Roark is a brilliant young architect of the modern school, whose bold and innovative designs are rejected by large segments of society. Although Ayn Rand does not base Roark’s life on the specific events of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life, Roark does possess many of the qualities and face many of […]
Read more Character Analysis Howard RoarkSummary and Analysis Part Four – Howard Roark
Summary In the spring of 1935, Howard Roark completes a summer resort, Monadnock Valley, in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Monadnock Valley is both an artistic and a commercial triumph. Customers love Roark’s concept and design, and they flock to it. A young college graduate sees it as he rides his […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part Four – Howard RoarkSummary and Analysis Part Three – Gail Wynand
Summary Gail Wynand, contemplating suicide, looks back on his life, searching for a reason to live. He remembers growing up in the harsh slums of Hell’s Kitchen, being the smart, tough leader of a street gang and being entirely self-educated. Wynand remembers the long, arduous struggle to start The New […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part Three – Gail WynandSummary and Analysis Part Two – Ellsworth Toohey
Summary As Part Two begins, Howard Roark has closed his office and is working in a granite quarry owned by Guy Francon in Connecticut. Dominique Francon vacations that summer at her father’s nearby estate. Visiting the quarry, Dominique meets Roark. Stirred by the taut lines of Roark’s body, the proud, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part Two – Ellsworth TooheySummary and Analysis Part One – Peter Keating
Summary As the novel opens, the hero, Howard Roark, has just been expelled for insubordination from the Architectural School of the Stanton Institute of Technology. Roark’s designs are radically new, never before seen in the field of architecture, “sketches of buildings such as had never stood on the face of […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part One – Peter KeatingCharacter List
Howard Roark The hero of the story. It is his struggle to succeed as an architect on his own terms that forms the essence of the novel’s conflict. His independent functioning serves as a standard by which to judge the other characters — either they are like Roark or they […]
Read more Character ListAbout The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead serves as an excellent introduction to both Ayn Rand’s writing and her philosophy of Objectivism. All of the major intellectual themes that inform Rand’s fiction and her subsequent philosophy are presented clearly in this novel. Having grown up in the totalitarian dictatorship of the Soviet Union, holding an […]
Read more About The FountainheadBook Summary
The Fountainhead takes place in the United States, mostly in New York City, during the 1920s and 1930s. It chronicles the struggles of the innovative architect Howard Roark in his effort to achieve success on his own terms. As the story opens, twenty-one-year-old Roark is expelled from the Stanton Institute […]
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