A Note on The Fountainhead

 

The following is not a review of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead but only a note on one aspect of the novel. It contains spoilers, and people who have not read the book and do not want to see them should stop here.

This year is the 80^th anniversary of the publication of The Fountainhead. It is a very fine novel – for its vivid and original characters, its presentation and integration into its story of serious ideas and principles, its critique of the social and cultural milieu of its time and ours, its vision of artistic and personal integrity, its psychological analysis of collectivist and some types of assumed to be humanitarian thought and behavior, its satire, its encomium to human creativity and achievement, its sense of and call to the heroic, and its defense of individualism in life and spirit. It is also something of a counterexample to its author’s later literary theories, because The Fountainhead’s plot, in its conclusion, is the weakest part of the novel.

The main fault of the plot is that the actions in the latter part of the book of the main characters do not make sense in terms of who and what they are. Roark, the iron individualist who neither cares nor often even notices what others do, the great artist who values his ability to design and build more than anything else in life or the world, having reached a point in his career where he can design and build all the projects he can handle, decides to invite an almost certain career ending prison sentence (or at best becoming marked as an unhirable weirdo if he somehow got away with his crime), because he is annoyed that some people changed a design of his that he had given away to someone else. Wynand, Roark’s equal in talent, drive, intellect, will, strength, ruthlessness, and determination, a man so great that Roark recognizes him instantly as a kindred spirit and later calls the only unrepeatable encounter in his life, a man who has dedicated much of his life to building a vast newspaper and real estate empire and fortune and using them as he pleases becomes an emotional leech and embarrassing fanboy because he has met a really good guy, risks losing his flagship newspaper in a crusade that can do nothing to benefit the person he is doing it for, then loses his nerve, changes his mind, and hates himself for it. Dominique, whose revulsion at Roark having to live in a world she detests and fear of him suffering transitory or even trivial setbacks are so great that she is driven to bizarre, self-destructive, and even insane behavior throughout the book suddenly decides when Roark is facing actual catastrophe that all her worries are over, and she can handle it. (Only the major and minor villains remain true to character. Toohey is as malignant as ever, and Keating remains weak, unprincipled, and easily led.) Besides all that, the happy ending requires a very unlikely deus ex machina from a jury of people selected from a general public whose members are presented throughout the book as incapable of understanding or appreciating someone such as Roark. The ending just does not work.