I didn’t care for the fate of Eddie Willers, either. Eddie’s character is almost a caricature throughout the book. I sometimes wondered if he was really a Golden Retriever. The director’s assistant is an ambitious and energetic person. In Rand’s day, such a person would almost certainly sidestep a woman who was in his way. He would also be privy to numerous insider transactions, which would be perfectly legal at the time. He would have been paid well and he would have the oportunity to trade stocks and make himself very wealthy. He kisses James Taggart’s ass for years, which would foster murderous resentment in any normal person, such as readers of the book. But all he can think of is getting the train to run, even though he knows there is no place for it to go.
But he was there to make a point. No matter how nice you are, no matter how much you produce, no matter how everyone likes you, if you let them use you, you will only get used. He wasn’t recruited for Galt’s Gulch, also known as the collection of lovers of Dagny Taggart. And here is an interesting point. Eddie was in love with Dagny since they were little kids, before even Francisco D’Anconia was introduced in the book. But he never acted on it. At some point near the end, he tells her how he really feels. Her response is essentially, “I knew that.”
Eddie appears to be single throughout the whole story. He hid his love for Dagny Taggart the entire time, never accepted the fact that he couldn’t have her and never moved on. Sorry, Eddie. The world is a bad place for nice guys.
As for the fight scene, I can only guess that Rand felt that since she had a pirate running loose during most of the story, at some point he should do something piratical. Calling it inappropriate would be kind. Regarding the rest of the entry into Project F, it had 16 guards according to the opening scene. This is a reasonable number given the time. Four of them are down before they even get inside. Is it unreasonable for Dagny Taggart to kill the guard at the door? Galt is inside. His captors are torturing him, possibly killing him. What was unreasonable to me is that she wasted her time talking to the guy. Rand demonstrates a typical fictional gunfight. Lots of talk and very little cover or center of mass. If you think that was bad, recall the first Charlie’s Angels movie. The fight scene in that one was so stupid it was hard to beleive they filmed it. Perhaps Ms. Barrymore threatened to cut off the producer’s coc supply if he didn’t do it her way.
How do they know when to go back? When Dagny tells them she will not stay in Galt’s Gulch, Galt reveals a few details about what will happen to the cities when society breaks down., The last thing on his list is the loss of electric power for light. I found it out of character that Galt wouldn’t want Dagny to look at New York in the darkness. She helped make it happen, in more than one way.
What happens next? The sequel would have been an interesting tale. They’ve created an anarchy. There is no law but force and no reason for anyone to trade. Armed gangs would rule, at least until someone organizes Judge Naragansett’s idea of a business friendly society. That would not be easy. Such a society would be fragmented at best. It would consist of small groups who banded together for whatever benefit they might derive from each other. Those willing to use force would dominate. Pacifists wouldn’t last very long. Neither would the weak. Such a place would require a strong leader. That leader would have to push change very hard, and probably force it on some. Rand’s ethics would eventually take, but in the beginning trade would take a backseat to survival.
You have just described the Dark Ages.
Several things. I think sig's description of what is likely to happen after Atlas finishes shrugging is probably pretty accurate. When larger societies fail, smaller ones crop up within, generally organized around the clan/tribe structure that seems written into the human genome. Within these prototypical organizations - Marx was definitely wrong about this and so, I think, was Rand - economics takes on a form that does not require a great deal of formal exchange, nor is it socialistic in nature, each contributing to the whole selflessly. It is what it is, and we see it in every society that goes through this sort of breakdown.
The Western Roman Empire, for example, shrank into the little puddles before its fall (Rand's metaphor for electricity here is exact) centered around self-sufficient manors, from which manorial barons slowly coalesced into other forms of meta-organization. This process had been in place for quite some time before the Merovingians came along to try to link the puddles once more.
It is only then that real commerce follows much more than a glorified barter system. Recall Rand's description of the desperate men mining coal by night and selling it on the black market. The ethical system is Galt's - she described it as "the ruthless observance of one's given word," but it is not industrial-age economics, with contracts and legal protection. That has to wait for industry itself.
And incidentally, how in the world are such contracts to be enforced if Judge Narragansett's "Congress shall make no laws regarding production and trade" becomes the law? I'd love to see a discussion around that one.
Now, as to Eddie Willers. We recall that upon Dagny's return subsequent to the tunnel disaster, she wastes no time in sketching out a plan to re-establish the transcontinental routes. But for a change she isn't the one top-kicking the thing along as she did with the John Galt Line. Eddie does that. And the real problem with Eddie Willers is that he can't do that and still end up a beaten lap-dog. Doesn't compute. He can either be the one or the other, but both requires some sort of character flaw that Rand never presented.
It's a real problem. I cribbed this interview from the Objectivist website, with none other than Rand's acolyte and one-time lover Nathaniel Branden:
Questions and Answers: 7 June 1998
Holly Davis asks: In Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged Eddie Willers is presented as a thoroughly moral and admirable person. Yet he is not invited into Galt’s Gulch. Did Ms. Rand ever discuss her reasons for this or for why Eddie’s life ends in tragedy?
Nathaniel Branden responds: Yes, she did. Or rather, I heard her answer questions of this kind any number of times.
Galt’s Gulch is a place where the Prime Movers of society are invited to, when they go on strike. It is not a place where any moral man or woman would be invited to merely because of being “a good person.” In that sense, it is an elite society—“the aristocracy of superior ability.” Therefore, do not view it as a literal prototype of an ideal society in the real world; it is not meant to be that.
Eddie’s end is meant to show what happens to “the best of the average” when the Dagnys and Reardens are gone from the world, and the James Taggarts are in control. Eddie, Ms. Rand would say, is too honest to survive in James Taggart’s world when “the better people” are gone.
To add my own viewpoint, I find Eddie’s end somewhat troublesome. “The best of the average” is a little tougher and more independent than Eddie is presented as being. He could be a leader in his own right and on his own level, even if not on that of the book’s heroes. I would like to have seen that shown. He should not have stayed with the train. He should have made his first priority to survive. That he chose the end he chose was not, as I see it, “idealism,” but an unfortunate expression of immaturity, dependency, and lack of realism: he could not absorb that the world of his youth was gone—and that the battle for a better world had to be fought from scratch. For these reasons, incidentally, it was not entirely plausible that he be Dagny’s “right-hand man.” That job would have called for a person of better mind and greater autonomy.
While I cannot say I agree with all of Branden's interpretation he does raise a couple of valid points. But if we open the focus of the question from Eddie's character to Dagny's as well we do see something disturbing, and that is simply that she did not treat her subordinates - plural, Eddie isn't the only one who fought to the last - in the same manner that Rearden, Francisco, and Danneskjold treated theirs. Theirs did end up in Galt's Gulch. So much, I think, for the postulation that the Gulch was only for the elite of the elite. It wasn't. And by those standards Eddie does belong.
As for what happens next, well, unfortunately industrial societies of this size and complexity tend to produce a surplus that keeps the looters in business for a remarkable amount of time after the production ceases. One needn't be an inventor like Galt to produce motors if one has technical manuals, workers, and determination. It can be done perfectly well under a police state and it was. Such a state cannot compete with free enterprise in terms of production and advancement of technology but it can certainly put out motors. We're not talking about Atlas now but another of Rand's metaphors, Prometheus. Like Rand's Prometheus, the fire has been given and cannot be taken back. (Unlike Rand's Prometheus, the real one wasn't punished by men for benefiting them but by the gods, but I suppose we shoudn't complain too much if she takes a little pencil to Greek mythology; Lord knows the Greeks did).
In any case, post-Shrug America will likely run down but not stop, and will only come onto the Galtean system reluctantly as its own prison-farm industries are out-competed by the Gulchers. And at some point the Gulchers are going to have to come up with a Project X of their own, because the bad guys will be. Prison states do tend to be rather good at that sort of thing. Sooner or later the North Koreans will accomplish in decades what the Manhattan Project did in weeks, but accomplish it they will. Just my $0.02.