We begin with Eddie Willers. Who is Eddie Willers? Good question. There seems to be a tendency to call Eddie Willers a wimp, which is unfair, because he will avail himself quite heroically by novel's end. However, our protagonist, one Dagny Taggart, conspicuously never sleeps with him, keeping it quite Platonic, so he is for the moment somewhat sub-par. He has a general feeling of civilization winding down. The "mystery," "Who is John Galt?", is posed to him by a bum. Take a close look at the bum, though. Rand takes a moment to say "the eyes were intelligent." Later we will see other poor folk, but they will be conspicuously rather listless sad-sack types. Already we are beginning to see Rand distinguish a truly slovenly poor from a wily worldly-wise poor.
There's a ten-story-high crack that no one repairs. A giant calendar invites the idea "Your days are numbered." Eddie reflects on the obvious metaphor of a great mighty-seeming oak actually being all hollow inside.
His woolgathering extends to remembering a minister saying "we must always reach for the best within us." He wonders if that means climbing mountains, or winning battles, or saving people from raging fires. By novel's end, however, he will realize with near-religious euphoria that simply doing your job and earning your money (presumably, hopefully, in a career and not simply a McJob) is that highest purpose.
I think it's noteworthy here that, according to Peikoff's preface, Rand did consider including a clergyman early on. From Rand's own notes of June 27, 1946:
"For Father Amadeus -- the source of his conflict. The uneasy realization that Galt is the end of his endeavors, the man of virtue, the perfect man -- and that his means do no fit this end (and that he is destroying this, his ideal, for the sake of those who are evil)."
However, later on, in Peikoff's words from this preface:
"Father Amadeus was [James] Taggart's priest, to whom he confessed his sins. The priest was supposed to be a positive character, honestly devoted to the good but practicing consistently the morality of mercy. Miss Rand dropped him, she told me, when she found it was impossible to make such a character convincing."
A poor characterizer can't handle someone merciful. That's kind of a tip-off right there.
Eddie enters the Taggart Building dedicated to the Taggart Transcontinental railroad. Its motto is From Ocean to Ocean, which to Eddie is "so much more shining and holy than any commandment of the Bible." He expands it to "From Ocean to Ocean, forever." Not to put too fine a point on it, but I somehow doubt Rand was much for natural history, contemplating a highly fluid and flexible future for thousands of years to come. The sad truth is that we have yet to truly grapple with just how ephemeral so many of our human artifacts are. It's even tougher when the subject is a railroad. I'd like to see maglev trains -- but would Rand actually agree with that if she were alive today in 2010?
We meet James Taggart, the company president. Who is Taggart based on? Damned if I know. Other industrial figures seem to be drawn from Andrew Carnegie or Thomas Edison or Henry Ford or even Howard Hughes -- but James Taggart, the presumed Exhibit A for how and why civilization is running down, reminds me of NO ONE. So far as I can see, he's a classic straw man, invented by Rand to be all the easier to tear down. I will be doing things like this from time to time, like asking "Why did Cherryl Brooks have to kill herself?", questions to nag the true fan.
Anyhow, more on the bizarre character of James Taggart for another day ...