The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

Q. Howard Roark refuses a major contract when he most needs it, claiming that his action was “the most selfish thing you've ever seen a man do.” (Part I, Ch. 15) Why does he call his action selfish? And why do other people call it selfless?

Ans.

Roark's first-handed procedure is furthermore the standard that interprets his integrity. Integrity, as asserted by Ayn Rand, is firm promise in activity to one's own best conceiving, to one's own mind. It is to perform what you sermonise, in other phrases virtue, significance that it is the standard that you should put into functional activity the concepts you hold. But first, of course, you should contain ideas. Integrity needs a man to be a theorist. Howard Roark encounters both of these requirements. He is a bright thinker and his actions brought new changes in society. In fact, Roark is a self-centred man, in the affirmative sense that Ayn Rand says this. He is factual to his standards, to his passions, to his conceiving, to his brain, to his self. When the board of the Manhattan Bank Building likes to adjust his conceive, Roark declines the suggestion for the new conceive, calling his demeanour "the most self-centred thing you've ever glimpsed a man do." (Rand, 1943) Despite being impoverished, he presents up a lucrative, publicity-generating charge in alignment to stand by the honesty of his conceive and he calls this selfish. To be factual to his self, a man should first have a self. He should believe individually, he should referee, he should pattern standards and he should proceed in pursuit of those values. He should not ever neglect them. This is precisely what Roark does. The integrity of his conceives is far more significant to him than the cash or acknowledgement that will accrue from the board. In residual factual to his standards and decision, Roark is factual to the deepest centre of his self. This is selfishness in its largest and best logic.

In other men's mind, particularly, the panel of the Manhattan Bank Building, Roark is glimpsed as a selfless man. A picture of this topic is the case of the Manhattan Bank Building. The board charters Roark to conceive the construction and then wrecks his design by supplementing a Classic motif. As the head individual of the panel clarifies: "In this way, though it's not customary architecture of course, it will give the public the effect of what they're used to." (Rand, 1943) Roark endeavours to interpret "why an dependable construction, like an dependable man, had to be of one part and one faith; what constituted the life source, the concept in any living thing or animal, and why, if one least significant part pledged treason to that concept, the thing or the animal was dead; and why the good, the high and the noble on soil was only that which kept its integrity." The head individual answers, "There's no response to what you're ...