When I first read The Fountainhead I knew it was right to commit to the truth and to rationality. “When I see something, I see it.” That is the motto of Rand’s heroes. He assumed responsibility for his own choices, based on his own reasoning, based on the facts he grasped. Roark thought for himself because he recognized that reality is real and the wishes of others do not change it. Thinking about one’s own values is selfish, but it is good nevertheless. Like Joan of Arc in George Bernard Shaw’s play, Roark would have asked, “What other judgment can I judge by than my own?” That is the motto of the individualist. For Roark, the judgments of other people never took a fundamental importance. Roark took responsibility to choose his values this meant thinking for himself. To be a value-seeker, a man must think for himself. Because he defaults on choosing and upholding his values, Keating is undone. If one selects values without reason, what reason could there be to uphold them? Not choosing that is a choice. For this kind of man, of course the commitment to values would have no limit, for what else could a man commit to than his values? Not so for Peter Keating.

Roark worked for his values because he himself had chosen them-they were his own values. If a man will be a value-seeker, he must be one by choice. By the end of the novel I saw that Roark’s commitment to his values had no limits. For the sake of his own standards he was willing to walk away from the academy, from desperately needed contracts, and even from a woman who was not yet ready to believe his dreams were possible. His commitment to his own values protected him against compromise at all stages of his career. Roark’s amazing quality was his purity of purpose. It is possible to seek values uncompromisingly. The novel showed me the long-term consequences that must logically follow from each man’s approach. Rand coined a term for Keating: a second-hander. The book contrasts Howard Roark, a man who chooses his values, with Peter Keating, a man who pursues whatever other people do. The seven lessons I learned about values:Ī man’s fate depends on his approach to values. The Fountainhead did indeed stretch my mind. Not the kind of hero I expected, Howard Roark was purely self-interested. Against all outside obstacles, both material and ideological, he creates according to the standards he chooses. It is the story of Howard Roark, an architect who insists on following the integrity of his own vision. This book did more than any other to open me to the world of ideas.

She picked a couple, but only one stayed with me. I asked my high school librarian for books to stretch my mind.

The fountainhead original book