Oliver Twist, Book 1, Chapters 1 and 2

This is my first time reading anything by Dickens.  We are reading the first two chapters, going back to read poetry, and getting back to Oliver Twist at the beginning of September.

Setting

The setting of Oliver Twist is purposely left vague.  This allows the readers to fill in the blanks of location and time.  If Dickens stated the city and date, then it would be real and not just a concept, an idea.  It would be closed instead of open.  The vagueness allows the readers to easily imagine Oliver being born in our own time and town.

After all, doesn’t this describe our poor, “the humble, half-starved drudge — to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, despised by all, and pitied by none.”

Distrust of medicine? family? changing world?

“Now, if during this brief period Oliver had been surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses, and doctors of profound wisdom, he would most inevitably and indubitably have been killed in no time.”

This quotes shows the loving (and sometimes smothering) family that Oliver doesn’t have, as well as the medical care other infants may receive.  But, it concludes that if Oliver had those two things, he would have been killed.  Is this a distrust in the family unit, in modern medicine, or simply in the changing world?

Child of a nobleman or a beggar

“Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar; – it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have fixed his station in society.  But now he was enveloped in the old calico robes, that had grown fully yellow in the same service; he was badged and ticketed, and fell into place at once – a parish child – the orphan of a workhouse – the humble, self-starved drudge – to be cuffed and buffeted through the world, despised by all, and pitied by none.”

The clothes labeled Oliver, taking away his individuality.  While wrapped in the blanket, he could have been anything.  But once the yellowed, worn robes and the badge and ticket were placed on him, he became a parish child.

Please, sir, I want some more.

Oliver asks for more food.  He is instantly confined.  One man thinks that Oliver will be hung.  A notice offers 5 pounds to anyone willing to take Oliver as an apprentice.  They are afraid that Oliver will influence the others.  They are afraid of anyone willing to dissent, to want more, to think, and to question.  The ones who want more food and will ask for it, will want more of everything.  As Frederick Douglas said, “If you give a n***** an inch, he will take an ell.”  If Oliver gets more, they all want more.  And more.

Oliver is punished for asking by being confined.  He may get hung or may become an apprentice.  Either way, the workhouse is washing their hands of him.  If he becomes an apprentice, he may get more in the end.

Quotes

“What a noble illustration of the tender laws of this favoured country! they let the paupers go to sleep!”

“The relief was inseparable from the workhouse of the gruel; and that frightened people.”

Atlas Shrugged, Part 2, Chapter 2

The Aristocracy of Pull.

Numbered Days

“Your days are numbered, it had seemed to say — as if it were marking a progression toward something it knew, but she didn’t.”

The numbered days draws from chapter one, where Eddie tries to remember the phrase, and helps build suspense, pushing the characters and readers toward the end.

Cigarette

The cigarette Dagny got from Akston “was not made anywhere on earth.”  Where could the cigarette have come from and what could the gold dollar sign on it mean?

The Money Speech

An online version of the speech can be read here. This is one of the greatest speeches in the book.

“An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has procured.”

“Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor.”

“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek…”

“But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it.  Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich–will not be rich for long.”

“… Watch money.  Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.  When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by  compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see that money is flowing to those richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed…”

From these quotes we learn that a good and honest man:

-doesn’t live beyond his means

-give value to money

-prefers the gold over paper money

-doesn’t expect money to buy him happiness, intelligence, or morals.

Discussion question/Journal entry

1. What else do we learn from the money speech?  What other qualities does an honest man have?  What qualities does a looter have?  What does Francisco say of money?

2.  Read the last quote above. If money is the barometer of a society’s virtue, what does America’s current economic crises (and the governments alleged solutions) say about us?

Atlas Shrugged, Part 2, Chapter 1

The Man Who Belonged on Earth

Why do you think you think?

The book was written by Dr. Ferris and published by the the State Science Institute.  Here are some of the quotes from the book:

“…That grey matter you’re so proud of is like a mirror in an amusement park which transmits to you nothing but distorted signals from a reality forever beyond your grasp…”

“The giants of the intellect, whom you admire so much, once taught you that the earth was flat and that the atom was the smallest particle of matter.  The entire history of science is a progression of exploded fallacies, not of achievements.”  To me, discovering the atom an achievement, along with the achievement of discovering the parts of the atom, the discovery that their is something smaller than the atom?   To Dr. Ferris, the discovery of something smaller simply meant that science was wrong.

“Do not expect consistency.  Everything is a contradiction of everything else.  Nothing exists but contradictions.”  Compare this with what Francisco and Akston believe.

“Don’t argue.  Accept.  Adjust yourself.  Obey.”

Wyatt’s Torch

“One well, on the crest of the hill, was still burning. Nobody had been able to extinguish it.  She had seen it from the streets: a spurt of fire twisting convulsively against the sky, as if trying to tear loose.  She had seen it at night, across the distance of a hundred clear, black miles, from the window of a train: a small violent flame, waving in the wind.  People called it Wyatt’s Torch.”

Discussion questions/Journal Entries

1. Compare and contrast Dr. Ferris’ view of contradictions with Francisco/Akston’s view.  Do they have ulterior motives in spreading these ideas?

2. Discuss the following quote: “Don’t argue.  Accept.  Adjust yourself.  Obey.”

3.  What do you think Wyatt’s Torch symbolizes?

Atlas Shrugged, Part 1, Chapter 10

Wyatt’s Torch.

He had to live

“He had to live, didn’t he?  He was no worse than anybody, only smarter.  Some get caught at it and some don’t — that’s the only difference…. That’s the only way anybody ever gets rich in this world”–  he glanced at the [Rearden’s] black car — “as you ought to know.” …. “What I can’t stand,” said Mayor Bascom, “is people who talk about principles.  No principle ever filled anybody’s milk bottle.  The only thing that counts in life is solid, material assets….”

Mayor Bascom (and many other people in the novel and today’s world) believe that principles do not matter, that all money is ill-gotten, that all rich men are dirty… This idea makes the everyday person more comfortable in their sins.  If the rich man down the street got their through evil means, then it’s okay to be evil.  Maybe one day you will be a rich man.

Rearden

“Then no rightful cause was left, and the pain of anger was turning into the shameful pain of submission.  He had no right to condemn anyone — he thought — to denounce anything, to fight and die joyously, claiming the sanction of virtue.  The broken promises, the unconfessed desires, the betrayal, the deceit, the lies, the fraud — he was guilty of them all.  What form of corruption could he scorn? Degrees do not matter, he thought; one does not bargain about inches of evil…”

Since Hank has been seeing Dagny, he has felt ashamed.  Not only that, but he feels he can no longer look at Lillian’s faults.  Who is he to cast the first stone?  He can no longer claim virtue and it eats him alive.

The Banker

“The rewards I got were not of a kind that people of your class, Miss Taggart, would appreciate. The who used to sit in front of my desk, at the bank, did not sit as you do, Miss Taggart.  They were humble, uncertain, worn with care, afraid to speak.  My rewards were the tears of gratitude in their eyes, the trembling voices, the blessings, the woman who kissed my hand when I granted her a loan she had begged for in vain everywhere else.” Eugene Lawson

Earlier, Mayor Bascom said “See that woman, for instance? They used to be solid, respectable folks.  Her husband owned the dry-goods store.  He worked all his life to provide for her in her old age, and he did, too, by the time he died — only the money was in the Community National Bank.”

Lawson, ‘the banker with a heart,’ lent too much money and the bunk went bust.  When it did, the people lost everything they had.  Lawson brags about the people he helped.  What about the people he ruined?

Birthright and Entitlement

In the chapter 5 post, I discuss the d’Anconcia way — that you are not born one, but expected to become one.  This contrasts to Lee Hunsacker’s belief: “We were going to do just as well as they did. Better.  We were just as important.  Who the hell was Jed Starnes anyway? Nothing but a backwoods garage mechanic — did you know that that’s how he started? — without any background at all.  My family once belonged to the New York Four Hundred.  My grandfather was a member of the national legislature…. Nobody wanted the place, nobody would bid on it.  But there it was, this great factory, with all the equipment, all the machinery, all the things that had made millions for Jed Starnes.  That was the kind of setup I wanted, the kind of opportunity I was entitled to.”

Hunsacker believes that his family name entitles him to these things. And, that Starnes — a lowly mechanic — didn’t deserve his factory.  Hunsacker believes in the birthright, he shouldn’t have to work for anything, he shouldn’t have to earn it.  He’s entitled to it.  Somebody else, like Starnes, has the tenacity to build his life, while Hunsacker sits on his behind and claims entitlement.

Sad Irony

Hunsacker later says, “We had started right in manufacturing the particular type of motor that had been his [Starnes] biggest moneymaker for years.  And then some newcomer nobody ever heard of opened a two-bit factory down in Colorado, by the name of Nielson Motors, nad put out a new motor of the same class as the Starnes model, at half the price!  We couldn’t help that, could we?  It was all right for Jed Starnes, no destructive competitor happened to come up in his time, but what were we to do?  How could we fight this Nielson, when nobody had given us a motor to compete with his.”

The motor that could set the world on fire was sitting in the factory’s research department.  But nothing in life is to be given, it’s to be earned through blood, sweat, and tears.

Marxism

Ivy Starnes summed up their idea for the factory: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need… Rewards were based on need, and the penalties of ability.”

More than hoped

On her quest for the maker of the motor, Dagny runs into Hugh Akston, the old philosopher and professor of Francisco, Danneskjold, and another unnamed student.  Dagny asks him who the third student was, and he says, “His name would mean nothing to you.  He is not famous.”

She then asks him if  he is “proud of the way these three have turned out.”  He replies, “More proud than I had ever hoped to be.”

Wyatt’s Torch

“Ellis Wyatt, stripped of the right of self-defense, left without voice, without weapons, and worse: made to be the tool of his own destruction, the supporter of his destroyers, the provider of their food and of their weapons — Ellis Wyatt being choked, with his own bright energy turned against him as the noose — Ellis Wyatt, who had wanted to tap an unlimited source of shale oil and who spoke of a second Renaissance…”

Dagny thinks Ellis is about to disappear and rushes to Colorado.

“In a break between mountains, lighting the sky, throwing a glow that swayed on the roofs and walls of the station, the hill of Wyatt Oil was a solid sheet of flame… Later, when they told her Ellis Wyatt had vanished, leaving nothing behind but a board he had nailed to a post of the foot of a hill, when she looked at his handwriting on the board, she felt as if she had almost known that these would be the words: ‘I am leaving it as I found it.  Take it.  It’s yours.'”

Dagny is horrified to see the flames… Ellis is the first man to make a statement before vanishing.  All the other people vanished silently.

Discussion Questions/Journal Entries

1.  Think about Mayor Bascom’s words.  What do they mean?  Can you think of any rich people who earned their money an honest way?  Can you think of any rich people who got their money by wrong-doing?

2.  Reread Eugene Lawson’s words and think about his philosophy.  He lends money to those who won’t be able to pay it back because they deserve it.  Is this philosophy seen today?  Could it be part of why the economy crashed?

3.  Akston states that he more proud of his three students than he’d ever hoped to be.  Look at what the two students believe and do and at what Akston believes.   How could he be proud of them?

Atlas Shrugged, Part 1, Chapter 9

The Sacred and The Profane.

Cherryl Brooks and Jim Taggart

Cherryl Brooks is introduced in this chapter.  She is a young woman working at a dime store.  Jim befriends her for his own perverted pleasure.

There are numerous things in their conversations that contrast these two characters.  Jim has had the benefit of a rich family and a great education, while Cherryl is from a poor family and little education.

On his way into the dime store, he thinks that soon it will go out of business.  This thought gave him pleasure.

Cherryl believes and says to Jim that “nobody’s really good enough for you.”  This leads her to all types of trouble.  She believes that Jim is a great and powerful man and deserves the best of the best.

She later tells him about her family and the poor: “We were stinking poor and not giving a damn about it.  That’s what I couldn’t take — that they didn’t give a damn. Not enough to life a finger…”  She believes in hard work and personal responsibility.

Jim defines a human: “A weak, ugly, sinful creature, born that way, rotten in his bones — so humility is the one virtue he ought to practice.  He ought to spend his life on his knees, begging to be forgiven for his dirty existence.  When a man thinks he’s good — that’s when he’s rotten.  Pride is the worst of all sins, no matter what he’s done.”

Cherryl asks, “But what if man knows that what he’s done is good?”

Jim: “Then he ought to apologize for it.”

Cherryl: “To Whom?”

Jim:  “To Those who haven’t done it.”

Cherryl: “I…. I don’t understand.”

Jim later goes on to say that “unhappiness is the hallmark of virtue.”

Owen Kellogg

Mr. Mowen, of the Amalgamated Switch and Signal Company, stood outside, watching and talking to a transient worker. The worker turns out to be Owen Kellogg.  Kellogg was a competent man who worked for Taggart.  Dagny was planning on promoting him.  But, he quit.  He refused all of her offers and wouldn’t offer a reason for his leaving.  Now, we find him working at a transient laborer.  Why?

When Mr. Mowen asks him what he thinks is going to happen to the world, he replies, “You wouldn’t care to know.”

The Motor

While Dagny and Rearden are on vacation together, they go to the Twentieth Century Motor Company.  While there, Dagny finds a motor that “would draw static electricity from the atmosphere, convert it and create its own power as it went along.”  The motor is in bad shape and the manuscript is half gone.  The motor could have “set the whole country in motion and on fire.”

Odd Metaphor

“She had stood there silently, watching, without interest or purpose, like a chemical compound on a photographic plate, absorbing visual shapes because they were there to be absorbed, but unable ever to form any estimate of the objects of her vision.”  Describing the pregnant woman in the town by the Twentieth Century Motor Company factory.

Discussion Question/Journal Entry

Owen Kellogg is one of the men of ability that disappeared.  Why has he reappeared?  What does it mean?  Why is he working as transient labor?  What philosophies and beliefs are seen from he discussion with Mr. Mowen?  Where are all of the other men of talent?  What is happening to them?

Atlas Shrugged, Part 1, Chapter 8

Chapter 8.  The John Galt Line.

Another One Gone

Dagny hears on the radio that Dwight Sanders had retired from business, suddenly and with no explanation. She rushed to New York, hoping to find and stop him.  She didn’t find him.  Where are all of these people going?  What is happening to the world of business?

Guilt by Inaction

Eddie is shocked at the passage of the Equalization of Opportunity Bill.  Eddie feels as if he “shared the responsibility for it in some terrible way which he could not define.”

Haven’t we all felt like this at one time or another?  We impassively watch, thinking and believing that it will not (cannot) happen.  And when it does, we feel guilty, responsible.  Like us, Eddie did not step up in protest. “To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” Abe Lincoln.

The Press

The press doesn’t report on the progress of the John Galt Line.  The general policy of the press is “There are no objective facts.  Every report on facts is only someone’s opinion.  It is, therefore, useless to write about facts.”  The press is no longer interested in telling the truth, they only want to push their own agenda.

While the rest of society seems to agree with the press, Dagny and Rearden have scientific minds, relying on the facts and facts alone.

John Galt

As Dagny is boarding the train, she is asked who John Galt is.  Her reply is “We are.”

John Galt has represented the person who did the impossible, and today Dagny and Rearden have accomplished the impossible.

Quotes

“I don’t engage in charity and I don’t gamble on incompetence.”  Hank Rearden

“Could one have any meaning without aim?  Whose malevolence was it that crept through the world, struggling to break the two apart and set them against each other.”  Dagny