The Fountainhead p. 630-640

Ellsworth comes to Peter Keating’s house as he has not left and has not seen anyone since Howard has been arrested. He did this to ensure he would not betray Howard, and exactly why Ellsworth came to see him. He pressures him and after some resistance of what little will Peter managed to still have, he gives Ellsworth the paper that Roark signed with him over the contract. And Ellsworth has a mixed response to this, “You’re a complete success, Peter, as far as I’m concerned. But as times I have to want to turn away from the sight of my successes” (Rand, 633).

The rest of this chapter was the elaboration of what Ellsworth truly wants out of all of this, the masterminding behind all the organizations and groups he helps forms but draws no power from. He wants to control the world by the conscience of the people. “I shall rule…You. The world. It’s only a matter of discovering the lever. If you can learn how to rule one single man’s soul, you can get the rest of mankind” (Rand, 635). He also elaborates on the means to this end of his. By making selflessness a virtue, it kills the aspirations of people, considering that, “Not a single [man] has ever achieved [selflessness] and not a single one ever will” (Rand, 635), and that by promoting the things that people should not follow, they then find people worshiping an ideal they cannot follow and make themselves feel insignificant and then willing to follow others who appear to be selfless, such as Ellsworth. He also preaches the use of serving and sacrifices as virtuous, and points out how this helps gain power for a man like him as well. “It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And he intends to be the master” (Rand, 637). He elaborates on many other aspects of how he feels the will of people can be bent and molded, but all have the common denominator by glorifying things that have not value to oneself but in the eyes of another, and no one is truly happy, “Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient…Happy men are free men” (Rand, 636), and so by making people feel that happiness is only achievable in the serving of others, it breaks their spirit because they become unhappy on something people tell them should make them feel good.

The concept in general of what current society holds sacred calls many values of society into question. We have many systems where the many help the few, both within regions and around the world, for the sole purpose of helping our fellow man. We also glorify lifestyles of loving and caring, but not in the sense of making oneself happy by what one wants, but by a standard of morals that society tells us is what we should want and desire. This issue of where one’s morals come from; if one’s morals and ideals do not come from within, does it not stand to reason that one is without morals at all? No man’s conviction should change based on the opinions of others if they are truly his, but rarely in society is this the case. To succeed in any political or public light, one must make their ideas embody what everyone else wants them to be, regardless of what they truly believe. Many people who hold their convictions will not move through society or survive. Galileo had to renounce his works because it went against the church, the strongest power in the world at the time. Darwin was ridiculed for decades for his idea of evolution, which some still argue over today. People will not value ideas by their own worth, but by what everyone else says their worth, and that is one of the biggest problems with our society.

The Fountainhead p. 616-630

Dominique is saved from her near death experience and is brought back to Wayward’s Penthouse to recover. When she regained consciousness, Wayward was there, “he looked amused…she remembered seeing him as the hospital. He had not looked amused then” (Rand, 617). This shows how Wayward is attached to Dominique in a way that losing her would destroy him. Howard sees her later in the day and she has already been told by Wayward that he stayed at the scene, was arrested, and is out on bail, posted by Wayward. Howard tells her that if he is acquitted, then they can finally be together, but if he is convicted, then she is to stay with Wayward, because, “he and you will need each other” (Rand, 620). Howard is very caring of both Dominique and Wayward, as can be seen in him planning to keep them happy if the worst comes, but it also shows how he is unbending and uncaring of his own well being over the ideals he holds. He would gladly sit in jail for the sake of preventing the destruction of his work.

Wayward begins a crusade for Roark, going against every other popular opinion and hurting the sale and popularity of his paper to do so. “He was granted the impossible, the dream of every man” the chance and intensity of youth, to be used with the wisdom of experience” (Rand, 624). Many people try to persuade Wayward of his unpopular stand defending Roark.

Toohey is also mentioned here briefly in the end, as now being ready thanks to “the right moment….handed to me on a sliver platter” (Rand, 629), to take over The Banner. How he plans to do so is not elaborated on, but it seems as though he has a plan in mind.

The Fountainhead P. 608-616

Howard and Wayward return from their long journey to find a dramatic change. The Cortlandt housing project is already under construction and while, “the building had the skeleton of what Roark had designed” (Rand, 608), but despite the efforts of Keating to fight off the forces of influence, the building was butchered and had “the remnants of ten different breeds piled on the lovely symmetry of the bones” (Rand, 608). This is the example it once again being ‘too late’, for Keating to change what he is; a second-hander. This time, however, he has dragged Howard’s unbending mind and body into it. Because he cannot conform to society, he also cannot allow his ideas to be shaped by it so long as he has the power to fight back. It’s this exact mindset that makes Howard his own person, and what propels him to seek Dominique’s help in distracting the warden of the Cortlandt housing project as he blows it off the face of the earth.

This portion also exhibits a change in Dominique, who has always been afraid of seeing Roark hurt by society, as she was at the Stoddard trial. Here she is in control, and not phased by society being able to hurt Roark, “She was free and he knew it”(Rand, 613). But in her following of orders of Roark to hide in a ditch until after the explosion and “see that your found in the car and that your condition matches its condition – approximately”, she returned to the car and, “slashed the skin of her neck, her legs, her arms. What she felt was not pain…she was free…She did not know she had cut an artery” (Rand, 616). And with this line they end the chapter, Dominique free of her fears of the world as she is almost leaving it and Roark not letting his work be butchered.

The Fountainhead P. 583-608

Wayward promotes Howard in his papers vigorously, dropping his name anywhere possible to give him attention. While he does it in an attempt to promote the popularity of Howard among the readers of the Banner, he is more hurt by the publicity of it, seen as “Wayward’s pet” (Rand, 590). He also got Roark commissions, “whose owners were open to pressure” (Rand, 591), trying to help Roark change the world, one building at a time.
Howard is becoming very exhausted, as he is constructing not only his regular commissions, but the housing project, the Cortlandt Homes, for Peter Keating. He finishes the project and has it accepted, but Wayward, seeing the design asks him about it, “Do you think I pick the things in my art gallery by their signatures? If Peter Keating designed this, I’ll eat every copy of today’s Banner” (Rand, 587). But Roark would not tell Gail why he did the project for Peter, or even admit that he had done it, keeping his word that he would not tell anyone about the agreement they had made. After completing the project, he goes out with Gail on his yacht to rest, admitting that, “I’ve overdone it” (Rand, 601), as he leaves for a few months. In this time Gail and Howard dissect the things that make society into something as ugly as it is. They end up calling the source of it the nature of people not having a self and thus named them “second-handres” (Rand, 605). Because they have no pride in themselves, not, “To be great, but thought great” (Rand, 605). Because they do not judge themselves by their own eyes, they never become happy, and can’t stand to see others who are. That is why people like Roark conflict with society, not on principles or ideas, but in the fact that he has his own and others don’t.

The Fountainhead P. 573-583

Howard meets Peter after six years and is shocked by the “disintegration” (Rand 573) of his physical appearance. Peter came to the office, but his tone was not as it had been the last time he had meet Howard. This time, Peter seemed to have more of an understanding of Howard’s mindset and his own standing, admitting that “I’ve been a parasite all my life…I have fed on you and on all the men like you who lived before we were born…If they hadn’t existed, I wouldn’t have known how to put stone on stone” (Rand 575). This acknowledgement of his own position was the same as when Dominique pointed it out to him, but the large differing factor is that he finally came to the conclusion in his own mind and was able to fully accept it. Knowing that he cannot succeed without Howard’s help, he asks him to design the Cortlandt Housing Project that would make housing for low-income families. Howard tells him that he needs a day to think it over and then later accepts his proposal to build the house for him. Before Howard does he makes Peter understand the ‘why’ in this. He made him understand that he built, not for glory or for his fellow man, or for money, but because “I love my work…I want to make it real, living, functioning, built” (Rand, 579). He also explains why he doesn’t just built it himself; because it is a project under the control of committees and a government and “I will never by given any job by any government” (Rand 579).
This cooperation in is showing the growth of Peter Keating as a character, and that while his own ability has not changed, nor has his way of getting by on someone else’s labor, he now knows it and understands it very clearly. It also shows Howard’s want for building, his love for any challenge in a project, and the message that Howard is just a person “glad to be alive. And [Keating] realized he had never actually believed that any living thing could be glad of the gift of existence” (Rand581).
It also showed a rare moment of Howard experiencing emotion; pity. Peter shows the paintings of his, the one’s he understand were no good but made him feel better. Howard only replied, “It’s too late, Peter” (Rand 582). And it showed Howard’s definition of pity being “complete awareness of a man without worth or hope, this sense of finality, of the not to be redeemed” (Rand 582-583). He also poised a very good and critical question about a society that “this monstrous feeling is called a virtue” (Rand, 583). This genuine and pure pity from Roark helps show why he despises society and everything it embodies as noble and right. Pity is not something for him that makes him feel better or more grateful for his own fortunes, something common in society, but the actual feeling of “an emotion which contained no shred of respect”(Rand 583).