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
Dominique and Wynand live an isolated life in Wynand’s penthouse and enjoy each other’s company without going out or inviting visitors. When Dominique realizes she is enjoying this, she insists on going out and inviting guests, which Wynand doesn’t protest. Yet, he ensures that there is nothing about her published in his papers and stops any attempt to draw her into public life. However, when she expresses her displeasure with the Banner, he says he would never “change the Banner or sacrifice it” for anyone.
Dominique is enjoying being married to Wynand, and tries to dampen their pleasure in each other by inviting the outside world, which she detests, into their lives. Despite his love for Dominique, Wynand, like Roark, makes it clear to her that his work at the Banner will always be more important to him.
Themes
At work, Wynand works with renewed energy and nothing changes in his policies. Alvah Scarret is pleased, telling Toohey they were worried about the marriage for no reason. Toohey says that Wynand seems happy, which is a dangerous thing.
To Toohey, personal happiness is always dangerous because he believes that a happy person is too independent for him to rule over.
Themes
Sally Brent, one of the reporters from the Banner, goes against Wynand’s orders and interviews Dominique for a story. Dominique agrees to talk to her and says things like all she wants from “life is to make Gail happy” and “be a good wife and mother.” That evening, Brent is fired. Later, she writes a disparaging article on Wynand’s love life which is published in New Frontiers.
While Dominique appreciates Wynand’s gesture of trying to keep her out of the Banner, she grabs the opportunity to debase herself in the newspaper because she knows it will cause her pain, which is what she seeks. Also, she is out to prove to Wynand that the Banner is toxic and this is the first step she takes to do that.
Themes
One evening, when Dominique knows that Wynand is tired and wants to stay in, she insists they go to watch Ike’s play, No Skin Off Your Nose. He protests, saying he doesn’t want to watch it, but she insists, saying that the Banner’s own critic, Jules Fougler, praised it, and so did other Banner journalists like Scarret, Toohey, and Sally Brent. Wynand quietly agrees to go, and the play is so terrible that the audience is confused. Fougler had made it clear “that anyone unable to enjoy this play [is], basically, a worthless human being,” so many pretend to like it.
Dominique’s next step to get Wynand to admit how terrible the Banner is, is to take him to watch the play that was praised in his own paper. While Dominique and Wynand realize that the play is awful, they also see that most of the audience pretends to like it.
Themes
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When Dominique and Wynand get home, she tells him that he has now seen the “crowning achievement” of his life’s work. He agrees that the play “made [him] sick” but says that it would have been even worse if a great play had been offered to that audience, since they don’t deserve one. He says he did suffer while watching it, but that the “pain only [goes] down to a certain point.” Dominique screams for him to stop, surprising him. He wants to know what made her so upset, but she doesn’t tell him.
Like Dominique, Wynand thinks that the world doesn’t deserve great art. And like Roark, he talks about how his pain only goes down to a certain point—the similarity between the two men is what likely upsets Dominique here. She married Wynand expecting him to be a vile exhibitionist, and is shocked that he has the same high-minded principles that Roark does.
Themes
