• Ayn Rand: The Fountainhead; Dutton/Plume, 1994; 736 pp;
She was born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum on Feb. 2, 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Fleeing the effects of the Bolshevik Revolution and the ensuing Lenin regime, Alissa chose her pen name, Ayn Rand at age 21 in Chicago in 1926. In 1943, working behind the scenes in Hollywood, Rand published a few short stories building to her May 6 publication of The Fountainhead, her first attempt at combining the narrative power of the novel with a sophisticated philosophical outlook influenced by her exposure to early communist Russia. Sixty years later, America celebrates Rand’s Objectivist philosophy that brought life to The Fountainhead.
The power of Rand’s philosophy matures in her crowning literary achievement, Atlas Shrugged. This 1,000-page-plus novel was recently named the second most influential book, under the King James version of the Bible, by a Library of Congress national survey.
Rand’s philosophy is known as Objectivism, the belief that all knowledge can be rationally apprehended through observable facts. Rand’s objectivism hinges on a rational being’s ability to comprehend and interact in the world by maintaining personal integrity and autonomy throughout life.
The connection between Rand’s objectivist philosophy and her rhetorical skill lies in her characters. Each character, from the heroic emblem of individualism, Howard Roark, to the despicable collectivist Ellsworth Toohey, gives life to Rand’s fear that one day the American ideal — the celebration of personal autonomy — could fall to collectivism.
Rand builds her Objectivist philosophy around the novel’s protagonist, Howard Roark. The reader is introduced to Roark in the 1920s attending a prominent tradition-minded architecture school. A picturesque romantic character, Roark is tall, slender, angular, and quiet. His talent is astounding but overshadowed by his more predominant characteristic, an unwavering commitment to personal integrity.
Rand’s literary construction of her characters parallels Roark’s anticlassical architectural principles. Roark believes that each edifice constructed must be unique, precise, and true. There is a sense of autonomy for each building. This autonomy epitomizes beauty. Roark defines beauty as that characteristic which displays a natural tendency to remain independently true to its nature. Similarly for Rand, humanity is beautiful when people live lives that promote reason and personal autonomy at all costs, the essence of human nature.
While attending the university, Roark is surrounded by the past in all its classical glory. Everywhere around him Roark encounters sycophants to the past, embodied in his classmate — an outstanding student in the classical tradition — Peter Keating.
Keating survives on the approval of those around him. His skills as an architect are limited to recreations of the past. And his success depends upon gaining the approval of those in power, an ability Keating mastered over the course of his life.
As a foil to Roark, Keating shows that true success is achieved by a commitment to the growth of personal integrity.
“Integrity,” as Roark says, “is the ability to stand by an idea,” at all costs. To truly place value in human nature is to be relentless in asserting “man’s right to the pursuit of happiness. His own happiness; not anyone else’s…” This is the essence of objectivism, to live life under your own choices, to be free of the burden of society and to not, because of this freedom, feel ashamed to call yourself selfish.
If Roark is Rand’s embodiment of objectivism, Ellsworth Toohey represents the antithesis, collectivism. A successful writer for the leading gossip magazine, Toohey uses his opinion column to control the opinions of the masses. Toohey’s power of persuasion can only elevate him to the height of the collective mass. He is no individual; he does not possess the power to create or the autonomy to survive.
The goal of existence cannot be found in “greatness — in other’s eyes. Fame admiration, envy — all that which comes from others.” When others are your prime concern, you forget about the most influential person in your life, you. But, this is not to say that life is void of social roles and responsibilities, far from it. We are, of courses, social creatures. Being social creatures, however, does not mean self-sacrifice for the philanthropic preservation of others.
Society for Rand consists in independent men interacting for their own benefit. No individual has the ability to be totally self-sufficient. Sometimes we need others to complete ourselves.
Rand late in her career said in a television interview when asked whether she feared death, “I will not die, the world will merely end.” This is the Objectivist mind: striving, accomplishing, and living as if the whole world was their existence. The Fountainhead will pull you into a world where the human mind is celebrated above all else, and it will leave you believing in the wonderful and awe-inspiring potential of the individual.