The Fountainhead, Chapters 6–10

Howard Roark is faced with a long period of struggle and grief in this period of the book. His employer and idealist in architecture, Henry Cameron, is forced to close his business and leave practice, putting Howard out of work. Immediately, however, Peter Keating scoops up Roark and gets him at Francon & Heyer. Because of his hate for destroying his work by making it acceptable to others, he only does the engineering and other than the chief of the engineering department who stated, “‘you’ve got more sense than I gave you credit for, Keating. Thanks.’ ‘For what?’ asked Keating? ‘For nothing intentional, I’m sure’, said the Chief” (Rand, 90). He also makes friends with a construction worker named Mike, who detests normal architects, but is fond of Roark for his genuine passion and a friend after saying, “Only one…that knew building. I worked for him when I was your age…Henry Cameron was his name” (Rand, 92). But after an altercation with Francon directly when Keating is away, Roark is fired for refusing to so a butchered version of Cameron’s work for a wealthy client. And after this he is forced to look for a job, and spends five months searching in vain, but eventually gets taken in by a John Erik Snyte, who wanted him for a “modernistic” perspective on building, having one from classic, gothic, renaissance and miscellaneous. After working for several months a character, Austen Heller, asks for a modernistic house that he wants to be “alive”, and when Roark shows him his sketch for which he is fired, Heller leaves with him, giving him the commission of his house and a $500 check to start his own business made out to “Howard Roark, Architect” (Rand, 128).

Keating has an easy period in this book. He has many commissions after a designer strike. He mentions to Catherine, his longtime crush who he always goes to months of time apart to, that they are engaged, and that makes both of them very happy. He also meets the daughter of Guy Francon, Dominique Francon, who is in personality, very close to Howard Roark, in the remark of her words, but much better in a social situation than him. She is not liked by her father, but seems to be liked by Peter, probably as a way of advancing his career.

The only other major character is Ellsworth Toohey, who writes for the Wynand paper, The Banner, and writes on both the retirement of Henry Cameron and of the builder’s union strike. On the strike, Keating heard the speech of Toohey, “He did not hear what the voice was saying. He heard the beauty of the sounds without meaning. He felt no need to know the meaning; he could accept anything, he would be led blindly anywhere” (Rand, 109), showing the influence that Toohey seemed to have over his readers and people around him, including his niece Catherine. He preached about the need of unity and essentially the necessity of people to conform to one another, and obey the standards that society sets for them. His work on Cameron, on the other hand, showed him as insignificant and that his downfall was inevitable, stating the Latin phrase, “vox populi vox Dei”, (Rand, 79), meaning ‘the voice of people [is] the voice of god’ which seems to be a phrase holding some irony in it, considering its origin “And those people should not be listened to who keep saying, 'The voice of the people [is] the voice of God,' since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.” (Alcuin). This word is much like the word utopia, meaning ‘a perfect society’, because of a book written about such a place, but the actual translation of utopia from Greek means, ‘no place’. Considering that Toohey is said to be well educated and knowledgeable of many things, he probably knows this and probably implies some deeper meaning by saying this. While most seem to admire the words of Toohey, some like Keating show some subtle hints of distaste in what he does to Catherine and how he changed her, “he wanted to be angry, but he saw her twinkling smile, her new kind of fire, and he had to smile” (Rand, 84). I think that Toohey seems to show the exact kind of thing that characters like Keating do, conforming to succeed, being the same things that people like Roark cannot bring themselves to do.