Faith and hope for Survival, Eddie Willers character

The novel commences with a discourse between our main character, Eddie Willers, and a bum who questions the existence of a “John Galt”. This conversation provokes the thought of Willers childhood as he begins to reminisce while walking through the decay of a once great city. Since he was a child, Willers has always been exposed to situations that demonstrated one cannot have too much faith without being disappointed. In his earlier years, an oak tree that he looked up to as “his greatest symbol of strength” (page 13) was struck down by lightening revealing nothing but a lifeless trunk, therefor indicating that his belief was no more than a hunk of dead wood.

                However, he continues to refuse the loss of hope and even now, as glances around a fading city, he still has a glimmer of faith when seeing “the sight of a prosperous street.” (page 12) This everlasting optimism carries on when he addresses his boss, James Taggart, a tired man who runs a railroad service. Willers regards his work as the last bit of life the city has and compares the railroad tracks on a map to “a system of blood vessels.” (page 15) He invests all his faith for whatever life still remains into this company and respects the business building as though it were a symbol of salvation. His dedication to his work, sadly, is ridiculed by Taggart, and as much as Willers pushes to find alternative ways to make the business successful, he is constantly shot down, almost like his oak tree.

                Another way to analyze this situation is looking at it as though it were a matter of survival of the fittest. Taggarts company is up against the Phoenix-Durango, a brilliantly well running and new train service. Willers realizes that unless some changes are made, their company will continue to fall behind until they eventually die out. Unfortunately, as much as he tries to make his boss arrive at this understanding, Taggart is stubborn and unwilling to alter his ways. His only reasoning being that “nobody can blame us.” (page 18) and that he hasn’t “given us time to grow along with him.” (page 17) What Taggart doesn’t see is that in the rules of survival, you either act quickly or fall behind.

- Mona Kabbani