What is she trying to do…..going to start a religion? And she probably would have succeeded if she were an orator as good as a writer. Every character in this novel is worth noticing, admiring and despising. On one hand there is HOWARD ROARK….an undisputable champion and a great talent in the field of architecture…..as solid as a rock about his principles. He is quiet able to carry forward the legacy of the all those creators and inventors without whom mankind would not have been able to make the world comfortable enough for himself. He is unmoved by theories of sacrificing his great art works for the sake of common people. Life should be lead in a way that makes a man happy and he should never compromise on his work at which he is best. He has been forced to make subtle changes in his works and reasons put forward. He has never been recognized for his work and fame is a word never experienced by him.
The book despises every religion in the world that makes the world a place …..where individual talents are suppressed to make way for the mass…. where a man is forced to sacrifice his talent for no reason whatsoever. ELSEWORTH TOOHEY is the champion of this thought. He is an ideal of the masses. His nonsense is a preaching. His self sacrifice theories are sermons and he leads to a world where your happiness is nothing if it is unable to satisfy the people surrounding you, the society. He is termite both in appearance and thoughts. He is a gas that is corroding the environment and he is growing at such pace that it will soon eat away all the talent in the world and then on man will depend on other….this other will depend on some different other and so on. Ultimately they all will depend on him and this is his method of making power. There will never be a free will, a free thought, any original idea and then the whole world will be equal. Yes, he is an ideal. At least everyone in the world thinks so.
This world is not a place for talents like ROARK. I m going to destroy each and every talent and because I know this something I can’t endure, I will make myself suffer. To suffer because I am a part of this world where a purist can’t survive. This is a world of second-handers and I will make them suffer unknowingly by eliminating their most prized possessions. This is GAIL WYNAND and DOMINIQUE FRANKON. These two are the characters that startle me the most. WYNAND is an extremely powerful man. He has gained power by giving the world what they always wanted to gain. He was the head of newspaper BANNER which came forward with each and every story of pain, atrocity, and humiliation for the human race. He made them suffer. DOMINIQUE was of her own kind. She wrote very article in her own way……despising the talent with each word and yet there was a theme of appreciation….in the core there was a humiliation for those who made it possible. She always try to make herself suffer by disguising herself, as a creature devoid of self, a writer worth preposterous talks in useless columns.
This is such a good philosophical book that at times it becomes a great psychological adventure. You can't take your eyes off when you are reading and you can’t stop thinking about it when you are doing something else, that is rare until you finish the book. Each and every character has its own charm and superb dialogues to defend their theories. While reading you feel that you are diving in the ocean of minds all those people whom you have known to be great in one way or the other. You know that there are two ways of getting success and when you chose the shortcut by compromising with your soul, you always fret over simple issues that can make you lose your fame or money. You become PETER KEATING whose ideal is TOOHEY. But if you chose the pure way you are frightened of nothing. Not even money or rarest of success possible in the world can make you do something with which your heart and soul doesn’t agree upon. You become HOWARD ROARK.
I know that whatever I say, as much I praise the book is not going to force you to get a copy of the book in your hand instantly, because whatever I write is not going to make it THE FOUNTAIN HEAD and because I am not AYN RAND.
