Atlas Shrugged, Part 1, Chapter 3, section 2:
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Recounts
Dagny Taggart's childhood decision to run
Taggart Transcontinental and her rise in the company. Recounts the history of the
San Sebastian Line: Millionaire playboy
Francisco d'Anconia invested money in developing the
San Sebastian Mines, and
James Taggart and the
Board of Directors assumed they could trust
d'Anconia to deliver a winner.
Dagny opposed this project and almost quit when it was approved.
James Taggart confronts
Dagny and demands to know what she has done to the
San Sebastian Line. She explains that she has moved anything of value out of
Mexico so the "looters" would not get it when they nationalized the line.
Taggart is scandalized by this but cannot muster the courage to countermand her actions. After leaving the office,
Dagny has a conversation with the
owner of a newstand about his cigarette collection. He says there are no new brands anymore, and only a few brands still being made. He talks of the cigarette as a symbol of man controlling nature, holding fire in his hands.
The offices of
Taggart Transcontinental and the Taggart Terminal.
Board of Directors
Dagny's Father
Dagny Taggart
Eddie Willers
Ellis Wyatt: Mentioned.
Francisco d'Anconia: Mentioned.
Hank Rearden
James Taggart
Mrs. Nathaniel Taggart: Mentioned.
Nathaniel Taggart: Mentioned.
Newsstand Owner
Orren Boyle: Mentioned.
The
newstand owner explicitly explains the symbolism of cigarettes: "I like to think of fire held in man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind - and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression." This is a character explaining what cigarettes symbolize to him - it is not a use of literary symbolism. The literary symbolism of this passage is established when the
newstand owner likens the fire of a cigarette to the fire of the mind. In Greek mythology, it was this gift of fire that raised men up. In
Atlas Shrugged, it is the achievements of the mind that raise men up. So the disappearance of most of the old brands of cigarettes, which the
newstand owner bemoans, is symbolic of the disappearance of the men of the mind.
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