[sam_paine]

Hey there. Maybe you can help a neophyte. I finally forced myself to finish A.S. (?), and I understand everything except letting Eddie Willers die (I suspect) on the train. Why didn't Ayn have him join the Gulch at the end? What'd he do or not do to deserve his fate?

[KantianBurke]

To demonstrate what would have happened to Dagny if she hadn't "shrugged;" a death be it literal, spiritual or both. See also Tagert's innocent wife.

[eddie willers]

Nathaniel Branden, at the time a Rand confidant, wrote: "Eddie Willers ... represents the best of the average man: the honest, conscientious person of limited ability. At the end of the story, his fate is deliberately left indeterminate; we do not know whether he will live or die; if someone comes along to save him, he will survive; if not, he will perish. The meaning of his fate is that men such as Eddie can function productively and happily in a world in which the Hank Reardens and the Dagny Taggarts are left free, but men such as Eddie have no chance in a world ruled by the collectivists." (Who Is Ayn Rand? [New York: Random House, 1962], pp. 121-22.)