| The
Fountainhead Essay Contest |
| for
students of high schools and junior colleges in
India |
|
|
The
Fountainhead Essay Competition 2002
The fourth all
India contest for high school students organised by
Liberty Institute, New Delhi
http://www.libertyindia.org/
First Prize of
Rs 8000/-
Ms. Valentina
Dutta
La Martiniere for Girls,
Kolkata (Calcutta)
Topic B: In The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand portrays the essential
division between two basic kinds of people: "those
dedicated to the exaltation of man's self-esteem and the
sacredness of his happiness on earth - and those determined
not to allow either to become possible." Illustrate
this division from the story, and give your reasons.
George Bernard
Shaw once said: "All progress is made by the unreasonable
man" - the man who transcends the prevailing reason
of his time. In Howard Roark, Ayn Rand created an individual
who epitomises the 'unreasonable man', a man who goes beyond
the prevailing reason of his time to affirm the greatness
of the human spirit.
The Fountainhead
is a novel of ideas, a novel about the conflict of ideologies.
The nature of the conflict is essentially simple. It represents
the clash between the exalted and the degraded; the eternal
war between the forces that want to foster that which is
best and highest in man, and those that pander to his meanest
instincts.
Howard Roark,
Architect. Three words emblazoned across the consciousness
of anyone who reads The Fountainhead. Roark is the embodiment
of the soul of mankind - its aspiration towards the fulfilment
of its highest promise. In him lives the spirit that has
been mankind's guide through the ages, the spirit which
has the courage to lead, to undertake the conquests of the
remotest summits, the spirit which finds in itself the greatest
good of which mankind is capable.
Howard Roark
was expelled from the university at which he studied architecture,
because the buildings he designed did not conform to the
stereotypes desired of him. Because he was different, he
was incomprehensible and therefore frightening to those
who sat on judgement on him. Howard Roark was feared, and
so he was made an outcast. He sought a job with Henry Cameron,
an architect who, many years before, had dared to be different.
In the eyes of the world, he had failed, but not in Roark's
eyes. When Cameron asked Roark why he wanted to become an
architect, Roark replied: "Because I love this earth.
That's all I love. I don't like the shape of things on this
earth. I want to change them . . . for myself."
The word, which
comes to mind when one thinks of Howard Roark, is 'integrity'.
In the context of The Fountainhead, it means honesty to
one's personal aspirations, and never-failing loyalty to
an idea. Howard Roark never loses his integrity, his desire
to change the shape of things. He does not accept a compromise
even once in all the years that he battles against a world
that resents him - the years during which he is plunged
into poverty by the closure of Cameron's business; when
he enters and quits the service of Peter Keating, a man
who fears and hates him; when he labours in a granite quarry
and finds the love of his life, Dominique Francon; when
she strives to destroy him and punish both herself and him,
marrying first Peter Keating and then Gail Wynand, a man
who stood for everything Roark hated.
There is in the
character of Howard Roark a certain quality of immortality,
an indestructible greatness that cannot be confined by the
limits of time and space. What marks him out from his fellow
men is the fact that he had the courage to do what he did
because it was what he wanted to do, because it was what
was due to himself. He is the supreme egotist - "the
man who stands above the need of using others in any manner."
Roark's role
in the novel is to uphold the value of self-esteem: man's
confidence in his own ability, his belief in himself and
in his search for the best of which he is capable. Man's
aim in this is not to please others, but to seek his own
happiness, the fulfilment of his own desires.
Ellsworth Monkton
Toohey is in every way the antithesis of Howard Roark. He
is the insidious force of evil, for he sees the issues that
confront mankind quite as clearly as Roark does, and chooses
to embrace the cause of mankind's degradation. Like Dominique
Francon, he sets out to ruin Howard Roark's career. But
Dominique's motives are personal - she sees in Roark the
embodiment of integrity, and tries to prevent that integrity
from exposing itself to a world that will try to defile
it. Toohey, on the other hand, is fighting not a person
but a cause.
The Ellsworth
Tooheys of this world seek to subjugate the soul of man.
They try to prevent it from seeking fulfilment, destroying
happiness by labelling it as sinful. They preach the doctrine
of selflessness, discouraging man's highest aspirations.
They instil in men the belief that they must live not for
themselves, but for others; that the greater good of the
community is all-important, and that personal satisfaction
is meaningless. They create a world in which men come to
despise themselves, looking always for the approval of others
in whatever they do. The spirit of man is then broken and
enchained, and men are at the mercy of those few who have
deliberately brought about this state of things. Power over
this miserable empire of degraded and abased natures is
their goal. In order to achieve this, they must first destroy
the Howard Roarks of the world, who stand firm in their
self-respect.
Those who succumb
to the doctrine of the Tooheys are like parasites, incapable
of sustaining themselves. They are like Peter Keating, a
man so dependent on the approval of society that he has
nothing left to support him when he loses his position as
a successful architect. Even at this point, he cannot renounce
Ellsworth Toohey and his doctrines, although these are what
have caused his misery. The unhappiness and sheer waste
that these doctrines can bring about are also illustrated
in Toohey's niece, Catherine Halsey. By teaching her that
one must always place the happiness of others before one's
own, suppressing one's desires and even one's identity,
he effectively converts her from a sensitive, caring girl
into an unfeeling and domineering woman.
The rottenness
of the mediocrity against which Roark's life is a protest
is embodied in the New York Banner, a newspaper that caters
to the worst tastes of the populace. In the hands of men
like Toohey, it is a tool to hasten the downward descent
of mankind. The owner of the Banner, Gail Wynand, is the
most tragic figure in the novel. He is a man 'not born to
be a second-hander'; a man with the same ability to perceive
and achieve greatness that Roark possessed. But in his thirst
for power, he surrenders himself to the realm of the second-handers,
creating an instrument capable of spreading an immense amount
of evil, which ultimately destroys him.
The central conflict
in The Fountainhead is one between those who believe that
the creative force in man is supreme, and those who want
to suppress it. The former are men who find in the achievements
of man the only thing on earth worth worshiping, who feel
a sense of exaltation whenever they contemplate one of mankind's
great creations or perceive in their own work the realisation
of their dreams. For these men, the self, the ego, is the
fountainhead, the source of their inspiration, of all that
is worthy in them. The innate nobility of the human spirit
of endeavour is upheld in them. It is indestructible.
Copyright 2002,
Liberty Institute, J-259 Saket (2nd floor), New Delhi 110017.
India
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