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Showing content with the highest reputation on 12/27/14 in all areas

  1. Interesting... We're you compelled to respond this way, or did you choose to.
    1 point
  2. Maken

    Eddie Willers

    I pulled this off another website: The last scene to include Eddie Willers shows him stranded in the desert. At the end of the book, Eddie isn't dead, nor necessarily even abandoned, but he also isn't shown as having been saved. He might be rescued, or he might die in the desert. We just don't know, because Rand doesn't reveal what he does or what happens to him after he is stranded. This suspense is intentional: Eddie is supposed to represent the "common man," people who aren't inventive geniuses and leaders. His fate is left unresolved at the end of the book to reflect Rand's belief that the fate of ordinary people depends in many ways on the actions of people like Galt, Dagny, etc. Rand described Eddie's situation in a letter to a fan: Eddie Willers is not necessarily destined to die; in a free society, he will live happily and productively; in a collectivist society he will be the first to perish. He does not have the ability to create a new society of his own, but he is much too able and too honest ever to adjust himself to collectivism. (Letters of Ayn Rand, p. 564)
    1 point
  3. JMeganSnow

    Eddie Willers

    There are already a number of threads on very similar topics if you want to search for them. However, why did John Galt have an obligation to save anyone? And why are you assuming Eddie Willers wanted to be saved? By his own words, he didn't want to start over. He believed that Dagny did and should, but he did not. In reading Atlas Shrugged, it's important to understand that it's a work of fiction. The fates of Eddie Willers and Cheryl Taggart aren't meant to be "realistic" or prescriptive of how to treat honest, average people, they are meant to dramatize and illustrate the logical fate of the honest, average man and woman in a world where man's mind has gone on strike. Ayn Rand wasn't indicating that they *deserved* to die or be abandoned or anything like that--it is precisely the fact that they *don't* deserve the horrors they suffer through that makes it so tragic.
    1 point
  4. softwareNerd

    Eddie Willers

    I think Eddie loved the railroad; he did not feel a duty toward it (not if we use Rand's concept of duty). Eddie was a less capable person than the heroes, but just as moral as they. Rand uses Eddie to illustrate the theme of Atlas Shrugged. He serves to illustrate the importance of the Atlases, not just to the evil parasitic men, but also to the perfectly moral men of lesser ability. This is at least part of the reason that Rand leaves Eddie out of Galt's Gulch -- to symbolize how moral men might perish when the heroes leave.
    1 point
  5. Olex

    Eddie Willers

    That's true. His error was one of knowledge, not of principles.
    1 point
  6. D'kian

    Eddie Willers

    I wish this continuing slander of Eddie would stop. He was paid because his employer found his services valuable. In that sense, he was no different from a conductor, an engineer, a signal man or a dispatcher. Except Eddie was good enough to be Dagny's right hand. He lacked initiative, yes, perhaps even ambition. When Directive 10-289 is issued, he doesn't quit, even when Dagny does. When the tunnel blows up, he neither quits nor takes over operations to salvage the railroad. That's the reason he gets to be the operating vicepresident's right hand rather than the operating vicepresident himself. In the end he takes the initiative, by going to San Francisco to keep that terminal open. That's too little too late, and he comits the same error Dagny did: keeping TI alive when all it could do was feed the looters. Compared to Dagny or Hank or Francisco, Eddie was second class, true. So what? He was a moral, productive man. That's all there is to it.
    1 point
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