“To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I" ”
A must read.
There are few books that force you to
think hard about your life, your goals and the world around you. The
Fountainhead definitely falls in this category.
This is a story about a talented
architect, Howard Roark, who believes in himself and refuses
to compromise with his work, refusing any sort of collaboration project and ignoring suggestions about his work. He believes that the end result of
one man's effort can be used as a starting point by others but an
idea that is formed by mixing together several ideas, isn't half as
good as the original ones. His radical and uncompromising attitude
causes Roark a lot of hardships, which he faces with the attitude of a stoic. At the same time, Gayle Wynand, a man
just as talented and determined as Roark, publishes in his newspaper
whatever the public wants to read. Unlike Roark, he doesn't believe in expressing
himself through his work. So at
one hand you have a media mogul, content to sit back and let people
read what they want, not interested in sharing what he believes, only
in making money and on the other,
you have Roark, the man who believes in working for no one except
himself and who won't do anything he doesn't like to do, no matter
what the consequences. The contrast in the beliefs and the lives of
these two individuals forms the basic plot for this novel.
You can't help but love both of them.
Roark and Wynand seem like brothers who chose different paths in life and are
now set for collision. Other characters like Toohey,
Dominique and Peter will remind you of certain people around you. Remember the boy who wanted to be a painter but is studying science under family pressure? He's Peter Keating (or will be unless he changes his dreams or his profession). The confused boy who
always does what others tell him to? He's a representative of the
confused masses, lost and gullible.
The greatness of this book lies in the
way it makes major philosophical commentaries, without being the
least bit boring. Rand talks about the need for individualism and
independence, she criticizes altruism and subsidies based on need, and
she does all this with flair. As a reader, I never felt bored of this
novel. Even during the philosophical parts of the text, my interest
never waned. The examples given in the book, the situations created
are all practical and while reading it, we are often reminded of real
life incidences where these things do occur.
