Eddie is a second-hander who sees the universe as malevolent.
Eddie is not a second-hander in the same sense as Peter Keating. And what is the evidence that he saw the universe as malevolent? I thought his view went from benevolence in the beginning to bewilderment by the end.
I never did understand what Rand was trying to convey with Eddie, but I saw him as kind of a “good person” character until the very end of the book.
Ayn Rand divided her characters into two classes:
(1) Heroes. Those who choose to use their conceptual consciousness to arrive at an independent understanding of the world. And consequently, who pursue goals or ambitions of their own choosing. These people are often condemned as selfish, even though they are the motive force of the world.
(2) Second-handers. These people are intellectual parasites. They simply accept some portion of the conventional wisdom uncritically, instead of working out the truth as best they can. Their lives revolve around their relationships to another person or people because they cannot function without guidance from others. These people are generally altruists.
Much of Atlas Shrugged revolves around the contrast between Dagny Taggart and Eddie Willers. Dagny without Eddie is still Dagny. Eddie without Dagny is nothing. Dagny is a hero. Eddie is a second-hander.
Eddie is honest, hard-working, and dedicated to Dagny. By conventional standards, he is a decent person. But by Ayn Rand’s standards he is a villain, albeit the least vicious of the villains.
When he [Eddie] was asked [by Dagny] what he would want to do, he answered at once “Whatever is right,” and added, “You ought to do something great … I mean the two of us together.” “What?” she asked. He said “I don’t know. That’s what we ought to find out. Not just what you said. Not just business and earning a living. Things like winning battles, or saving people out of fires, or climbing mountains.” “What for?” she asked. He said, “The minister said last Sunday that we must always reach for the best within us. What do you suppose is the best within us?”
Clearly Eddie is relying on the minister and Dagny to do his thinking for him.
In his last scene, the next to the last in the book, he finally realized that Dagny was right – that business is the best within us. But he is still crying out to the absent Dagny instead of thinking of his own survival.
Ayn Rand’s opinion of Eddie is reflected by John Galt. John Galt is well acquainted with Eddie and knows of his connection to Dagny, because John has been having conversations with Eddie in the lunch room at the Taggart Building in order to find out what Dagny is doing to try to save Taggart Transcontinental so that he can frustrate her plans. Yet outside those conversations, John never thinks or speaks of Eddie and does not consider inviting him to Atlantis.
In fact, I am sure that John would have been horrified if Dagny had suggested bringing Eddie to Atlantis (which she did not). After all, John ended his great speech by saying, “I swear – by my life and my love of it – that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”.
Eddie Willers walked on, wondering why he always felt it at this time of day, this sense of dread without reason. No, he thought, not dread, there is nothing to fear: just an immense, diffused apprehension, with no source or object.
This shows that Eddie’s sense of life is that the universe is malevolent. Also see the part about the Oak Tree on page 13.
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