 James says to Cherryl: “I don’t want to be loved for anything.

I want to be
loved for myself not for anything I do or have or say or think.” What does
James mean by this? What do Cherryl’s responses to James suggest her
view of love to be? What is your view? How does this issue relate to the wider
themes of the novel?

James knows that he cannot become rearden hence he tries to feel powerful by
being able to destroy him

Lets start with explaining what is love according to james and certain moments
from the chapters where he tries to display it

How he calls Cheryl a gold digger for loving him for his virtues. Give it a thought
whether hwat james says makes sense( discard it0

Lets elaborate about Cheryl transformation

In that was come to her reponse which is just her viewpoint of love

My view

Wider themes of the novel look up

Ayn rand has displayed a very interesting take on love through many of her
works, my favourite being, “Love is the expression of one’s values, the greatest
reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character
and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the
virtues of another.” In her book, the new intellectual. In atlas shrugged rand tried
to portray this idealogy through james taggart and cherryl taggart.

The lines “I don’t want to be loved for anything. I want to be loved for myself not
for anything I do or have or say or think.” Are picked upu from part 3 chapter 4
anti-life of the novel. James taggart says these lines to Cheryl when she asks hm
what does he want to be loved for?. James is of the view that love has to be for
the person himself and not for the virtues he possesses. To which Cheryl asks
him what is the SELF he is talking about. James replies by saying if she loved
him, she wouldn’t ask it. This phrase shows that blind trust or even faith are of
the utmost importance to love in jims understanding. Virtue has no value in love
to him, he even goes ahead to call Cheryl a Gold-digger of the spirit. He sees
Love as its own cause. He disconnects the need for causation and reality.

From the very first moment he saw Cheryl, he was getting the love that belonged
for somebody else. Cheryl loved him for his virtues, which she learns that they
aren’t actually of his own but of Dagnys’.
 The new testament of Christianity gives him the tools he needs to present his
point to Cheryl. He expects from Cheryl the kind of unconditional love which is
almost godly. Gods love for us is unearned without virtue. Which leads to jesus
sacrificing himself for us, the undeserving.

James tries to string up words like trust and faith whenever Cheryl tries to ask
him about his work or the meaning of love to him.

He points to Cheryl that love is nothing but blind faith and asserts that he needs
her. Cheryl did not know what he wanted of her exactly. Cheryl notices that james
comes to life when he senses a sense of admiration from her but resents a
reason for the same. He wants Cheryl to love him for his mere existaence and
nothing more than that.

Rand projects her view of love through Cheryl, in “The Ethics of Emergencies pg.44
she says that “A “selfless,” “disinterested” love is a contradiction in terms: it
means that one is indifferent to that which one values.

Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one’s selfish
interests. If a man who is passionately in love with his wife spends a
fortune to cure her of a dangerous illness, it would be absurd to claim that
he does it as a “sacrifice” for her sake, not his own, and that it makes no
difference to him, personally and selfishly, whether she lives or dies.”

Cheryl recollects her behavoir in the early days of her marriage where she strives
to fit in the shoes of Mrs.Taggart. one night she confesses to jim about the
lessons she learnt and jim bursts out laughing almost maliciously. This is one of
the first instance that Cheryl turns a blind eye towards the true nature of jim.

Rand describes Cheryl as a child handing him a report card with a [erfect score ,
begging him to be proud of her. After Cheryl starts to realise the true nature of jim
one can say she experiences a spiritual death. When eddie willers tells her about
jim she isn’t surprised because somewhere she already knew it but lived in a
haze.
She starts to see jim like she has never seen before. She starts to notice his futile
attempts to manipulate her to feel pity for him, his ever so evasive behaviour.

The night when jim returns from the party and tries to surprise Cheryl it was her
poise which annoyed him the most. While boasting about the September 2 nd deal
he wants Cheryl to react in the same way she did at the inauguration of the John
Galt Line. But little does he know he was just with a ghost of her.

To me, the English word love is too restrictive or unambigiuos in nature. The
Greeks have broad categories of love which are more accommodating and don’t
push every other teenager/philosopher on a quest to find a meaning of their own.
Eros: erotic, passionate love.Philia: love of friends and equals.Storge: love of parents
for children. Agape: love of mankind. These are the broad categories of love which the
greeks used and it would ease the pain of many people in the current times if these were
used more often than the term love.

Im confused why he offers her the queen jewels when he doesn’t want Cheryl to
love

Jim wants to be rearden without the necessity of being. Something anti life about
jim and Cheryl too.

He doesn’t want to be anything at all.

All this evasion going through about who he is, his motives and love. References
to fog regarding this. His whole exixtence is foggy

It has added up to something which he doesn’t want to admit.and doesn’t want to

be responsible. It si less threatening to aknowledge for him to be anything in
particular and is hell bent on destroying lives of people like dagny and taggart.

He cant be them so he feels powerful by being able to destroy them