Atlas Shrugged Part III, Chapter 8: The Egoist (Part 2) - They Try to Break Him
So the looters have Galt locked in the royal suite of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, surrounded by armed guards. And they send in their best people, one after another, to convince him to cooperate. Every single one of them fails. And the way they fail tells you everything about who they are.
The Parade of Beggars in Suits
Mr. Thompson tries the buddy approach. He offers Galt the title of Economic Dictator. Total power over production. Anything he wants. Galt laughs. Not a bitter laugh. Just genuine amusement. Because what Thompson is offering is Wesley Mouch’s job, and Galt just spent three hours on the radio explaining why that job is the problem.
Thompson even says, “If you want a free economy, order people to be free!” And he doesn’t see the contradiction. Galt does. “At the point of a gun?” That exchange is one of the sharpest moments in the book, because it captures something I saw growing up in the Soviet system. The authorities genuinely believed you could command prosperity into existence. Just issue the right directive. The fact that the directive had to be enforced at gunpoint never struck them as a problem. It was just how things worked.
When Thompson offers Galt a billion dollars, Galt asks: “Which I’ll have to produce, for you to give me?” When Thompson offers power over all citizens, Galt asks: “After I teach them to do it?” Every offer loops back to the same dead end. They have nothing to give him that doesn’t first require him to create it.
Then Thompson drops the pretense for one honest moment: “Without me, you couldn’t get out of this room right now.” And Galt smiles and says, “True.” He accepts it as a fact. But he won’t pay ransom for it. “The removal of a threat is not a payment. The offer not to murder me is not a value.”
After Thompson, they send James Taggart. Taggart screams about moral responsibility, about selfishness, about how nobody can be sure of their own knowledge. It’s philosophical chaos dressed up as an argument. Galt paces the room, relaxed and indifferent, and Taggart watches his body with undisguised hatred. Not hatred of his ideas. Hatred of his physical ease, his confidence, the way he moves. Hatred of the fact that he exists.
Then Dr. Ferris takes his turn and suggests that every third child under ten should be killed to conserve food, and if Galt refuses to cooperate, the deaths will be “his moral responsibility.” Thompson screams at Ferris and throws him out. But Galt’s response is the real knife: “Tell the bastard to look at me, then look in the mirror, then ask himself whether I would ever think that my moral stature is at the mercy of his actions.”
The Banquet That Wasn’t
The looters get desperate enough to stage a public spectacle. They dress Galt in a tuxedo, plant a gunman at his side with a pistol pressed to his ribs, and parade him into a ballroom with five hundred guests and live television cameras. Chick Morrison announces “The John Galt Plan for Peace, Prosperity and Profit.” Wesley Mouch promises the plan will “lower prices and raise wages” and “give more freedom to the individual and strengthen the bonds of collective obligations.” It’s word salad. Everyone knows it.
Dagny is in the audience. She watches Galt’s face appear on the television screen, calm and implacable, surrounded by the twitching, sweating faces of the politicians. And she thinks: once they have seen him, once they know what a human being can be, how can they want anything else?
Then Mr. Thompson introduces Galt to the nation, calls him “the new leader,” says he’s joined their cause “of his own free choice.” And he asks Galt to say a few words. Just “hello, folks” or something.
Galt stands up. In one swift motion, he leans sideways, briefly exposing the gun pressed against him to the cameras, and says five words to the entire country:
“Get the hell out of my way!”
The broadcast cuts off. The room erupts. That scene is pure Rand at full power. Whatever you think of her philosophy, the dramatic instinct is undeniable.
They Resort to Torture
After the banquet disaster, the looters have nothing left. Chick Morrison resigns on the spot and bolts for a hideout in Tennessee. The rest huddle in a back room while Dr. Ferris talks them into using a machine he’s built at the State Science Institute. The “Ferris Persuader.” A torture device, designed to inflict maximum pain without killing the victim.
They fly Galt to New Hampshire. Strap him to a leather mattress in a soundproofed cellar. Attach electrodes to his wrists, shoulders, hips, ankles. A stethoscope amplifies his heartbeat into the room. And they start.
This scene is hard to read. Rand describes it in clinical detail. The current running between his wrist and shoulder. His body convulsing. Then across his chest, through his lungs. His panting, broken breathing. The irregular racing of his heart. The needle on the dial creeping toward the red mark.
James Taggart watches with a look that Mouch recognizes as enjoyment. “You’re too easy on him!” Taggart yells. “He hasn’t even screamed yet!” That line tells you more about James Taggart than a hundred pages of backstory.
Through it all, Galt does not speak. He does not beg. He does not scream. He lies still between the shocks, controlling his breathing, letting the pain pass through him rather than fighting it. His eyes, when he opens them, are clear and conscious. The heart was protesting, Rand writes. The man would not.
I have to pause on this for a second. I’ve read enough history, from the Soviet camps to the interrogation rooms, to know that Rand was drawing on real knowledge here. The dynamic where the torturers need the victim’s cooperation more than the victim needs anything from them. Where the whole system depends on one person’s mind, and you cannot beat a mind into working. That’s not fiction. That’s documented reality.
The Machine Breaks
And then comes the moment that might be the most perfectly constructed scene in the entire book.
The generator powering the torture machine breaks down. The current stops. The mechanic can’t fix it. He stares at the wires, baffled. Ferris screams at him. Taggart screams at Ferris. The mechanic says, “I don’t know what’s wrong with it.”
From the mattress, Galt speaks. In the calm, competent tone of an engineer, he tells them: “It’s the vibrator that’s out of order. Take it out and pry off the aluminum cover. You’ll find a pair of contacts fused together. Force them apart, take a small file and clean up the pitted surfaces. Then replace the cover, plug it back into the machine, and your generator will work.”
Total silence.
The mechanic stares at Galt. Sees the mockery in his eyes. And even this simple man suddenly grasps what is happening: they need the mind they are destroying. The man they are torturing is the only one in the room who can fix the machine they are using to torture him.
The mechanic drops his pliers and runs out of the room. Galt bursts out laughing.
That is the entire philosophy of the book compressed into one scene. You can force a man’s body. You cannot force his mind. And the moment you destroy the mind, you destroy the thing you needed. Rand has been building toward this for a thousand pages, and the payoff is devastating.
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This is part of a chapter-by-chapter retelling of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (35th Anniversary Edition, ISBN: 978-1-101-13719-2). New posts daily.