Agreed. She rejected and left her mooching uninspired family . She had dreams and aspirations . She was interested in and grateful for the achievements of Taggert Transportation , and Reardon Steel. She held admiration for and recognized the individuals creations as marvels from the mind and felt celebratory for them.

Yes, if Eddie had had the good sense to go on strike when he had the chance.

I came up with two alternative destinies for Eddie. One would frankly have cut the story short: Eddie sees Dagny off on the comet, then goes to find John Galt ("the worker") waiting for him in the commissary. This time, Eddie opens by saying he is at last ready to quit--on the strength of having figured out how the authorities got Henry Rearden to give in. He has just then decided to walk out. Knowing nothing about the Gulch, he hopes to recruit his friendly worker to join him and a few members of Dagny's office staff to occupy the Taggart Lodge and try to get a self-sufficient community going there. John immediately stops him and suggests the conversation is better left for safer quarters. Eddie suggests going to the place in the Terminal underground where Dagny hid away the prototype electrostatic motor she had recovered from the Twentieth Century Engine Company. John recognizes his old prototype at once and says so. The rest logically follows from this.

The second has Eddie making his escape much later. When he flies out to San Francisco, to deal with the San Francisco terminal manager quitting in the middle of the California Civil War, he sets a goal of getting an eastbound Comet started as his escape route. When the Comet breaks down east of Flagstaff, and the wagon train comes lumbering by, Eddie suggests they all drive toward Phoenix, Arizona--and the Dan Conway ranch. There Eddie encourages Dan to reopen the Phoenix-Durango Railroad, and drive into the Red Mountains. For he thinks he knows where to find the Gulch. And in fact, the real-life Durango Railroad served the town of Ouray in the Uncompaghre River Valley, the most likely Gulch location.

None of this would have helped Cheryl any. For that, someone would have had to look out for her to break--if not John Galt himself, then maybe one of Ragnar's spies.

Ayn Rand once said that she cast herself as the fish wife in the Gulch. The fish wife was a writer in the outside world who insisted on putting plot into her stories.

Right. Lawful residents, that's what they were. Or if you like, invited guests.

The fate of good people like Eddie Willers and Cheryl was the logic of the plot. Likewise for her We the Living. Ayn Rand said she wrote it that way because the plot had to show what happens to good but not exceptional people in that kind of society. She said that
Eddie Willers was one of her favorite characters.

The role of Eddie Willers is to illustrate the fate of what is modern day libertarianism. If you recall an earlier scene speaking to Dagny in their adolescent(formative) years Eddie responds, "Whatever is right." as his standard answer when questioned as to the outcome, fate, or destiny in all/any situation. He doesn't see (or has never learned) that it takes human volition to 'make things right' and rational ideas to even conceive of what is right. Galt understands that, if admitted Eddie brings with him baggage that says that a John Galt(genius) doesn't exist and doesn't have to exist because everything works out and falls into place automatically, naturally i.e., if Edison didn't invent electric light, someone else would have. Which is true only in a very shallow sense. In the case of the motor in Atlas Shrugged its a paradigm shift in civilized man. Dagny expresses it best when she discovers the remnant in the factory; "Don't you see Hank? This changes everything!" Uh, while we're on the subject of "the factory remnant" take a look at the header image on this page:
http://www.GaltsGulchPortal.blogspot.ca
& son of a b---- you know what this means? It means someone has done gone and invented that godamn motor!
Don't believe it? Ya think that anyone could have? or it would have been done eventually anyway - no need for Ayn Rand or any such thing as a 'tremendous feat of abstract science' to even conceive or invent it!? Well folks for a million years since the birth of the idea of fire man has been on the wrong track and has never had a moments peace or harmony with living on earth then or since. Ayn Rand solved the anomally and expressed it in theory - what you see in that header image of that link-page is your key to putting together the concept of the motor in concrete form. If you can appreciate the thought and effort that went into its creation you're welcome to come and attend Atlantis/Galt'sGulch in June - if not, you don't understand the enormity of what this solves and the fate of Eddie awaits you.
And I mean it.

JohnGalt Iamoura

I'm sure she would have needed more than her good looks to be admitted entry to the Gulch. That was a place for thinkers, not for mere "lookers."

Not to worry, though. Cheryl Brooks was no airhead. She would have done well, I'm sure, as Midas' administrative assistant.

"it would be hard to say what caused her deterioration into a psychotic break"

How about being married to James Taggert an
enigma pushing the collectivist agenda with no morals and a deep seated resentment to reasoning producers.

Yes. I was mistaken as I thought the social worker took her life.

Remember to be in the gulch you had to take the oath and accept the rules plus not hide from one's contradictions. It demanded reason, morality, and productivity. That would keep most people out.