Excited Newbie

When Dagny confronts the guard, she identifies herself and says she has Mr Thompson’s permission to enter the building. The guard has orders from Dr Ferris to bar the door. There is no issue of self-defence, since the guard tells Dagny that he cannot shoot at her, because she is an emissary from Mr Thompson.

The issue is presented as one of choice: Dagny tells the guard he has to choose which order he will disobey; the price of the wrong choice is his life. When he will not make a choice, she shoots the man “who wanted to exist without the responsibility of consciousness.”

The point Rand is making is that we should take responsibility for making choices, and that some of these choices are a matter of life and death. Fair enough. Unfortunately, in presenting the issue the way she does, Rand’s didactic intentions undermine her literary aims.

How so? Well, in order that Dagny can present the guard with a choice, she must remind him of who she is, and with whom she appears to be allied. Otherwise, she could just be some random trespasser, and the guard would be duty-bound by the requirements of his job to bar her entry.

But in revealing her identity to the guard, she sets herself up as a rival authority to Dr Ferris. She also tells the guard he cannot know for sure whether she has orders from Thompson, nor that Thompson and Ferris may have agreed to let her enter the building. So in addition to her greater authority, Dagny has more information – the guard cannot know whether or not she is bluffing – and she is also willing to use violence.

In other words, Dagny and the guard are not on a level playing field. Dagny occupies the high ground in terms of her authority, superior information and coercion, but she insists that the guard take part in a charade of “choice”.

I think this is why the reader finds this passage disturbing, and why it represents a literary and philosophical miscalculation by the author. Our sympathies are supposed to stay firmly with Dagny, but because she presents the guard – and the reader -- with an impossible choice, our empathy shifts from Dagny to the guard.

As a result, his killing “feels” wrong, but it requires some analysis to see why this feeling is justified.

Brendan

And in real life even the most abject lackey of the state would choose to move aside. But we’re not talking realism here. Rand decided that her guard was irrational enough to throw away his own life, and that’s the text we have to work with.

The context of this passage is that Dagny sets herself up as a rival authority to Dr Ferris, and demands to be let into the building on that authority. She then demands that the guard should ignore all authority and make his own decision. But in that case, he should also ignore her authority, and if he does that, the basis for her demand is negated – she is just somebody standing before him holding a gun.

And since she is holding a gun on him, by Objectivist lights, she is interceding between his mind and reality. Yet Dagny is demanding that the guard act according to reality.

In that context, the guard cannot make a rational choice. What he can do is “instinctively” save his life, but that would defeat Rand’s didactic purposes.

Brendan

I know that this is the idea Rand wants to present. I just think she presents it badly. As has been pointed out, Dagny's context is that she has gained a sort of epiphany, whereby she now understands the full picture.

So when she confronts the guard, Dagny sees herself as a type of “truth-bearer”, who is trying to persuade the guard to see reality. But he cannot know this. His context is what he perceives -- a woman threatening him with a gun.

As for staying with SOLO for so long, I think this site offers some high-calibre discussion and a good test for my own thinking. So I guess I should say…thanks for the opportunity. Gotta hit the road. Happy holidays!

Brendan.