The Fountainhead (Rand)

Growing up in the Soviet Union and believing in political freedom and the rights of the individual, Ayn Rand wrote The Fountainhead as a mark of respect to the creative individual. The protagonist, Howard Roark, is a pioneering architect whose clever and advanced designs are not appreciated or understood and are hence rejected by the rest of society. Like many inventors and creative thinkers, Roark struggles to gain the acceptance of the conservative and traditionally orientated masses, who are accustomed to following established norms and are fearful of change. The central theme of the novel is individualism being opposed to or conflicting with collectivism. It is about the clash between those who ‘think for themselves and those who allow others to think for them’.

The most palpable instance of collectivism in The Fountainhead is the political one. The novel’s villain, Ellsworth Thooey, is a Marxist intellectual, waxing lyrical about socialism to society. He maintains that a single individual has no worth in himself but exists only to aid his community. In the 1930s context of the novel, collectivism was fast becoming a predominant aspect of the social and political world. Rand witnessed this first hand when the Communists took over her country (Russia), then in surrounding Europe, when in Italy, the Fascists came to power and in Germany, Hitler and the National Socialists took control on the political level.

Roark, as an enlightened being, is opposed by an assortment of conservative collectivists—believing that a person should conform to others, that a person should rise up against others, or, politically, that we should exist under a Fascist or Communist dictatorship in which the individual is completely at the hands of the governing bodies. Regarding this aspect of the book, Rand sets her protagonist up against various collectivist ideas that exist in America.

In September 1939, as an allied front, Nazi Germany and the SU, entered Poland by fore- sending the country and most of surrounding Europe into the most damaging war of social history. In the next decade collectivism was on the brink of military occupation of not just Europe but the world at large. In the US, many politicians, academics and members of the white-collar workforce thought of the Communist and Nazi regimes as gallant endeavours- as innovative efforts to highlight an individual’s moral duties to his comrades and his country. Prior to the war, there was ideological support in the US for both the Communists and the Nazis; even after the war, support among the academics and scholars existed for Communism and continues even today.

In one respect, Rand created The Fountainhead as a ardent caution to society of the sheer dangers of collectivism, no matter of what political variety. While experiencing these horrors in Europe for herself, her novel can be interpreted as a forewarning to prevent the same difficulties in the US.