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
When Keating is away from the office, Francon sends for Roark. He tells him they have an odd client who wants an office building designed to look like Cameron’s Dana Building. They have shown the client sketches made by three others, but he has refused them all. Francon asks Roark to make some sketches since he knows “Cameron’s tricks,” but he also adds that they can’t let such a “crude thing” be a product of their firm and tells Roark to use the Doric Greek style. Roark asks to “design it as Henry Cameron would have wanted it done,” which makes Francon angry. He is insulted by Roark’s criticism of his aesthetics. Roark tells him, “I’m begging you,” but Francon demands that he “follow [his] instructions as to the Classic treatment of the façade.” Roark says he can’t do it, and Francon fires him.
Roark is a man of integrity and refuses to compromise on his ideas, even when that means he will lose his job as a consequence. He cannot bear to have Cameron’s aesthetic marred by the Doric Greek style.
Themes
Roark sets about looking for a job, “without anger or hope.” The architects he meets “[do] not care to find out if he [is] good.” Some ask to see his sketches, and it hurts Roark to show them to indifferent eyes. Sometimes, he visits Cameron in New Jersey and they talk about architecture. After being rejected everywhere, Roark tries to re-interview with places that had turned him down, but many have heard he was expelled from Stanton and fired from Francon and Heyer and they think that “the decision ha[s] been made for them.”
While Roark feels no pain with regard to his personal circumstances, he does feel hurt to show his drawings, which he cares deeply about, to people who are indifferent to them. Many prospective employers evaluate him on his circumstances rather than his work, and they refuse to hire him because other people have found him unworthy. This highlights most people’s attitudes to the decisions they make—they incorporate other people’s standards as their own.
Themes
In September, still unemployed, Roark reads an article by Gordon L. Prescott in which he writes that architecture is suffering from a lack of new talent and ideas. Roark finds the article honest, and he goes to Prescott’s office with some hope. But Prescott tells him he has no patience with “visionaries” and that he finds Roark’s drawings impractical and immature. He shows Roark the work of someone he considers a tremendous talent, and Roark finds the work absurd.
Gordon L. Prescott is a disappointing hypocrite, and Roark discovers that his actual ideas are very different from what he’d stated in his article.
Themes
In October, Roark still hasn’t found a job and is attending interviews. He realizes that most people now think he will never be an architect, even before he has started. He shrugs when he thinks this because all his job rejections are only “unsubstantial incidents” in his path; he is certain where he is going.
Despite the outpouring of rejections he encounters, Roark’s self-confidence remains intact, and he doesn’t doubt that he will be an architect.
Themes
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