The Fountainhead

Some books are ageless. They deal with subjects and ideas that cut across physical and temporal limits and leave behind a profound influence on their readers. The Fountainhead is one such book. It took me 25 days to complete reading it (since i generally used to find time only on weekends) but it has completely transformed my thought process.

I had heard a lot of praise about the book from some of my friends and in spite of the contents appearing quite rebellious to me, I knew that I had to read it. I had also read a lot of negative comments about the book on a few orkut groups and this had only raised my curiosity. I was wondering what my opinion about the book would be and I was willing to understand the philosophy of Objectivism with an open mind.

And now, I think that it is one of the most spectacular literary work that I have read. The central characters that Ayn Rand has created and their interaction with each other has enabled me to address a lot of concerns about my own values and principles as well as the ideas of others around me. And I simply loved the philosophical ponderings in solitude after reading the book!

I will try to organize my thoughts by mulling over the main characters in the book:
(Note: The book is set in the 1920-30s and deals with people in the architectural discipline)
1. Peter Keating: A very successful student at school and college, who comes from a mediocre family, and feeling a sense of personal pride at what he has achieved in spite of his modest beginnings. He is offered a job at a leading architectural firm (Francon & Heyer). Although he seems to be enjoying all the limelight and attention that he is getting, somewhere deep down, he feels that he left his passion for painting and substituted it with architecture which was more lucrative. He tries to believe that he must be happy because everyone around him thinks that he is a good architect and there is seemingly nothing that he can complain about in how his career is taking shape. He is en route to become one of the most famous architects in New York. But his outer confidence and success are totally dependent on others and their approval. He is nothing himself but merely a reflection of the Peter Keating that exists in the eyes of others. Although he takes advice from his friend Howard Roark on various architectural assignments, he likes to believe that they are his own and does not want to accept that Roark is a better architect than he is. Roark's total indifference towards others' opinions and having an opinion about others confuses Peter and and the latter always finds himself uneasy thinking about Roark.
2. Catherine Halsey: She is Peter's girlfriend, and loves Peter without accepting anything in return. She is frail and lacks self-confidence and finds it easier to surrender herself completely to Peter. Even if Peter does not call her or meet her for months together, she does not refer to it the next time they meet and is always accepting whatever Peter has to say. Peter loves her very much but is afraid that his mother would not approve of their marriage since she is neither rich nor has the quality to be the wife of a famous architect (according to Peter's mother). Catherine does not even complain when Peter marries another woman after promising to marry her just the previous day. She gives herself to serving the poor and physically challenged people in some orphanage. She believes that she is living a very noble life by serving the poor and accepts that living for others is the only appropriate way of living. She fails to understand that the real reason why she loves to be in the company of the less privileged is because it gives her own self a sense of being better off than others and that she has the ability to confer good upon others with an air of superiority. She is a person who sincerely believes in the principle of selflessness and spending a lifetime for the cause of others.
3. Guy Francon: The owner of the reputed architectural firm Francon & Heyer; Guy has been a very successful architect (at least in the public domain). He spots Peter as a budding architect and offers him a job at his firm. In spite of the huge reputation he has built in his career, Guy still wants Peter to testify that his life has been successful and thus he too depends on external recognition for his satisfaction.
4. Ellsworth Toohey: Ellsworth is the antagonist in the novel (of course; as portrayed by Rand). He is more of an architectural commentator who wants to establish an intellectual superiority over the world. Since school, he believes in the power of the brain over muscles and uses his superior mental capacity to deal with his physically stronger opponents. He believes that the Napoleons of the world; who wanted to establish military supremacy over the world were fools and true sustainable control over the world can only be achieved by ruling the minds of the people. He is always in the news as a benign person who has true understanding of art and architecture. He uses this position of strength to bring forth mediocre talent in the world and suppress any genius in the field (prominently Howard Roark). He promotes the philosophy of collectivism as opposed to individualism. He is a person who enjoys killing of talent and establishing the supremacy of mediocrity over ingenuity. Ellsworth is uncle to Catherine and promotes Peter's architecture over Howard's (will be discussed later) and in a later dialogue with Peter expresses his shocking philosophy and how he wants to put an end to any emerging talent in any field of art or literature.
5. Steven Mallory: Steven was a talented young sculptor but someone who did not have the mental strength to stand the world which preferred to praise mediocrity over his talent. He tried once to kill Ellsworth. He believed Ellsworth to be the symbol of this monster within humans that found it more comfortable to uphold the average over the extra-ordinary. He designed Dominique's statue in the Temple of Human Spirit and was a friend to Howard and Dominique. He was a symbol of talent that was somehow unable to protect itself against the mediocrity-blinded common people.
6. Dominique Francon: She is the daughter of Guy Francon and the female protagonist in the novel. She is aware about the falsehood of the social life that her father lives in and positively hates to be a part of it. She is very uncomfortable with the double standards that people display in social circles. Dominique meets Howard Roark at a granite quarry and falls in love with him. She loves his sense of self and the sheer lack of love or hatred in his actions. She surrenders herself to Roark who treats her neither with love nor with humiliation. Dominique becomes fond of Roark's architectures and how his buildings stand on their own and not as borrowed patchworks from earlier eras. Dominique is the naked statue that is kept in the Temple of Human Spirit (built by Roark) and this temple is nothing but a ploy by Ellsworth to leave Howard defeated in a legal battle. Dominique marries Peter out of her love for Howard and to show that she is suffering along with him in her own way. Dominique is one of the few people who approve of Howard's adherence to his ideals and disregard of what others think about him.
7. Gail Wynand: Gail is the owner of the popular newsgroup known as "the Banner". He is a person who has risen from the slums to become a very prominent figure in New York. Although he is capable of appreciating talent and does not have ulterior motives unlike Toohey; he wants to destroy any evidence of talent by bringing it to his submission. He feels that the life he is living is worthless and thinks quite often of committing suicide. He finds the statue of Dominique (through Ellsworth) and later meets her and wants to marry her. He trades a very crucial contract with Peter at the cost of Dominique. Later he meets Roark as the architect of the Temple of Human Spirit and tries hard to break him. The three (Dominique, Gail and Howard) spend a lot of time together with Howard and Dominique both maintaining silence about their earlier lives. Gail likes Roark a lot and spends a lot of time trying to understand himself better. Later, when Roark is accused in a case where he has blown up a public housing construction, Gail uses all his failing social clout to try and defend Roark against the public opinion (controlled by Toohey) and finds that something which he considered his strength was no more than an illusion.
8. Howard Roark: The undisputed protagonist of the novel. The proponent of the concept of objectivism and individualism. He is a genius architect who was expelled from school because he refused to follow any existing ways of architecture. After being expelled, he had a rough career and worked only for clients who were willing to allow him to work as he wanted to. He never designed buildings just for the sake of others and generally refused to work if his clients suggested any changes in his designs. This severely restricted the number of contracts that he could get but in spite of the financial hardships that he faced, Roark never let go his principles. He frequently helped Keating with designs but never expected to get the public praise out of them. He believed that each building that he designed must have a specific purpose and must exist an one entity rather than a patchwork of architectural styles from various eras. He was against the idea of reaching a compromise by discussion in a group and refused to work in a team with other architects. Roark was an atheist and built the temple of Human Spirit to enshrine the supreme power of the human mind. He had designed a public housing system for Keating (who had approached him for help in a desperate situation) with the condition that Keating must ensure that the building was designed exactly as per the design by Howard. However, because of external pressure, Keating was not able to live up to his promise and significant alterations in Howard's design were introduced. Consequently, with the help of Dominique, Howard blew off the half-complete structure being erected and allowed himself to be identified. His speech in the court while defending himself essentially summarizes the philosophy of Objectivism.

Now that I have given a brief description of the principal characters, I will move ahead to the philosophical aspects of the novel. Firstly , I find Fountainhead as a very sincere novel which tries to explain the fallacies of the rising force of Socialism and Communism during its time. How often has one heard the words "Man is a social animal" which try to emphasize the importance of society in human life and remind you that you owe a responsibility of returning the favors bestowed by the society. Since childhood, what we are taught is that greed is bad and one must always put the benefit of others over that of the self. But now that seems like a big conspiracy wherein the individuality of the self is being suppressed under the collective will. Till now, like many others, I used to believe that the failure of Communism lay in its mode of implementation and not in its ideology. But now, I realize that some concepts of communism destroy the very motivation for innovation and that is to see one's ideas take place (which is a very selfish feeling). [Though most of the communist nations have collapsed indicating possibly that capitalism is more appropriate as compared to communism; prominent countries that continue to excel with communism are China and Cuba (but an analysis of these is beyond the scope of the blog at least at the moment!)]

To quote Roark from the final speech.. "The unsubmissive and first human stands at the opening of chapter of every legend that mankind has recorded about its beginning. Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. No creator was prompted by a desire to serve his brothers, for his brothers rejected the gift he offered and that gift destroyed the slothful routine of their lives. His truth was his only motive. The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power - that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated and self-generated. The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective mind or a collective thought. We can divide a meal among many men but we cannot digest it in a collective stomach. The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men." Some of these thoughts are best represented as they have been in the book and so the direct quotation. To think about it, the concept of equality has been mis-interpreted over the ages. Instead of being the equality of opportunities it has been interpreted as the equality of the final outcomes. If two people get the same outcome irrespective of their individual efforts, it means nothing but that efforts do not affect outcome. This is where most communist nations failed that they tried to equalize what each person got instead of providing them with equal opportunities. So it is very essential that talent be given its own space to flourish and should not be fettered by the requirement to adhere to common will. In this regard, I feel that democracy is far from the best form of governance because it operates on the concept of majority but then this would demand a separate post to deal with it.

But one thing that I don't find appropriate is that Roark says that it is alright to inherit the products of the ideas (like wheel, fire, etc) from earlier generations to build on them but is against the sharing of ideas in a group amongst contemporaries. As pointed out in one of the comments, the end product of a thought can be an idea (in the sense that it is not a physical object; examples could be the theories that have been developed in different sciences) and hence can be inherited. But at the same time the sharing of ideas among contemporaries is considered to be a dilution of the original idea. But is it really necessary that the original idea be the the most perfect? Why do you have to believe that any suggestion made by another human being living in our age must be detrimental to the idea? That is nothing but arrogance and this is one of the principal reasons why the word "ego" has a bad connotation today. I think the sharing of ideas among men is extremely important for humanity to move ahead. A discussion helps very much to enhance and improve upon an idea (just see how the comment has improved this blog) but only the urge to try and reach a consensus should be done away with.. And the main reason for this is that we attach a feeling of belongingness to an idea. So this part of the ego is something which is a hindrance to progress. People try to defend their idea and attack the idea of another in a discussion. This is where the need for a consensus to resolve the issue sets in. I think an idea in a discussion must be only seen as the object of study and interest for all rather than associating it with its source. But inherently a thought is put forward beginning with "I think" (a ready example being the previous sentence) and so it gets difficult to dis-associate the originator from the idea. However, if this dis-association is consciously followed it will help us evaluate the idea better and probably refine it as well. Perhaps the concept of parallel thinking rather than argumentative thinking would help.

Another positive thing from Fountainhead is that it attacks the concept of charity and pity. And rightly so. The concept of charity itself requires someone to be an object of that charity (which is quite ironic). This so-called virtue fails to exist in the absence of such an object (or person). As Howard Roark reflects "There must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling (of pity) is called a virtue." Pity not only destroys the self-respect of an individual but also makes the person submissive to fate. The person decides that it is more comfortable to keep begging rather than to earn a living through self-effort. [Some people claim that begging itself is an art and it involves effort to convince the giver to shell out money but I believe there would be no givers if they knew that it was a voluntary activity and in that case it would be impossible for these beggars to exist.] Showing pity destroys the human mind and people show pity for what? Because they feel guilty that they have accumulated more wealth than fellow humans? If that wealth is acquired through effort and by just means there is no need to feel guilty about it.

Moreover, the different personality that people want to portray in public as opposed to what they really are is something very much unnecessary because at every point of making a choice we would add the unnecessary dimension of how that decision would affect our portrayal in the eyes of others. The best and most natural thing to do in public is BE YOURSELF. But in this respect, I believe there are some who go to the extent of portraying in public that they are themselves. (what an irony!)

Also, at some point in the book, Dominique says that the concept of immortality can be thought of only in the case of Roark because he is like a monolith and unchanging. People usually change so often that they die every moment. So the concept of immortality can never exist in the case of such people. So does Rand believe that changing is a vice? I don't agree. Because changing and learning is an essential part of human existence. If there were no motivation to improve the way we were and to learn from experiences what worth would life be? And unless you have an open mind it would be like staying in a closed room for all your life devoid of the refreshing air outside. In this case, I believe that we need to move from the concept of rock logic to water logic. That is, our logic must not be rigid like a rock but capable of adapting to different situations like water. And it is this water that can cut its path through the rigid mountains to achieve its goal of reaching the sea.

I believe it has been a very very long post and I myself am tired of writing more. There may be many more cases and instances from the book that may need discussion but I believe it is best to stop here. So right or wrong, whether you accept Rand's ideas or reject them, you definitely cannot afford to ignore them! I hope I have given you enough food for thought and in case you have still not read The Fountainhead; what are you waiting for???