Howard Roark

Howard Roark is the protagonist of The Fountainhead, an architect who designs by his own judgment and refuses every arrangement that would require him to design by anyone else's. He is Ayn Rand's first full presentation of an ideal man, and the character through whom she dramatised independence as the primary virtue.

“I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.”
~ Howard Roark, The Fountainhead

The theme

Rand described the theme of The Fountainhead as individualism and collectivism in a man's soul, and the novel works it out through the contrast between Roark and the people around him rather than through political argument. The distinction it turns on is not selfish against generous but first-hand against second-hand: whether a person's judgment, values, and sense of his own worth originate in his own contact with reality, or are taken from other people.

Roark is the first-hander. Peter Keating, who has no independent preferences and rises by pleasing whoever can advance him, is the second-hander presented sympathetically enough to be recognisable. Ellsworth Toohey understands the distinction perfectly and works to destroy the capacity for it in others. Gail Wynand is the hardest case in the book: a man of Roark's stature who sought power over people instead of over his work, and who is destroyed by the discovery of what that made him dependent on.

Why he does not care what they think

Readers regularly find Roark's indifference to his enemies implausible, and the forum asks about it directly. The answer is not that he is cold or that he has suppressed a reaction.

On this account self-esteem is not conferred by other people's opinions, so other people's opinions cannot take it away. Roark is not enduring the contempt of his critics by an effort of will; the contempt does not reach the thing they are aiming at, because his estimate of his work rests on the work and on his own judgment of it. What can hurt him is losing the chance to build, and that is exactly what the novel shows hurting him.

This is also the answer to the question about his motivation. He does not build for money, fame, charity, or the improvement of anyone. He builds because building is the activity in which his capacities are used, which is what Objectivism means by productiveness as a virtue and by purpose as a value. Money and clients are the means; the work is the end. See Egoism and Pride.

Cortlandt

Roark agrees to design Cortlandt Homes, a government housing project, on one condition: that Peter Keating submit it as his own and that it be built exactly as designed. Roark takes no money and seeks no credit. The design is then altered by others during construction, and Roark dynamites the building.

Rand's argument, delivered through Roark's speech at his trial, is that the design was his, that he gave it on a single condition and received nothing else, that the condition was broken, and that what he destroyed was therefore his own work, given conditionally and taken on false terms. On this reading the wrong is done to Roark first, and the dynamiting is the recovery of something never validly transferred.

The objection is the one members of this forum make repeatedly, and it is not weak. The building was the physical property of parties who had made no agreement with Roark and had done nothing to him. His agreement with Keating was unenforceable and known by him to be so. Breach of an agreement is a matter for a court, and the ordinary remedy is damages. Destroying a structure with explosives in a city endangers people who are not party to anything. On the Objectivist principle that the initiation of force is impermissible and that objective law exists precisely so that disputes are not settled by the parties themselves, Roark's act looks like the thing the philosophy forbids.

The state of the question. This is genuinely disputed among Objectivists rather than settled, and the article records it as disputed. The considerations usually offered in Roark's defence are that Rand wrote the novel before Objectivism was systematised and was dramatising a moral principle rather than drafting a legal code; that the courtroom speech is an argument about who owned the design rather than a claim that self-help is generally permissible; and that Rand herself never presented the act as a model for conduct in a society with functioning courts. The considerations against are the ones above, and they have never been answered in a way that satisfies everyone.

Readers should also notice that the novel does not present the act as costless or obviously right: Roark is arrested, tried, and has to persuade a jury, and Rand chose to stage the defence rather than to have the question not arise.

Roark and Galt

The comparison is a standing forum topic. The short form is that they are ideal men in different situations rather than different ideals.

Roark operates inside a hostile society and goes on working in it. He takes commissions from people he does not admire, forms a friendship with Wynand, and never withdraws. John Galt has concluded that continuing to produce under the prevailing terms is what sustains them, and acts on that conclusion by leaving and persuading others to leave. Roark's problem is how to do his work in the world as it is; Galt's is what to do when that has become impossible. The difference is a difference in the premise about how far the rot has gone, not in the characters' values.

Common misunderstandings

That Roark is antisocial or hates people. He values the people worth valuing, works with clients, and has the closest friendship in the book. What he refuses is to hold their opinions as the source of his judgment.
That the novel says an architect should never compromise with a client. Roark compromises on budget, materials, and program constantly. What he will not alter is the design's integrity, and the novel is careful about which of those is which.
That Roark is an egotist in the ordinary sense. Rand's point is nearly the reverse: an egotist in the common usage needs other people to confirm his importance, which makes him dependent on them. Roark does not need the confirmation.
That the Cortlandt dynamiting is Objectivist doctrine. It is an episode in a novel published in 1943, and it is argued about by Objectivists to this day. See above.
That the courtroom speech is a statement of Objectivist politics. It is a statement about independence and about the relation between creators and second-handers. The political philosophy came later.
That Roark and Dominique's first encounter is presented as a model of anything. See the discussion of that scene at Sex, which addresses it directly.

Discussion

References

Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead. Bobbs-Merrill, 1943.
Rand, Ayn. Introduction to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of The Fountainhead, 1968.

External links

Second-Handers at the Ayn Rand Lexicon