The Fountainhead takes place in America in the s and s. Roark and his mentor, Henry Cameron, are early designers of the modern style. Although the book is not historical fiction, and the lives of Cameron and Roark are not based on the lives of real-life individuals, their struggles parallel the battles waged by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.
In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the architectural style that still dominated American building was Classical. American architects largely copied Greek and Roman designs or those of other historical periods such as the Renaissance.
Louis Sullivan was one of the first to build in what became known as the modern style. Generally held to be the father of modern architecture and, in particular, of the skyscraper, Sullivan waged a long battle for his ideas against conventional standards.
Harriman also notes that Frank Lloyd Wright , the greatest of the modern designers, is famous for his "strikingly original designs. Although the events of Roark's life are not identical to the events of Wright's, in the broad sense Wright does serve as the model for Howard Roark. Cameron and Roark, in the novel, struggle against characters like the Dean of Stanton Institute, who believes that all the great ideas in architecture have been discovered already by the designers of the past, and that contemporary architects are simply to copy those ideas.
Sullivan and Wright, in real life, battled against similar instances of conformity. Though important similarities between Rand's fictional characters and Sullivan and Wright do exist, it is important to remember that Roark and Cameron are exemplars of innovativeness and independent thought; they are not fictionalized versions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan. In her previous novels, Ayn Rand had also glorified the heroism of the freethinking human mind, although in different forms.
Her first novel , We the Living , published in , tells the story of three individuals who dare to think for themselves in the Communist dictatorship of Soviet Russia. Its heroine, Kira Arguonova, is similar to the author; she is an independently thinking young woman, fiercely opposed to the totalitarian state in which she exists. But Kira desires to be an engineer in a society in which neither her bourgeois background nor her freethinking mind is welcome.
Despite being an outstanding student, she is expelled from engineering school. The story focuses on her relationships with two men — Leo Kovalensky, the aristocrat whom she loves, and Andrei Taganov, the Communist who loves her. Leo is a brilliant young scholar, but his aristocratic family and individualistic views leave him no future in the Soviet Union. Andrei, an honest man who believes sincerely in the ideals of the Bolshevik Revolution, witnesses the harsh fate to which Kira is condemned, and must question the virtue of the Communist principles for which he has always stood.
We the Living shows the fate of freethinking men and women in a totalitarian state. Her second book, the novella, Anthem, published in , also takes place in a collectivist dictatorship — but in an unspecified future. The dominance of the group over the individual is so absolute in this society that it has even outlawed the word "I. With independent thought stifled, this society has lost all technological progress and reverted to a primitive condition. The hero reinvents the electric light, but is condemned to death for the crime of thinking for himself.
Further, contrary to the state's decree, he dares to love a woman of his own choosing. In both love and work, he thinks independently, refusing to obey, unwilling to surrender the things most precious to him.
Ayn Rand shows in Anthem that all the values that make human life valuable and joyous come from the individual, not from society. In both We the Living and Anthem , the independent heroes are pitted against a collectivist dictatorship; in both books the theme is political, emphasizing the necessity of freedom for human progress and happiness. Rand herself came from Russia to the United States at age 21, drawn by the conditions depicted in American movies, and eager to leave Stalinist Russia.
Jobs as a screenwriter and script reader in Hollywood supported her writing, and also introduced her to husband Frank O'Connor. Literary critics and philosophers have never taken Rand seriously, but her works have garnered popular acclaim. Despite mostly negative reviews, her four novels remain in print and have together sold over 25 million copies, and Objectivist discussion groups and internet sites abound.
Jewish Women's Archive. Episode E. Pride and Prejudice. Crime and Punishment. The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Outsiders. Hinton , S E Hinton. The Count of Monte Cristo. The Lincoln Highway. The Man Who Died Twice. A Slow Fire Burning. Initial sales were slow, but as Mimi Reisel Gladstein described it, sales "grew by word-of-mouth, developing a popularity that asserted itself slowly on the best-seller lists.
A 25th anniversary edition was issued by New American Library in , including a new introduction by Rand. In , a 50th anniversary edition from Bobbs-Merrill added an afterword by Rand's heir, Leonard Peikoff. By the novel had sold over 6. As the protagonist of the book, Roark is an aspiring architect who firmly believes that a person must be a "prime mover" to achieve pure art, not mitigated by others, as opposed to councils or committees of individuals which lead to compromise and mediocrity and a "watering down" of a prime mover's completed vision.
He represents the triumph of individualism over the slow stagnation of collectivism. He is eventually arrested for dynamiting a building he designed, the design of which was compromised by other architects brought in to negate his vision of the project.
During his trial, Roark delivers a speech condemning "second-handers" and declaring the superiority of prime movers; he prevails and is vindicated by the jury. Rand described the inspiration as limited to "some of his architectural ideas [and] the pattern of his career". Peter Keating is also an aspiring architect, but is everything that Roark is not. His original inclination was to become an artist, but his opportunistic mother pushes him toward architecture where he might have greater material success.
Even by Roark's own admission, Keating does possess some creative and intellectual abilities, but is stifled by his sycophantic pursuit of wealth over morals. His willingness to build what others wish leads him to temporary success. He attends architecture school with Roark, who helps him with some of his less inspired projects. He is subservient to the wills of others: Dominique Francon's father, the architectural establishment, his mother, even Roark himself. Keating is "a man who never could be, but doesn't know it".
Though she offers to introduce Keating to Toohey, he initially refuses despite the fact that such an introduction would help his career. It is the only exception to his otherwise relentless and ruthless ambition, which includes bullying and threatening to blackmail a sick old man and unintentionally causing his death. Although Keating does have a conscience, and often does genuinely feel bad after doing certain things he knows are immoral, he only feels this way in hindsight, and doesn't allow his morals to influence current decision making.
Keating's offer to elope with Catherine is his one chance to act on what he believes is his own desire. But, Dominique arrives at that precise moment and offers to marry him for her own reasons, and his acceptance of the offer and betrayal of Catherine ends the potential of romance between them. His acceptance of Dominique's offer of marriage, which would help his career far more than a marriage with Catherine, is a quintessential example of his failure to stand up for his own convictions.
She is a thorn in the flesh of her father and causes him much distress for her works criticizing the architectural profession's mediocrity. Peter Keating is employed by her father, and her intelligence, insight and observations are above his. It is only through Roark that her love of adversity and autonomy meets a worthy equal. These strengths are also what she initially lets stifle her growth and make her life miserable. She begins thinking that the world did not deserve her sincerity and intellect, because the people around her did not measure up to her standards.
She starts out punishing the world and herself for all the things about man which she despises, through self-defeating behavior. She initially believes that greatness, such as Roark's, is doomed to fail and will be destroyed by the 'collectivist' masses around them. She eventually joins Roark romantically, but before she can do this, she must learn to join him in his perspective and purpose. The character has provoked varied reactions from commentators.
Chris Matthew Sciabarra called her "one of the more bizarre characters in the novel. Gail Wynand is a wealthy newspaper mogul who rose from a destitute childhood in the ghettoes of New York City to control much of the city's print media. While Wynand shares many of the character qualities of Roark, his success is dependent upon his ability to pander to public opinion, a flaw which eventually leads to his downfall.
In her journals Rand described Wynand as "the man who could have been" a heroic individualist, contrasting him to Roark, "the man who can be and is". Ellsworth Monkton Toohey, who writes a popular art criticism column, is Roark's antagonist. Toohey is Rand's personification of evil, the most active and self-aware villain in any of her novels. He styles himself as representative of the will of the masses, but his actual desire is for power over others.
Aiming at a society that shall be "an average drawn upon zeroes," he knows exactly why he corrupts Peter Keating, and explains his methods to the ruined young man in a passage that is a pyrotechnical display of the fascist mind at its best and its worst; the use of the ideal of altruism to destroy personal integrity, the use of humor and tolerance to destroy all standards, the use of sacrifice to enslave.
His biggest threat is the strength of the individual spirit embodied by Roark. Rand used her memory of the British democratic socialist Harold Laski to help her imagine what Toohey would do in a given situation.
New York intellectuals Lewis Mumford and Clifton Fadiman also contributed inspirations for the character. Rand indicated that the primary theme of The Fountainhead was "individualism versus collectivism, not in politics but within a man's soul. As historian James Baker described it, " The Fountainhead hardly mentions politics or economics, despite the fact that it was born in the s.
Nor does it deal with world affairs, although it was written during World War II. It is about one man against the system, and it does not permit other matters to intrude. She chose architecture for the analogy it offered to her ideas, especially in the context of the ascent of modern architecture.
It provided an appropriate vehicle to concretize her beliefs that the individual is of supreme value, the "fountainhead" of creativity, and that selfishness, properly understood as ethical egoism , is a virtue. Peter Keating and Howard Roark are character foils.
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