Book Review: FOUNTANHEAD
The novel begins with two characters; Howard Roark being expelled from Stanton and Peter Keating graduating. Both are architecture students. The reason for Howard Roark being expelled is his ‘stubbornness’ against learning from the historical architecture designs and conventional teachings. He is a person who believes in following his own instincts and creativity. On expulsion and graduation of Roark and Keating respectively, they both go to New York City to begin their careers - Keating gets into a reputed firm Francon & Heyer, and Roark starts to work with a man he believed understands his goal, Henry Cameron. In initial days, Keating becomes more successful, he pushes out others at higher positions and captures their positions in his firm, and also achieves commissions for his firm. He designs the projects of his clients in their desired forms to please them and gain prestige. He succeeds in performing his mundane tasks of making conventionally designed buildings, as most of his clients don’t have any interest in creative designs. Clients are more focused on showing off their wealth and nothing more than that. A journalist, Ellsworth Toohey who is in-charge of many organizations in the city, highly appreciates Keating for his designs. On the other hand, Roark fails to find job as he denies to compromise with his beliefs and design useless features on his project buildings. In order to support himself, he joins a job in a quarry owned by Guy Francon, as manual labor. On his work, he meets Dominique Francon, his female equivalent, and a love-affair starts, which proves painful for both of them; Dominique wishes to destroy him as he matches the potential of her "ideal" and she doesn’t want any one to represent him in their world. Roark fails to make her stop this. As a revenge, not only does Domninque get jobs for Peter Keating which were to go to Roark, also she marries Keating, Roark's competitor Not only that, later she marries Gail Wynand, and joins his conspiracy to obliterate Roark, however they had their own motivations. Dominique meets with Gail Wynand, the owner of a very prominent set of newspaper in order to discuss a building he is planning to build. She gains commission for Keating and marries Wynand, as he is a stronger enemy to Roark. However, a point to be noted here is that, Wynand is a deeper personality than Keating, as he realizes what is right, but he follows another path to gain power over people. Wynand decides to build a home for Dominique and him, and he asks Roark for his architecture and he realizes that Roark is a person who is hard to get corrupt. They two become good friends. Dominique observes Roark from a distance, and doesn’t get close to Roark. She knew that nothing can be change anymore about what are their feelings for each other.
Keating, in the mean time feels hallow and unhappy. Also he looses his sense of designing and asks Roark to take over designing the Cortlandt Homes project for him, Roark accepts the offer on the condition to have complete control over the construction design and process. However, finally the homes do not get built according to his will and hence, Roark destroys the homes with dynamite. He is arrested and is sued for that, he faces court trial but is proved non-guilty. Roark and Dominique come close together, leaving Wynand alone. However, he continues his contract with Roark to build his Wynand Building, in the design as they had discussed during their friendship. Roark, with his strong beliefs, perseverance and creativity comes out as hero of the story and wins over the worldly constraints!
SUBMITTED By;
PAVAN KUMAR CHILUKA
PGP ABM-II