The Fountainhead- Critical Analysis

By Ayn Rand

Novels like The Fountainhead are a treat to wits, fantastic with words, up with intelligent ideas but all in vain when we try to bring it in terms with reality.

I very much doubt putting this novel in ‘Philosophy’ genre at the first place. What is important is to understand the hair line difference between a psychological story and a philosophical one. Ayn Rand’s Objectivism by all means is the best background she could use to exhibit her novel but indeed she seemed to have forgotten that besides the philosophical ideas she was running a very strong revelation of personalities which according to me overpowered former. But the limitation to this aspect is her ‘confinement’. Her characters are more or less similar, complement or corresponding to each other. She gives only black and white without any shades of gray. After a certain point it was almost as if I could, with quite accuracy, predict the reaction of so and so character even in the most unpredictable situation.

There are various common chords running through the characters which at a certain point made reading monotonous. The characters were too high headed, impractical, cold, babies of idealism, egoist and always ready with pre cooked witty dialogues, as it seemed. Nevertheless, I don’t have courage to deny that however away from reality, the ideas and the dialogues were a work of genius. Yet this is one novel that ‘is’ fiction and will ‘remain’ a fiction. Its orientation in real life just doesn’t work.

Not only Dominique and Howard are complement to each other but Gail Wyand also is no less. The trio looks like three different parts of flesh from the same body. Their soul is more or less made by the same material and this Rand puts forth through their taste, dialogues, way of responding to a certain situation and the silent communication between them. Gail Wyand at first hand looks like a real brainless business man when presented by others in their general conversation. He is talked about in the very early pages and we almost forget him getting engrossed in the story, he makes a debut when one half expects it and when he does so he just looks like a brother to Roark. Rand tries a lot to show them different in certain aspects for e.g. when they talk about their past and present their view of life but the fact that they both come from Hell’s Kitchen and have risen from a slumdog standard all the more strengthens their virtual kinship. Wyand is almost say obsessed with Roark

and his company but it never at a single point makes you think of any homosexual relationship but I won’t hesitate to say that Wyand indeed loves Roark. No man better than him can tell the importance of success and how many hardships it took him to achieve it, not to forget those long years and its this very success that he keeps on stake for that one man.

It’s not a matter of co-incidence that the early and late pages of both Wyand’s and Roark’s lives are a carbon copy. They both had a miserable childhood but their ambitions were never too small, where at one hand Wyand gave up his ‘integrity’, fell at the hands of ‘collectivism’, founded The Banner; Roark could not compromise with his soul and declining several tempting offers was stagnant in the hierarchy of success. Life brought them together and then again their destinies unfolded similar lines. With Roark’s trial it was Wyand’s trial too. Not at the hands of court but his own self… his inner self. Their both’ crisis started together and it was not only Roark’s battle though it was a self imposed battle for Wyand for the love of Roark. That was his loyalty. He didn’t care about continuously decreasing employees, audience and “We don’t read Wyand” movement. He just had to save that man.

But above a certain point, at least that is one practical thing in the novel, he gave up! How could a man like Wyand give up and still continue with The Banner? How could he give up and still meet eyes with Roark? No... It wasn’t any fear from Roark but fear from his own inner self. He sold The Banner and vowed never to meet Roark. That is true heroism. The integrity and the soul that novel tells us was sold by Wyand was actually never bargained. He just gave in to the rules of the world because he understood either it is success by nodding head to whatever the crowd believes or it is eternal darkness with no fame. He is certainly not Dr. Faustus and not even the old man in Dr. Faustus but somewhere in between.

Roark on the other hand is an egoist who doesn’t care about anything that concerns this world except buildings. His personality in the first pages of the novel comes out to be very appealing, all the more fascinating when he works with Henry Cameron, mysterious when he works in the Quarry, brave when he decides to fight the world but utter nonsensical when we reach the end of the novel. It reminds me of Waiting for Godot where all along we wait for Lucky to speak because he looks sensible but when he opens his mouth he speaks the most rubbish words put together, most absurd things possible. Not that Roark doesn’t speak sense at all, he does and indeed he sheds a few diamonds too but the image that Rand establishes is way too high. Another reason that the speech isn’t worth is that it looks like stretched. A man who never spoke above

fifteen words in a row speaks so much that too just repeating points was certainly a disappointment.

He doesn’t look like a true hero because it’s quite a long time that authors have stopped talking about flawless protagonists. At least since modernism started one has not so much read about any hero who is an ideal, not even close to ideal but ‘ideal’. That’s where The Fountainhead takes a back seat. And I don’t know why even after so much re thinking I can’t help keep Wyand higher than Roark.

Dominique, better half of Keating, Wyand and Roark is way imaginary than Roark himself. She is very attractive and respectable until her series of marriages and at one point I can even say until her first marriage. When she gets married to Keating one starts feeling more respect for her love for Roark, that she has always concealed in her words, actions or while getting sexually involved. When she marries Wyand again one feels justice because Keating never tried to save the marriage over the housing project. Though we feel pity for Keating but may be his hollowness deserved this fate. But when Wyand is made to suffer from marriage is when Rand unintentionally degrades Dominique.

Those two marriages helped Dominique to get at par with Roark and thus be a loyal wife to him but all that happened in the process was not at all justifiable. I think it’s very evident from the novel that Rand is not quite happy with the traditional and conventional way of doing love, showing love and living in love. She condemns the romantic relation of Catherine and Keating which would have been quite an ideal for Plutarch and Donne.

Honestly confessing any one would fall flat on the pages when she introduces Catherine Keating scene. I think it was the most beautiful description of a love affair I had ever read. Theirs was almost like a poetic and a selfless love. Though Keating a Casanova but Catherine was as loyal as Desdemona.

“….he could have any girl he met and he knew it; he knew that he could have Catherine; he wanted her; she loved him and had admitted it simply, openly, without fear or shyness, asking nothing of him, expecting nothing; somehow, he had never taken advantage of it.”

“He had many violent loves, when he swore he could not live without this girl or that; he forgot Catherine for weeks at a time and she never reminded him. He had always come back to her, suddenly, inexplicably, as he did tonight.”

“….and he was thinking dimly that it made no sense at all; he had more pertinent things to tell and ask her; people did not talk like that when they hadn’t seen each other for months. But it seemed normal to her; she did not appear to know that she had parted”

It’s only many pages later that we realize what Rand actually wanted to mean through that affair. Catherine comes across as the dumbest character; Keating, the hollowest character and their relationship was one to be laughed at and not admired. Their affair had to end or rather had to fail.

On the other hand, with Dominique she uses very weird sets of emotions. Text very clearly says that she had been involved sexually with many people and the kissing scene with Keating gives a little insight about the sexual love she desires. She too wants to feel the pleasure of sleeping in bed with someone but she fails to do so. Reader never gets to understand this concept clearly until she is raped by Roark and we learn that was the most pleasure giving involvement she had ever had.

This almost baffles. Love of this kind is truly novel, never heard of. How is it possible that one wants to feel sexual ecstasy without a “touch of tenderness”. She clearly says it to Roark during a love scene to continue with his coldness almost as if she will become invulnerable with just one soft touch. Again, this whole concept of cold love making is witty and intelligent but impractical on the other.

Rand has made her characters larger than life because of two reasons. First, they are too idealistic. What they do is utterly admirable but its impossibility to get adapted in real life makes you disheartened. Second, to these characters their decisions and actions seem more important than life. Dominique doesn’t for an instance thinks what she is doing with her life- marrying whom, going where, writing what, sleeping with whom, speaking what, etc. Roark too doesn’t care about his finance, career, livelihood, his beloved getting married, etc. They are all instinctual creatures. They do what they like not paying heed to the repercussions it may bring. They also seem to take life for granted. This is certainly beyond the practical scope of integrity or living all by your soul.

Novel explores a great deal and all that on stand of two professions. Where at one hand architecture is all that is sublime, journalism is all that is corrupt.

Overall the novel is no doubt an intelligent work and a masterpiece in its own way but instead of celebrating human as he is Rand condemns him what ever it stand for. Be it collectivism or being a second hander I think she is expecting

too much out of this creation of god and being over ambitious always leads to doom, it will always melt your wings as happened with Icarus. One should not forget that man is after all a social animal and animals are not solitary creatures. Even the first man, made in the light of God felt a need for a companion. Though I to a certain point agree with collectivism theory I think it’s not put forth in a much favorable manner as by Eugene Ioneso’s Collective Psychosis or Objective Co-relation which condemns collectivism but with flexibility.

Jasleen Kaur