Okay, so I had to do a scholarship application for Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. I honestly think that the book was really interesting, (though completely against much of what Brebeuf teaches) so I decided that I’ll post it up here. I’m not sure if I did a good job. I wrote it in an hour to make the deadline… which is three minutes from now (yes 4 am on sunday morning). I just spent to long reading the damned bitch. Here’s my essay, please let me know what you think. I’m curious.
In Ayn Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead, the world exists as a flawed society where most humanity lacks independent thought. Rather than general human thought existing in terms of the singular “I,” common people view the world through an altruistic vantage, speaking in terms of the collective “we”. Dominique Francon, daughter of the acclaimed architect, Guy Francon, represents a duality among this society; she is capable of seeing the world through the eyes of an individual, but feels disillusioned as no one is capable of the meeting the standards that she has set for mankind. However, when Dominique meets Howard Roark, her opinions on the subject alter, as she observes that Howard is a true man of integrity. Although Dominique loves Howard Roark, she tries to destroy him to prevent the corruption of his integrity.
In chapter eight of part three, Gail Wynand states to Dominique, “Do you know what you’re actually in love with? Integrity. The impossible. The clean, consistent, reasonable, self-faithful, the all-of-one-style, like a work of art.” Howard Roark is the ideal of Gail’s impossible integrity. Howard Roark exists solely through his work. As an architect, Roark refuses to design anything that he views as mediocrity. He focuses little on what his clients want, instead favoring the originality and functionality of each individual design specific to the environment it surrounds. Roark tells Keating as they discuss the design Cortlandt, “Offer me this and you can have anything I’ve got to give. My work done my way. A private, personal, selfish egotistical motivation. That’s the only way I function. That’s all I am.” Roark is his work, and by remaining steadfast in his form, he maintains his personal dignity.
Dominique immediately recognizes Roark’s dignity through his architectural feats, registering that no building of Roark’s could be built by a man without a strong conviction that his work is the best. However, Dominique believes that by creating work such as his, Roark is committing an abomination. She admits that Roark’s work is a “sacrilege, though not in the sense that he [Toohey] meant… When you see a man casting pearls without getting even a pork chop in return – it is not against the swine that you feel indignation. It is against the man who valued his pearls so little that he was willing to fling them into the muck and to let them become the occasion for the whole concert of grunting, transcribed by the court stenographer.” Dominique feels that Roark’s work is blasphemy simply because he is willing to create it in such a world as The Fountainhead, where men not only misinterpret the design, but denounce the meaning of each building for which it stands.
Dominique is, as Roark says, “afraid of the world,” and “held by it,” so she decides that rather than to have Roark’s work defiled as was the Stoddard Temple, she must try to ruin him. She aspires to steal all commissions that Roark attempts to seek with a hope that Roark will never design another building. By not designing, Roark does not have to face indignation toward his own work, preserving his personal dignity.
Dominique’s decision to destroy Roark plays into a much greater theme in the novel. Roark is a self-defined egoist – a “man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them.” In preventing Roark from obtaining commissions, Dominique is actually trying to prevent Roark from falling to a lower level of humanity. If Roark ever agreed to design in a style of architecture not his own, then he would be sacrificing his personal dignity, his integrity, and that which makes him independent. Roark would be working to satisfy ideologies not his own. This is altruism.
Throughout the novel, the opposing ideologies of altruism and egoism show dissimilar facets of the human condition. The popular belief among society, altruism, declares that men should be selfless, always placing the common good before any personal wants or needs. Altruism argues that by doing good upon others, happiness will grow within each individual. However, egoism argues that the man who attempts to live for others actually becomes a dependent, and in being so, he will never find happiness within himself.
To rid a man of his natural tendency is to rid a man of who he truly is and of who he could be. If a man has no sense of self, existing solely for the purpose of others, he will then gauge his worth based on an unreachable social model. He will never be able to be what society wishes because the societal model goes against his very nature. Trying to live in such a manner is insatiable.
If the ultimate goals of human existence are to protect and experience happiness, as well as know true virtue, Howard Roark must always remain an egoist. To Dominique, Mallory, and Wynand, Roark represents the incorruptible model of egoism, which is the spirit and embodiment of true humanity.
