Limitless night / Endless plain / Tree, snow, spring

From the closing scene for Eddie: "He lunged in the direction of the rabbit, as if he could defeat the advance of the enemy in the person of that tiny gray form. The rabbit darted off into the darknness---but he knew that the advance was not to be defeated. . . . He collapsed across the rail and lay sobbing at the foot of the engine, with the beam of a motionless headlight above him going off into a limitless night."

There is a likeness there with the final scene for Kira in We the Living. Kira "fell on the edge of a slope. She knew she could not rise again. Far down, below her, an endless snow plain stretched into the sunrise. The sun had not come. A band of pink, pale and young, like the breath of a color, like the birth of a color, rose over the snow . . . . A lonely little tree stood far away in the plain. It had no leaves. Its slim, rare twigs had gathered no snow. It stretched, tense with the life of a future spring, thin black branches, like arms, into the dawn rising over an endless earth where so much had been possible."

The closing scene for Eddie resonates with Rand's earlier, 1935 scene for Kira, which has brought so many to weep. Right after the close for Eddie, we have the final vignette for Atlas. Here may be another resonance with the earlier creation. It has always seemed to me that the final vignette for Atlas contains a personal allusion to the tree for Kira, simultaneous with its allusion to the great old tree in the childhoods of Eddie and Dagny. I suggest that the following contains a personal allusion to Kira's final scene. "There were shelves of snow on the granite ledges and on the heavy limbs of the pines. But the naked branches of the birch trees had a faintly upward thrust, as if in confident promise of the coming leaves of spring."

how many "Eddies" lived in Russia, circa 1922?

A non-Objectivist friend of mine who high-lighted every single one of the essential passages and even sentences of Atlas Shrugged with the acumen of a literary critic/philosopher said that the novel's greatest flaw was the exclusion of Willers. I said that I agreed that loyal friends would have come to rescue him. When I read the book, I assumed that this did happen, just later and off-stage.

Ted

I am assuming that you have just finished read Atlas Shrugged, as have I, because (aside from the many, many pages I have bookmarked) this was the very question I was asking myself at the end.

I wonder if I missed the role attributed to Eddie?

His loyalty did not print a passport to the Gulch.
Did, Eddie go wrong, or did he go right?

Does not Dagny employ the best?

Did not the members of Galt's Gulch revere the best of people?
It seems to be a contradiction that Eddie was the best (according to his position) and was not invited to Galt’s Guch. He was quite obviously not one of the dynamics, so maybe his position in the Gulch, came at a later time. A time as per order of merit, like who is next in line?

Was his to loyalty to Dagny his undoing?

Honesty and integrity were the underlying principals Eddie seemed to maintain.

I would have thought that these principals would have been ideal in Galt’s Guch, given that there must have been a great need for “labour “. Frisco, for example would surely need labour for his mines, Dagny for her railroads, Hank for his steel, Galt for his motors etc. Or are these people such perfectionists that they do everything themselves which would not only be impossible, its more ideological than logical.

I like to think that Eddie did eventually reach Galt’s Gulch.

But I haven't finished it yet. I started with The Fountainhead and couldn't put it down. It totally blew me away and I gushed over poor Spice Boy. He gave me good advice, that Atlas Shrugged needed time and indeed he was so very correct (thanks Ross). I can't wait to comment and I am not looking at your posts, but don't let this thread slide cos I want a ride on it.....ok!!

Thank you, I agree with that

Eddie Willers is my favourite character in Atlas Shrugged.

And Eddie Willers experienced human greatness first-hand for most of his life, so he of all people would have had the ability to create a haven if he wanted one.

We have to create our own gulches and hideaways. And we can.

The original questioner missed the point of AS.

Excellent Landon, well said!

I too have enjoyed everyone's take on this, with the exception of Piksmeat of course, clarifying my own notions. I just wanted to say that.

So far I've loved most everyone's responses. There are many ways to interpret Eddie's fate at the end of the novel.

I always viewed Eddie's decision to stay as such. I agree with Marnee that Reardon, Dagny etc were given a huge decision and had to undergo a significant amount of change (growth) of character in order to make their decision. At the time he would've been capable of asking to leave for the valley (Dagny/Frisco probably could've pulled it off) the question is never uttered precisely because he hasn't grown enough to understand what it means yet. He is still convinced that the world they are in can be saved and he does his best to do so.

Only when this leads to the stalled train does the issue finally connect with him. He has his moment of understanding on the tracks, only it's come to late.

Could a man like this survive in the wilderness on his own until the return of the prime movers? It's likely. But the part I understood about his character is that he couldn't have avoided knowing about the valley by that point, yet he never brought himself to ask, and he paid the consequences in the moment he finally understood them.

---Landon

Inking is sexy.

http://www.angelfire.com/comics/wickedlakes

Galt's Gulch is a massive plot device. Yes, it's a refuge, a place to be truly free, a place for Dagny to discover the truth while still rejecting it, etc., but primarily, it's symbolic. It stands for the world as it could be, as it will be.

Practically, it's not Mount Olympus or the Elysian Fields. It's the Batcave.

So Eddie doesn't really come into it. He was always going to be left on the outside; used as a reminder as to the fate of a good man when faith & force are honored in place of freedom & reason. Eddie's real prominence in the story comes from his use as a conduit through which Galt learns about Dagny, and her struggle.

Wow. I never thought of Eddie Willers as the type who would let himself "rot along with the others." You have a very negative idea of Eddie!

He was more than capable of getting on in his life and being productive without the prime movers -- starting a enw world in the desert where he was left off, yes? Wasnt that the point? Its our time NOW to create and produce, rely on ourselves. Its Eddie's time at the end of the novel.

Also, are you saying that Galt had a duty to bring Eddie in becaue he was loyal to Dagny? Dagny and Rearden had to go through a SERIOUS transformation and realization before they were invited! Eddie had not gone through this yet, had he? I dont think so. That is the point as well.

Or Piksmeat are you just dying to criticize Rand for something, anything? Are you afraid that she is right?

"Left to rot" by whom?

Who and what is the primary cause of the rot?

Your comment suggests - as do many of your questions - a serious inversion of justice. You put the blame on those most victimized by the very ideas which led to Eddie Willers plight. Certainly it is not Eddie's fault that the society is rotten. But it is not the striker's either. They, like Eddie, are its victims - and yet you demand that they save him.

As for your own whine that you, too, would be allowed to rot, what are you complaining about? The rot is caused by your views, which it is clear that you do not grasp.

"But at the end of the novel he is just left to rot like everyone else as the world goes to hell in a handcart."

Actually, we don't know that. We don't know what became of Eddie Willers, just as we don't know where the members of Ragnar's crew are quartered when ashore.

Mr Boydstun,

Good points. Remember, too, that John Galt's own supervisor at the Twentieth Century Motor Company was also one of the strikers and, while he did vacation in the valley every year (not even telling his own wife where he'd be!), he did not live there.

One of the concerns I have with Atlas Shrugged is the treatment of Eddie Willers. I thought it was wrong to treat a loyal employee that way. I'm not John Galt or Howard Roark and I'm sure nobody here is either. The best we can hope for is to be like Eddie Willers. But at the end of the novel he is just left to rot like everyone else as the world goes to hell in a handcart.

Mr. Johnston,

I'm glad you asked this question, which a number of my friends have asked me over many years. I like John Drakes' reply and Craig Ceely's reply.

I have an further thought on this. The story of Atlas Shrugged is enriched by not having all the characters one has come to love be safe in the valley at the final collapse. Leaving Eddie outside provides the way to make that tremendously moving scene with him in the stalled train, with the vision of his life with Dagny from their childhoods and their long joint struggle for the railroad. The human cost of the collapse needed to be brought home to the reader by the case of this wholly sympathetic character.

Our memories of things tend to prune the complexities of things. I think it works that way for our memories of complex stories such as the story in AS. Certainly over decades, I have found myself remembering lines of novels as more simple than they truly are when you look them up. Here are a couple of pruned memories of mine that illustrate this tendency. From AS "All life is struggle; man's life is purposeful struggle." From Fountainhead "Never the words, only the music."

Rand's story for AS does not bring all the creative and productive people into the valley. That is not the full story told. The author has her character John Galt (my favorite character from first I read the book) address such people, anonymous to him and to the reader, in his radio speech. He urges them to follow his own pattern of creating isolated enclaves for themselves for the near future.

x

Eddie Willers would have been welcome in Galt's Gulch had he choosen to follow Dagny.  I don't remember his name, but as Dagny was being given the grand tour of the valley, she was introduced to a truck driver.  That truck driver was not introduced as any sort of 'prime mover', only as a man who recognized the philosophic importance of prime movers.  So I would say that Galt's Gulch was not purely for the 'prime movers', but primarily for them.  It was a safe-haven and private retreat (owned of course by Mulligan).  Strikers were invited to the valley by Mulligan, Galt, Francisco, or Ragnar.  For the most part that only included the prime movers, because those are the individuals that they wanted to save from the collapsing world around them. 

John Drake