Fountainhead And I

Fountainhead

I am a great fan of Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”. This book needs no intoduction, but to brush up your memories click here. I literally consider it to be the modern Bible; with only exception being that the hero here is not crucified and he atlast gets a chance to prove his point.

Here rather than discussing the plot and other things I would like to share my personal views and correlations on this book.

First of all lets discuss its theme. For the jargonistic souls its Objective Individualism, but in simple terms its just to prove that an individual or a single person’s will presides over the society. There is nothing like collective whole of humanity. How true! After all we are homo sapiens “the wise man”, not some inanimate objects who can be bundled together and thrown any where as per desire. That’s the grievious problem that plague this society today. All we have constructed is compartments and hierarchies and we want to push everybody in some level in the way how sheeps are forced into pens. Everybody is different. With unlimited possible combination of genes there is no way of grouping the persons made of them. Recent studies have shown that a normal human beings produce numerous mental capabilities right from intellect, color recognition, social expertise… and there respective weightages varies a lot thus creating spectrum of minds each having its unique capabilities.

My sympathy lies with Peter Keating:

There is no point in discussing Roarke here. He is basically a demi-God, a mouth piece of truth or to put simply a character impossible to exist in real World. His only importance is that he is the sublime voice inside everyone’s heart constantly gnawing and incensing him to revolt against Society; a well designed slaughter house for humanity. However Peter Keating is absolutely realistic. His agony, his emptiness, his desire to get everything which even he knows is unreal and perishable, is a reflection of our own self. Our rush-life, our constant habit of getting every body’s attention and praise matches to his. But what else we can do. We can’t stop. We can’t go against the stream. We know the consequencies. We sees ourselves through how other sees us. We, by hook and crook, want to get every lucrative object in World. No, not for our pleasure, we know its perishable. If we wouldn’t have been that smarter we wouldn’t had got that object in first place. Its as if we are running from some sort of emptiness, some lacunae, something restless inside. Let it be anything, however ineffective, we want to fill that gap. The pain is unbearable. And these are the times when some Roarke’s voice haunts us, adding to agony. Thanks, Mr. Roarke but rather just passing a trite better you could have also suggested some way out.  Destined to be loser in the end we just see the rock rolling down the slope which we brought meticulously to the hill top; a fate similar to Sisyphus.

And to add more spice, there always exist some characters like Toohey – the Mr. “know it all”. They will never tell you the right path but will certainly laugh at you when you select the wrong one. Probably, it was for these people the shotgun was made. Just blow of the pissants head. They are the hybrid of humans and vultures, poking their ugly beak in every one’s matter. They behave as if they are the agents protecting the integrity of this silly matrix like world.

And then there remains the beauty, Dominique. She personifies none other than Maya, the illusionary veil misgiuding everybody through her seducing charm. This one dollar whore fools people like Peter Keating and part with them ones their downfall starts. It opposes the principle of demand and supply; goes where demanded less and eludes those in need of her. She readily gets raped from the stone-head but contempts the one with soft corner.

The speech of Roarke

As I said Roarke depicts none but the voice of truth. His speech appears none less than the Commandments, with a quality of being more personal and direct to the point. Nothing can be added or deleted from it. It by itself is complete and perfect. Watch the speech below (Howard Roarke speech from movie “Fountainhead”, based on “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand):