Thank you Salta. I'll search for that as well. Please let me know if you find something.

Excellent. She was a tragic character. I think I didn't give her enough significance on my first read thru. You explain quite well how far she fell. She went from wanting to be everything Mrs. James Taggert was supposed to be to hating who she became. Rand was brilliant in the way she developed her characters.

Cheryl was a tragic character. Her actions in the year of her marriage to Jim demonstrate a capable and focused intelligence, and her drive to "learn everything that Mrs. James Taggart is expected to know and to be" demonstrated a drive to rise to what she saw as a better place in the world, a place with educated and cultured people, people of worth and accomplishment. Her disillusionment when she discovered that the people in her new world were no better than the people of her old world -- just with more money and better clothes -- was profound.

The last evening of Cheryl's life is a carefully-crafted arc. After being a minor note in the novel, she is given an entire chapter and we realize that she is one of the good guys, a heroine on the wrong track [she's looking for love in all the wrong places.] After the excitement of her wedding, she worked, she achieved, she found her achievements mocked, and she started questioning all of her premises. She had reached a point of indifference in the months after their marriage, and her reaction to Jim's unexpected early return that evening was the same -- quiet, subdued. His boasting about the pending nationalization of d"Anconia Copper jars her and her brief meeting with Dagny raises her spirits, only to come back and find Jim in flagrante delicto with a women whom Jim then boasts was Mrs. Henry Reardon.

After Jim strikes her and she runs in panic, I don't think she ever recovers from the shock. The narrative of her flight sounds like a mind in a tailspin. "No exit -- her shreds of awareness were saying, beating it into the pavements in the sound of her steps -- no exit...no refuge...no signals...no way to tel destruction from safety, or enemy from friend. .... No! -- was the only conscious word in her brain -- no! -- no! -- no! -- not your way, not your world -- even if this "no is all that's to be left of mine." Her final scream is "an animal scream of terror".

This is one of several moments of intense, even desperate, emotion in the novel, but it is wrenching on a gut level beyond, for example, the burning of Ellis Wyatt's oil fields or the destruction of the Taggart Tunnel. It foreshadows the attack on Rearden's factory and the death of the Wet Nurse

I feel certain I have heard Ayn Rand explain in an interview, or maybe in a Q&A session somewhere (I can't direct you to it right now, but I will if I find it).
She modeled the Cheryl marriage on a real life example, a philosopher I think, who believed in altruism and married a woman he was not interested in, but who he felt would benefit most from being married to him. It resulted in a hit to the woman's self-esteem, and eventually she committed suicide.

I have been somewhat troubled by Cheryls death for years. For a long time I assumed that she found herself in a trap created by James that she didn't know how to get out of. In the movie(and book) at the shop when Cheryl first meets James she expresses admiration at his creation of the John Galt Line, unaware that he didn't do any of it. Jim of course took the credit. When she finally realized none of it was true and that James was indeed the hollow tree described in the first chapter of the book it was just too much for her( no matter her IQ) to deal with. I know it goes much deeper that this, but that is how I have looked at it. I just wonder how many good people end up either drugged up or alcoholics or dead when they realize the depth of the deception.

She may well have feared what James would do to her. When he finally revealed his true colors she probably knew he would go to any lengths to "win".

She was quite a positive person when they met. That changed slowly until the night she finally had to admit who Jim really was. Interesting question to ask Kh.

I did not see Cheryl as a lipstick worshiper. I think she was leading the typical blue collar path for her socio economic group at the time. She wanted more, but it was vague and just unsettling. She became driven after meeting James-an opportunist. The question she should have always asked herself was "why do you need my attention." a question most people need to ask and don't.

Where did you get that Cheryl lacked intellectual ability? Because she was a shop girl she was stupid? She didn't have a lot of life experience from growing up in the family she did, but that does not make her stupid. She was smart enough to get out.

Not to mention that most of the contributors here have an IQ of 95? Defend that position with facts.

I hadn't thought about how collectivism destroys the people it sets out to help. That's an excellent point. I felt that Cheryl was getting stronger during her marriage to Jim and that she was slowly figuring out how the world worked. I may be wrong on that point and the realization was more of a shock than I suspected. Thanks Mike.

Like Eddie Willers, whose fate was left indeterminate, Cheryl Brooks Taggart is an average person. She was a shopgirl, not a genius stuck in a clerical job. Hers was a world where a new lipstick is the difference between self-esteem and humiliation. Having worked as a waitress, Rand knew that world. She spoke of it in defending capitalism. Capitalism, it is charged, gives millions [now billions] of dollars to manufacturers of lipstick while scientific geniuses go unrewarded, After dealing with the obvious point, Rand returned to the importance of lipstick to the shopgirl.

John Galt said that he would kill himself rather than see Dagny tortured. Howard Roark was willing to go to prison in the name of the nation that - had it condemned him - no longer existed. Cheryl could not live in a world of social workers.

Dagny, Hank, and the others, could put the social workers and social planners in context. Cheryl could not because she lacked the intellectual ability. It is not immoral to have an IQ of 95. In fact, 85% of Americans think that they are of above average intelligence; and I suppose that applies all the more here in the Gulch. I assure you: some of the most popular contributors here with the best credentials give evidence of statistically normal intelligence. They remain moral people, as was Cheryl. She could not survive in the world of the looters.

The death of Cheryl Brooks Taggart was Rand's judgment that collectivism destroys the people it claims to benefit.

Perhaps too it was Cheryls realization that there were a lot more Jim Taggerts than Dagny Taggerts. Does Cheryl represent what others might do if they really knew what Jim and his ilk were like? Cheryl is a more complex character than I originally thought.

Different paths but ended in the same failed marriages. Not sure why Cheryl didn't react with more anger towards Jim. She must have completely blamed herself. I wonder if she just didn't want to live in a world where James was respected and Dagny was looked down on?

Rockymountpirate summarizes my view on this exactly and raises an interesting question: Why was Hank's reaction different.

Regarding why Cheryl had to die, it was the dubble whammy of finding out Jim was a creep and then running into people presenting themselves as offering succor but who were just like Jim. It's consistent with the theme of the book that even the best people will give up in a world where mooching second-handers are in charge. I do not think she's encouraging a collapse of society or individuals' suicide. Rather, she's saying look at the dark place something that on the surface sound nice can lead to.

I think your correct about that, and I have thought about it but never quite grasped it. Hank was indifferent after awhile because no matter how well he did, what he achieved or what he thought was derided by his family. Lillian was indifferent to Hank also, just so long as she kept her social position. Hank was someone to defeat, to best, to conquer, to destroy. James needed Cheryl's adulation and to feel superior to the girl he took out of the gutter, and her trying to better herself was a threat to him.

Hank responded more with indifference and then anger. Cheryl was taken by surprise at learning who Jim really was but I'm thinking Rand wanted her death to represent something more.

That's an excellent question Rich. I too have wondered at the significance of Cheryl's suicide. She tried so hard to become what she perceived as an equal to James, never realizing he wasn't who she thought he was. I have wondered if the shock of finally finding out just who he was and how wrong she had been in her choice, not her highest value, that she just temporarily lost herself. It is also interesting to me that neither Cheryl or Hank were married to the people they thought they were when they married them, and they had different reactions to the betrayals of their spouses. If she had gone back to Dagny that night, things possibly would have been different for her.

I will be very interested in seeing other people's view of this event.