Analysis : Chapters 11–15
The media is the most powerful and despicable public institution
in The Fountainhead. Although Rand published her
novel before television became ubiquitous, newspapers and magazines
are omnipresent in the novel and reach everybody. Toohey exploits
and manipulates the media to its full extent. His mediocrity prevents him
from expressing himself through his own art or architecture, but
he reaches the public and hurts Roark with his column in the Banner.
Because the media shapes opinions and knowledge, Toohey at first
hurts Roark simply by failing to write about him and thus keeping
him from the public eye. But Toohey must switch strategies after
Roark becomes known, and he begins using his newspaper column to
launch an attack on Roark’s reputation.
The extent of Toohey’s maliciousness becomes increasingly apparent
in these chapters, as he manipulates Stoddard into hiring Roark,
letting him begin the building, and then firing and suing him. Characters
react to Toohey’s repulsiveness in different ways. Dominique thinks
the horrible world deserves Toohey and his collectivist philosophy,
and so she does not try to stop him. Stephen Mallory sees Toohey
as the embodiment of the world’s brutal irrationality and tries
to stop Toohey by shooting him. Howard Roark poses the greatest
threat to Toohey and suffers the most at Toohey’s hands, and he
reacts with cold indifference to the crazed columnist. When Toohey
and Roark meet at Stoddard’s temple, Toohey expects the meeting
to be a fiery clash between two powerful enemies. Instead, Toohey
finds that Roark does not even think about him. Roark thinks of
Toohey not as an equal, but as a distasteful nuisance. Roark’s ability
to ignore Toohey confirms the latter’s mediocrity.
Dominique and Keating form an unhappy union that contrasts with
the idyllic marriage that earlier seems possible between Katie and
Keating. Both Katie and Keating feel that they could make each other
happy; Keating could protect Katie from Toohey and Katie could make
Keating feel honest and pure. Yet Keating is too weak and greedy
to know what is good for him. Dominique and Keating marry not to
find happiness, but because Dominique wants to punish herself. She
hates living in a world that does not understand Roark, and to fight
successfully on Roark’s behalf would mean stooping to the tactics
of the world she hates. The marriage frustrates Keating, who enjoys
the congratulations of his friends but fears his wife’s cold indifference.
Throughout The Fountainhead Rand illustrates
Roark’s individuality and strength on conviction by highlighting
his apathy toward or distaste for institutions. He gets expelled
from the Stanton Institute of Technology because his designs are
too modern and he is unwilling to conform to conventional standards.
But this conservative reaction to his work does not faze him, and,
wholly uninterested in working at a conventional design firm such
as Francon & Heyer, he seeks to work for the individualistic
Henry Cameron. Similarly, at the trial, in Chapter 12,
Roark makes no attempt to put forth a defense that could actually
win him the case. He does not care about the legal system or about
triumphing in it; rather, he seeks only to defend the integrity
of his work. He shows the same lack of concern for marriage; because
he sees it as a meaningless formality, he feels no jealousy toward
Keating about his marriage to Dominique and feels no compunction
about committing adultery with her. He considers all value systems
but his own utterly irrelevant.
