The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead

by

Ayn Rand

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The Fountainhead: Part 1: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
John Erik Snyte looks at Roark’s sketches, finds them “Radical but remarkable,” and wants him to start work at once on designing a department store. He asks one of his men to help get Roark set up, and he asks Roark if he can work on it all night. Roark agrees. Roark’s pencil trembles as he begins drawing, and he feels “anger at himself for the weakness of allowing this job to mean so much to him.”
Roark is happy to be able to design again, and dives into work. He takes such pleasure in his work after his long break from it that his usual composure is affected. This angers him because he understands the work he is doing now is not worthy of his complete investment in it.
Themes
Rationality vs. Emotion Theme Icon
Snyte is a prominent architect who has built in many styles. His strategy is to let his five designers battle it out for the winning design for each commission, and he then adds bits of the other four to the final design.  He believes that “[s]ix minds are better than one.” Roark is to be his “Modernistic” man, and Roark understands that he will never see “his work erected, only pieces of it, which he prefer[s] not to see.” Yet, he is “free to design as he wishe[s],” so he accepts it.
Snyte embodies the architect who believes in the ideas of the collective, and his final products are a jumble of various design aesthetics. While Roark believes that a building must have integrity and be governed by a single idea and purpose, Snyte is the exact opposite.
Themes
Integrity vs. Conformity Theme Icon
The building-trades union is on a strike. While most of the newspapers support the strikers, Wynand’s publications don’t—Francon knows it is because Wynand’s corporation owns the hotel where the strike started. Francon and Heyer are the architects for this hotel and Francon had hoped that it would open the door to more commissions for them from the Wynand group. This is why the strike makes him anxious—he worries that Wynand will blame him for the stalled project.
The Wynand enterprises seem to have great clout, with Francon, too, attempting to win their favor. While the Banner markets itself as a newspaper for the people, it doesn’t support the strikers since its parent company stands to lose money from the strike. This situation is a commentary on how corporations lack integrity and take on whatever values lead to them profiting.
Themes
Integrity vs. Conformity Theme Icon
Francon snaps at Keating because of his worries, and Keating goes home in a bad mood. He calls Catherine and finds her voice soothing. He wants to see her but doesn’t want to talk about her uncle, Ellsworth Toohey, who is a strike sympathizer and will be speaking at a meeting that evening. Since Toohey writes a column called “One Small Voice” in Wynand’s Banner, some think he won’t appear at the meeting to avoid angering Wynand, while others say he’ll “sacrifice himself” and go, since he’s “the only honest man in print.”
Toohey has expanded his influence from being an architectural critic to taking sides in a political situation. As always, he stands with the masses.
Themes
Religion and Morality Theme Icon
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When Keating goes to Catherine’s apartment, she isn’t home. He feels a sinking sense of loneliness take hold of him and then he goes to the meeting hall to look for her, where he finds her handing out pamphlets. He calls her a “fool” but Catherine is excited, and she tells him that Toohey’s decision to come here despite knowing it would anger Wynand makes her “believe in all human beings.”
Catherine is in complete awe of her uncle. Toohey has apparently made the decision to appear here despite Wynand being against the strike. Toohey will take Wynand on again later in the novel—at that time, it will be an all-out war. First, though, there is this small battle where Toohey makes it clear where his sympathies lie.
Themes
Love and Selfishness Theme Icon
Together, Keating and Catherine listen to a suave and cultured activist named Austen Heller speak. He talks in an unemotional way about how the state must have only minimal power over people, and that “the freedom to agree or disagree” is the foundation of society. He then calls Wynand “an exquisite bastard who has been rather noisy lately,” which worries Catherine because she fears Wynand will take out his frustration on Toohey.
Heller stresses individual freedom and the limited power of the state in his speech, well-reasoned ideas that are delivered without much emotion. The crowd appreciates his denunciation of Wynand but isn’t affected by much else, showing that reason isn’t popular with the masses.
Themes
Individualism Theme Icon
Rationality vs. Emotion Theme Icon
Toohey is greeted by deafening applause from the crowds and he begins speaking in a voice that is full of emotion and that Keating thinks of as the “voice of a giant.” Keating thinks that he has “no need to know the meaning” of the words that Toohey is uttering and that “he would be led blindly anywhere” by that voice. Toohey calls for unity and says it is time for everyone to “merge his self in a great current.”
Toohey is hugely popular with the crowds, and his emotional, hypnotic voice affects even Keating, who has no opinion on the strike until that point. Keating feels the force of Toohey’s voice can convince him to do anything. Toohey calls for people to surrender themselves into a unified whole, returning to his theme of people giving up selfhood in order to achieve collective unity.
Themes
Individualism Theme Icon
Rationality vs. Emotion Theme Icon
Religion and Morality Theme Icon
Quotes
After the strike is settled, business booms once again at Francon and Heyer, and this is why Keating is surprised when he sees Francon come in looking upset one morning. Later that day, Keating sees a young woman at the office, who he thinks looks beautiful but cruel, and he discovers that it is Dominique Francon. In the Banner, she has written about one of the houses which Keating had designed, criticizing its flourishes and excesses. Keating hears her laughing coldly while Francon reprimands her for embarrassing his firm, and Keating is torn between the desire to meet her and to never see her again.
The first impression Dominique makes on Keating is that she is beautiful but cold—or in other words, unemotional. Roark, too, makes people uncomfortable by his lack of emotion. Dominique’s aesthetics, too, seem to align with Roark’s, since she has criticized a building’s flourishes. She comes across as independent and opinionated, and unafraid of others’ opinions or the consequences of her actions on them—in these ways, she is similar to Roark.
Themes
Individualism Theme Icon
Integrity vs. Conformity Theme Icon
Rationality vs. Emotion Theme Icon
Love and Selfishness Theme Icon