total break with the old. His oath is "I swear - by my life and my love of it - that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine"
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * Dagny Taggart's apartment
 * The broadcasting studio in New York City
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * James Taggart
 * John Galt (via radio)
 * Mr Thompson
 * Most all of the group from Washington

Section 381: Part 3, Chapter 8, Section 1

 * Plot summary:
 * The Washington group talk about Galt's speech, flustered. Fred Kinnon finally brings up the food crisis, but the group has no solution. Dagny tells them that they have no answers but John Galt does, so they should step aside and let John Galt take charge.
 * Thompson realizes she is right but rather than give up power he thinks to himself that he can coopt Galt. Dagny leaves with Eddie Willers. Thompson resolves to find Galt and make him solve the problem. They set a tail on Dagny so she'll lead them to him.
 * Alone now, Eddie tells Dagny that he realized that he's known John Galt for years as a common track worker at the Taggart Company. Dagny tells him that if he doesn't want Galt destroyed that he is to forget ever knowing him, never to tell anyone.
 * All around the country, the "better men" are now starting to "drop out" as a result of the impending food crisis and John Galt's speech. They are heading off into isolated & unpopulated areas of the country.
 * Nobody qualified can be found to fill meaningful, important positions. People turn down raises and promotions rather than take a position of responsibility. The country starts to fall apart. Inflation takes hold.
 * Thompson goes on the radio to send a message to John Galt that they will negotiate, that they will do whatever he says.
 * With Hank having dropped out, Reardon Steel is taken over by the government, but the mill is closed after several months of mismanagement culminating in a fire.
 * Feb 3 is the last date mentioned in this decline (in a passage about a pilot who sees no flame from Reardon Steel).
 * Thompson tells Dagny to contact Galt and to tell him that Thompson wants to negotiate. He also says that Ferris and others are trying to find Galt in order to kill him, and perhaps have already killed him. He frightens her into contacting Galt.


 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * Wayne-Falkland Hotel
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Mr. Thompson
 * Dr. Ferris
 * Wesley Mouch
 * Jim Taggart
 * Fred Kinnan
 * Dagny Taggart
 * Eddie Willers
 * Tinky Holloway
 * Chick Morrison
 * Eugene Lawson
 * Ma Chalmers
 * Dr. Simon Pritchett
 * Mr Mowen

Section 382: Part 3, Chapter 8, Section 2

 * Plot summary:
 * Dagny doesn't have a way to contact John Galt, but thinks she can find him. While working at the Taggart company, he had given a home address. She goes there and finds that he is in fact there. They spend a little time together. He shows her his laboratory hidden in the apartment, including the static electricity motor.
 * He warns her that she has been followed and that they are coming to take him. He urges her that when they come she should act as though she was tracking him down to turn him in, that she is on their side. They come, and she does. They force their way into his laboratory, but he has booby-trapped it and everything inside is dust before they can gain entrance.
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * The streets of New York City
 * John Galt's apartment
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Dagny Taggart
 * John Galt
 * Four thugs

Section 383: Part 3, Chapter 8, Section 3

 * Plot summary:
 * Thompson pleads with Galt to take control of the economy, but refuses to cede power or change the overall system. Galt refuses. Thompson tries various forms of persuasion. He slyly asks if Galt has any loved ones he'd like to speak to. Galt knows that these loved ones would become hostages and says that there is no one.
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * Wayne-Falkland Hotel
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Mr. Thompson
 * John Galt

Section 384: Part 3, Chapter 8, Section 4

 * Plot summary:
 * Chick Morrison explains that their propaganda that John Galt is with them and planning a solution isn't convincing anyone. They mention factory closings, and also hunger riots in West Virginia. We learn of South Dakota farmers marching on their capital, burning state buildings and luxury houses. The State of California is in civil war between various factions.
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * Wayne-Falkland Hotel
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Chick Morrison
 * Mr. Thompson
 * Wesley Mouch
 * Dr. Ferris
 * Fred Kinnon
 * Dagny Taggart

Section 385: Part 3, Chapter 8, Section 5

 * Plot summary:
 * Thompson summons Dagny to see him. She is still acting as though she is on their side. She tricks Thompson into showing John his confidential reports on the chaos around the nation, which she knows will encourage John.
 * Mr. Thompson & Jim Taggart try to persuade Galt to no effect. The next day, Thompson brings Chick Morrison, who does no better.
 * Dr. Ferris is next but also fails. The importance of the Taggart Bridge across the Mississippi River is brought up.
 * Dagny talks to Eddie Willer at the Taggart Company. Eddie leaves for San Francisco and says good-bye to Dagny as he doesn't expect to see her again.
 * Dr. Stadler is ordered to talk to Galt. Stadler tries to make excuses to John for selling out.
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * Wayne-Falkland Hotel
 * The Taggart Company
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Mr. Thompson
 * Dagny Taggart
 * John Galt
 * Jim Taggart
 * Chick Morrison
 * Dr. Ferris
 * Eddie Willer

Section 386: Part 3, Chapter 8, Section 6

 * Plot summary:
 * Chick has Galt brough at gunpoint to a dinner gala to announce the John Galt Plan. It is also being broadcast over television and radio. They are trying to tempt him with what they themselves would want as a bribe (The dinner held in his honor, the power). Mouch makes a speech promising contradictory things. The plan to lower taxes but raise government spending. The rich get to keep everything they have but the poor get more. Higher wages but lower prices.
 * When the TV camera goes to Galt, Galt dodges away from the man holding a gun to his back so that the gun is apparent to the camera, thus showing that the leaders have been lying, that he isn't cooperating, and there is no John Galt Plan. Galt then says to the camera "Get the hell out of my way!".
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * Wayne-Falkland Hotel
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Chick Morrison
 * John Galt
 * Mr. Thompson
 * Jim Taggart
 * Dagny Taggart
 * Wesley Mouch

Section 391: Part 3, Chapter 9, Section 1

 * Plot summary:
 * Dr. Robert Stadler drives out to Project X (the weapon based on sound waves). An armed militia has taken it over, calling themselves "The Friends of the People".
 * Dr. Stadler talks his way in, and is taken to see the leader, Cuffy Meigs, in the control room. Cuffy is drunk and talks about his ambitions and demands.
 * He and Dr. Stadler get into a fight over who will control Project X, they hit into the control levers, and Project X is randomly activated. It destroys itself and everything in a 100 mile radius; buildings and people. The vital Taggart Bridge over the Mississippi River is among the destroyed.
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * Project X, somewhere in Iowa, within 100 miles of the Mississippi River
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Dr. Stadler
 * Cuffy Meigs
 * Various militia men.

Section 392: Part 3, Chapter 9, Section 2

 * Plot summary:
 * The washington group argues about how to make Galt take control and save their system. Dagny is present and listening but the group still doesn't consider her an enemy. When the talk turns to torture, she slips out to call Francisco and warn him of their plans for Galt. She packs some things and meets him at a nearby street corner.
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * Wayne Falkland Hotel
 * Dagny's apartment
 * The streets of New York City
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Mr. Thompson
 * Dr. Ferris
 * Jim Taggart
 * Dagny Taggart
 * Wesley Mouch
 * Tinky Holloway
 * Chick Morrison
 * Eugene Lawson

Section 393: Part 3, Chapter 9, Section 3

 * Plot summary:
 * Galt is hooked up to an electric shock torture machine. His torturers want to break him so that he'll do what they want. But they are also afraid of killing him because they want him to save their system. Galt endures the pain but doesn't break. As the torture grows more severe, Galt remains steadfast but the torturers become more and more afraid of possibly killing him. The machine breaks and nobody can fix it. Galt tells them how to fix it, which partially freaks them out. Jim Taggart realizes that he actually hates himself and not John Galt and this fact breaks Jim, leaving him unresponsive. This freaks out the others and they use Jim as an excuse to stop torturing Galt for the night, planning to return the next day.
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * The "Project F" building at the State Science Institute in New Hampshire. The "F" stands for Ferris.
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Dr. Ferris
 * Wesley Mouch
 * Jim Taggart
 * John Galt

Section 3A1: Part 3, Chapter 10, Section 1

 * Plot summary:
 * Dagny, Francisco, Hank, and Ragnar force their way into Project F, killing several guards and capturing several others. Hank is shot in the shoulder. They rescue John Galt, freeing him from an electric shock torture machine that had been used on him.
 * They fly back to their secret town of Galt's Gulch in the Colorado mountains. Passing over New York City, they see the gridlocked masses attempting to flee the impending catastrophic food shortage. As they fly by, the city goes black as the power stations are abandoned.
 * John, Francisco, and Ragnar look at the dying city and take satisfaction, as it is the culmination of 12 years of work.
 * Dagny is also happy, and focuses on the future. She considers the world a blank slate waiting to be written upon.
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * The "Project F" building at the State Science Institute in New Hampshire
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Dagny Taggart
 * Ragnar Danneskjold
 * Hank Rearden
 * Francisco d'Anconia
 * The Guards
 * John Galt

Section 3A2: Part 3, Chapter 10, Section 2

 * Plot summary:
 * Despite the fighting in the streets of lawless San Francisco, Eddie Willers was able to get a Comet train out of from San Francisco, only to have it break down in the middle of the Arizona desert. The crew can't fix it and there is no Taggart company left to send repairmen. An old fashioned wagon train pulled by horses comes by and invites the passengers to join them. Eddie looks at the people on the wagon train and thinks that they don't have what it takes to survive. Even though he is in the desert with no food and water, Eddie Willers stays with the train. The crew and other passengers load into covered wagons and leave.
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * A Taggart Comet Train (the last one)
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Eddie Willers

Section 3A3: Part 3, Chapter 10, Section 3

 * Plot summary:
 * It is late winter, and we visit various cabins in Galt's Gulch to see what the characters are doing.
 * Richard Halley is playing his Fifth Concerto. It is triumphant, it "swept space clean and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort".
 * Midas Mulligan is thinking about investments he'll make in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, other places.
 * Dagnar and Kay are relaxing.
 * Judge Narrangansett is rewriting the constitution, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade...".
 * Francisco, Hank, and Ellis are together. Francisco is planning a smelter for Hank, Hank envisions a railroad. John will design the engines. Dagny will run it.
 * Elsewhere John and Dagny are out walking. He says "The road is cleared. We are going back to the world."
 * End of the story.
 * The following Places in Atlas Shrugged are used as settings in this section:
 * Galt's Gulch, a Colorado Valley
 * The following Characters in Atlas Shrugged appear in this section:
 * Richard Halley
 * Midas Mulligan
 * Ragnar Danneskjold
 * Kay LudLow
 * Judge Narragansett
 * Hank Rearden
 * Francisco d'Anconia
 * Ellis
 * Dagny Taggart
 * John Galt
 * Quotations:
 * "The road is cleared. We are going back to the world" page 1069 said by John Galt