On its surface, this book is about two different architects who simultaneously embark upon their careers in New York City. At its core, it’s about the difference in philosophy between individualism and collectivism.
If you know Ayn Rand, then you know she is a champion of individualism, and thus her protagonist is a man named Howard Roark, an architect who expresses his individualism with every project he designs. He is innovative and fiercely independent and simply doesn’t give a damn what other people think. Sometimes, his indifference to the opinions of others gets him in trouble, and yet there are also times when other characters express their admiration of his strong will, lamenting the fact that they themselves care what other people think. Roark represents Rand’s ideal of the creative individual who lives for himself and not for others.
Rand is the mother of a school of philosophy called Objectivism, which she once described as “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” With this definition in mind, it is evident that Roark embodies her philosophy as he is a man who only cares about his own happiness, to varying degrees of success and failure.
Roark’s classmate and counterpart is Peter Keating, a man who represents collectivism in all its forms. Keating is a natural conformist whose architectural designs are all reproductions of past styles—like Renaissance, Gothic, or Beaux-Arts—and are based on whatever he thinks will win him more clients or public approval. He is constantly seeking validation from others and is dependent on them for his success. While Roark’s designs come from his own creative soul, Keating’s designs are simply a mirror of popular taste and client demands, but never anything original. While he initially finds success, by the end of the book Keating has become a shell of a man.
The main antagonist of the book is a journalist, architecture critic, and political activist named Ellsworth Toohey. Toohey is a power-seeking intellectual and collectivist who uses his talents to shape public opinion. He organizes numerous groups and committees and uses people’s desire to help others (their altruism) as a means of control and mass manipulation. He wants to crush individuality (often in the form of Howard Roark) and promote collectivism, and what he ultimately gets for this endeavor is mediocrity.
One of the other major themes in this book is the relationship between power and the media. This is first expressed in the character of Toohey as he uses his circulated writing in order to mold public opinion, and is then later encountered again when the character of Gail Wynand is introduced as one of the most powerful newspaper magnates in the city. At one point, Wynand tries to use his newspaper to uplift Roark and is nearly run out of business for it and must relent his efforts. The take-away from this is twofold: both the power of those in charge to manipulate public opinion, and the power of a collectivist mindset once an idea takes hold.
All in all, this book is a philosophical novel that expertly expresses the struggle between creative independence and societal conformity. While Rand lands firmly on the side of the individual, I was very aware of points throughout the book when I did not. I won’t share specifics so as not to spoil the plot, but my take-away was not that we should all champion the creative rights and rationality of the individual and condemn those of the collective, but that a balance between the two is necessary. There are certainly times when individual creativity and ingenuity should be put on the front page of the newspaper and celebrated by the world, and also, there are times when we should all come together and adopt a hive mind. Take architecture: If I’m designing a new train station, perhaps I should be allowed to express my individual talents and make a one-of-a-kind train station that is beautiful and functional and unlike any other. Alternatively, if I’m designing a community of one hundred houses, perhaps I should model them after a community that has already been constructed elsewhere so as to keep costs down and make them affordable to families. I believe that whether we should adopt an individualist mindset or a collectivist one should depend on the context.
With that as my own personal take-away, I must praise the prose of Rand’s writing: her book, while long, is exquisite. Her characters are well defined and not afraid to speak their minds and often said and did things that I did not expect. Her vivid descriptions of people, places, and things brought them to life in my mind. Her writing is engaging and full of ideas, and while I speculated that individualism would win out in the end (knowing the author’s philosophy ahead of time), at no point did I know what was going to happen next. I enjoyed this book wholeheartedly, both for the surface story and for the underlying philosophy.
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