LN#7 : Fountainhead?—?the Most influential book of all time.

One book that has deeply affected my youth has been “The Fountainhead”. I have only read it once and I could not muster courage enough to read it again. The book and the philosophy in the book are quite heavy and it is very difficult to remove it from one’s mind once it seeps in. 

I love this book because the characters in this book are very well written and like Dostoevsky’s book, they have a meaning to them. Howard Roark, the protagonist of the book has become a cult god in the literature world. Anurag Kashyap has based the lead character of the cult film Satya on the character of Howard Roark.

I have read many reviews and there are hundreds of interpretations of this book everywhere. Some matches my understanding of the book and some don’t.

Here is my opinion –

Roark is the definition of a perfect man that exists in the world according to Rand and at times it appears rightly so. He has a goal, he is highly confident of himself, no one can make him feel less about himself and he fights hard to get whatever he wants in a very aggressive manner. He is a man with steady focus and one goal and nothing can distract him. He is arrogant and chooses things against the common perception of the people. He is a non-conformist. He is everything a man should be but never could be because society won’t allow him to be.

After reading the book, I tried to be like Howard Roark and it helped me to some extent but more or less it affected me adversely as I stopped caring about other people.

Peter Keating on the other symbolizes everything that is mediocre in this world. He knows all the social rules and abides by them. He is a conformist. He tops the classes and he gets the best jobs but somewhere inside him no matter what he does there is no satisfaction. The satisfaction to him will only come when everyone around him will be happy about him and will acknowledge that he is successful. His idea of success is based on other people’s opinion about him.

Both Roark and Keating are good architects but Roark excels over Keating because Keating has a boundary of knowledge while Roark doesn’t. Roark can do whatever he wants and give any direction to his life while Keating cannot do so as he is bounded by the rules and expectations of the society. Keating has the road map of his entire life planned while Roark lives one day at a time.

In between comes a beautiful girl called Dominque Francon who symbolizes the prized possession in the world dominated by a man and whoever is with her is the king. She is the most beautiful girl one could meet and her beauty is not because of her physical appearance but her mental presence. An intelligent and understanding girl who is extremely beautiful is someone that no money in this world can possess and that is why Keating never gets her though he is crazily in love with her. Wynand gets her but only physically and he could never make her fall in love with him. Francon has given her heart to Roark who even rapes her once but she is so much in love with him that she cares about him even after that. She cannot be attained by anyone and she cannot attain the one thing she really wants to attain.

Francon’s Uncle is Ellsworth Toohey who is the best antagonist I have ever read in a story. Toohey symbolizes the man with the power of knowledge who can destroy anyone with this intellect. He is an editor of a newspaper which makes him all the more powerful and a man who can anytime interject ideas into the mind of masses through his writing. He doesn’t like active men as he is a passive himself so he is always out to take over Wynand and destroy Roark. It is possible for him to take over Wynand but his real challenge is to make Roark yield in front of him which he never gets to do. In the end, he destroys Roark and his plans, his dreams and his goals and meets him to rub over him his success in destroying him. In beautiful storytelling, Roark refuses to acknowledge the presence of Toohey anywhere in his life and says he is completely indifferent to him. Toohey is left angry and confused then about what to do. Toohey’s character can be best identified with the joker of the Dark Knight who does crime for the sake of enjoyment and not achieves anything, those are the worst kinds because you can never defeat them. Joker can only be defeated by complete indifference to his identity which in the movie was impossible because then he would start destroying things, bombing buildings and killing people to get himself noticed. Toohey is just like that. He does evil for the sake of enjoyment and not to benefit from it. It is very difficult to stop a man like that.

Gail Wynand in the book symbolizes the capitalistic mindset and the capitalistic philosophy on which a country like America stands. He is a man rich beyond means and he is someone who often resembles Roark to some extent but misses it due to his materialistic desires and his inability to live without them. Unlike Roark, whom no one can blackmail and nothing can make him weak because of his inability to fall in love with anyone or anything and his complete focus on what he wants to achieve, Wynand is weak because he cannot part with his luxurious life. He gets Francon as a trophy wife as he never gets to make her fall in love with him.

The book is beautifully written and is seriously long. I think there are more than 700 pages in this book. Forget reading this book in one sitting because no one can do that, not even to make a record. Why? Because the philosophy of the book is quite heavy and you cannot take it for a very long time as it will then start messing with your head.

This book is a must read for everyone, even though one hates or likes this book as it is a philosophy that everyone should have knowledge of. It is a gigantic and monumental work of a woman who has spent years developing the concept and writing this book. But don’t leave the boo in between or you will never understand the true genius of the book. This book can only be enjoyed when it is read in full capacity. There will be times when you will feel utterly bored and feel like quitting the book because it will start affecting your personal life, my advice is — DON’T.

Read it because it is one of the greatest pieces of writing ever written by any human being.