“Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.”

The quote stems from Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, a 1943 novel that still polarizes today. I like novels that make me think and want to discuss - this one most definitely does.

A pivotal scene from the 1949 Hollywood adaptation of The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand is essentially a story about individualism versus collectivism, packed into the life and times of one Howard Roark, an unbending architect who refuses to ever compromise away from his creative visions. Needless to say, he rubs people the wrong way left and right, he goes penniless for quite some time - and he goes to extreme and explosive lengths when others chose to renege on the promise to keep his work pure.

You and I and most of us are what Roark calls ‘second-handers’ - people who compromise to get along and conform to get things done. Second-handers are people who are not original - what they do and live and say and create is based on someone else’s creations (by the likes of Galileo, Tesla, Jobs, Archimedes, Gandhi, Alexander the Great, etc.)

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.”

Roark refuses to bend, period. So he’s expelled from university and slowly, against all odds, makes his own way. He’s hired and he’s fired for sticking to his ways. He starts his own firm and refuses a big job that would have set him up for life, because the clients, who love his designs, want him to make some ‘minor adjustments’. Soon he’s broke and, because he still refuses to bend, takes a job as a worker at a quarry. His polar opposite is one Peter Keating, a friend from university, who excelled there, whom everyone liked, who got along and quickly rises in the architect world (the epitome of a second-hander in Roark’s eyes).

“To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?”

The amazing Patricia Neal in the role of Dominique Francon in the 1949 film

Enter the novel’s most curious character, Dominique Francon. This stunning woman is the daughter of the owner of a famous architect firm. She’s also working for the Banner, a New York Tabloid, as a columnist. This woman, well, as unbendingly clear as Howard Roark is (and thus easy to understand), as curiously difficult a psychology this woman possesses. When you read the novel, you’ll wonder about her decisions more than a few times!

“If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted—I’d have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else. We’re all so tied together.”

She is raped by Howard Rourke (you read that right, and more on this later) and clearly continues to be strongly attracted to him. She’s attacks him in her columns, yet secretly meets him for romantic encounters. She obviously loves him, but choses to marry Peter Keating, the architect who now works at her father’s firm, and a man she clearly doesn’t care about. She is fascinated by Roark’s way of being, but refuses to acknowledge that beyond their private encounters. She allows Keating to use her (beauty and influence) to get gigs.

“I’ve learned to bear anything except happiness. I must learn how to carry it.”

She even agrees to sleep with the owner of the Banner, Gail Wynand, so that hubby gets the gig. She does in no way shape or form mind. She goes on a cruise with Wynand, they actually get along. Then Wynand essentially buys her from Keating and Keating agrees because it’ll mean he’ll get to build a large building. When Roark is arrested for malpractice, she’s a witness for the prosecution - yet when he does something quite horrific later (wait for it), she becomes his willing accomplice. Do you think they’ll be together in the end? I won’t spoil that for you.

Howard Roark was, as Ayn Rand stated, ‘her vision of an ideal man.’ Then it may come as no great surprise that, when Hollywood came knocking, none other that that righteous rock of a man that was Gary Cooper was chosen to play the lead. The Fountainhead film was released in 1949 and Ayn Rand herself wrote the screenplay. Novelists adapting their own material to the medium of film is most often a bad idea, because they tend to be too firmly attached and unwilling and unable to make necessary adjustments. Frankly, though, I thought the film did a surprisingly good job of turning the long novel into quite an effective film.

Now about that rape scene. This clearly is among the most polarizing elements of the book. Critics called that scene “representative of an antifeminist viewpoint in Rand's works that makes women subservient to men.” Rand was called a traitor to her own sex. Rand herself said that what happens in that scene isn’t rape, but that Dominique had invited Roark into her bedroom. Well - I’ve read the novel and when you do, you make up your own mind. From my point of view that is absolutely no denying that Roark raped her. And that, that was quite jarring to say the least. It also makes, of course, for a very interesting beginning for that magnet-like on-off connection between Howard Roark and Dominique Francon that is woven into the novel.

At its core, though, this isn’t a novel about two people and the romance angle that is pushed more strongly in the film (understandably so) isn’t nearly as important as the already mentioned individualism versus collectivism. The philosophy of Objectivism, Rand’s baby the way I understand it, is this: “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

Now here’s the thing - ideals are just that, ideals. They are not real life, just as concepts are only concepts. As human beings we like ideals, we like heroes, we like looking up at at the stars (or Hollywood stars or billboard toppers) - but we like doing that for the very opposite of Ayn Rand’s ideal man - we don’t do it because it makes sense, we don’t do it for ‘reason’ - we do it because we like the way it feels. Rand’s focus on the left brain is, let’s be clear here, foolish. The ‘homo economicus’ is a myth, discounted now. Our species uses reason (the left brain) with amazing results, of course - but today we know that humans are emotional first, rational second. And to strive for reason as an absolute, is actually inhuman.

The key focus on individualism versus collectivism makes for a great story and an iconic protagonist (both in the novel and the film) - but that’s where it belongs, in fiction. Pitching individualism against collectivism is, simply put, stupid. The human race needs both and has employed both to great effect (with all the good and all the bad we have wrought). We need the ramrod visionaries who go against the grain and stand firm against the norm with their new ideas.

But a world made of individualists would have led to the extinction of our species a million times over by now. What has allowed our species to flourish was not individualism (that bit helps us progress and sometimes leap forward), it was and is and will always be collectivism. We get things done when we do exactly the opposite of a Howard Roark, namely when we work together, when we find common ground, when we compromise and collaborate. That was the key for our species to rise to the top of the food chain.

Long story short, as I said in the opening, it’s a good novel, one that makes you think and want to discuss. But leave Rand’s philosophy where it belongs, in works of fiction. If you are that rare Howard Roark, follow your dreams and stick to your guns, by all means. Your life will be hard, but it’ll be worth it. But for the rest of us it’s so much healthier to realize that you are not Howard Roark, or Galileo Galilei, or Steve Jobs, or Brad Pitt, or Beyoncé Knowles. Most likely you are like me, you are one of the many, you are an average schmoe. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact, it is you who is needed. Don’t strive to be an individualist because you think you’re supposed to, instead strive to join others, strive to work together with others, strive to find community, strive to help - and I guarantee that it’ll be a good life, well lived, for you and those around you.

I guess to Ayn Rand’s idea of individualism above all, my counter would be my basic philosophy: “Be kind to yourself and those around you. But if you can’t, at the very least don’t be an asshole.”

But wait - I can’t let you go without the final monolog! It is excellent. Spoiler here: When Roark is double-crossed and a building he designed rises with alterations, he does what his unbending self must do - he destroys the building, he literally dynamites it. Then he’s put on trial, where he has no chance of acquittal and choses to defend himself - here’s the movie version of Roark’s plea for individualism. Good speech, good food for thought - you know mine - what are yours?