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The United States has had a perverted perspective on Ayn Rand’s epic characters. They have been explained as capitalist heroes whose selfish pursuits reached the level of nobility. However, looking specifically at the famous protagonist in The Fountainhead, Howard Roark, I see a person who transcends capitalism.
Howard Roark possessed a special talent for architecture. His creative skills made the world a better place. However, Howard had no concern for money or fame. His only focus was to maximize his potential as a person.
Meet Pearl. Pearl has set out to transcend tradition and freely express his potential. Pearl and his incredible garden are exhibits of the human spirit unlimited by preconceived notions of beauty, style, race, socioeconomic status, or formal education. Further, Pearl’s garden is a perfect example that the highest attainment of individual potential remains outside the bounds of economic philosophies and systems.
Many people misunderstand Rand’s protagonists as justifying the extremist brand of capitalism which has manifest in contemporary society. However, I see Rand’s Roark as the Platonic ideal of the real man Pearl: sharing his gifts not for the lust of a bonus or elevated status among peers, but for the invaluable satisfaction and happiness which accompanies self-knowledge and personal accomplishment.
Next time you see or hear people waiving around Rand’s books while proclaiming the virtues of individualism, ask them what they do every day to be more like Howard Roark … or better, Pearl. In a world full of Roarks and Pearls, communist and capitalist crooks stand out like ugly weeds in a wonderful garden.
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We could sure use a lot more people like Pearl. Thanks for the article, Damien. The garden is truly beautiful.
Thank you for stopping by. Happy holidays!
Howard Roark may not have been motivated by money or fame the way his antagonist Peter Keating was, but that doesn’t mean that Roark didn’t deserve it. After all, had he cared only about the work, he wouldn’t have destroyed his own creation rather than let it stand having been butchered by others. He asked not for money or fame in designing it, but he did have his terms (just like any capitalist would) – and those terms were violated.
It doesn’t matter if one’s passion is architecture or topiary gardens — or finance, manufacturing, distribution, farming, construction, or other productive achievement in the realm of material value — anyone whose work is “unlimited by preconceived notions of beauty, style, race, socioeconomic status, or formal education” deserves to be paid the respect they deserve for the value they create. Only capitalism provides that. This “extremist brand” of capitalism is what makes men like Roark possible — and Pearl as well, whose beautiful garden was the bauble of only royalty prior to capitalism.
“However, Howard had no concern for money or fame. His only focus was to maximize his potential as a person.”
This is not a true statement. Howard Roark was definitely ‘in it for the money’–he would not have taken on a job without getting paid for it. Consider Courtland Homes–the housing complex that Roark dynamited. What was Roark’s payment for this project, given that he wasn’t officially the architect? His payment was not in money–it was th joy of seeing his dream take on a physical form. But when his dream was marred by Keeting, by way of Toohey, he blew up the complex. Go to Youtube, and search for ‘Howard Roark speech” and you will see Roark’s speech that he gives at his jury trial. In this speech, you will hear Roark explain what his payment was to be, and why he destroyed the homes, and, more broadly, his defense of living for his own sake.
The author is wrong–anyone who lives according to rational self-interest is ‘in it for the money’. And by that, I mean that he desires a value that is equal to the value he offers, for his goods or services. He doesn’t desire a sacrifice on your part, nor does he desire to sacrifice his work or efforts to anyone else.
“However, I see Rand’s Roark as the Platonic ideal of the real man Pearl: sharing his gifts not for the lust of a bonus or elevated status among peers, but for the invaluable satisfaction and happiness which accompanies self-knowledge and personal accomplishment.”
You are wrong about Roark, and if you think any of Ayn Rand’s characters embody a ‘Platonic ideal’, then you are waaaay off the mark about her, in general. Here is exactly what Leonard Piekoff, the intellectual heir of Ayn Rand, had to say about Plato, and this quote is WORD for WORD:
“The content of true reality, according to Plato, is a set of universals or Forms—in effect, a set of disembodied abstractions representing that which is in common among various groups of particulars in this world. Thus for Plato abstractions are supernatural existents. They are nonmaterial entities in another dimension, independent of man’s mind and of any of their material embodiments. The Forms, Plato tells us repeatedly, are what is really real. The particulars they subsume—the concretes that make up this world—are not; they have only a shadowy, dreamlike half-reality.
Momentous conclusions about man are implicit in this metaphysics (and were later made explicit by a long line of Platonists): since individual men are merely particular instances of the universal “man,” they are not ultimately real. What is real about men is only the Form which they share in common and reflect. To common sense, there appear to be many separate, individual men, each independent of the others, each fully real in his own right. To Platonism, this is a deception; all the seemingly individual men are really the same one Form, in various reflections or manifestations. Thus, all men ultimately comprise one unity, and no earthly man is an autonomous entity—just as, if a man were reflected in a multifaceted mirror, the many reflections would not be autonomous entities.”
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“Next time you see or hear people waiving around Rand’s books while proclaiming the virtues of individualism, ask them what they do every day to be more like Howard Roark”
Once again, you use your false concept of what Howard ROark represented, to attempt to conflate him with someone who didn’t seek profit, but did work as an end in itself. But this is a misunderstanding of Ayn Rand’s ethics. According to Rand, people TRADE values, they don’t do things for free.
While it seems noble to think of Roark’s view of his own architecture as payment in and of itself, it is not. We should not conflate the joy we receive in seeing one of our own achievements coming to fruition, with the monetary value associated with providing that value to someone else. I would not build a building for someone just because I would receive joy in tha tfact that they enjoyed living in it. That joy is a real value, but nothing can replace money. You provide a productive value, and receive a monetary value in return. Any additional values you receive are real, but are beside the point–they are not part of the transaction. Having said that, I’m obviously referring to productive exchanges here. Not all human interactions which involve an exchange of values, are necessarily monetary in nature. Your relationship with your family or loved ones is not a monetary relationship.
But a productive relationship is necessarily a monetary one. In the Fountainhead, Courtland Homes was the only non-monetary productive relationship Roark had with anyone. But he wasn’t paid in the way he intended to be paid. And therefore it was a breach of contract. Not a legal breach of contract, but one which needed to be remedied by unusual means. And that is why he had to dynamite the structure.