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, scornful demeanor of his face, Dominique pursues him. She comes to the quarry, where the workers engage in inhuman toil in the terrible heat. She wears a dress the color of water, a pale green-blue that flaunts the coolness of the gardens and drawing rooms from which she comes. She stresses her beauty and her name to Roark, the red-headed worker who stares at her insolently. His look says that he not only has the right to stare at her with arrogance and unspoken intimacy, but that she has given him that right. Dominique is angry but terrified that she has no control over the feelings this nameless worker arouses in her. She returns repeatedly to the quarry. Roark, despite being tired from the unspeakably hard labor, is attracted to this haughty and beautiful young woman.

Dominique, attempting to break the power she feels Roark has over her, stays away from him. But the safety of her home lacks the tense excitement he gives her; she flails at the white marble fireplace in her bedroom with a hammer and succeeds in scratching it; then she demands that he fix it. Roark looks at it, realizes what she has done, and breaks it with one blow of his hammer. “Now it’s broken and has to be replaced,” he tells her. He has it taken out and orders a new piece of marble from Alabama. Dominique waits for the marble to come “with the feverish intensity of a sudden mania; she counted the days; she watched the rare trucks on the road beyond the lawn.” When the stone arrives, she barely glances at it. She sends to the quarry for the red-headed worker to come and set it. But Roark sends another worker in his place, and Dominique is enraged. She crosses paths with him several days later while riding her horse. When she asks why he didn’t set the stone, Roark replies that he thought it made no difference to her who set the stone — but obviously it does. She lashes him across the face with her riding crop and rides away.

Three days later, Dominique still has not seen Roark. She sits alone at her dressing table late at night. She presses her fingertips, wet with perfume, to her temples, seeking relief in the cold bite of the liquid on her skin. She thinks she should try to sleep. Dominique does not hear the sounds of footsteps outside, even though the French windows of her bedroom are open to the garden. She hears the footsteps only as they rise up the stairs to her terrace. She looks at the French windows; Roark enters. Dominique resists him physically, but Roark refuses to relent. Although her servants are nearby, she refuses to scream. She is not certain whether, in the first instant of feeling his skin against hers, she thrust her elbows at his throat trying to escape or “whether she lay still in his arms.” This was “the thing she had thought about, had expected, had never known to be like this, could not have known because this . . . was the kind of rapture she had wanted.” Their resulting lovemaking is so passionate that “it was not part of living, but a thing one could not bear longer than a second.” When Roark leaves, not a word has been spoken between them. Dominique feels that she must bathe. When she looks at herself in the bathroom mirror, she sees the purple bruises left on her body by his mouth and she moans: “She knew that she would not take a bath. She knew that she wanted to keep the feel of his body, the traces of his body on hers, knowing also what such a desire implied.” Rather than wash away her lover’s touch, she lays all night on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor. As for Roark, when Roger Enright recalls him to New York to design the Enright House, he thinks of Dominique even then. Architecture is no longer the sole mistress of his soul.

Roger Enright is a hard-bitten entrepreneur who began his working life as a coal miner in Pennsylvania. A self-made man, no one had helped him on his way to becoming a millionaire. That, he says, is why no one ever stood in his way. He never bought a share of stock or sold a share in any of his enterprises. He holds his fortune single-handed, “as simply as if he carried all his cash in his pocket.” He owns an oil business, a publishing house, a restaurant, a radio shop, a garage, and a refrigerator-manufacturing plant. Before venturing into a field, he studies it for a long time, then acts as if he’s never heard of any of the field’s accepted wisdom. Enright’s innovative ventures sometimes fail but often succeed, and he runs them all with the same ferocious energy, working twelve hours a day. Roark’s work on the Enright House brings not only recognition but also more work.

Anthony Cord, a young Wall Street tycoon, hires him to design his first office building, a towering skyscraper in the heart of midtown Manhattan. Also, Kent Lansing, a member of the board formed to build a luxury hotel on Central Park South, wants Roark to design the building. For various reasons, the board is skeptical. Most have never heard of Roark, some have personal connections to other architects, some are influenced by the opinions of family members or friends. Lansing fights indefatigably for Roark. When Roark asks him why he is fighting for him, Lansing replies, “Why are you a good architect? Because you have certain standards of what is good, and they’re your own, and you stand by them.” Similarly, Lansing continues, he too has standards regarding a good hotel, they’re his own, and Roark is the man who can give him what he wants. The other members of the board are against him, he tells Roark. But he has a huge advantage: They don’t know what they want. He does. After a month of Lansing’s battle, Roark signs a contract to build the Aquitania Hotel.

As the Enright House is built, Austen Heller seeks to take Roark to a social gathering of architects, critics, and potential clients. He wants Roark to make contacts; specifically, he wants Roark to meet Joel Sutton, an admirer of Enright who considers hiring Roark. Heller tells Roark that he does not want to hear anything more about granite quarries for a long time. When Heller mentions that Dominique Francon will be there, Roark agrees to go. At the party, Dominique is stunned to discover that her workingman lover is the designer of the Enright House. As Heller introduces them, Roark observes Dominique’s demeanor. “There was no expression on her face, not even an effort to avoid expression.” Roark thinks that it is strange to see a face presenting a bone structure and an arrangement of muscles but no meaning, a face as a simple anatomical feature, like a shoulder or an arm, no longer a mirror of thoughts or emotions. He and Dominique engage in polite conversation, formally correct, giving no one a clue to their real relationship. At the party, Joel Sutton expresses interest in hiring Roark for an office building, but he is disappointed that Roark does not play badminton, his hobby. Sutton likes Roark — he likes everybody — but he is easily influenced by others.

Dominique writes about the Enright House in her column. She says that the building is “essentially insolent,” and a “mockery to all the structures of the city and the men who built them.” Few readers understand that she attacks Roark’s building because it is too brilliant for the mediocrity of its surrounding. Most readers miss the extravagant praise she pours on the Enright House — as she intends. They recognize only that she attacks the building. Joel Sutton, who respects her opinion, is disturbed by her criticism of the Enright House. She invites him to lunch, where she convinces him to hire Peter Keating, not Roark. After taking the commission away from Roark, she comes to his apartment that evening; they make love. Dominique gives herself to him “in a surrender more violent than her struggle had been.” This sets a pattern for their relationship: Dominique works by day to take commissions away from Roark — and at night she makes love to him.

Dominique joins forces with Ellsworth Toohey in an anti-Roark alliance. For differing reasons, they are determined to wreck Roark’s career. They agree that both will work, each in their own way, to take commissions from Roark and bring them to Keating. To this end, Dominique uses her grace, beauty, and connections to throw dinner parties to which she invites prospective clients, and at which she charms them into hiring Keating. Under the guise of attacking Roark’s buildings, she continues to praise them in print, until Toohey convinces her to stop advertising Roark’s name in her column. Enright, who respects her, is angered by her comments regarding the Enright House. He takes her to the construction site, and is not surprised by her ecstatic reaction to the building. But he is puzzled to later read in her column such remarks as, “I wish that in some future air raid a bomb would blast this house out of existence. . . . So much better than to see it growing old and soot-stained, degraded by . . . the dirty socks and grapefruit rinds of its inhabitants. There is not a person in New York City who should be allowed to live in this building.” Enright is not certain if she attacks the building because she doesn’t like it or because she thinks it is so good that society does not deserve it. Roark understands her methods, as does Toohey. Dominique stops mentioning Roark and his buildings in her column.

Despite some successes, Toohey realizes that the anti-Roark campaign is failing. The Enright House, the Cord Building, and the Aquitania Hotel combine to give Roark a degree of publicity. Toohey is worried by Roark’s growing recognition. He convinces a follower, Hopton Stoddard, to hire Roark to build a temple. Toohey knows that Roark’s building will feature a magnificent but revolutionary design, one so original that he can then accuse Roark of attacking all of the accepted precepts of religion. Toohey is right regarding Roark’s design — it is an architectural masterpiece. Further, Roark hires the brilliant young sculptor, Steven Mallory, to design the Temple’s sculpture. Mallory, like Roark, has a vision of man the noble hero, capable of greatness. Mallory’s figures reflect this respect for man. Because of the startling originality of his work, Mallory, though young, has already faced rejection in favor of more conventional sculptors. He is cynical and outraged at the injustices of society. He takes a shot at Ellsworth Toohey, because he believes that Toohey knows everything about the deeper causes of these injustices and supports them. When Roark meets him, he is drifting toward dissolution. He doesn’t keep his appointment with Roark, he makes no contact to explain his absence, he is drunk when Roark meets him for the first time, and he is rude when Roark comes to his apartment. But Roark recognizes Mallory as both a great talent and a spiritual comrade. Roark hires Mallory, he encourages him, and Roark’s example inspires the boy. Mallory’s sculpture for the Stoddard Temple is worthy of the Temple itself. Another reason for its beauty is the fact that Dominique agrees to pose for the Temple’s central sculpture. The three of them — architect, sculptor, model — are joined by Mike Donnigan, Roark’s construction worker friend, in a bond similar to that felt by individuals on a crusade. They understand that the building of the Temple to the Human Spirit is a sacred undertaking.

But, in the end, Toohey’s scheme succeeds in convincing the public that Roark is an enemy of religion. Toohey convinces Stoddard, who blindly follows him, to file a lawsuit against Roark. In the case and in the public furor that surrounds it, Toohey masterminds a concerted attack on Roark’s building, claiming that, as a radical departure from every known principle of religious architecture, it represents an assault on all that has been traditionally held as holy. Most people accept Toohey’s assessment, and Roark is now infamous. At the trial, Dominique, testifying for the prosecution, claims that Roark’s Temple of the Human Spirit should be torn down because mankind is unwilling to live up to its exalted standard. Though testifying for the plaintiff, Dominique makes clear her appraisal that Roark designed a masterpiece of which society is unworthy. The Temple should be torn down, she argues, in order to save it from society.

Stoddard wins the case. After the trial, Dominique accepts Keating’s earlier proposal of marriage. Keating goes ahead with the wedding immediately, despite being scheduled to marry Catherine Halsey, the girl he loves, the following morning. To make matters worse for Roark, construction is stopped on the Aquitania Hotel due to legal problems among the owners. Though Kent Lansing vows to gain legal control of the project and retain Roark to complete it, they both understand that the battles in court will take years to resolve. At the end of Part Two, Roark is once again at a low ebb: He is unable to get commissions, the few he does receive result in construction stoppage or worse, and the woman he loves has left him to marry his enemy. It appears that Ellsworth Toohey’s schemes against him are destined to succeed in ruining his career.

Still, Toohey is unsure of himself. He needs from Roark some confirmation of his power, even if only Roark’s admission that Toohey has succeeded in hurting him. He manufactures reasons to spend time at the renovated Stoddard Home for sickly children (the building once intended to be the Stoddard Temple), hoping to one day meet Roark there. When Roark does appear to examine the botch made of his design, Toohey waits for him. He asks Roark what he thinks of him. Roark answers in simple honesty that he does not think of him. Toohey understands that, though he has succeeded both in taking away commissions from Roark and in making his name notorious, he will never be able to touch Roark’s independent spirit, which will go on designing revolutionary structures.

Analysis

Ellsworth Toohey’s character is stressed in this section. Up until the construction of the Enright House, Toohey has had to take no action against Roark; the originality of Roark’s designs was sufficient to keep a convention-following society from recognizing him. But at this stage of Roark’s career, a series of independent men hire him for major projects. Roger Enright is the first. Enright, a tough and innovative entrepreneur, understands that Roark is the only choice for the new type of apartment building that he has in mind. This is the chance that Roark needs. The brilliance of his design attracts to him Anthony Cord (for the construction of an office building) and Kent Lansing (for the construction of a hotel).

Roark’s success threatens Toohey. Toohey, a powerful critic, seeks control over the field of architecture as a means of gaining wider power. Roark’s independence stands in the way of this control. He launches a multi-front campaign designed to stop Roark. First, he will not mention Roark in his column, even to attack him; he convinces Dominique to do the same, refusing to grant Roark free publicity. Further, he enlists Dominique’s support and, together, they convince prospective clients to reject Roark and hire Keating, a jellyfish thoroughly under Toohey’s control. Finally, when Roark succeeds despite these measures, Toohey conceives and executes the Stoddard Temple plan, a brilliant scheme of manipulation and character assassination. By the end of Part Two, Toohey’s machinations have reduced Roark to the second and last nadir of his career; Toohey now stands at the high point of his power. In the book’s final half, Toohey’s ability to impede Roark’s practical success is gradually reduced to naught.

The complex relationship of Roark and Dominique is further developed in this section. Though Dominique loves Roark with intense devotion, she willingly joins with Toohey in the attempt to destroy him. She does this because the reason she loves him clashes with her understanding of what is and is not possible in society. She loves Roark for the unbending independence of his spirit, the creative originality that designs revolutionary masterpieces. But she believes that society does not and will not value these innovations. Dominique looks at the career of her father, Guy Francon, and at the lives of Peter Keating, Henry Cameron, and Howard Roark. She sees that her father, a mediocre architect, charms his way to great success; that Keating, a manipulative fraud, uses deceit and flattery as a means to climb the corporate ladder; that Cameron, the world’s greatest architect, ends as a drunken failure; and that Roark, the brilliant young designer, is forced to work in a quarry. She observes that Wynand’s pandering leads to great success and, above all, she sees Ellsworth Toohey — whom she knows to be monstrously evil — embraced as a saint of virtue by society. Because of events like these, Dominique comes to the conclusion that men of integrity have no chance in human society, that only the most corrupt and evil will succeed. She thinks that Roark has no chance; that his genius and unbending integrity — the very qualities for which she loves and admires him — are the reasons for which he will be rejected. Watching the process by which greatness is destroyed by a crowd of envious mediocre people is agonizing for Dominique. She cannot bear to observe as society drives Roark to the same fate as Cameron. Because she believes that she is powerless to save Roark, her only recourse is to destroy him herself — not as the act of spiritual murder that Toohey seeks, but as an act of mercy killing. Roark must die by her hand, the hand of one who understands and loves him, not by the hand of an indifferent or corrupt society. This is her motivation in forming an anti-Roark alliance with Toohey. As Toohey observes, though their reasons may be different, they are working toward the same end.

Ellsworth Toohey has been a power seeker since childhood. He was a sickly and frail child, bitterly resentful of the healthier boys capable of excelling at physical contests. Instead of embarking on a constructive program of building his strength, Toohey chooses the destructive path of tearing down others. He seeks power over them in every possible way. Even as a child, he cultivates a following among the hapless and downtrodden. Under the guise of friendship and support, he takes over their souls, telling them how to conduct their lives. First he embraces Christianity; later, the socialist philosophy of Marx. Either way, he stands for one constant — the morality of self-sacrifice — for he intends to be the beneficiary of those sacrifices.

Toohey preaches a doctrine of selfless service to society. He is an altruist and collectivist. He believes that the group is more important than the individual, and that an individual exists solely to serve others, which stands in stark contrast to Roark’s completely opposite views. Toohey is virulently opposed to the individualism of Roark, to the principle that an individual has “inalienable rights” and that a man has the right to live his own life. Toohey’s values are those that underlie Communism and Nazism — the supremacy of the State or “the People” over the individual. Roark’s values are those that underlie the original founding principles of the United States — the sovereign right of the individual. Roark’s commitment to independent life stands in direct opposition to Toohey’s goal of establishing a Communist or Fascist dictatorship in the United States. “Great men can’t be ruled,” Toohey states. “Therefore, we don’t want any great men.” Given the book’s theme, this statement should be understood to mean, “Independent men can’t be ruled. Therefore, we don’t want any independent men.”

Toohey’s power-seeking activities are manifested in two interrelated forms. At the private level, he cultivates a legion of brainwashed followers who have relinquished all independent functioning and obey his every command. Toohey is a cult leader in this regard, exactly like such real-life figures as Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Sun Myung Moon. His method is to convince others to give up their values, those things they most love and that give their lives meaning. “No,” he advises one boy. “I wouldn’t go in for music if I were you. . . . That’s just the trouble — that you love it. . . . Give it up. Yes, even if it hurts like hell.” When a weak-minded person like Peter Keating gives up what he wants, his life is experienced as empty. He needs someone to fill it with purpose and meaning. He is no longer capable of doing this independently; he needs someone to do it externally. Ellsworth Toohey “was never too busy to give them his full attention,” and he fills this void.

In the act of co-opting men’s souls, Toohey is simultaneously furthering his political goals. A citizenry of independent thinkers, like Roark and Dominique, will not follow the commands of a Hitler or a Stalin. A society of independent men will form a political system of independence in which individuals are left free to pursue their own goals. A collectivist dictatorship requires a society of Peter Keatings, who are eager to obey a leader in exchange for approval and security. In the United States, Toohey faces a heritage of individualism and personal liberty that collectivists in Germany, Russia, or China would not. Toohey knows that every person he turns into a mindless zombie readies the country by just that much for the collectivist state he seeks. His followers will continue to obey if he is able to reach his goal of establishing a collectivist dictatorship in the United States with himself as chief intellectual advisor to the dictator.

Toohey is a man whose life is utterly dominated by other men — by the schemes, scams, plots, and machinations necessary to control others. Even Peter Keating, blind follower that he is, lives a more independent existence; for at least Keating can design buildings, however ineptly, and at least Keating can love a women, however tragically. But Toohey does not accomplish even this much. His entire existence is devoted to gaining spiritual and political power over others. Others are not merely the dominant — they are the exclusive — factor in his life. In this way, Toohey forms the sharpest contrast with Roark. Where Roark’s life is devoted to nature (to gaining the knowledge and expertise necessary to build, to deal effectively with physical reality), Toohey’s life is devoted to society (to identifying weaknesses in, and gaining mastery over, other men). Both men seek power — Roark over nature, Toohey over men. The contrast is presented brilliantly in the closing scene of Part Two. Toohey asks Roark what he thinks of him; Roark answers honestly, with no bravado, “I don’t think of you.” Toohey’s existence is defined by what others think of him; they are his reality; he is real only in their evaluations. He needs others to regard him as an important (indeed, the all-important) factor in their lives. But this is not so for Roark. “Toohey looked at him, and then at the bare trees around them, at the river far below, at the great rise of the sky beyond the river.” The trees, the river, the sky — the forces and life forms of nature — these are Roark’s domain. Roark can deal effectively with nature; he can survive independently; he has no need to conquer or control others. On the contrary, he has that which conquerors seek to control — the capacity to build and grow, the ability to create abundance. In this moment, Toohey comes face-to-face with the stark contrast between himself and Roark. Toohey’s face has the quality of “listening to something as simple as fate.” At some unadmitted level of consciousness, Toohey has just realized the contrast between Roark and himself, and he sees now why this is a battle he cannot win.

Toohey has no chance with independent men who have no need of him. But with dependent souls, like his niece, Catherine Halsey, he has complete success. He preaches to her the evil of selfishness and the virtue of selflessness. But Katie loves Peter Keating sincerely. She realizes that selflessness entails the sacrifice of her values, including the renunciation of her engagement, and she recoils from this. At some uncomprehended emotional level, Katie senses her uncle’s threat. When convinced that Keating will marry her, she spontaneously cries: “I’m not afraid of you, Uncle Ellsworth!” But Keating does not marry her. Toohey has long urged Keating to marry Dominique instead. When Toohey succeeds in this goal, he has accomplished two tasks with one stroke: He has emptied Keating’s soul of its last personal value, and he has emptied Katie’s soul of its only one. Both are now utterly selfless, devoid of loves of their own. Both are now floundering wrecks, whose empty lives are absent of meaning and who are incapable of self-guidance. Toohey, the spider ever increasing his supply of flies, has just added two more to his web. From now on, he controls the lives of both Keating and his niece. But he fails miserably with Roark.

Despite the notoriety of the Stoddard Temple — Toohey’s best effort against Roark — the decline in Roark’s career is only temporary. The Enright House, the Cord Building, the Aquitania Hotel, and the Stoddard Temple are major projects, and Roark’s designs are brilliant. These buildings are known and will attract to Roark in the future the kind of clients who care only about the quality of an architect’s work, and not about his social standing. Primarily, these buildings will draw Gail Wynand’s attention to Roark’s work — with significant positive consequences for Roark’s career.

Roark’s life is profoundly improved in another way, as well: his relationship with Dominique Francon. Dominique is intensely idealistic — she responds positively only to the sight of man’s noblest accomplishments. Her reverence for the Greek statuette, for Roark’s buildings, and for his character demonstrate her commitment to man at his highest and best. She can feel nothing, only indifference, for anything less. Dominique is a sincere hero-worshipper. She understands that the greatest men and women of history — Aristotle, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Curie — represent the human potential; she knows that these are the individuals we must admire and emulate. Dominique will settle for nothing less. Howard Roark is that ideal, and Dominique recognizes it instantly. Though consciously wondering at the quarry whether Roark is a convict, Dominique responds to Roark at a deeper level. Reminiscent of Aristotle’s insight that “the eyes are the windows of the soul,” she recognizes that Roark’s “is the face of a god,” as she later explains to Kiki Holcolmbe. It is important to note, regarding Dominique, that, despite meeting Roark at the lowest point of his career, she knows from one glance at his face, his eyes, his posture, his movements, that there is some special and proud quality about this man. Later, she is not surprised to discover that he is the designer of the Enright House. She gives herself to Roark in the first moment of meeting and, at the deepest spiritual level, remains true to him for the rest of her life.

But for all her idealism, Dominique is also a pessimist. She believes that the rare individuals and works of integrity she worships have no chance; that the world is corrupt; that phonies like her father and Peter Keating achieve success and acclaim, whereas geniuses like Henry Cameron and Howard Roark end up either as drunken failures or laborers in granite quarries. This is why, for a long time, Dominique does not oppose, and even aids, Toohey — for she believes that his evil is all the world deserves. It is also why she destroys the priceless Greek statuette that she worships — because the world it suggests does not exist. More importantly, it explains why Dominique resists Roark physically at the quarry and why, later, she joins with Toohey in an attempt to wreck his career. In her view, Roark, the proud man of integrity, will be destroyed by a society that fears and envies his greatness. If she allows herself to love him, then her pain at his destruction will be unbearable. But, given her values, Dominique cannot help but love Roark. Therefore, his inevitable destruction must come from the hand of one who understands and loves him — hers — not from the hand of a society that rejects him. Her alliance with Toohey seeks a common goal — Roark’s destruction — but for opposite reasons. Toohey seeks spiritual murder, because Roark will not fit into the collectivist dictatorship Toohey hopes to establish; Dominique seeks mercy killing, so that the world cannot kill Roark slowly and agonizingly, as it did Cameron. Toohey looks to save his world from Roark; Dominique looks to save Roark from the world. They agree: Roark’s career must die.

Roark loves Dominique for a deeper reason than her beauty and elegance, for something even rarer than her brilliant mind: Her idealistic devotion to the nobility of man matches his own. Despite her pessimism, her alliance with Toohey, and her marriage to Keating, the value that her love adds to Roark’s life is incalculable. Roark now has a soul mate and lover who shares his deepest views of life and man. The depth of spiritual closeness they achieve is shown throughout the story, but one memorable scene stands out.

The Stoddard Temple is Dominique’s worst fear realized. Roark designs a masterpiece that the world, in its evil and its ignorance, destroys. Her suffering is far worse than his. She comes to his room on the evening that Stoddard announces his lawsuit. She says nothing, but Roark knows at a glance what she feels, and that she feels it for him. “‘You’re wrong,’ he said. They could always speak like this to each other, continuing a conversation they had not begun. His voice was gentle. ‘I don’t feel that.'” This dialogue between lovers illustrates that their intimacy is such that a wordless glance suffices to inform each of the other’s deepest thoughts and emotions. Roark knows that despite Dominique’s marriage to Keating, he will not lose her. They are bound to each other by deeper ties than a wedding vow.

Dominique marries Keating as an act of spiritual anesthesia. It is her idealism — her commitment to Roark and to all manifestations of human stature — that condemns her to suffering in a world that rejects her values. She seeks to kill off in herself (or at least put to sleep) her capacity to respond to sights of man’s greatness. Keating is an unprincipled man, utterly devoid of the noble values that Dominique treasures. By immersing herself in Keating’s life — by being a dutiful wife, by arranging his social calendar, by smiling at men of influence, by sleeping with him — she seeks to lose her attitude of man-worship. Dominique, a woman capable of loving only the equivalents of Michelangelo, in unbearable pain living in a world that repudiates such exalted standards, seeks to rid her spirit of its capacity for reverence by filling her life with the individual least deserving of it. But, as Nietzsche said, nobility of soul “is not to be lost.” Dominique’s quest is hopeless. Her reverence for man’s greatness is the essence of her soul; it is ineradicable. This is the deepest reason that Roark cannot lose her.

Another development in Part Two is the introduction of Steven Mallory’s character. When we meet him, Mallory is going a direction similar to that traveled by Henry Cameron. He is a brilliant young sculptor, whose work possesses “a magnificent respect for the human being.” Roark chooses him to do the sculpture for the Stoddard Temple because his figures “are the heroic in man.” But Mallory is tormented by the same evils that defeated Cameron and plague Dominique. His genius and originality are neither recognized nor valued. He is characteristically rejected by society in favor of sculptors who give the public works, not of man the hero but of trite conventionality. Mallory is already becoming bitter and cynical. He misses his appointment with Roark; he is drunk when Roark comes to his apartment; he is rude. But Roark recognizes him as an ally in his crusade. He encourages the boy; he shows him how much is possible; he hires him and, later, pays for his time so that Mallory can work as he wants. Most of all, by being the independent man he is, unconcerned with society’s rejection, Roark inspires Mallory. Mallory was on his way to cynical dissolution, because he thought that the innovators have no chance. Roark shows him, in action, that they do. Mallory, like Cameron, is, in effect, a part of Roark’s family. The elderly Cameron, Roark’s teacher, is a father figure; the youthful Mallory, whom Roark mentors, is like a younger brother. Mallory’s career will soon receive an upward boost from the same source as Roark’s — the patronage of Gail Wynand.

Glossary

conformity an unthinking acceptance of the beliefs of other people. Here, it applies to a number of negative characters, especially Peter Keating.

nonconformity an unthinking rebellion against the beliefs of others. Here, it applies to negative characters, such as Lois Cook and Gus Webb.

individualism the theory claiming that an individual has certain “inalienable” rights (such as freedom of speech) that must not be violated by society. Here, the right of an individual to his own life is embodied in the character of Howard Roark.

collectivism the theory claiming that an individual exists solely to serve society, and that he possesses no right to his own life. Here, the theory is embodied in the character of Ellsworth Toohey.

innovator a person who has new ideas and, consequently, develops new methods and/or products. Here, it is represented by such heroes as Henry Cameron, Howard Roark, and Steven Mallory.

independence reliance on one’s own thinking in the search for truth, rather than a blind acceptance of or rebellion against the thinking of others. Here, the character of Howard Roark is its fullest expression.

dependence permitting others to dominate one’s beliefs, either in the form of following their thinking or rebelling against it. Here, this failure to function independently is, in one form or another, the hallmark of all the villains.

fountainhead the original source of something, such as a river. Here, it means that the independent reasoning mind is the original source of all human progress and prosperity.

compromise the vice of betraying those things most important to an individual, a violation of integrity. Here, shown in the life of Peter Keating.

idealism a commitment to man at his highest and best. Here, applicable to all of the heroes, most importantly Howard Roark and Dominique Francon.

pessimism the belief that the good have no chance to succeed in the world, that only the evil will flourish. Here, shown as a mistaken view held by Dominique Francon.