The Power of the Moral Ideal in The Fountainhead Essay -- Fountainhead

The Power of the Moral Ideal in The Fountainhead  Ã‚      The Fountainhead is a novel of gigantic proportions.   It deals with great talent and great mediocrity, with great love and great hatred, with great ambition and equally great complacence.   It unpretentiously chooses to steer clear of the much hyped common man, with his commonplace dreams and aspirations. The theme of The Fountainhead can be summarized in the famous line by the author-"man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress".   The novel exalts egotism, which is generally looked upon in our world with great dislike.   The protagonist, Howard Roark, is a man used by the author to exemplify this philosophy.   He is a man of outstanding genius whose only fault seems to be that the world is not ready for him.   This man's genius remains unrecognized by the society, he is shunned and ridiculed, but no number of attempts to break him, to force him to confine his work within the parameters laid by the society succeed.   The inborn talent in this man and the fountainhead of inspiration in his soul cannot be restrained by any force on earth. Individualism is the doctrine on which the novel is based." No man can live for another".   If a man has talent, and recognises the potential within him, he has the right to be an egotist.   Egotism must not be equated with false pride.   A man who believes in himself acquires the strength to combat the whole world.   Such is the case of Howard Roark.   What puts him on a plane much higher than every other character in this novel is the sheer power and self conviction he exudes in the face of the gravest adversity.   Howard Roark is as powerful as he is not because he has any control over the society or the minds of others, but because ... ...redible strength can never be destroyed .he may physically be open to destruction, but the fountainhead -of inspiration within him and his amazing self-conviction can never be shattered. Works Cited and Consulted Berliner, Michael S., ed. Letters of Ayn Rand. By Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton, 1995. Branden, Barbara. The Passion of Ayn Rand: A biography. New York: Doubleday, 1986a Branden, Nathaniel. My Years with Ayn Rand. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999. Garmong, Dina. Personal interview. 2 Nov. 1999. Peikoff, Leonard. The Philosophy of Objectivism, A Brief Summary. Stein and Day, 1982. Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead. New York: Plume, 1994. The Ayn Rand Institute. "A Brief Biography of Ayn Rand" [Online] available www.aynrand.org/aynrand/biography.html, 1995 Walker, Jeff. The Ayn Rand Cult. Carus Publishing Company, 1999