Atlas Shrugged

Eddie Willers meets once more with John Galt and admits that he is suffering and barely enduring the railway’s sharp decline under the new directive and without Dagny. He also discusses the pleasing news that one of Boyle’s steel plants, primed to begin production of RM, was recently destroyed by Danneskjold.

Rearden, walking home alone at night, is met on the road by Danneskjold, who gives him a bar of solid gold. Danneskjold explains his philosophy and says that he steals from the looters in order to return the money to those who rightfully earned it. The gold bar is a token to symbolize the wealth that he has taken on Rearden’s behalf out of solidarity against the theft of his RM.

An express train called the Taggart Commet crashes, destroying the only available diesel engine capable of safely traversing the Taggart Tunnel. An influential politician is impatient for the train to continue, threatening the livelihood of anyone responsible for the delay. Through a combination of belligerent cowardice and willful incompetence, the politician gives orders to run a coal engine through the tunnel. Every principled or intelligent employee involved in the process refuses to be a part of it and quits, but they are replaced or circumvented by those who will. The Commet enters the tunnel with a drunk person at the wheel, and the whole train full of passengers is killed in the ensuing wreck.

Dagny spends a month suffering in isolation in her cabin before Francisco d’Anconia comes to see her, and they greet each other as friends. He is sympathetic to her pain and begins to tell her that he has spent the past 12 years deliberately wrecking his inherited business empire rather than let the looters gain his family’s legacy and his own work. Partway through his explanation, he is interrupted by an announcement on the radio that the explosion of the Taggart Commet destroyed the Taggart Tunnel in the worst railway disaster in history. Dagny is unable to bear it, and despite Francisco’s desperate pleas, she returns to New York.

Eddie is in the middle of refusing to reveal Dagny’s location despite rabid threats when Dagny interrupts returning to her office and position in TT. She starts clearing up the mess that has become of the railway while Eddie updates her on the situation, including the increasingly common phenomenon of “frozen trains” that get abandoned by their entire crews and left stationary in the middle of their journeys. Dagny and Rearden touch base before she leaves to take stock of the situation in Colorado.

Francisco visits Dagny in friendship, and although she is still adamant in fighting for what’s left of TT, she acknowledges that she may in time come around to his way of thinking. Francisco admits that there is a destroyer out there working to persuade the best men to quit. Rearden enters, interrupting their conversation, and is furious in light of Francisco’s earlier perceived betrayal about his copper order. Upon discovering the romantic history between Dagny and Francisco, Rearden slaps Francisco before Dagny can stop him.

Dagny receives a delayed letter from Quentin Daniels, informing her that despite his respect for her, he is quitting so as not to let the looters benefit from his work on the motor. Dagny frantically tries to get a hold of him, fearing that he’s disappeared, but he promises not to go anywhere without first meeting with her. Desperate not to lose him, Dagny races across the country to his side.

Eddie meets again with Galt. Eddie has just learned of the affair between Rearden and Dagny, which forced him to realize his own romantic feelings for Dagny and discover a hitherto untapped well of hopeless self-pity and violent anger. He tells Galt of Daniel’s project with the motor, which had previously been top secret, and of Daniel’s decision to quit. Galt seems amused until he learns that Dagny is racing to meet with Daniels, at which point he rushes off.

Dagny travels on the Commet to meet Daniels and allows a stowaway person experiencing homelessness named Jeff Allen to ride in her private car with her. Despite his abject poverty, Allen has dignity and a respect for hard work that comes hard learned from his experience at the Twentieth Century Motor Company. He tells her of the years he spent working there and how the collectivist system tore the community of workers apart and led to the company’s destruction. He confesses that the workers were likely the origin of the question “Who is John Galt?” because Galt was a worker at the factory who quit on the day they all voted for the collectivist policies that ruined them, swearing to stop the motor of the world. With each indication over the years that the world’s motor was indeed slowing, they began asking after Galt’s backstory and identity but never found any answers, thereby coining the phrase as an expression of helpless surrender.

The Commet stops, and Dagny discovers that the entire crew has deserted, leaving the train “frozen.” She leaves Allen in charge of the train with the promise of a job and an advance on his wages and begins to walk the many miles to a functioning rail-side phone along with Owen Kellogg, who happened to be on the same train. She organizes for a replacement crew but herself heads to a nearby airfield to seek a faster alternative. Kellogg agrees to mind the train in her absence and see that Allen gets his job and Rearden is informed of her plans. She commandeers a plane and flies to Daniels’s location, only to learn that he has just departed on another private jet. She follows and crashes into the Rocky Mountains when the controls on her plane fail.