John Galt Rhetorical Analysis

Can one give an answer to one of the most obvious examples of rhetorical questioning? Throughout the six thousand words that make up this complex, sprawling mystery, not once did a statement completely answer the question "Who is John Galt"? Perhaps what seeks to be done cannot be done with words alone. To produce a unified definition which a narrative can provide, through the series of unfolding events and their impact on me as the reader. For what seems like a simple query, so many answers or none, but just one answer exists for the protagonist, Dagny Taggart: an empty statement. One synonymous with the despair and the futility of questioning what cannot be answered. To her, the name is the core of a very distasteful mention on the lips of …show more content…
Galt's life embodies a distinctive characteristic- an unflinching commitment to facts and an incredible willingness to accept it, no matter its content. His usual reaction to events is serenity, and this is because he holds an undeviating allegiance to reality that his most honest judgment grasps.—”his eyes were grasping this moment, then sweeping over its past and its future, [and] a lightning process of calculation was bringing it into his conscious control”— so by the time he reacts, he sees that an event which might seem like an unpleasant surprise was inevitable all along. While all this gives a clear depiction of Galt’s character, It's easy to overlook the more gossamer moments that reveal new aspects to his personality. Most worthy of note is his romantic involvements with Dagny, To whom he said in a moment of pure euphoria “I love you, Dagny. I love you more than my life, I who have taught men how life is to be loved. I’ve taught them also never to expect the unpaid for—and what I did tonight, I did it with full knowledge that I would pay for it and that my life might have to be the price". This special relationship is an ostensible contradiction to the prevalent belief in the split between emotion and reason, which holds that an person is of rational or emotional inclinations— but cannot be both. In the character of John Galt, we meet a man who is emotional because he is in love and still remains rational because he clearly understands the importance of these desires within the context of all his other values and knows and accepts the result of succumbing to his emotions. In the end, John Galt proves that reason, and emotion can and should be integrated in a human being's life, and it exists as an independent quality of