The disaster resulting from this deal. The collapse of the whole farming district in Minnesota (“the last granary”): the rotting wheat, the bonfires of wheat, the bankrupt farms, the desertions of whole families, trekking away into nowhere, the lines of carts on the roads (like war refugees, but much worse). Rearden loses heavily on the farm machinery—credits he had extended. (He was counting on “help to success,” but help was given to failure.) The famine in the rest of the country.
The famine and desertions of workers at the ex-Rearden mine in Michigan.
Parallel developments: Dagny’s search for Galt (Francisco d‘Anconia, the empty valley).
Rearden and his wife—his realization that Dagny was his real love. His scene with Dagny when he tells her that.
James Taggart crushes Cherryl’s attempts to rise—she understands his real nature.
Cherryl’s drowning plea to Dagny—the attempt to hang on to a living power.
The circumstances (the result of their mutual problems above) that lead to the affair of James Taggart and Mrs. Rearden. Their ghastly night together—the horror of sex as second-handedness, as hatred, malice, and self-contempt.
Taggart confesses the affair to the priest. The priest forgives him, but feels crushingly uneasy afterwards.
The tunnel collapse. The return to old tracks—the pre-tunnel era. The desperate need of new track. Dagny’s worry over the Taggart Bridge.
The professor. Reduction of his laboratory funds. Talk of using his “vibration-ray” against “isolationist” sections. The scene where the professor realizes that Taggart is his master. The professor is demoted—the “determinist” assistant is put in charge of the laboratory.
The rebellion of [Rearden‘s] secretary against her family—her decision to quit and marry.
Rearden discovers Mrs. Rearden’s affair with Taggart. Connected with same event—he sees the real nature of his mother, brother, and sister, and of their attitudes toward him.
Immediately following—the crucial emergency conference: Rearden, Taggart, mine-owner, businessman, bureaucrat. Subject—the new rails for TT. Taggart has raised the rates on the Minnesota line, due to the farm collapse. The mine-owner has raised the price of ore. The bureaucrat does not allow Rearden to raise his prices on rails (“TT can’t afford it”). The squeeze-play in the open. Rearden is given an impossible burden—because he is the strongest; it is made impossible for him to function—because they so desperately need him to function. The crucial line (from Taggart): “You’ll do something.” Now Rearden sees (though not yet in words). He says nothing and walks out of the room.
Rearden in his office—the crushing realization that he will know the truth (which he already knows) at any moment now. His secretary comes in for the promised appointment. She tells him she is quitting—and why. He sees the similarity of their tragedies. He understands everything.... He is ready to leave the office, when she tells him about the man waiting to see him. The name in the sealed envelope. “It must be a gag.... Send him in, I’ll see him. What does he look like?” “Like something made out of a kind of aluminum-copper alloy.”
The news that Rearden has quit. The reaction of Dagny and Taggart— Taggart’s terror. He rushes to Lillian Rearden—to make her beg Rearden to remain.
The scene where Lillian Rearden, his mother, brother, and sister beg Rearden to remain. His immovable coldness—they are dead for him, the sense of justice turned against them. He goes away (to the valley).
The scene with his brother and Rearden’s superintendent. The superintendent quits, with his staff.
The scene in which a lawyer reads Rearden’s deed to the collective: Mrs. Rearden, mother, brother, sister, and the publicity punk. The parasites “with their clothes off”—the naked truth about them. (Mrs. Rearden wishing to sell her share—the predicament of collective ownership.)
The collective hires a friend of Cuffy Meigs as executive. Half the workers have deserted. The executive sells the remaining supplies and crucial machinery, on the side, then vanishes. The collapse of Rearden Steel.
The final emergency to TT—no Rearden rails to come. The small banquet—Dagny, James Taggart, bureaucrat, businessman, Meigs, Mr. Jones. The decision to close the Wisconsin-Michigan ore line. Dagny’s desperate, almost screaming protests. Their arguments about “sharing hardships” and “the government needs a transcontinental line.” They outvote her. She escapes from the room in horror.
Dagny in the subway. John Galt. She sits crying—and the bum who consoles her (“Oh well, who is John Galt?”). Toward morning, Galt comes back—they go to his room—their night together.
Dagny’s challenge to him—his explanation. (“No, there is no conflict—there never can be—as you will learn.”)
The closing of the ore line announced—the riots—the fights for the rails—the general panic.
Dagny-Galt: the “enemy romance.”(?)
The announced president’s broadcast. In radio studio—president, Dagny, Taggart, the professor (perhaps some of the lesser ones, too). The machinery won’t function. Then—John Galt’s voice. (A gasp and a scream in the studio—the gasp from Dagny, the scream from the professor.) John Galt’s broadcast.
Scene in subway with phone booth, afterwards.
The panic—the country falling apart. The professor’s hysteria—scene where he demands that the priest curse Galt—the priest refuses.
Government’s attempts to negotiate with Galt, by short-wave. His refusal. Secret orders to find him.
The scene: Galt and the priest, in the restaurant. The appeal through pity. His refusal.
Dagny comes to Galt’s garret. The appeal through love—his refusal. Then she warns him—he hands her the phone. (“I was waiting to be found—I didn’t know it would be you. But it had to be.”) She notifies the government.
Dagny returns to Galt’s room, with the police, hoping he will be gone. But he is there. The “polite” arrest—the wreck of his laboratory. (“What was in it? You’ll never know.”)
Galt in a luxurious hotel room. The private bargaining: Galt and Mr. Jones—“What are you after?” Galt’s refusal. When Mr. Jones asks is there anything he would like, he answers: yes, he would like to speak to the professor.
The scene: Galt and the professor. “John, I had a good motive!” The boy of eighteen and the sentence about the supremacy of reason. “Why don’t you say something?” “You’ve said it all.” The professor escapes from the room, in total spiritual collapse.
The professor tells the others that they cannot let Galt rule, they must destroy him. Professor is placed under “protective custody.” He escapes.
Scene: Dagny and Rearden. Rearden is on Galt’s side—Dagny confesses to him that she is Galt’s mistress.
Scene: Dagny and Eddie Willers, when he leaves for California (by plane) to “save” the Comet. He realizes that he’s always loved her.
Galt is ordered to dress in evening clothes and driven to a banquet room. The banquet. The appeal through flattery. The miserable and ludicrous mixture of crawling before him and arrogance in the implication of the value of their admiration. His answer, over the radio: “Get the hell out of my way.”
The professor hears the broadcast over his car radio as he speeds toward the laboratory. He realizes that Galt’s refusal is more frightening than his acceptance would have been. The “determinist” and Meigs-types of “guards” will not let the professor into the laboratory. He wants the ray to destroy Galt. (“He’s won! Don’t you understand? He’s won, because he’s refused!”) He screams that Galt is the enemy, because he is the mind. “That’s right,” says one of the guards. “And what are
you?”
The explosion of the laboratory—the end of the ray and of the professor. (The “thing of screaming pain”—and the greater horror of one spark remaining within it to remember that this had been a great mind.)
The scene is a bare hotel room—Taggart, businessman, bureaucrat, Meigs, Dagny. Galt has been locked back in his room. The “soundless hysteria” : the quiet, brief discussion, which has but one meaning, they all know it—the resort to force (with the unstated knowledge that the mere premise of such an attempt is insane). They avoid Dagny—her presence is restraining them, they don’t want her to understand. But Dagny is cold, silent, emotionless—strangely detached. She understands, and much more than they do (she understands what they will understand in the torture scene). She gets up unexpectedly, without a word, and walks out of the room.
Dagny alone in her office in the TT building (night). The emotionless, methodical burning of her papers. The long-distance call from Eddie Willers—trouble for the Comet. She tells him, quietly, to quit. He can’t. (But he knew she would: “You, too?”)
As she hangs up and proceeds with her burning, an executive rushes in with a report on danger to the Taggart Bridge: a new crack is reported—a storm is rising on the Mississippi—and a crucially awaited heavy freight train is approaching the bridge. Before the man finishes, she leaps to the phone; in the time it takes her to reach her desk, she sees the consequences of the bridge’s collapse and the remedy to save it; she sees Nat Taggart and the whole of Taggart Transcontinental. Then, slowly, with a twisted movement of her arm, she replaces the receiver. “What are we going to do, Miss Taggart? We don’t know what to do!” She thinks: This is it ... I didn’t know it would be so hard.... She answers: “I don‘t, either.”
The torture of Galt. The reaction of the parasites—particularly Taggart. Galt laughs at them, pointing out the contradiction of their predicament. Their concern not to kill him (except Taggart: he is passive here—he is seeing the first hints of what he is to discover). The electric engine breaks down. Galt tells them about holding creators through their joy of living. “Go ahead, turn on the electric current.” The mechanic cannot repair the machine—he asks for Taggart’s instructions. The parasites’ answer—“Do something.” Galt tells him what to do. The mechanic obeys dazedly—the machine works. The mechanic looks at Galt—at the parasites—then drops his tools and runs away in terror. Galt laughs.
Meigs seizes the engine, to operate it. The businessman whines: “Don’t kill him!” Taggart cries suddenly: “Make him scream!” The stunned, embarrassed silence; they all sense what Taggart sees completely in that moment. Taggart falls back against the wall, white-faced; he is done for. Meigs turns on the current. A man rushes in to announce the collapse of the Taggart Bridge. Galt’s moment of involuntary temptation. They stop the torture and rush out, realizing the implications, each to save himself. Taggart has not even heard the news; he is fixed on his discovery.
Taggart and the priest. The confession of total evil and the plea for absolution. “I have nothing to say, James. I’m on strike.”
The rescue of Galt by Dagny. (Brute force against mind and force.) He looks up at her, smiling in that complete deliverance which she knows. He says: “We never had to take any of it seriously, did we?” Tears streaming down her face, smiling, she answers: “No, we never had to.”
The flight of Galt and Dagny to the valley, over a world where the lights are going out.
The last run of the Comet. Eddie Willers—against the world. The stop in the desert. (“Dagny, in the name of the best within us! ...”) The encroaching nature—the return of the jungle. Eddie Willers sobbing on the tracks, under the motionless ray of the headlight that shoots out to get lost in a dead night.
The music of the composer’s “Heroic Symphony” filling the valley and rising out of it to the night sky. Rearden, d‘Anconia, Danneskjöld, Hastings at work—the control of nature, the triumph over nature. Talk about future plans, starting everything from the beginning, in a small,
selfish
way. “Galt will run the local railroad from New York to Philadelphia.” Galt and Dagny on the rocks above the valley—looking off at the wrecked road and the stubborn fire in the distance. Galt says: “The road is cleared. We’re going back.”
July 7, 1946
Three Main Lines for Part I
I.
The gradual disappearance of the creators.
They are pulled out on strike at crucial moments in the story—in connection with TT’s disintegration. Each time, the loss is a specific blow to TT (as in Rearden’s quitting). Preferably, each desertion must cause a specific step lower for TT. The men can be TT’s big executives, or key suppliers, or key shippers (or one of each). Each time, the loss of one man in a business causes failure for all the others in it. (Probably four instances, at the most—but clear-cut, crucial ones.)
Show Dagny seeing her net of rails breaking and falling apart in her hands. If the strikers are the life blood of the world, then TT is the world’s blood system; as the blood goes, the vessels shrink, emptied, and dry off; then the body withers, in growing paralysis. By the time Dagny finds that Galt is a minor employee of hers, she has realized, in despair, that TT is a dying net of vessels without blood. (And Galt is the one who watches the operations of TT and knows when, where, and whom to strike.)
II.
Dagny’s quest in connection with Galt’s old engine.
There are two lines of search on her part. First, trying to find someone to understand the importance of the engine, to restore it and make it work. This is futile, except for Rearden (or, every time she has a chance at a good engineer, Taggart ruins it). Second, trying to trace its history and find the man who designed it. Here there is a chance for flashbacks, in strange, half mysterious hints and conversations, a chance for a gradual movement of Dagny toward Galt. And a chance to show all the variations of the parasites’ attitude toward brains and achievement, and toward material property.
III.
“What is wrong with the world?”
This is the overall, miserably bewildered question in all the minds, but particularly in Dagny’s (and, next, in Eddie Willers‘). This must be conveyed in small touches, small but tremendously significant in unstated implications. Here there is a chance for such things as: the music, “the cigarette made nowhere” (or some such equivalent, an extremely well-made small gadget that could not have been made in the factories and by the industries which Dagny knows), the girl-writer’s book “published nowhere,” etc.
The feeling of “Ergitandal”—just exactly that
—first, with the hopeless yearning of an impossible dream—then growing into an ominous reality (ominous in being inexplicably real somewhere)—leading to and climaxed by Dagny in the valley.
[What “Ergitandal” refers to is unknown.]