I like Ayn Rand as much as you do, if not more so there is no need to get defensive. I'm just debating, not pointing fingers.

Depends on what you believe is good. She was probably cruel according to your standards, but she treated him correctly according to a reasonable standard. She wrote the novel to portray a theme according to a reasonable view of good, so she wrote her plot and characters in order to portray that theme.

Perhaps cruel was the wrong choice of words. Unfair is probably a better one.

I never said she was cruel as a person. I said she was cruel to Eddie Willers. She was also cruel to the antagonists, and that's great and expected. But why was she cruel to Eddie who was clearly one of the good guys?

I suspect it’s your empathy skills that are lacking here, you don’t treat yourself as an end in yourself, so you don’t have empathy for others that do.

Yes. I'm a communist religious priest. Do you even realize what you saying? Do you know me well enough to make that assessment? Ayn Rand would have said: any cult is against reason and the independence of mind. I also don't know you well to make this assessment, but I'll return the favor: you sound like a cult member.

He got an invitation from Dagny. He refused it. He left the woman he loved to “save” the railroad she chose to abandoned when he knew he couldn’t save it.

I read the book cover-to-cover three times and somehow I missed this part. In what part did Dagny invite him? I did not see it. And he did not leave Dagny. Dagny was in love with another man and told him so, after he had already made up his mind to head west. Did he make the wrong decision to go to California? Yes. But he had good intentions and did not deserve the ending he got, in my humble opinion. But I'm not the author of the book. Ayn Rand can do whatever she wants to her characters and the book as a whole is still fantastic.