"Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on this earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons -- a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man -- the function of his reasoning mind."
-: Quote Howard Roark from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead
I had finished my High School board exams when Mom gave me this book and said have you read this..if not you should,its remarkable! Usually I would have heard of the famous books which I pick up to read...but somehow this has escaped me till that day.. And then began my "The Fountaihead" journey...slowly,gradually I too like hundreds of its readers got engulfed in the world of Howard Roark.
For a young girl at an impressionable age,The Fountainhead opens a world of ambition and rebel, a quest for independence and integrity. I do not have the count of how many times I have read the book but each time I have found something new..some new amgles to the characters.
Would not like to venture into the depths of the critcism of Idealism and Objectivism....but one thing I always feel that certain thoughts and idealogies which stand true over years and in changing times should be left beyond the realms of criticism. A novel in 1943 has as much potential to show light to the generations looking for guidance in the year 2009.
Coming to the three main characters whom I personally have loved and studied and found lots of similarities with people around me.
Dominique Francon - a vision of an independent girl,fierce in love and ideals and stubborness to do what you want to do.And the only woman for a man like Roark.
Gail Wynand - Rags to riches,ambitious,inspiring and powerful
Howard Roark - The protagonist, his principles and his one-dimensional idealogy stands him apart - the speech at the Courthouse of an individual's struggles in the world of second-handers.Roark awes you,inspires you,makes you fall in love with the integrity of human soul.
At the culmination of the story when Wynand understands the importance to hold on to your spirit and self and let not the world's ideals change is as relevant as in the story as in modern world.That was the protagonist's victory.It is all encompassed in the last conversation that Gail says to Roark,
"Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours...and could have been mine."
Amidst the many controversies and criticism surrounding the ideals of Objectivism and the idealogies of The Fountainhead...the book has challenged,awed and thrilled all its readers.
And in the world which is full of Peter Keatings and Toohey's, Roarks do a world of difference.
This person in real world might not exist in totality but there are people with ideals who still do..I know of one!!!
And for the The Fountainhead,it is a story which inspires me each time I read it...a book I would recommend to each person I know,and who believes in himself!!!
