Crowds and groups of people, whenever they appear in the novel, symbolize inefficiency and irrationality. Since the novel places a high premium on individualism, collectives of any kind—like associations, councils, and audiences—are shown in a negative light. According to Roark (and Rand), a person is incapable of rational thought when lumped in with a group, which is why Roark refuses to “co-operate” or “collaborate” with other architects, even if that means refusing a prestigious commission like the exposition for a World Fair. Parties, like those thrown by Kiki Holcombe, are shown to be petty affairs with trivial banter and insecure people, while committees and boards are repeatedly shown to be inefficient and pointless. For example, Keating’s Council of American Builders achieves no results and meets without an agenda, other than listening to speeches and drinking root beer. In the novel, even the crowds on the street are an unthinking mass, filled with a resentment they do not quite understand.
Crowds and Groups Quotes in The Fountainhead
“The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape [of the building]. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it’s made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. […] Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important—what others have done? […] Why does the number of those others take the place of truth?”
“You’re fired,” said Cameron. […] “You’re too good for what you want to do with yourself. It’s no use, Roark. Better now than later.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s no use wasting what you’ve got on an ideal that you’ll never reach. It’s no use, taking that marvelous thing you have and making a torture rack for yourself out of it. Sell it, Roark. […] You’ve got what they’ll pay you for, and pay plenty, if you use it their way. Accept them, Roark. Compromise. Compromise now, because you’ll have to later, anyway, only then you’ll have gone through things you’ll wish you hadn’t. You don’t know. I do. Save yourself from that. […]”
“Did you do that?”
Then came the voice.
“My friends,” it said, simply and solemnly. “My brothers,” it added softly, involuntarily, both full of emotion and smiling apologetically at the emotion. […]
It was not a voice, it was a miracle. It unrolled as a velvet banner. […] It was the voice of a giant.
Keating stood, his mouth open. He did not hear what the voice was saying. He heard the beauty of the sounds without meaning. He felt no need to know the meaning; he could accept anything, he would be led blindly anywhere. […]
Keating looked at Catherine. There was no Catherine; there was only […] a nameless thing in which she was being swallowed.
“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered. His voice was savage. He was afraid.
“If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted—I’d have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else. We’re all so tied together. We’re all in a net, the net is waiting, and we’re pushed into it by a single desire. You want a thing and it’s precious to you. Do you know who is standing ready to tear it out of your hands? You can’t know, it may be so involved and so far away, but someone is ready, and you’re afraid of them all. And you cringe and crawl and you beg and you accept them—just so they’ll let you keep it. And look at whom you come to accept.”
“Just drop that fool delusion that you’re better than everybody else—and go to work. […] You’ll have people running after you, you’ll have clients, you’ll have friends, you’ll have an army of draftsmen to order around! […]”
[…]
“Look, Peter, I believe you. I know that you have nothing to gain by saying this. I know more than that. I know that you don’t want me to succeed—it’s all right, I’m not reproaching you, I’ve always known it—you don’t want me ever to reach these things you’re offering me. And yet you’re pushing me on to reach them, quite sincerely. […] And it’s not love for me, because that wouldn’t make you so angry—and so frightened….Peter, what is it that disturbs you about me as I am?”
“And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor’s pocket? No, it’s not as easy as that. If that were all, I’d say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren’t. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is something one doesn’t borrow or pawn. And yet, if I were asked to choose a symbol for humanity as we know it, I wouldn’t choose a cross nor an eagle nor a lion and unicorn. I’d choose three gilded balls.”
“What you’re thinking is much worse than the truth. I don’t believe it matters to me—that they’re going to destroy it. Maybe it hurts so much that I don’t even know I’m hurt. But I don’t think so. If you want to carry it for my sake, don’t carry more than I do. I’m not capable of suffering completely. I never have. It goes only down to a certain point and then it stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it’s not really pain. You mustn’t look like that.”
“Where does it stop?”
“Where I can think of nothing and feel nothing except that I designed that temple. I built it. Nothing else can seem very important.”
“You’re not here, Dominique. You’re not alive. Where’s your I?”
“Where’s yours, Peter?” she asked quietly.
He sat still, his eyes wide. […]
“You’re beginning to see, aren’t you, Peter? Shall I make it clearer. You’ve never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn’t want to show it. You wanted an act to help your act—a beautiful, complicated act, all twists, trimmings and words. All words. […] You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. […] Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes.”
“What achievement is there for a critic in praising a good play? None whatever. The critic is then nothing but a kind of glorified messenger boy between author and public. […] I’m sick of it. I have a right to wish to impress my own personality upon people. Otherwise, I shall become frustrated—and I do not believe in frustration. But if a critic is able to put over a perfectly worthless play—ah, you do perceive the difference!”
“If you want me, you’ll have to let me do it all, alone. I don’t work with councils.”
“You wish to reject an opportunity like this, a shot in history, a chance of world fame, practically a chance of immortality…”
“I don’t work with collectives. I don’t consult, I don’t cooperate, I don’t collaborate.”
“It’s what I couldn’t understand about people for a long time. They have no self. They live within others. They live second-hand. Look at Peter Keating. […] He’s paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself he’s been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy—all that which comes from others. […] And isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. […] They’re second-handers.”
He walked at random. He owned nothing, but he was owned by any part of the city. It was right that the city should direct his way and that he should be moved by the pull of chance corners. Here I am, my masters, I am coming to salute you and acknowledge, wherever you want me, I shall go as I’m told. I’m the man who wanted power.
[…] You were a ruler of men. You held a leash. A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends.
My masters, the anonymous, the unselected. They gave me a penthouse, an office, a yacht. To them, to any one of them who wished, for the sum of three cents, I sold Howard Roark.
“The ‘common good’ of a collective –a race, a class, a state—was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. […]
“Now observe the results of a society built on the principle of individualism. This, our country. The noblest country in the history of men. The country of greatest achievement, greatest prosperity, greatest freedom. This country was not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of altruism. It was based on man’s right to the pursuit of happiness. His own happiness. Not anyone else’s.”
Crowds and Groups Symbol Timeline in The Fountainhead
