The Fountainhead The depiction of emotion through omniscient narrative I was told as a child that one should never judge a book by its cover. Since the moment I was preached this key note I have always felt the need to look at book covers for long with judgement. Why shouldn’t one judge a book by its cover? Isn’t it human to do so? So now, I am holding a copy of Ayn Rand’s first published novel; The Fountainhead, by Penguin Modern Classics, that reveal her philosophy in the context of a dichotomy of characters and picturesque words which feed towards an incomparable quality of sound and emotion. On the cover I find Tamara de Lempicka’s auto-portrait, Tamara in the green Bugatti. The AutoJournal of 1974 stated that ‘the self-portrait of Tamara De Lempicka is a real image of the independent woman who asserts herself. Her hands are gloved, she is helmeted and inaccessible, a cold and disturbing beauty (1987:77).’ Looking at the cover with my own eyes, I can see that my view does not differ from that of the statement above regarding The Fountainhead. Rand’s cold, but also passionate novel is a thorough representation of this selfportrait.
Rand’s
philosophy
of
objectivism,
that
is
continuously
underlined in the novel may make the reader think that there is a lack of emotion in her style of writing. However, it only seems so because Rand tries to objectify with each character on a personal level. She engages herself
in
the
moment,
hence
momentum
becomes
the
essence
of
her
technique. Therefore, it can only be expected that some of her readers will not engage themselves in the text as Rand did. If there is such a thing as a novel that needs to be read with an open-mind, this is the novel for that exact purpose.
The feminists have attacked Rand on moral grounds, the subjectivists, the revolutionary youth and the twelve visionless publishers she submitted her work to have all rejected her until she found Bobbs Merrill Company and
her book became a major success. While reading the book, having also read Rand’s biography I felt that Rand symbolised herself through the character of Howard Roark. Roark, is a man of vast intellect and creativity, but being that way has it’s crutches too. His views are rejected by the conformists, such as Peter Keating, the traditionalists such as the Dean and the revolutionaries such as Ellsworth M. Toohey. He is faced with opposition on all sides. He is a man who tries very hard to reach his ideals, just as Rand. Even though, many interpretations of characters in The Fountainhead subsided Roark as the ‘ideal man’, I think that Roark is also a man who sacrifices himself. While working for Henry Cameron he sacrifices his finances in the face of working with someone who would understand his ideology regarding architecture and life in general. He endures many difficulties in order to keep his place as the primary source of honesty and creativity. Rand delivers the difficulty of Roark’s task by using Henry Cameron’s one page monologue with himself to Roark, warning Roark not to choose the path that he had chosen many years a go.1 at you as you enter a bus, and
he’ll
‘ There will be days when a bus driver
will snap
be only asking for a dime, but that won’t be what you’ll hear;
you’ll hear that you’re nothing, that he’s laughing at you, that it’s written on your forehead, that thing they hate you for. There will be days when you’ll stand
in the corner of a hall and listen to
a creature on a platform talking about buildings, about that work which you love and the things he’ll say will make you
wait for somebody to
rise and crack him open between two thumbnails and then
you’ll hear the people applauding him, and you’ll want to scream because you won’t know whether they’re real or you are, whether you’re in emptied your own head, and you’ll say
a room full of gored skulls, or whether someone has just
nothing, because the sounds you could make- they’re not a
language in that room any longer; but if you’d want to speak, you won’t anyway, because you’ll be brushed aside, you who have nothing to tell them about buildings! Is that what you want?’ (Rand, 1943: 55)
This page is a manifestation of great emotion that also constitutes boundless insight into the pains of Cameron
1 ‘ There will be days when a bus driver will snap at you as you enter a bus, and he’ll be only asking for a dime, but that won’t be what you’ll hear; you’ll hear that you’re nothing, that he’s laughing at you, that it’s written on your forehead, that thing they hate you for. There will be days when you’ll stand in the corner of a hall and listen to a creature on a platform talking about buildings, about that work which you love and the things he’ll say will make you wait for somebody to rise and crack him open between two thumbnails and then you’ll hear the people applauding him, and you’ll want to scream because you won’t know whether they’re real or you are, whether you’re in a room full of gored skulls, or whether someone has just emptied your own head, and you’ll say nothing, because the sounds you could makethey’re not a language in that room any longer; but if you’d want to speak, you won’t anyway, because you’ll be brushed aside, you who have nothing to tell them about buildings! Is that what you want?’ (Rand, 1943: 55)
and all of whom are identical to him.Even though Cameron speaks of these feelings to Roark it is not Roark who feels such. It is Keating, Roark’s ideological opponent who feels Cameron’s speech to the bone when Toohey gives his lecture to the public in opposition to Wynand; a media mogul, and in favour of the labourer’s strike. Keating gets angry that Catherine Halsey, Toohey’s nephew who was supposed to meet Keating, instead chooses to go and participate in her uncle’s lecture. Keating is frustrated, he feels inadequate in a room of people who believe in a man of Toohey’s political calibre and not Keating’s self- hidden intellect. This is ironic because Keating’s own ideology leads him to forfeit his intellect in order to conform. Although Keating and Roark are clashing characters, Rand manages to unite them under the subject matter of architecture as two frozen images on the same mirror; one who sacrifices all and the other who sacrifices none.