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).