Fountainhead End

This section is the end of what is without a doubt the largest and most insightful book I have read in my four years of high school. The book ends with the trial of Howard Roark, which is similar to the last trial in some of its aspects. Howard does not call any witnesses and issues no statement until the end. There was a comment, however, on his choice of jurors, “Roark had chosen the hardest faces” (Rand, 675), who were engineers, mathematicians, truck drivers, bricklayers electricians, gardeners and factory workers. There was much testimony of many people, but the only ones mentioned were Keating, the officer who found Roark, the warden who Dominique distracted, and then Roark’s closing statement to the jury. The statement was the only piece of real merit in the many pages this trial took up, it summed up in elegant words the ideal of man and how it had been contorted: “man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal – under the thread that sadism was his only alternative” (Rand, 681). He also pointed out how the great mind must struggle against the many for his idea to survive; “thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light…the first man invented the wheel. He was probably torn on the rack he had taught his brothers to build” (Rand, 677-678). He supports the ideas of the individual and points out the flaws with a selfless society and the wrongs of such idealists, “Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive…The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere “(Rand, 683). And apparently the jury that Roark had selected agreed with him in less than an hour, because in the end, Roark is found not guilty of committing any crime and released.

The rest of the book resolved the loose ends of the story. Wayward divorced Dominique, who is now with Roark, and was forced by law to re-hire Ellsworth. To this Wayward said, “We must comply with the law” (Rand, 687), and orders him to be on the job before nine o’clock. After no more than ten minutes at his desk Ellsworth is startled by the screeching halt of the Banner’s presses. To this, Wayward says, “It’s nine o’clock. You’re out of a job, Mr. Toohey. The Banner has ceased to exist” (Rand, 688). Wayward also has one last gesture, by calling Roark to his office, and telling him he is to build the Wayward Building, the largest in New York, “as a monument to that spirit which is yours…and could have been mine” (Rand, 692). The meeting has a feeling of sadness because in it Wayward expresses no desire to ever see Roark again, and the look on his face to be, “know, closed and never to be reached again. A face that held no pain of renunciation, but the stamp of the next step, when even pain is renounced” (Rand, 690).

This ending is bitter, but I feel it is fitting for the contrast of the theme of the book. The character that had no fear of others and let himself follow his own path ended up happy with what he wanted, work, his identity, pride, and a wife of Dominique. Whereas Wayward wanted the same thing, but sacrificed his pride to try and reach the others, and lost a part of his empire and all or the other two.