He will not ever compromise these goals despite enormous pressures to do so. Roarke has always shown to be passionate with his work and is totally uncompromising in his creativity in his desire to accomplish his idealism. Their relationship develops from one in which they each seek to assert power over the other while achieving sexual release to one of true love between genuine soul mates. The story also include a complex romantic affair between the recalcitrant architect Howard Roarke and socialite Dominique Francon. In the person of Ellsworth Toohey, a flamboyant newspaper columnist, Rand illustrated how a power hungry personality can manipulate the masses by setting a standard of mediocrity which fosters collectivism.

Thus despite gaining wealth and apparent achievement, Keating's life was filled with emptiness.Īyn Rand then formulated the common perception that altruism, the fundamental human value, is seen as an evil because the part of society that seeks to achieve this can only do so at someone else expense. In order to achieve his ambition to be a successful architect, Peter Keating was willing to sell his soul, including his wife, when necessary. Peter Keating, another architect, who achieve greatness by copying others, while giving the illusion of originality and creativity. Howard Roark struggles as an architect in the face of a successful rival, Peter Keating, and a newspaper columnist, Ellsworth Toohey.

As Roark states at one point, he believes that buildings, like people, have one central theme or idea, and that idea cannot be compromised. Roark's architectural design of buildings are considered extremely radical and are considered by many fellow professionals as offensive because he fails to pay homage to the artistry of the period, and his stubbornness to collaborate with anyone on any part of his designs. 'The Fountainhead' tells the story of Howard Roark, a young architect who is a self-contained human being, living entirely for himself-by his own definition of himself. In the iconoclastic character of the architect Howard Roark, she presented for the first time the kind of hero whose depiction was the chief goal of her writing: the ideal man, man as 'he could be and ought to be.' After struggling for several years at various non-writing jobs, Ayn Rand began writing The Fountainhead in 1935.

The fountain head book