The Journals of Ayn Rand (77 page)

John Galt
—energy. Activity, competence, initiative, ingenuity, and above all
intelligence.
Independent rational judgment. The man who conquers nature, the man who imposes his purpose on nature. Therefore, Galt is an inventor, a practical scientist, a man who faces the material world of science as an adventurer faces an unexplored continent, or as a pioneer faced the wilderness—something to use, to conquer, to turn to his own purposes. In relation to the creators—
he is the avenger.
(He is
“the motor of the world.”)

A man who is the most tragic victim of collectivist exploitation.
He is the one who finds it so hard to break the ties. Hank Rearden—possibly a great, self-made industrialist, torn by the naivete of his own generosity.

The martyred artist.
The composer (Dietrich Gerhardt, who supports his own torturers); the girl-writer. [
AR replaced Gerhardt with the somewhat different character of Richard Halley
.]

The great man made into a parasite in his private life (or made miserable).
A man who thinks he must pay a price for selfishness.

Probably a minor character.

This is Dietrich Gerhardt.

The young girl who supports a whole family (or the honest kind of tough worker like Mike).
The industrialist’s secretary. The worker who fights against Taggart and for Rearden. (She understands the issue.)

The philosopher.
A kind of Ortega y Gasset—vaguely. A kind of Aristotle if he came back to life today. Or even Thomas Aquinas.

The farmer.
A man of action [who opposes] the parasites in the most basic, simplest terms.

Dagny’s employee.
The ship owner who sank his ships rather than let them be nationalized (probably an Englishman). (Gerald Hastings)
The priest.
Father (medieval name), who is the last of the strikers. He withdraws the moral sanction from the world of the parasites. (He represents the last stand for pity.)

The traitor.
The man in-between who has both potentialities, could go both ways, tries to see both sides, attempting a compromise. He turns out to be the one most destructive to the side of the creators, the one contributing most to the parasites—which he himself cannot stand, therefore he destroys himself. (He accomplishes James Taggart’s triumph over him.) Stan Winslow. (He is also an example of the two potentialities in the lesser man.)

The man who goes insane on the idea of charity
—a kind of “Dostoyevsky.”

The average man.
The actual in-between, who goes to the good in a society of producers, to the bad in a society of parasites. He can be an older executive of TT—who, at the end, realizes the horror of his position.

The man who makes a virtue of evil
—who claims that his lack of conviction is a virtue, a sign of some sort of breadth of vision: “To have convictions is to wear blinders.” The damn fool confuses a view of the opinions of others with a view of reality.

The mystic of parasitism
—another “Mr. Smith” of Washington.

James Taggart’s “best friend,” “pull,” and guide.

James Taggart’s wife
(“the Cinderella girl”). She may be an example of the average woman going to pieces without spiritual guidance (and going through hell with J.T.).

The man corroded by envy of genius
—because he knows that his miserable little achievement is swamped out by the magnificent achievement of the genius. He knows enough to recognize the difference—yet his conclusion is that the genius must be destroyed to protect
him.
That means, by his own definition, that the best must be destroyed for the sake of the worst. This is the monstrous kind of second-hander’s selfishness—the primary consideration here being in the others and in measuring one’s value by comparison. He considers his own talent worthless, because the talent of the genius is greater—therefore, to be best, he must destroy the genius; his standard of perfection is not absolute, but relative, he wants to do, not the best possible, but the best others will see. ([Note
added later:
] No.

The man who does this
has no
“little” achievement—whatever he has is stolen.)

The worst victim: the industrialist
(probably steel): self-made, extremely active, extremely generous, extremely naive.

His wife: a decadent society bitch—neither too beautiful, nor too rich, nor too well-born, but some of all of it. She does not need his prestige or money—her sole aim in life is to keep him down spiritually, to snub and ridicule him, destroy his every personal aspiration, humble him so that she may feel her own personal superiority through the sense of crushing a giant.

His sister: a clever, charming, and empty bitch who uses him unmercifully in every way—socially, professionally, financially—under guise of her “understanding.” Her one concern is always to make him feel that she gives him more than she receives, to keep him thinking himself “under obligation”—[she does] this by means of the “spiritual,” as against his gifts which she considers “grossly material.”

His brother:
a swindling [failure] who is “ashamed of his brother” and drools that he has no chance because his brother “crushes” him. A socialist.

His mother:
an empty old bag who will never let go of the pretense that her son “owes everything to his mother”—who much prefers her younger son, a worthless failure—and who makes the industrialist’s life miserable by constant demands that he “make up to his brother” for his own success.

Assorted poor relatives and friends
—who “knew him when”—whose sole theme-song is: “Don’t you go high-hat on us,” and who feel that he’s betrayed “his people” by rising above them. And they use him unmercifully. To not “go high-hat on them” means to turn his soul and pocket-book over to them.

His secretary:
his exact parallel on a smaller scale. As competent and honest as he is, and plagued by the same set of parasites with the same motives, though superficially different.