Yesterday, I finished The Fountainhead. An avid reader of Ayn Rand’s fiction and philosophical essays, it was high time that I read the earlier of her two popular novels. After finishing the novel, I recalled the oft-repeated criticism that Ayn Rand’s characters are one dimensional, unrealistic, caricatures.
I don’t think this criticism applies to Atlas Shrugged. The villains and heroes are certainly selectively recreated proponents of competing philosophical systems. Ayn Rand is not a naturalist. That is her artistic prerogative—one I am grateful for.
But fine, perhaps some of her readers prefer naturalistic writing. Perhaps the characters of Atlas Shrugged, despite their internal conflicts, are simply too romantic for some readers. I am not one such reader; I find Dagny, Hank, Francisco, The Wetnurse, Stadler, and Jim to be incredibly nuanced.
I can make neither heads nor tails of this criticism levied at The Fountainhead. In fact, I have the opposite problem with the behavior and actions of the heroes of this novel.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
Gail Wynand was not born to be a second-hander but becomes one. Even after marrying Dominique and befriending Howard Roark—after seeing that the good is possible to him on this earth—he chooses power, wealth, and vanity over integrity. This is tragic but poetic; Gail is Roark’s foil. He is not the enemy, per se, he’s not the mindless beast devouring the world. He is Lucifer: a fallen angel; a creator turned destroyer.
Roark, on the other hand, is meant to be integrity incarnate; the man whose will to create is incorruptible by the likes of Ellsworth Toohey. Roark, for the vast majority of the novel, demonstrates his wanton disregard for the obstacles placed before him, no matter how hard the going gets.
Despite his rhetoric and ethical alignment therewith for the majority of the novel, Roark demolishes the Cortlandt building. Instead of shrugging off the bastardization of his creation to create something else, he destroys.
Destruction should be left to the likes of Toohey, the collectivist, Wynand, the nihilist, and Keating, the lukewarm nothing. Destruction is the proper province of the bad. Creation is the exultant realm reserved to heroes. A hero should never stoop to the means of his antipodes.
Say what you want about The Fountainhead and the character of Howard Roark. But one cannot persuasively argue that Roark is an uncomplicated, oversimplified, dimensionless character. Quite the opposite is true.
I encourage all of my readers to consume The Fountainhead in book or audio form. The ethical failure of the novel’s protagonist makes the novel all the more engaging—if not more pleasing—to read.