The Fountainhead P. 293-418

The Fountainhead P. 293-390

Roark is given a Commission of the Stoddard Temple, a temple for an old man with a heavy conscience who thinks a temple to god will elevate his sin. He ends up choosing Roark out of everyone else because it is advised to him by his close friend who he adores and obeys with the fanaticism of a religion, Ellsworth Toohey. Ellsworth does this, and lays the framework so that Roark will build the temple without Stoddard ever seeing it and making it publicly known to be a gift to god by man. Roark hires Steven Mallory, the man who attempted to kill Ellsworth, to make a statue for the temple, a statue of Dominique nude as the centerpiece of the temple. At first Mallory thought that Roark was like everyone else and was just doing this to destroy him a little more an amuse himself, but he sees in Roark what he saw in himself in the love for work. It also showed the hate of what society can do to people like him when he sees, “a small plaster plaque, the kind sold in cheap gift shops… A few lines, the structure of a few muscles showed a magnificent talent that could not be hidden…the rest was a deliberate attempt to be obvious…Mallory saw Roark’s hand begin to shake…the plaque shot across the room and burst to pieces against the wall. It was the only time anyone had ever seen Roark murderously angry” (Rand, 329). It showed both the appreciation that Roark had for someone with the ability to make something beautiful of their own principles like he did, and the hate he had for society making it so that they might have to bend to survive in it. Then, when Stoddard finally sees the temple, he is distraught by how, “Instead of a moos of deferential sorrow, befitting a place where on contemplates eternity and realizes the insignificance of man, this building has a quality of loose, orgiastic elation” (Rand, 339). Roark was sued to pay to reconstruct his great work of the Stoddard Temple to a home for subnormal Children. Prominent architects are chosen to reconstruct it and Roark’s career is afterward tossed greatly into the mud by this very public affair, the attacks by Ellsworth in the newspaper, The Banner, and the depression that hits America, causing a universal decline in the overall economy, including construction of new buildings.
Ellsworth’s past is revealed. It is told that he was a sickly child, who used his mind to get what he wanted and do what he wanted. He played of the emotions and secret fears and pains of those around him. His aunt commented that, “you’re a maggot, Elsie, you feed on sores… ‘Then I’ll never starve’, he answered” (Rand, 297), showing that his way of living and the demeanor that he always displays and uses had not changed from when he was a child. The one thing that essentially summed up the motive of Ellsworth was a lesson in religion that abruptly ended his devotion to it, “the teacher had been elaboration upon the text: ‘what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ Ellsworth asked: “then in order to be truly wealthy, a man should collect souls?’” (Rand, 298). Toohey has used his compassion and his ability to show people what they need, and make them do as he has pleased all along, but it is never noticed by his victims, who always believe that it is their own idea and will to do things, and Toohey just reassured them on their course of action.
Dominique and Roark part after the Stoddard temple incident, because of the pain it inflicted on Dominique, who could feel the pain that Roark could not in what they were doing to him. She decided to test herself by putting herself through her own punishment; she quickly ends up marrying Peter Keating, making Catherine disappear as a distant memory. Keating is overjoyed after the initial shock of this actually happening, but cannot place that feeling of uncertainty he has about the reasons for the marriage.