PLOT
It is December 10th, the night of Rearden's anniversary party. Hank hates parties and tries to avoid mingling with the guests. Dagny tries to speak with Hank but he is standoffish. Francisco makes an appearance in order to learn what kind of man Hank is. They talk. Dagny hears Lillian make fun of the bracelet from Hank. Dagny challenges Lillian to trade it for Dagny's diamond bracelet. Lillian gives Dagny the blue-green bracelet. We learn about the Rearden's sex life and that the Reardens view sex as an animal need.
SUBPLOT (loose ends)
The Equalization of Opportunity Bill, sponsored by the Friends for Global Progress, states a person or corporation couldn’t own more than one business. Wesley Mouch tells Hank it is not a threat to be passed.
Ragnar Danneskjold - A pirate roaming the Atlantic taking goods.
John Galt Legend - Francisco says an old lady is right when she tells a story about John Galt. "John Galt sank his ship and went down with his entire crew. They all agreed to do it."
Party Guests - Bertram Scudder wrote an article called "The Octopus" trashing Rearden.
COMMENTS
Scale - Hank actually seems to be getting along with Francisco better than Dagny does. They still can't completely connect, however "The glance betrayed how much he (Hank) wanted to find the sort of man he thought he was seeing." Francisco's purpose was to learn to understand Rearden. Francisco also talks with Rearden "to give you (Hank) words you need, for the time when you'll need them." Clearly Hank sees something in Francisco that Dagny thinks is gone.
Sex - Hank begins this chapter with NO ENERGY and considers trying to evade the party. He tries to figure out why he has all the energy in the world to do amazing things and he barely has enough energy to button his shirt. We learn Hank's perspective of sex:
"He had won his every battle against inanimate nature; but this was a battle he lost."
"He despised a need which now held no shred of joy or meaning...He became convinced the need was depravity."
"He came to believe the doctrine that this desire was wholly physical, a desire, not of consciousness, but of matter, and he rebelled against the thought that his flesh could be free to choose and that its choice was impervious to the will of his mind."
Hank sees sex as a base need that he can't control. "He had sought an act of triumph, though he had not known of what nature." "He grew to hate his desire." Why did he marry Lillian? "It was the difficulty of the conquest that made him want Lillian."
Perspectives on Sex:
-Hank realizes he has been powerless over a need that he considers to be depravity that was wholly physical.
-Dagny from Chapter 5: "...as if, she thought suddenly, as if sensuality were not physical at all, but came from a fine discrimination of the spirit."
-Francisco from Chapter 5: "I still want to sleep with you," he (Francisco) said. "But I am not a man who is happy enough to do it."
The chapter actually ends with Hank overcoming this physical need and not having sex with Lillian. Hank ends this chapter with the energy to overcome the greatest thing he had been powerless over, but how did he do it?
PRACTICAL APPLICATION (worth rereading)
Party Guests - The logic (or lack thereof) behind the statements made by the party guests is worth rereading. They are the result of precepts we hear everyday, taken to their logical end. Knowing these ends makes it easier in everyday life to lead the people who make these comments to this end. For instance: I love to ask someone how they KNOW they are right when they say you can't KNOW anything. Because they feel it? How do they know they feel it or know they don't feel it? (See Supplement) I have found I use the word "believe" where most people use the word "feel".
Causality - This chapter begins a three chapter arc on Causality and "What is Man?" The party guests are unwilling to do the causes to get the effects they want, so they demand the effects regardless of the causes. This is why they are contradictory and hypocritical. Everything they state is the belief Man is an Animal, rather than live at Focus, they encourage everyone to live in Drift. Why? So they can control everyone through force. They are looters; people living in Evasion.
Francisco and James - Ms. Rand takes one of the precepts, the greed of businessmen, to its logical end in full detail. Francisco tells James he has done EXACTLY what James' (and the party guests) stated was virtuous. Why is James upset?
Contradiction - The party is filled with people who are contradictory. "The purpose of philosophy is not to help men find the meaning of life, but to prove to them that there isn't any." Francisco continues his apparent contradictory manner. Again, the author is posing apparent contradictions and you have to decide whether Francisco is more right than everyone else or more wrong than everyone else. If you haven't decided yet, it is only going to get harder...
Thought Processes - This chapter makes complete sense when you account for the thought processes.
This entire chapter is focused on the fact Hank is at "Drift". The chapter begins with: "Rearden pressed his forehead to the mirror and tried not to think." He actually considered "Evasion".
"He had won his every battle against inanimate nature; but this was a battle he lost."
Drift is where you lose your energy and are controlled through your feelings towards an addicted (automatic) thought process. We all have specific areas of our life where we are in a Drift thought process. What's something you want to do, but you can't bring yourself to do it? (exercise?) What is something you want to stop doing, but you can't bring yourself to stop doing it? (snacking?) These are specific examples where what you want to do in your Focus thought process doesn't occur because your Drift comes out.
From the quotes in the Comments section above, Rearden's definition for "sex" is Drift. Why did he marry Lillian? "It was the difficulty of the conquest that made him want Lillian." It looks like sex with Lillian began at Focus, but through time ended up at Drift, like EVERYTHING does when it is handled without understanding and only through experience.
Dagny is at Focus and her interaction with Hank is awkward because of this. Then, Dagny goes to Drift in a specific situation...
"She felt herself blushing, for the first time in years: blushing because she knew suddenly that the sentence named what she had felt all evening. She ran, trying not to think."
Then, one external event from Lillian caused her to go to Evasion in this specific situation: "She did not know the moment that preceded, or the moments that were to follow."
After Dagny gets the bracelet, she goes back to Drift and then efforts herself back to Focus.
Hank, who is at Drift, sees this one external event and Dagny thinks: "Yet she was suddenly certain that she knew what he felt: he wanted to slap her face."
From the notes for chapter 5, we saw Francisco did slap her face and it happened because he was living at Focus, got exhausted (Drift) and her comment was the one external event leading to him losing self control (Evasion).
However, Hank ends the chapter avoiding Drift sex with Lillian. He has broken his addiction!
How did Hank break this addiction?
Why did Hank become more loving and attentive to Lillian after the bracelet incident BUT YET stop having sex with Lillian?
The title of Part I is "Non-contradiction". There are no contradictions with anyone's actions in this novel...
SUPPLEMENT
Stress - Years ago I took a test on handling stress. People told me I would do well on the 40+ question test. I ended up getting a perfect score. Typical question:
If you gave a talk and no one asked a question, whose fault would it be?
a)all yours b)mostly yours c)yours and the audience d)mostly audience e)all audience.
Next question: What would you do before your next presentation? The answers ranged from "everything in your power to make it better" to "Nothing". All of my answers were "all my fault" and "everything in my power".
Stress occurs when you believe (or is it "feel"?) something is out of your control and you have no power or desire to change it. The people who are stressed out and ready for a heart attack are usually the ones who get emotionally wound up about it "not being fair" and "not their fault". If you feel (or is it believe?) everything is your fault then you have the power to change it. Recall how much James and the negative side of the scale focuses on blaming and faulting others. A person focused on blaming others will be as unstable as James is depicted.
Hank is a master at handling stress and pain. "He had never spared himself in any issue. When a problem came up at the mills, his first concern was to discover what error he had made; he did not search for anyone's fault but his own; it was of himself that he demanded perfection. But at the mills, it prompted him to action in an immediate impulse to correct error; now, it had no effect...” Hank believes this party is out of his control.
Notice also, that Hank believes in Right and Just:
"...that one had to seek that which was right, because the right answer always won - that the senseless, the wrong, the monstrously unjust could not work, could not succeed, could do nothing but defeat itself."
How We Know What Isn't So - According to the book "HWKWIS", all you can know for sure is whether something isn't true. Our ability to selectively recall supporting facts misleads us into believing something is true or right when it isn't. It's the difference between "compare" and "contrast". For instance, I can try to convince you I drive a Corvette: my car's name starts with a "C", it has four wheels, it has a steering wheel, etc. Just because everything I've said is a fact and is in common with a Corvette, it doesn't make it a Corvette. "Compare" isn't going to get you to the truth. That's because I'm not seeking the truth, my purpose is to prove my point (look for similarities only).
The way to find out the truth is to ask deconfirmatory questions. That is, "contrast", ask questions trying to prove the premise wrong. The 1986 shuttle explosion was another great example. Everyone who looked at the data was trying to prove they could launch the shuttle. That is, "comparing" the data to a launch scenario. However, all the data needed to stop the launch was among the same data they used for their comparison.
Why don't people focus on proving themselves wrong? Because most people are insecure and want to be right, right now. Their goal is not growth; it is comfort. Likewise, the only way for a Christian to know for sure is to try and prove Christianity wrong. When they find something that's wrong, they should remove it and move on. The search for truth is actually a process involving the constant testing and removal of beliefs. The problem is so many Christians, especially new ones, have the need to feel right, right now. They are a terrible advertisement for Christianity.
The only people who "know" anything are the ones who have challenged and changed their beliefs. Those who haven't changed don't know anything. That's why deduction is the most powerful form of reasoning. Ms. Rand does a great job of using deduction when she demonstrates the logical end (some say exaggeration) of the negative side of the scale. However, deduction and contrasting involves challenging people's beliefs. In order to do this, the setting has to be one of trust and understanding. That's the real tragedy with the loss of civility and the rise of "irony" (sarcasm) in our society. It prohibits us from working together to improve ourselves.
Table of Contents
Next Chapter: The Exploiters and the Exploited
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