Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead": A Review

Essay by Jacob White (LHS Class of 2011) 
      

The main theme of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead is “man as he should and can be.” Howard Roark is the living epitome of the way all men should act, and the majority of the book descibes how different he is from most people. Where Roark cares nothing about the opinion others have of him, most people base their lives around impressing others for their own fulfillment. Rand calls the people who live to impress others are called “second-handers,” an example of which would be Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead. Where Roark chooses to live his life apart from the evil of the world, and to stay true to the morals he believes in, Wynand believes that good can never exist in a world with so much evil, and so he attempts to overpower the world by lowering himself to its level. But why does Gail pander in this manner? And why doesn’t Howard Roark?

Gail Wynand grew up living a tough life in the slums, fending for himself and fighting to survive. He strove from the beginning to achieve greatness. Working his way up from the bottom, Wynand quickly rose to power through journalism (his newspaper was called The Banner). He gained an influence over thousands of people by temporarily “selling out,” meaning that he lowered all of his standards and morals to the level of the population whose acceptance he wished to gain. His plans were to share his ideals with the world, hoping the world would adopt these ideals as their own. This is apparent when Wynand tells Roark, “I’ve sold my life, but I got a good price. Power...now I can use it...for what I believe.” But very soon Wynand discovers that he can only hold power over “the mob” as long as he tells them what they want to hear. The minute he decides to take Roark’s side with the Cortlandt Case, workers begin to strike, businesses refuse to put their ads in the Wynand papers, and The Banner’s sales drop. Eventually Wynand switched sides, and even though his paper begins to sell again and the strikes end, he is left a ruined man. This is just another example of how compromising one’s morals will never turn out positively. From the beginning, Gail Wynand always had good strong morals and wished to share them with the world, but by going against and trashing his own morals, he was left broken in the end.

Howard Roark is a very selfish and uncompromising individual. Even from the very beginning of The Fountainhead, Howard refuses to waste his time drawing copies of old French opera houses or Tudor chapels. Roark begins his career working in a failing firm with an architect whose strong morals keep him from accepting most jobs that come to him. Once Roark starts a firm of his own, he refuses work unless he is given full artistic control. Though most see this as a selfless act based on strong morals regarding his work, Roark states that it is the most selfish thing a man could ever do. 

The main difference between Roark and Gail Wynand is the morality of his selfishness. Roark, unlike the others, has his own beliefs and his own morals, and he sticks to them. Wynand has morals as well, but to feel successful, he must control the minds of his readers. To exhibit such power, he has to compromise his morals. Gail Wynand conforms to what others want, which takes away his identity entirely. But Roark is the perfect example of a man with an identity. No matter what his life throws at him, Howard Roark will never change what he believes in. He does not rely on the opinions of others to keep himself motivated or to feel like he has worth. Even though the world tells him that to be successful one must be well-liked and have money and power, Roark knows that he can get by on his integrity alone. He needs nothing other than his own individuality; he knows he is special and needs no one else to make him happy.

Gail Wynand is a perfect foil for Howard Roark. Even though both of them have strong morals, in the end it comes down to whether or not they ignore their morals or live for what they believe in. Wynand chose to change himself in order to appeal to the masses. He sold his identity, his soul, for the sole purpose of winning the approval of others. But Roark knew all along that no one would ever be able to tell him whether he was successful or not. Roark lived his life for himself. His work was not done to impress anyone in particular, but because he was passionate about it and good at it. He never once compromised the things he believed in, even when he was on the verge of failing. Roark’s morals stayed strong; although most others in the book lost their souls, his stayed intact, making him the solitary static character in The Fountainhead. All humans should strive to live their lives for themselves, the way Howard Roark did, and attempt to avoid living a life like Gail Wynand: a life based around the need of acceptance from others to feel fulfillment in one’s own life.

Questions for Further Writing:
Have there been times in your life when you felt like either Roark or Wynand? Is it possible to have felt like both?

White argues that Roark’s “live for self” mindset is what sets him apart as the exemplary character in The Fountainhead. Does that fit with your model of what it means to be successful? Why or why not?

Are there ever contexts when it would be preferable to be more like Wynand?