I’m re-reading Atlas Shrugged (recommended to all)
and watching the global politico-economic events unfold.
The parallels are uncanny.
The blindness amongst men staggers the imagination.
The writing is on the wall,
this house of cards is going to fall.
I remember reading an article…
(perhaps it was an audio file as I remember the emphasis in the speakers empassioned voice)
…saying that if only people would read Atlas Shrugged they would ‘understand’.
“Just read it, that’s all they have to do.”
Well I’m reading it fort the third time now (first time when I was 18), and
I never realised what a TEAR JERKER it is!
Below I list the pages and quotes that have literally brought tears to my eyes, lumps to my throat.
I loved Atlas since the first read – and it all seemed so very obvious to me then – in a ‘rational without life experience’ kind of way…
But now having gone through life experiences of love, companionship, business management, shared struggle and defeat… I feel deeply stirred by Ayn Rand’s genius story…
…and I also better appreciate Eric Savage’s words.
“Just read it, that’s all they have to do.”
WARNING: These clips obviously reveal a little bit of the storyline, so if you have not read it but have already firmly made the decision to do so, perhaps you will not want to spoil any surprises by reading the clips below. On the other hand, if reading them may help encourage you to actually pick up a copy of Atlas Shrugged from Amazon
or your local book store, then I hope these brief clips serve that purpose.
And the film of Atlas Shrugged Part 1 will be released in 2011. Read the book before you watch the film!
P 80 Each night, she drove the five miles from the country house to Rockdale. She came back at dawn, slept a few hours and got up with the rest of the household. She felt no desire to sleep. Undressing for bed in the first rays of the sun, she felt a tense, joyous, causeless impatience to face the day that was starting.
p82 The floor of the station trembled., and glass rattled in the windows. She watched the train’s flight with a smile of excitement. She glanced at Francisco: he was looking at her, with the same smile.
p86 The plea of his first smile had not been a plea of weakness; he had acquired an air of determination that seemed merciless. He acted like a man who stood straight, under the weight of an unendurable burden.
p88 He shuddered suddenly, he threw off the blanket, he looked at her naked body, then he fell forward and buried his face between her breasts. He held her shoulders, hanging onto her convulsively. She heard the words, muffled, his mouth pressed to her skin: “I can’t give it up! I can’t!”
p91 She realized suddenly that playing with those marbles was not a deliberate affectation on his part; it was restlessness; he could not remain inactive for long.
p112 Rearden’s startled glance at him was like the involuntary thrust of a hand grasping for support in a desperate need. The glance betrayed how much he wanted to find the sort of man he thought he was seeing.
p131 He pointed at the column of smoke. “There’s your new sunrise. It’s going to feed the rest.”
“If it’s not stopped.” “Do you think it can be stopped?” She looked at the rail under her feet. “No,” she said.
p132 “We’ve done it, haven’t we?” he said.
In payment for every effort, for every sleepless night, for every silent thrust against despair, this moment was all she wanted. “Yes. We have.”
p153 “You see, I can’t believe that you’re really gone . . . because I know that you’re still able to hear me. The way you live is depraved. But the way you act is not. Even the way you speak of it, is not. . . . I had to try . . .”
p154 In the moment when she thought that she had seen this look before, that this was the way he had looked against the night glow of the city, when he lay in bed by her side for the last time—she heard his cry, the kind of cry she had never torn from him before: “My love, I can’t!”
p155 He reached for his fountain pen, wrote at the bottom of the list “Henry Rearden, Rearden Steel, Pennsylvania—$1,000,000″ and tossed the list back to her.
p156 The line of her shoulders looked taut, yet thrown back easily, as if poised for flight. Tension seemed natural to her, not a sign of anxiety, but a sign of enjoyment; the tension of her whole body
p160 The wrinkles of her soft chin trickled into a shape resembling a sneer. “What are they, your mills—a holy temple of some kind?”
“Why . . . yes,” he said softly, astonished at the thought.
p162 Mr. Ward looked quickly away from him, but Rearden had caught a glimpse of
his face. It’s so much for him, thought Rearden, and so little for me!
p165 What? . . . I can’t hear you. Have you caught a cold? . . . What are you thanking me for, as yet? Wait till I explain it to you.”
p177 “Dagny, I think you’d better come over.” … The anteroom of the office was full. Men stood jammed among the desks, against the walls. As she entered, they took their hats off in sudden silence. She saw the graying heads, the muscular shoulders, she saw the smiling faces of her staff at their desks and the face of Eddie Willers at the end of the room. Everybody knew that nothing had to be said.
p178 She added casually, as if it were a last-moment decision, but it fooled no one, “Oh yes, tell him that I’m going to ride with him in the cab of the engine on that run.”
An old engineer beside her grinned and said, “I thought you would, Miss Taggart.”
p183 In a voice of quiet authority, the voice of a vice-president, he ordered, pointing at the cameras, “Stand back—way back. Take one shot when I cut it, then get out of the way, fast.”… He held the scissors ready over the white ribbon. He took his hat off and tossed it aside.
p185 A solitary figure stood at every mile post. Some were young schoolboys, others were so old that the silhouettes of their bodies looked bent against the sky. All of them were armed, with anything they had found, from costly rifles to ancient muskets. All of them wore railroad caps. They were the sons of Taggart employees, and old railroad men who had retired after a full lifetime of Taggart service. They had come, unsummoned, to guard this train. As the engine went past him, every man in his turn stood erect, at attention, and raised his gun in a military salute.
p189 She shook the hands of the men of the train’s crew, without words, with the seal of the grins on their faces.
p190 “I’ve always been curious to see what you’re like.” “I’ve never had a chance to be what I’m like—except “Do you live here alone, like this, miles away from Wyatt pointed at the window. “I’m a couple of steps everything.”
p191 Ellis Wyatt picked up his glass, looked at their faces and said, “To the world as it seems to be right now!”
He emptied the glass with a single movement.
She heard the crash of the glass against the wall in the same instant that she saw a circling current—from the curve of his body to the sweep of his arm to the terrible violence of his hand that flung the glass across the room. It was not the conventional gesture meant as celebration, it was the gesture of a rebellious anger, the vicious gesture which is movement substituted for a scream of pain.
Entries only recorded so far up to page 191.
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