Objectivism In Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand’s ideology of Objectivism is presented in arguably her most famous publication, The Fountainhead. Objectivism, as described by Rand, relates to reality, reason, self-interest, and capitalism. While a complicated philosophy, Rand wrote most of her works trying to publicize her ideas and to spread them to a wider audience. The primary protagonist, Howard Roark, is an architect thrown out of school because of his refusal to conform to tradition design. Peter Keating is Roark’s foil, always conforming to climb the professional ladder and make personal gains. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand showcases two characters that contrast each other greatly, Howard Roark and Peter Keating, to show the shortcomings of Keating as well as the perfection …show more content…
Keating corrals his architectural designs to fit inside the socially acceptable realm of traditional architecture. At the Stanton Institute, he graduates and takes a job at a prestigious design firm, climbing his way to the top in many immoral ways. In the case of Lucius Heyer, Keating realizes that to continue his professional advancement, he must get Heyer out of the way. To do this, he pretends to be friendly with Heyer, until he finds a few financial issues with his accounts. Then, following Heyer’s first stroke, Keating accuses the man of wrongdoing, causing a second stroke that kills him. Effectively, Keating killed Heyer to climb higher in the firm. Yet Keating continues to follow traditional designs, often looking to Keating for advice, but never straying from what he has been taught to conform to. Keating admits his leech-like nature to Roark, saying “Howard, I’m a parasite. I’ve been a parasite all my life. You designed my best projects at Stanton. You designed the first house I ever built….I have fed on you and on all the men like you who lived before we were born…If they hadn’t existed, I wouldn’t have known how to put stone on stone,” (Rand 575). Keating ultimately realizes that all of his life, he had just been imitating those before him, remaining comfortable and complacent with widely-accepted ideas. Keating symbolizes the stubbornness of members of society who refuse to change, and the conformity

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