Fountainhead – A critique

I thought, I will don the hat of a critic and criticize the Fountainhead book. Note that if you have not read the book you might not understand some parts of this post, you can skip them as they are totally unnecessary. You might as well move to the last paragraph of the post, which is important, if you are going to read the book.

So, coming back, if I have to describe the book in one word – I will call it “wordy”. Now you may get the impression that I do not like the book at all. Yes, I don’t like it. Why? Just because of some long and wandering essays, because of extreme meanings given to simple actions and facial expressions, or because of the author trying to manipulate the minds of the reader. No, although these are reasons enough to dislike the book, I dislike it because of one simple reason, it is much too negative. It portrays a character such as Toohey who is a part of a terrifyingly negative world, giving shape to humanity just as Roark did it with the buildings.

You may ask, if I disliked it so much, why did I read it? I read it because I wanted to understand the philosophy of objectivism which is so proudly displayed by many of its readers. I read it because I wanted to understand the potential Roark being displayed by every other individual. I read it because, inspite of all that I said in the previous paragraph, it has a wonderful philosophy. Finally, I read it because “someone” told me not to.

So, behind the lackluster story, pointless explanations and long essays, what was the one thing that has helped the book to remain alive for all these years. It is the re-definition of the word: “Selfish”. The author describes the word in a new light, it is defined in a sense that makes the people proud to say the same as the author said and I quote one friend of mine: ”She has shown her middle finger against the world, to say that fuck you, I am selfish, and redefined it because people use the word sacrifice and selfless indiscriminately and get work out of people.”

The principles behind the protagonist in the book are to perceive reality according to himself. He is such an egoist that he doesn’t care what others think of him, everything he does has a purpose and the purpose is never to serve others. If the things he create, serve others too in the process, it is good, but it doesn’t matter to him.

The antagonist, Ellsworth Toohey, is the exact compliment. He has everything to do with people. He creates puppets by exerting his influence over others, gaining their souls to make them non-thinking and dismal creatures. He does this with many of the other characters in the novel, creates a whole army out of them, for no other purpose than to rule. The negativity of the antagonist is more than any other in any other story. It frightened me, when Mallory likened the society to an unthinking beast, it frightened me as I realized Toohey to be the person who had severed the brain of that beast. I am not the person who cries or gets frightened with the movies or novels, but the negativity of this novel had me. I was frightened and disgusted. But, I still carried on till the end.

So, in the end, I would say that this is a novel not for the fickle-minded, but for a mature and a philosophical mind. The author manipulates you, be on your guard. Take its wonderful philosophy, but not its negativity, the negativity is the creation of years of exploitation in USSR for the author. And yes, if you are looking for a thriller, sorry to disappoint you, but you won’t find it as a cheap thriller to entertain. This novel is taxing and painful to the brain and might change your philosophy if you are not on your guard.