I wasn't quite as icily strong as she was, didn't take my leave, write my exhilarated message on the statue in bright red lipstick (I don't wear it--chapstick only goes so far for graffiti), jump into the plane. I wasn't as brilliant as she was, to know what she wanted (though I did) and stick with it all the way through. I slipped and forgave (is that bad?) and pretended to forget (ignored his looks, his sighs, spoke behind him, not to him).
But I left him there all the same.
And I waited (though I know she didn't) to see what would happen. Ready to take it back, in an instant (I'm not her, I'd cave) if I thought the wheels would crush him.
But they didn't.
One Eddie Willers saw the two beacons of the train's lights, and stood up, and walked away.
Dagny hugged her knees to her chest from behind the computer monitor, reading the words of elation, and felt herself smiling.
Someday, he would be another girl's Galt.
8 comments:
double you tee eff, mate?
Does... does this mean... wait, does this mean that you and he are... what?!?
I so get it.
So, Tinty, for the non-Randenites among us, please translate!
yeah please explain...it sounds really interesting and i really love the way it's written...but i don't really understand
[Atlas Shrugged spoilers]
Eddie Willers loved Dagny Taggart, and Dagny Taggart loved John Galt.
(She also had mad sex0rz flings with Henry Rearden and Francisco D'anconia, but in this story, there's no clear D'Anconia and the Henry Rearden is considerably different.)
Dagny knew how Willers felt, and she pitied him, but did not try to appease his wishes by acting falsely. It was truth, integrity of feeling, that she had for Galt. It would have been a lie to give into Willers's pity with fake affection; that would have hurt him more, in the long run, than what really happened.
For, in the book, Dagny Taggert left Eddie Willers in a dying world, because she knew to help him with a lie would be far greater a sin--to both of them--than the alternative. She escaped. She lived.
Eddie Willers struggled, and eventually was lost in the night. Without her, things collapsed all around him. In his last scene, he has become trapped on an abandoned train in the middle of nowhere, and knows there's no hope for him. He closes his eyes to weep at the desolation, and the curtain closes.
The point, made in the book, was not specifically about his character: Rand was demonstrating the fate of the "common man" in the world of looters--though the heroes Dagny and Galt fought their way through to win, there was no chance for those less than great. The tragedy was that there was no chance.
But that was an Objectivisty tangent. Rand used Eddie Willers as a point to be made: you cry when you see him fall down; it's heart-wrenching to see what he'll never share with Dagny. You want him to stay pressed between the pages, where everything difficult is just a symbol, something you can prove.
In real life, our Eddie Willers, however, are different. They love, and see through human eyes the way their Dagny's speak when they say the word "John Galt." (Didn't Mrs. Achenbach say that pronouncing someone's name was one of the truest gestures of love?)
But sometimes it's a very good thing, that they are different. Dagny Taggart loves John Galt. And Eddie Willers has realized that he doesn't have to lay dying on the train tracks. Not because he has her--though that was surely a past aspiration--but because he has him.
***
Neither John nor Eddie go to Enloe; no one here has met the latter of the two.
That's one reason Henry Rearden didn't want to let Dagny know his situation was different in real life, because there could be no chance of side sex0rz.
...er, just kidding. But Henry is becoming more being a Henry and not an Eddie. Sometimes it feels like being an Eddie would be easier.
Honestly, I like the Eddie Willers support system in my life - I know he'll be there helping me with things while I wait for my John Galt to appear. And though I know he hated being my Willers, he is someone else's Galt. You really have to cheer when that happens.
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