Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Fountainhead, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Individualism
Integrity vs. Conformity
Rationality vs. Emotion
Love and Selfishness
Religion and Morality
Summary
Analysis
The board of directors of the Wynand papers meet without being summoned by Wynand. The strike has been on for two months. The directors reprimand Wynand, asking him to call off this stunt and telling him this is a “business organization” and not “a charitable society for the defense of personal friends.” Mitchell Layton, who is the biggest shareholder in the Banner after Wynand, calls for “teamwork, one big orchestra” to run the paper rather than one man at the helm. Alvah Scarret tells Wynand that it’s no use fighting any more, and to reverse his position on Cortlandt and to re-hire Toohey. The choice is between this and closing the Banner. Wynand finally agrees to reverse his position on Cortlandt and re-hire the other employees he fired—but not Toohey. The board accepts.
Wynand loses his will to fight when he realizes he will have to shut the Banner if he insists on doing things his way. He has always loved his work, and cannot bear to see the newspaper shut. The board of directors has teamed up against him—Toohey has carefully arranged to have it so, with his own man Mitchell Layton owning a big share of the Banner—and Wynand chooses to compromise rather than shut the paper.
Themes
Wynand walks out of the office without talking to Dominique and goes to his penthouse. He then walks the streets of the city at night, thinking that he used to think he owned the city but in reality, everyone in the city had owned him. His “masters, the anonymous, the unselected” had given him “a penthouse, an office, a yacht. To them, to any one of them who wished, for the sum of three cents, [he] sold Howard Roark.”
Wynand sees the new edition of the Banner, and he sees an editorial that Scarret has penned in Wynand’s name, saying that he has been too lenient with Roark and that he “must be made to bear the fullest penalty the law can impose on him.” He walks to Hell’s Kitchen and realizes that he has never run things—he only added himself “to the things they ran.” He thinks that “those who lack the courage of their own greatness” can never be forgiven.
Again, Wynand understands that he hasn’t had any power at all. He also realizes that he has the potential for greatness—this is what Roark and Dominique recognized in him—but knows that he lacks the courage to be a truly great person.
Themes
