Why did roark

Think of that above all. Your only purpose is to serve him. You must aspire to give the proper artistic expression to his wishes. I could say that I must try to sell him the best I have and also teach him to know the best. I intend to have clients in order to build. Expelled from a prestigious architectural school for his unconventional designs — denied work because of his refusal to compromise his creative principles — opposed by the architectural critics, his professional colleagues, his whole society — reduced, at one point, to laboring in a granite quarry — is Howard Roark a selfless martyr to an artistic ideal?

Or does he embody a new concept of self-interest — one that places nothing above the rational judgment of his independent mind? Affable, yet desperate for social approval, Keating covets fame and wealth, and is willing to do whatever it takes to get them.

Scheming and backstabbing, Keating manipulates his way to the top of his firm and the architectural profession, attaining everything he ever sought. But what has he achieved when he finally gets there?

By conventional standards, Keating is the archetype of selfishness. But what is the essence of his self? What is the real nature of his ambition? What does he actually want in life? What does he truly value, of his own accord? And is there something mistaken about our conventional notion of selfishness, if Peter Keating seems to be its paragon?

He must be a thinker to grow food, build houses, manufacture clothes, and perform the other creative actions necessary to prosper on earth. But the mind is an attribute of the individual; just as there is no group stomach to digest for men collectively, so there is no group mind to perform collective thinking. Each man must accept responsibility for his own thinking and his own survival; each must be sovereign in living by his own most conscientious judgment.

If a man sincerely — in his most scrupulously honest judgment — believes a claim to be true, then he must hold to this belief even though all of society opposes him. To be a thinker means to go by the factual evidence of a case, not by the judgment of others.

To be a thinker means that if a man recognizes the perfection of an architectural design, he must not compromise it merely because others oppose him. Such willingness to live by his own thinking is independence and integrity — this is virtue.

When Roark stands by the integrity of his designs, he stands by his mind. This is what makes him a moral and a practical man. For it is by means of his mind — not by conformity to others — that Roark builds. It is only by the fullest use of his mind that he — or any individual who does productive work — succeeds.

A human being learns from others, as Roark does from Cameron, but he can neither think for others nor permit others to think for him. Any productive activity — including the construction work performed by Roark's friend, Mike Donnigan — requires understanding. Constructive work of any kind is not achieved by blindly mimicking the actions of others. The activities of building and growing — creating food, houses, automobiles, medical cures, airplanes, and computers — are intellectual in nature.

All successful living for human beings require commitment to the mind. Roark's buildings, his ultimate commercial success, and his happiness are a result of living by his own thinking. Successful living forbids man to betray his mind. To surrender one's judgment is to exist like Peter Keating, a form in which no success or happiness is possible.

Integrity, as demonstrated by Howard Roark, is a commitment to one's own thinking, philosophy and viewpoint in the face of all opposition. Howard Roark's life exemplified the qualities of independence and integrity. However the Wynand Building prefigures John Portman.

By wielding nothing but his pencil, he has come to represent the core values of neo-liberalism. Whenever the American economy needs a bump, Rand is there to encourage an intellectual walk out. Dominique and Roark spit integrity at each other, Gail Wynand shoots himself for lack of it. In this world of histrionics, it is always high noon. When Rand died in , Alan Greenspan had a six-foot floral tribute in the shape of a dollar sign mark the funeral, and in a groundswell of resurgent popularity, Silicon Valley schools began to fill with Ayns and Randys.

Ammunition against his mythical powers comes via parody. But in the end architects should note there is much in Roark that is merely convenient. Rand chose a profession whose working methods are notoriously lonely. Architectural students inevitably feel heroism at the drawing board and then crushing public defeat, and many can see heroism in FLW who should know better.

Further we cannot imagine Roark doing it for the money. This is why his myth has legs, and why it continually needs a bomb under it.