[This is mainly just more literary interpretation. You might find that boring.]
It is interesting to hear you interpret the message of Willers to be
Eddie is an earnest idealist, trying to do his best by Dagny Taggart and her company, and that trait is his doom.
My interpretation of that ending scene is that Rand thought the prime movers (Dagny, Rearden, Galt) were the ones who made things work. You had people who were honest and capable, but not great, and they too would be left in a stagnating world if the prime movers were to leave. It was to galvanise people to action—even if you’re not actively trying to mooch off people, you won’t be guaranteed a place in Galt’s Gulch. And if you’re “just average”, perhaps you can do a lot more good if you find your Dagny Taggart to support and enable.
Not to say your interpretation is wrong and mine right, but I found it interesting to have two different interpretations, especially when I, too, resonated so much with Willers!
Also, I think loyalty to one’s society is something that everyone in the plot shows. From memory, we see many characters (Dagny, Rearden, even Kellogg) struggling to step away from the companies they love. It takes them a lot of time (at least for the former two, as far as the reader knows) to agree to leave.
Perhaps the better question is, to whom should one be loyal? In the end Willers decides to save the company, but in doing so he decides to leave behind Dagny. If there was ever any fatal flaw to Willers (other than “not being great”), it is that he places his loyalty in his past, and not in the people he trusted. A Hufflepuff can be loyal and supportive, but they can’t be loyal to everything. If the world is burning and there is a team of people who need your support, perhaps you should abandon the world—at least for a while.
(I don’t find literary analysis boring at all!) It’s been long enough since I read the book that I don’t exactly remember all the bits, and it also makes sense that different themes could resonate for different people. I think your interpretation is probably closer to what Ayn Rand intended – she obviously doesn’t think of Eddie as an antagonist, exactly, since he has positive traits and her antagonists generally don’t. I agree, and probably she would agree, that Eddie was able to do more good by “finding his Dagny” (I mean, this is what I was trying to do at the time!) That being said, I...don’t remember having the impression at all that he would have been welcome in Galt’s Gulch, even if he had decided to pin his loyalty on Dagny herself rather than the railroad; I don’t remember him even having an opportunity to find out that she was leaving or why. (I could just be misremembering this, though.)
[This is mainly just more literary interpretation. You might find that boring.]
It is interesting to hear you interpret the message of Willers to be
My interpretation of that ending scene is that Rand thought the prime movers (Dagny, Rearden, Galt) were the ones who made things work. You had people who were honest and capable, but not great, and they too would be left in a stagnating world if the prime movers were to leave. It was to galvanise people to action—even if you’re not actively trying to mooch off people, you won’t be guaranteed a place in Galt’s Gulch. And if you’re “just average”, perhaps you can do a lot more good if you find your Dagny Taggart to support and enable.
Not to say your interpretation is wrong and mine right, but I found it interesting to have two different interpretations, especially when I, too, resonated so much with Willers!
Also, I think loyalty to one’s society is something that everyone in the plot shows. From memory, we see many characters (Dagny, Rearden, even Kellogg) struggling to step away from the companies they love. It takes them a lot of time (at least for the former two, as far as the reader knows) to agree to leave.
Perhaps the better question is, to whom should one be loyal? In the end Willers decides to save the company, but in doing so he decides to leave behind Dagny. If there was ever any fatal flaw to Willers (other than “not being great”), it is that he places his loyalty in his past, and not in the people he trusted. A Hufflepuff can be loyal and supportive, but they can’t be loyal to everything. If the world is burning and there is a team of people who need your support, perhaps you should abandon the world—at least for a while.
(I don’t find literary analysis boring at all!) It’s been long enough since I read the book that I don’t exactly remember all the bits, and it also makes sense that different themes could resonate for different people. I think your interpretation is probably closer to what Ayn Rand intended – she obviously doesn’t think of Eddie as an antagonist, exactly, since he has positive traits and her antagonists generally don’t. I agree, and probably she would agree, that Eddie was able to do more good by “finding his Dagny” (I mean, this is what I was trying to do at the time!) That being said, I...don’t remember having the impression at all that he would have been welcome in Galt’s Gulch, even if he had decided to pin his loyalty on Dagny herself rather than the railroad; I don’t remember him even having an opportunity to find out that she was leaving or why. (I could just be misremembering this, though.)