The Philosophy of Francisco dAnconia and John Galt - Book Report/Review Example

 The fact that the majority is invariably wrong on any point distinguished by the slightest element of doubt or controversy, or on any issue which demands the power of serious discrimination, should not really surprise the discerning. Anyone who takes for granted the premise that on such points the majority is always right must realize that s/he has entered the garden path of destruction—of self and others. Dan Conway could have fought the ‘law’ which killed his Phoenix-Durango railroad line, he could have accepted the help proffered by his business rival Dagny Taggart, and he could have gone on to win a string of well-deserved victories over the looters and moochers of the ‘welfare’ world, but he did not. This may have been because he realized the transience of such victories over the intransigent majority of looters that populated his world. The reason he gives—somewhat unconvincingly—is that he wishes to believe that the majority is right. Ayn Rand apparently wished to acquaint the reader quite early on in the novel with the destructive consequences of giving the majority the sanction and the weapon to deal a death-blow to the creative, productive, proactive individual. This was perhaps essential for the full comprehension of the difference in Dagny Taggart’s, Hank Rearden’s, Francisco d’Anconia’s or John Galt’s response to similar opposition, The history of the United States of America, the history of many other democratic nations, indeed, the history of the world cannot be read or understood without paying tribute to the majority who came together to win victories for the common good. This is an incontrovertible fact and Ayn Rand does not intend to contradict it. What she invites the reader to remember, however, is that the majority who came together for the common good were also, and perhaps as strongly, influenced by thought of personal good too. What would it profit a man/woman if s/he gains for the common good something which can only detract from individual happiness or could even destroy the individual soul? The majority is a concatenation of individuals and nothing that harms the individual can be of service to the community of which he is a part. Rand brings this idea home in the first pages of the novel in the image of the oak tree as seen and comprehended by Eddie Willers: The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot of the Taggart estate. Eddie Willers, aged seven, liked to come and look at that tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of a string. He felt safe in the oak tree's presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength. One might say that the tree represents the power and strength of a free and democratic nation. However, a tree has to feed and to grow and it might even be struck by blight or canker or lightning if proper care is not taken of it. The ideal ‘rule of the majority’ could so easily degenerate into the brute ‘might of the majority’ and the power of right may be overset by the power of might. The tree in the novel decays even before Eddie Willers reaches the prime of his own life. Again, because the image of the tree occurs so early on in the novel, it is impossible to discount its importance in the novel’s scheme. The portrait of the powerful tree as the symbol of strength is immediately negated by a picture of its sorry plight: One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside—just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it. There can be no doubt that Rand intended the tree to symbolize the plight of American democracy, which appeared to her to be veering towards the false sunlight of socialism and the so-called welfare state. Atlas Shrugged is a warning to patriotic Americans that they had to love themselves and their country if both were to progress. The sorry picture of the blighted oak trees, and the even sorrier picture of the strangled Phoenix-Durango line, are intended to shake American citizens out of the grip of complacency, and the sin of complaisance. Eddie Conway is presented as a down-to-earth entrepreneur who realized that he could fill a need in the business world, and who did exactly what he set out to do. Unfortunately he was someone who did not understand the insidious and perfidious strength of the prevailing culture of influence. In Chapter 4, Rand gives the reader a straightforward description of this seemingly ordinary character: Dan Conway was approaching fifty. He had the square, stolid, stubborn face of a tough freight engineer, rather than a company president; the face of a fighter, with a young, tanned skin and graying hair. He had taken over a shaky little railroad in Arizona, a road whose net revenue was "less than that of a successful grocery store, and he had built it into the best railroad of the Southwest. He spoke little, seldom read books, had never gone to college. The whole sphere of human endeavors, with one exception, left him blankly indifferent; he had no touch of that which people called culture. But he knew railroads. Perhaps he could not understand the prevalent culture of influence because he knew quite well that “he had no touch of that which people called culture.” Anyway he is perfectly willing to believe that the majority is right to condemn him, and he is perfectly willing to obey them, willing, in other words, to give them the power that they would not otherwise have had to destroy him and his railroad. It is left to Dagny Taggart—Conway’s rival—to urge him to stand up and fight, but Conway seems a broken man, broken by forces he cannot understand. Dagny tries to reach his mind: "Why don't you want to fight?" "Because they had the right to do it." "Dan," she asked, "have you lost your mind?" "I've never gone back on my word in my life," he said tonelessly. "I don't care what the courts decide. I promised to obey the majority. I have to obey." "Did you expect the majority to do this to you?" "No." There was a kind of faint convulsion in the stolid face. He spoke softly, not looking at her, the helpless astonishment still raw within him. "No, I didn't expect it. I heard them talking about it for over a year, but I didn't believe it. Even when they were voting, I didn't believe it." "What did you expect?" "I thought . . . They said all of us were to stand for the common good. I thought what I had done down there in Colorado was good. Good for everybody." In response, Dagny Taggart calls him a “damn fool” for not recognizing that he was being punished for being the one good man in a world of looters, but Dan Conway apparently cannot comprehend such a view of the world. He gives up the struggle and decides to change—but at least, in his case the reader sees a good man who does not want to change for the worse. It may not be a great change for the better, but who can quarrel with his plans for a retired life of culture—to devote himself to fishing, and reading books? What we see in the fate of Dan Conway, presented so early on in the novel is the fate of a good man with a mind of his own, and his heart in the right place—brought down by the harsh force of a brute majority who have ganged up on him. The point to note is that Conway is a good man who accepts his fate—who accepts the truism in Orwellian phrase that “Napoleon [the majority] is always right.” Conway is not surprised to see Dagny Taggart rally him on to continue the fight, nor is he put out in the least by her protestations of selfishness, but he cannot continue the fight because he believes the majority is always right. Therefore, he accepts the will of the majority and thereby gives them the power, the right and the excuse they need to destroy him. In this respect he stand in stark contrast—intentionally stark contrast—to Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart, who later in the novel refuse to sanction the looting of their intellectual and material property and win the chance to plod on for some more time. However even they have to accept failure and to realize that they cannot exist in a world of looters with any sense of decency or dignity. Their failure to see through the schemes of the designing majority stands, again, in sharp contrast to the canny success of Francisco d’Anconia and John Galt in similar situations. In other words, the fate of Dan Conway throws light on the fight of Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden and this, in turn, helps to illuminate the philosophy of Francisco d’Anconia and John Galt. Read More