Summary: Chapter 6
With the money from the Enright commission, Roark reopens
his office. He agrees to go to a cocktail party with Austen Heller
when Heller mentions that Dominique will attend. When Roark enters, the
party’s hostess tries to talk to him, but finds him insolent. Heller introduces
Roark to Dominique. She engages him in a polite conversation, and
neither of them mentions their previous encounter. Dominique feels
that Roark is testing her. Toohey spends the evening watching Roark
carefully.
Summary: Chapter 7
Dominique’s next column attacks the Enright House, but
Toohey accuses her of actually subtly praising Roark. One of Roark’s
potential clients, Joel Sutton, grows anxious and asks Dominique
if he should hire Roark. She tells him that Roark will create a
beautiful building for him, but Sutton wants something safe. Dominique
recommends Keating. That night, Dominique visits Roark. She coldly states
that she wants him, but that she hates him because her desire for
him is so strong. She promises to do everything in her power to destroy
him because she needs to test his strength. Roark understands her
need and admires her.
Summary: Chapter 8
When they lay in bed together it was—as
it had to be . . . an act of violence. It was surrender, made the
more complete by the force of their resistance.
See Important Quotations Explained
Over the next few months, Dominique earns four commissions
for Keating. Toohey visits her and proposes an alliance against
Roark. She agrees. Dominique and Roark visit each other often, always
at night. Dominique revels in Roark’s strength and in her inability
to resist him. By day, Dominique devotes her energies to destroying Roark.
Roger Enright, furious with Dominique, takes her to see the unfinished
Enright House. Standing within the building’s frame makes Dominique
euphoric. She writes an article saying no one should be allowed
to live in the building. Enright is bewildered by this hidden praise
of Roark. Keating cannot decipher Dominique’s actions. Everyone
in New York thinks that Dominique is in love with Keating, but in
private she refuses to talk to him.
Summary: Chapter 9
When Toohey was a child, he hated anyone distinctive.
He tried to destroy the unique and disguised his cruelty behind
words of humility. To Toohey’s surprise, people believed him, and
he soon had a following. At Harvard, Toohey was especially popular
among wealthy heirs. As an adult, he began preaching submitting
oneself to the needs of others. Upon coming to New York, he became
a vocational adviser. He rarely counseled students to follow their
dreams, encouraging them to pursue undesirable careers instead.
Toohey then started publishing and became a celebrity.
Summary: Chapter 10
In June of 1929,
the Enright House opens. Roark receives more commissions. He signs
a contract with a man named Anthony Cord to build a fifty-story
skyscraper in Manhattan, his first office building. A man named
Kent Lansing approaches Roark. Lansing wants Roark to design a luxurious
hotel for Lansing’s corporation. After weeks of vicious debating,
Lansing wins over the rest of the corporation’s board and they select
Roark to build the Aquitania Hotel.
Hopton Stoddard, one of Toohey’s dependents, wants to
build a temple to religion. Toohey sees an opportunity and tells
Stoddard to hire Roark. Toohey coaches Stoddard to give a speech
that will win over Roark. Although Stoddard’s appearance and manner
disgust Roark, Stoddard’s arguments impress him. Stoddard says he
wants to build a temple to the human spirit and wants Roark to infuse
it with his own soul. Roark thinks perhaps he does not understand people
as well as he thought he did and agrees to design the temple.
Analysis: Chapters 6–10
Dominique and Roark’s love affair demonstrates the novel’s premise
that real passion involves struggle and submission. Dominique admires
Roark intensely and wants to protect him from the world’s stupidity,
but because she wants to test Roark’s strength she tries to destroy
him in print and rob him of his commissions. Dominique pits herself
against Roark in hopes that he will foil her attempts to ruin him,
which would thus disprove her cynical view of the world. Roark understands
her actions perfectly, and the public antagonism between Roark and
Dominique does not drive them apart, but brings them together. Dominique’s
attempts to crush Roark drive the normally frigid pair to a state
of ecstasy.
Rand contrasts the harsh and exquisite love of Dominique
and Roark with the tender cuddling of Keating and Katie. Keating
and Katie always treat each other with consideration and consequently their
love feels flat and devoid of real sexual charge. They also lack the
intuitive understanding of one another that Dominique and Roark
enjoy. Roark always understands what motivates Dominique’s behavior,
even when she acts in ways that most people would find perverse
or inexplicable. Keating seems to misunderstand the most basic facts
about Katie, not noticing, for example, that her very soul is being
threatened by her uncle. Even in love affairs, The Fountainhead favors
the strong over the weak, praising the violence of Roark’s relationship
over the meekness of Keating’s relationship.
Rand shows us that Toohey’s lifework will never succeed.
He spends his days trying to destroy the exceptional. He wants to
convince the world that mediocrity is the greatest attribute, thereby robbing
mankind of its idealism and ambition. However, Toohey can never
destroy every genius and he can never persuade everyone to aim for
mediocrity. Theoretical sympathy for the masses motivates Toohey,
who sees the accomplishments of great men as insults to the millions
who cannot achieve greatness in their own right. Tooley’s motivation
is also personal. He knows that he will never join the ranks of
the elite, so instead of wasting his energy attempting to join them,
he attempts to destroy them. He believes that if he can convince
the world that mediocrity is the greatest of attributes, if he can
rob mankind of its idealism and hope, if he can flatten all of society
into a smooth mass of unexceptional men, then he can become a great
man. In order to achieve his goals, Toohey employs the language and
arguments of religion and socialism. Rand was both a staunch atheist
and a great antisocialist. She found that both religion and socialism
ask humans to renounce themselves for a greater good. Such renunciation
of the ego is dangerous, argues Rand, as it opens an individual up
to manipulation. She makes both of these systems unappealing to
us by making them the ideals of the repellant Toohey.
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