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Atlas Shrugged
Started by raghavr at 12-19-2008 8:44 AM. Topic has 4 replies.
  
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 12-19-2008, 8:44 AM
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raghavr
Joined on 12-19-2008
Posts 1
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Question about love in Atlas Shrugged
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I've always loved Atlas Shrugged.. it's helped me understand a lot of things about the world as it is, and helped me in some part to form my own philosophy and consequently, make the best of my life.
and while I'm quite clear about philosophical precepts of the novel, I have a question to do with the emotional compass of the characters..
The one thing I did not understand or fully fathom was the way Dagny moves from Francisco to Rearden and finally to Galt. I got why she was with Rearden - because at that time, Francisco was doing the whole playboy thing and Dagny was unaware of his true intentions.. She thought he had degenerated to something she couldn't even classify. I even got her going from Rearden to Galt because with Rearden it was more an admiration of the man he was than true love. But she did love Francisco; who was biding his time until he could tell her the truth and go back to her. In his heart, he had always loved her.. even through the 12 years of their being seperate.. how could he just give her up to Galt? (well, I guess because you can't force love); Therefore, the question is - how could she leave Francisco for Galt? If an emotion once granted can never be taken away (paraphrasing the fountainhead), shouldn't she still have loved him? Isn't he still the man he was, perhaps greater because of all he had done in the time in between? What if tomorrow, she finds another Galt? A Galt 1.1 perhaps.. more capable, intelligent, with greater courage of conviction and the same moral, ethical values -- would she go to him then?
What is permanent?
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12-22-2008, 5:23 PM
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JRBogie
Joined on 12-23-2008
Posts 2
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Re: Question about love in Atlas Shrugged
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it is more basic than you are looking for. Dagny has loved men because of who they are and Galt is the culmination of what all men should be in her eyes, as Dagny is in all three of the men's eyes. It is not blind love, it is admiration for the man
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12-30-2008, 2:19 PM
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lirruping
Joined on 12-30-2008
Posts 1
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Re: Question about love in Atlas Shrugged
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Raghavr: I read The Fountainhead about ten years ago and have jjust finished Atlas Shrugged. I came away with the same question about why Dagny ultimately chose Galt over Francisco--and for many of the same reasons you mentioned.
Bogie says that "Galt is the culmination of what all men should be in her eyes".
Well, I guess so... if it is only the fact of her ending up with him proves this.
I guess his greatness (and her responsive love) somehow overrides the existence of her previous love for Francisco--even after she knows that Francisco's playboy thing was an appearance he maintained in service of higher ideals and at the (great) expense of his expression of his ongoing love for her. Everything Francisco is and does is consistent with her idea of greatness, including holding his purpose and ideals (in this case the broad goal of carrying out the strike and building the Gulch community) as his highest driving passion, even above romantic love.
Further, as you point out, she loved him first. Did her love for F. somehow die during the time when Dagny believed that he was a playboy? I don't think so. But if so, why didn't it come back to life when she learned the true meaning of Francisco's actions?
Galt has going for him his engineering genius along with his radically "rational" and "right" political ideas. Francisco's has (apparently) an equivalent genius in his chosen field as well as equally radical, rational and right political ideas--plus a first claim on her love.
Perhaps Dagny would say that since the big-picture political thinking was Galt's, since he was the initiator of the strike, that he was the greater man & that this therefore justifies or determines her love for him above Francisco.
Who am I to know?!
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01-10-2009, 7:57 AM
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Chris.S
Joined on 01-10-2009
Posts 5
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Re: Question about love in Atlas Shrugged
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This is explained in the part of the story where Francisco, Galt, and Dagny are walking back to the Gulch from Franciscos house (I think it was his house). Basically, she does love all three men, but she falls in love with Galt finally because he is the physical and mental/rational culmination of her highest values.
On the road, Fran asks her to go back and stay at his place so they can catch up. She turns to Galt and asks him if that was ok with him because he is technically her employer. While she asks this, she is desperately wishing that Galt allows her to go, but when Galt refuses, she is ultimately relieved because she realizes that if he had allowed her to go, a destructive love-triangle would have been created, where everyone refuses to acknowledge the truth - that Dagny truly loves Galt.
It's ok to be in love with different people as long as it's a response to their rational values and not out of any altruistic thing. As well, people and their values grow and change over time. Hopefully, a couple's values will grow and change together, but if they grow apart, then both can act rationally and realize that they might not be good for each other anymore. This is demonstrated in Dagny's relationships with Fran, Hank and Galt. Galt is her final lover ever, because within that world, Galt is a Man (the only man) that reflects her highest and greatest values.
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09-07-2009, 12:46 PM
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Dominique
Joined on 09-06-2009
Posts 10
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Re: Question about love in Atlas Shrugged
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Il looks like the answer lies in the particular personality of Ayn
Rand who is fascinated with great heights. The end of Atlas Shrugged happens
on the heights of a mountain just after climbing it with John Galt.
The end of The Fountainhead happens in an elevator that leads Dominic
to the top of the highest skyscraper in New York to meet her true lover. Clearly, Ayn Rand
does not fool herself in Atlas Shrugged when she suggests the obvious comparison
between the two rails of a railroad line that fly away as do the
frames of a skyscraper in the sky. This expresses an escape from something that is
a real, disappointing, world of constraints, rules, laws, lack of freedom, etc.
Dagny, and Dominic alike, are Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand builds her whole life
on her personal story of escape from Russia to the United States, and
to New York in particular, a place that strikes her. Ayn Rand is always
talking about freedom, and free will, and free entrepreneurship,
and... New York; but, noticeably enough, she never makes mention of
the very symbol of what she says she love : the Statue of Liberty!
So, Dagny/Ayn Rand puts herself at the opposite side of Hank
Rearden who never uses his particularly strict code of moral values
with humans as he does in business. Contrary to Hank Rearden,
Dagny/Ayn Rand wants the best in everything, including in love.
Although this anecdote is as short as subtle, you may notice that
Dagny/Ayn Rand is struck with the exceptionally beautiful features of
Ragnar Danneskjold, when she meets him in Galt's home. But the
description end as soon as she learns that he is married with a
striking beauty he loves, the actress Kay Ludlow. Would Ragnar Danneskjold
have enjoyed more physical presence in the story if he had been
single? Well, Ayn Rand alone decided that he was married and unlikely
to be another Dagny's lover, but it is hard to deny that he couldn't
have been a potential lover for Dagny...
As a conclusion, I would say, on the one hand, that Ayn
Rand's view on love was perhaps very personal and that she attempted to make it a part of her whole philosophy. But, on the
other hand, the criterion defining the best man for a women,
according to her, must be the best one can find so as to fit her
philosophy of life as a whole: the pursuit of progress, evolution,
Darwinism and the evolution of species, etc-in this sense, it
wouldn't be much more than another way to describe her philosophy
through the example of love. All this struck us because it happens in
the context of a famous fiction, in which all of us use to see the
pattern “one girl for one man” (Cinderella, the Count of Monte
Cristo, ect.). But if you take this into account, then you'll find
that Dagny got only three dates in her whole life, which is not that
excessive by today's standards... As you suggest it, the one thing we
may truly wonder about is what Hank Rearden and Francisco d'Anconia
are going to do with their life, then, as everything suggest
that Dagny will never go back to none of them?
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The Atlas... » Ayn Rand's Nove... » Atlas Shrugged » Re: Question about love in Atlas Shrugged
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