“I use people for the sake of what I can do to them. It’s my only function and satisfaction. I have no private purpose. I want power. I want my world of the future. Let all live for all. Let all sacrifice and none profit. Let all suffer and none enjoy. Let progress stop. Let all stagnate. There’s equality in stagnation. All subjugated to the will of all” (668). Quoted by Ellsworth Toohey, the antagonist of The Fountainhead. Toohey is the representation of the collective, a group where individuals have no characteristics of being an individual, where people act senselessly as a whole. This book may have been published in 1943, but its philosophical value and meaning have not changed nor become irrelevant. The problems presented in Rand’s novel are just as prevalent today, decades after the setting.
In the beginning of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, Howard Roark—visionary architect that is the protagonist of the novel—and Peter Keating—Roark’s polar opposite—start their careers as architects. Keating lives in a category Rand names “the second-hander.” Over the course of the novel, Keating comes to Roark for help numerous time—for career direction, structural advice, all the way to designing buildings for him. Keating relies heavily on the opinion of others, he needs reassurance and guidance like it is a necessity. Contrary to Keating is Howard Roark. Roark is a part of the second group, “the creators.” He has ingenious building ideas and the opinion of others has no effect on him. Society hates him because he is not a part of society. This is the main theme of The Fountainhead, the individual’s plight against the collective, the few vs. the masses, the hosts vs. the parasites.
Ellsworth Toohey is a columnist at a sensationalist news...
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... promotes conformity and not “standing out” as Roark does with his buildings.
The Fountainhead centers on the main struggle between Roark vs. the world. Toohey is a part of the world—if not the representation of it. In supporting Keating’s career he is making the ideal man for a mindless society, a man who—by Rand’s definition—isn’t a man at all. Toohey uses the other mediocrities in order to destroy the integrity of greatness. This integrates with the anti-Roark campaign because it makes people not see the exceptionality of Roark’s work and causes them to call him an “egotist” or “ego-maniac.” Defiling greatness relates to many other themes in this book, two major ones being: logic vs. emotion and innovation vs. tradition. The Fountainhead may have been published in 1943, but its genius characters, themes and ideas are timeless and are very much applicable today.
A captivating novelette in which a man’s priority is to serve only for his brothers, Ayn Rand’s Anthem illustrates a society that has suffered the ghastly consequences of collectivism. She depicts an oppressive culture in which the word “I” is unheard of and men belong to the collective “We.” Men’s lives are determined through the Council of Vocations, a group that maintains a powerful dictatorship by subjugating the public from the beginning of their lives. The idea that “If you are not needed by your brother men, there is no reason for you to burden the earth with your bodies” (Chapter 1) has been forced into average mindset of the vehemently maintained society. In contrast, Rand mocks the totalitarian civilization through the main character Equality. Since he was born, Equality possessed a quick mind and constantly strayed apart from his peers. Through his life, he shows an unwilling behavior to conform not only to his name, but also to the rules of society. After he is found guilty of independent thought, he is sadistically beaten and dragged into the Palace of Corrective Detention, an unguarded jail that castigates the public of their wrongdoings. Shackles are unnecessary as a result of the brainwashed society and their compliance to obey orders, which consequently allows Equality to escape. In a collective society, citizens are denied their inalienable right of individualism, which ultimately eliminates all thoughts of opposition. Through their submission, the presence of their souls vanishes and society deems the collectivist tenet true. The lack of guards and old locks in the Palace of corrective Detention symbolize the evils that result from a collectivist society.
In a year that remains undefined beneath a small city lit only by candles, a young man is working. He works without the council to guide him and without his brothers beside him. He works for his own purposes, for his own desires, for the dreams that were born in his own steady heart and bright mind. In his society, this is the greatest transgression. To stand alone is to stand groping in the dark, and to act alone is to be shamed by one’s own selfishness. The elegantly simple society that Ayn Rand has created in the novel Anthem has erased all segregation and discrimination by making every man one and the same with those around him; only Equality 7-2521 defies the norm with his ruthless
Ayn Rand’s Anthem is a politically satirical novel is set in a future society that is so highly collectivized that the word “I” has been banned. The world is governed by various councils who believe that man’s sole reason for existence is to enforce the Great Truth “that all men are one and that there is no will save the will of all men together” (Rand, 20). Any indication of an individual’s independent spirit is swiftly and brutally put down, with the transgressors being punished with severe prison sentences or even death.
In Ayn Rand’s novella, Anthem, children are often seen living apart from their families. Unfortunately, it’s not their choice, but society is set up such that they are made to live apart. Children are forced to live like this because dictatorial leaders are committed to collectivism. Collectivism is an emphasis on collective rather than individual action or identity. Leaders enforce the separation between parents and children in order to maintain collectivism and ultimately have complete control over the children. You and I do not exist; government deems it so. We are one, a single body functioning for the collective good of society. Ayn Rand’s Anthem speaks to this collectivist doctrine while highlighting the implicit contradictions that impede its successful implementation.
The government’s authority over several aspects of society displays its corruption and causes more people to become conformists who lack egotism in Ayn Rand’s novel Anthem. The government chooses the occupations of all of the citizens. It is the Council of Vocation’s position to decide everyone’s job, thus suppressing the right of the people to freedom of choice. The teachers, who had been appointed by the Councils, inform the students to “Dare not choose in your minds the work you would like to do when you leave the Home of the Students. You shall do that which the Council of Vocations shall prescribe for you. For the Council of Vocations knows in its great wisdom where you are needed by your brother men, better than you can know it in your unworthy little
Howard Roark’s speech in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead displays the author's personal philosophy of objectivism. Objectivism is an idea that Ayn Rand had developed and promoted in her works of literature. Objectivism advocated for the rights of individual freedoms such as someone being able to do whatever that person desires with their own creations. In this case, Ayn Rand’s character Howard Roark; who had dynamited his own building . Through Rand’s persuading diction, immense detail, and powerful organization, Ayn Rand takes a stand through a fictional character to promote the idea that an individual should be able to live freely without society or the government scrutinizing him.
Morality is a particular system of values and principles of conduct. In the novella Anthem written by Ayn Rand that she writes about two opposite moralities: collectivism and individualism. Collectivism is followed by a totalitarian dictatorship. Equality, the protagonist, is opposed to collectivism morality; instead, Equality chooses individualism as his moral compass. Equality’s characteristics are curious, intelligent, and strong. He lives in a society that encourages universal uniformity and crushes individualism.
Throughout the book “Anthem” the city has many rules and controls. Such as, not loving any person over another. Not saying the forbidden word “I”. Not stealing from another. With these rules and controls Ayn Rand created a collective society, but with the idea of a utopian society. The definition of Utopia is “ an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.” The rules and controls listed above and the many more that are in the book “Anthem” describe a society trying to become collective but in a utopian way.
One of the overarching conflicts in Ayn Rand’s, Anthem, is Collectivism versus the belief in Heresy. Rand is a firm believer in heresy, making her one of history's most notable heretics. In the same way Anthem is bias, so is my ‘Big Idea’ collage. I used propaganda and symbolic images to express the importance and just within heresy. The two silhouettes of a human heads serves the significance of the seemingly everlasting conflict that both groups have. All the images that make up the silhouettes is what the different parties stand for. Equality’s rebellious views and experiments, such as ‘the power of the sky’ and the sacred manuscripts, are enclosed within the traced head on the right side. On the other side, I dissected the authority in
The Fountainhead provided and continues to provide a powerful inspiration to the individualist movement in America, and throughout the world. More than any other single work, The Fountainhead revived popular enthusiasm for a way of thinking, and a way of life, that in 1943 was regarded by virtually every sector of intellectual opinion as outmoded. Ayn Rand's courageous challenge to accepted ideas was rendered still more courageous by her willingness to state her individualist premises in the clearest terms and to defend the most radical implications that could be drawn from them.
Reason is the opportune quintessence of logic. Ayn Rand’s “Fountainhead” explores the assets and disadvantages of employing reason as a weapon of persuasion. The protagonist of the novel, Howard Roark, is reason. He symbolizes, epitomizes, and embodies living logic. Assuming individualism, he achieves complex thought processes, simultaneously exploring the theme of the novel—society’s manipulation of individualism. As reason, Roark is faced with constant opposition—every semblance of his person is shunned, negated, and trampled solely for the presumption of his potential threat. In regards to Roark’s personal opinion, he lamented that: “…on [his] side [he] ha[d] reason…[he] kn[e]w, it [was] something no one really want[ed] to have on his side…” (Rand 165). Acknowledging that loss is imminent, Roark’s righteous ideals negate his failure(s). Furthermore, Roark has no choice. Reason is a constant aspect of his continuation—he is incapable of existing without it. Its role is a cosmic, undeniable force that, while consistently causing him to lose anything he ever desires, he masochistically reveres. Roark’s identity as reason is further cemented by his lack of it. “Then, without reason, he thought of Dominique Francon” (Rand 264). Roark’s unnatural relationship with Dominique Francon conveys to the reader of his infallible rationale. When with Dominique, Roark is unnaturally impractical and capable of human emotion, conveying to the reader that this state of being, this unreasonable existence, is a prosthetic state for him and therefore his true state is one of practicality.
The ultimate motive of both the altruist and egoist is personal gain. Separating the two ideologies is the method by which this is accomplished. For the altruist, addressing the needs of humanity is purportedly the sole purpose of existence. Egoists, on the other hand, refuse to act if an action does not directly benefit themselves. In The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand addresses the function of altruists and egoists within society through character development. There are four characters in particular who distinctly exhibit the attributes of altruistic and egoistic individuals: Catherine Halsey, Peter Keating, and Ellsworth Toohey possess altruistic qualities; whereas, Howard Roark is explicitly egoistic.
...ed with a moral or political obligation to the sacrifice of his own interests for the sake of greater social good, utilizes the same ‘common good’ as the tyrant. Both justify and execute, with a clear conscience, horrors that would never be considered for one’s own sake, but are more than worthy for the cause of the masses. Collectivism, in its raw, implemental form, results not only in mass delusion, but in the deconstruction of society by the tainted individuals in power portraying their goals as that of the masses. In reality, the masses suffer, while the authorities exist in a state of self-induced gluttony; an apparition that resembles progress, but actually symbolizes progress’s murder. By following the stories of these men, Ayn Rand provides a basis for how collectivism, even when masked by the guise of justice, results in nothing but the death of humanity.
Ayn Rand's classic story of one man's desire to become an individual in a nameless society presents a compelling refutation of collectivism in all forms. The hero, labeled "Equality 7-2521" by the State, chooses to challenge conventional authority as he learns the joys of experimentation and discovery, the ecstasy of human love, the challenge and fairness of liberty, and the happiness of self-interest. Equality 7-2521 writes three unique phrases in his journal: 1. "My happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to an end. It is the end.", 2. "We know that we are evil, but there is no will in us and no power to resist it.", 3. "The word 'We' . . . must never be placed first within man's soul.". These phrases will be discussed individually in the remainder of this essay.
Why do you think the author chose the title he/she did? Analyze its deeper meaning. If it is an obvious title, rename it something more symbolic and explain your rationale.