As I continued reading, little by
little some of my expectations were met. John Galt emerged and he threatened to
go against what the Twentieth Century Motor Company tried to implement as their
basis of function. He revolts against their ideals and when I read this I
honestly thought that there was no chance that he would have success doing it.
If you think about it there are so many downsides to revolting against a big
corporation like that of the motor company. Surprisingly though, Galt successfully
puts the company into bankruptcy. He stated that he would make sure that he
would end the motor company since he didn’t approve f their methods and
ideology. I found it amazing how his ideas were so well supported by the
public. Honestly, I found his methods a bit controversial. Basically by putting
the Twentieth Century Motor Company into bankruptcy I thought that he was going
to cause for an economic downfall to occur.
Galt should have thought about the
consequences of making his point. I personally don’t think it was worth risking
the economy’s health simply by proving that Twentieth Century Motor Company’s
ideologies were flawed. But, as I continue to read I realized that Galt is only
doing this in order to fulfill his self-interest. He could care less about how
it affects others to an extent; he merely wants to create a better environment
for his life. Ironically enough though, it is later revealed that Galt is the main
engineer behind the motor Dagny and Rearden have been searching for. At this
point in the novel was when I started to correlate out entire lecture in class
about the circle of seasons. I realized that Galt is the person who is between
winter and spring, he has knowledge and experience but he is able to retain
clarity. He lives on self-interest and it seems as though he embodies almost
all the characteristics of a Christ like figure. Hopefully as the story continues
I will finally learn how John Galt achieves his goal, or if he fails to do
so.
I agree with some points that Chris has made, but I do believe he is wrong about some other points. In the society Galt is dealing with, people will never understand the gravity of the way they are behaving unless they are hit with something devastating, such as a crash in the economy. This is why for example Francisco d’Anconia has purposely crashed his own business in order for those who invested in it to realize that they are taking great men like him for granted. People restrain themselves from realizing that they are living in an immoral way by calling others immoral, which is why Galt places importance on allowing the economy to fail, not because he is living in a separate society now and does not care, but rather to show that Americans’ are not living correctly. Characters like Galt have achieved a level of understanding far superior to those surrounding him. He is not creating an environment fitted solely for him; rather, he wants to live in a world where the intellectuals are not stolen from. Galt stresses the importance of helping yourself out because eventually people will take advantage of you. People incorrectly call this selfish, but I believe that Christ would understand that this is important in reaching clarity, which is why I also called him “Christ-like.”
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