2007 The Fountainhead Essay Contest

First Place

Rituparna Basu, Methacton HS, Lansdale, PA

The conventional view is that in life one can either achieve practical success or be moral, but not both. What view of this relation do you think emerges in The Fountainhead? What is the novel’s conception of success? Of morality? Explain by reference to characters and events of the story.?

How to Keep Yourself Alive

When Peter Keating tells Howard Roark, “This is business, I just want to know what you think of this practically, not philosophically,” the former echoes a dichotomy that has plagued mankind for centuries. Man has always been taught there are two routes to any decision: the practical or the moral. If he chooses the former, he will act unethically but receive material, social, or physical gratification. If he follows the latter, he will be doing the “right” thing but will not achieve anything for himself. Thus, it is impossible in any situation to be both practical and moral. In The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand demonstrates that no such dichotomy exists, that the moral is the practical. Furthermore, she stresses that to achieve practical success, one must be completely moral in thought and action.

The “practical vs. moral” derivative of the mind-body dichotomy stems purely from altruistic ethics. If man’s moral function is to sacrifice himself to others’ needs, then naturally he will meet with conflict when he wants to achieve something for himself. To be practical, then, is to sacrifice others to one’s self, which connotes lying, cheating, bribery, or physical harm. For example, Peter Keating acts “practically” when he sneakily gets Tim Davis fired and kills Lucius Heyer with shock to become Guy Francon’s partner. Morally, however, his actions are reprehensible because he purposefully ruins other people’s lives for his own gain.

Ayn Rand rejects the perpetrated “fraud” that Keating accepts: “self-sacrifice or domination” as the only choices to achieve something. If any form of sacrifice exists in an interaction between two men, one is reduced to the role of slave, while the other plays master. Like Howard Roark says, “The [moral] choice is independence or dependence,” not whom to sacrifice. The “creator,” whose standard of value is life, uses his “reasoning mind” to survive. The “second-hander” is the leech that feeds off others’ ideas because he is “incapable of survival.” The man who thinks for himself and acts on his own judgment is the only moral kind of man: he stands above “the need of using others in any manner.” If one works to achieve his values by dealing with men through mutual gain, he neither sacrifices himself nor others. The moral then becomes the practical, falsifying the ancient dichotomy.

This idea is best exemplified by Howard Roark, who is successful because he is moral. He holds certain values, such as his work, his competence, and architecture, and he achieves them through rational means. He does not expect anyone to hire him because of anything other than the quality of his work, and he does not sacrifice the quality of his work to meet other people’s whimsical demands. Instead, Roark works diligently and designs for those who appreciate his work for what it is. When Guy Francon assigns Roark to design a building using “Cameron’s tricks,” Roark pleads Francon to let him “design it as Henry Cameron would have wanted it done.” When Francon refuses, Roark declines the offer because desecrating a design inspired by Cameron would be equivalent to desecrating Roark’s value for the meaning and quality of his own work. If he did not possess that value of “his own work achieve[d] in his own way,” Roark would lose the desire to even design. He upholds this same principle for all his potential employers, like Robert Mundy and Nathaniel Janss. Roark’s intransigent principles never land him in an “impractical” situation, as in not having work to do, because if Roark cannot perform a job adhering to his own values, then he chooses to not do that work at all. When he indeed needs money to meet bare needs, Roark works at Francon & Keating in its engineering department because he does not approve of the firm’s esthetics, for John Erik Snyte because there he is at least “free to design. . . and solve actual problems,” and then in a granite quarry because he cannot presently find other architectural work. He prefers being an architect to any other occupation but is not willing to be one at the sacrifice of his own principles. Romantically, Roark asks for no sacrifices from himself or Dominique. He knows he can ask her to annul her marriage to Keating and that she would obey him, but he does not do so because then she will remain nothing more than an “empty hulk,” living only for him. Roark knows he will not love her then because she will have lost her identity and genuine desire for him. She does not know how to say “I,” and so Roark lets her learn for herself, knowing she will come back to him when she is ready. The result is Dominique’s liberation in Monadnock Valley when she is finally able to love Roark “willingly, completely, and always.” In everything he does, Roark preserves his values because he recognizes that his own life is important and worth living to the fullest.

Keating, on the other hand, is never successful because he is always immoral. He achieves material wealth and recognition in his early days but is constantly plagued with guilt and insecurity, such as when he wins the Cosmo-Slotnick competition with Roark’s design. He possesses no self-esteem and instead needs others to verify his worth, specifically Ellsworth Toohey because he is supposedly renowned and can influence the public and Dominique Francon because he knows she possesses the grace and dignity he never will. Keating’s standard of value is not life but destruction, as evidenced by his dealings with Davis and Heyer. Keating knows he is incompetent and so can only rise to the top by obliterating those above him. His ineptitude finally takes its toll, however, when he is unable to run his firm, forgoes his physical health, and becomes incapable of maintaining relationships with anyone. Keating is then left with only a phony honor, a result of his phony work, which does not provide him with a commission or an ounce of self-worth. When he finally manages to acquire the Cortland Homes commission, once more with Roark’s design, Keating’s pretension is unable to save him any longer, beaten by the years of failure and self-doubt. To Toohey he admits that Roark designed Cortland, too wary to even care that his own reputation will be ruined because of this confession. At the trial, Keating indifferently answers the prosecutor’s questions and the audience knows it is witnessing a man broken in spirit and ability. By acting in contradiction to his values, Keating inevitably fails in every endeavor. For example, he loves and values Katie but makes “himself forget her and everything she implie[s]” to marry Dominique instead for her social status. The marriage leaves Keating “miserably unsatisfied” and ultimately ends in a divorce. He wants to be a great architect but does nothing to improve his skills, instead focusing solely on how good others think he is. Keating’s immense suffering throughout his life is a consequence of the altruistic code he follows: he does not find it important to value himself and his work to achieve his dreams and so naturally, nobody else values those either.

It is important to note here that often being immoral can yield to a false security of success in the short run. Over the span of a lifetime, however, one’s unethical behavior will inevitably backfire. Roark struggles to find work in his younger years because not many people appreciate his style of art. He continues working, however, because he loves to design and knows his work is empirically good. Thus, others’ opinions of it don’t concern or motivate him. Even when Roark is charged guilty for “breach of contract and malpractice” regarding his beloved Stoddard Temple, he is not “capable of suffering completely” because he can objectively solidify the quality of his work, and this knowledge of his competence provides him with a kind of satisfaction that nobody can snatch away from him. In his later years, Roark is able to move his office to the top of the Cord Building when more people find his work and ask him to build for them, like Roger Enright, Kent Lansing, and Gail Wynand. Keating, however, possesses no absolute talent and achieves nothing but feels momentary happiness because everyone thinks he is an accomplished architect. He delivers his self-esteem to the public whim and when people find someone else to admire, like Gus Webb, Keating is left with a “single floor” firm that contains none of the glamour it once held. Thus, when judging what is “practical,” one must consider the span of a lifetime as the gauge. It then becomes even more important to be moral because unethical behavior can yield in massive psychological damage in the future, such as with Keating.

Roark and Keating both begin their architectural journeys at Stanton. The former is expelled while the latter graduates with honors, yet it is only Roark who finds success, happiness, and love throughout his life. He is always moral and consequently, always practical. Keating suffers continuously because he possesses no self-worth and gives away his soul so others like him. Ayn Rand shows through these characters’ values, thoughts, and actions that being moral truly leads to achieving practical success. Keating sacrifices everything he loves for instant gratification. Roark is the hero who clings passionately to everything he loves because he values his own life and the fuel it requires to keep his mind, body, and spirit alive.