The Fountainhead Howard Roark Objectionism

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As demonstrated by the relationship between Ayn Rand’s symbolic characters of The Fountainhead Howard Roark and Dominique Francon, violent warped love prevails through selfishness and the courage of one’s convictions in an altruistic society that rewards mediocrity. This seemingly perverse sense of love between the ideal man and literally his woman depicted by Rand is exemplified in Dominique’s wanting to destroy Roark despite her affections. Though Rand’s characters are not three-dimensional realistic humans, but rather symbols to prove her Objectionist theory, Dominique is more complex than Howard in that she manipulates the system that she openly despises and engages in masochistic behaviors while Roark just plainly wants to create masterpieces and ignore society, content all the while. Roark, the heroic protagonist, embodies the greatness Dominique and Rand believe the world will destroy in that it won’t allow it to flourish, thus she loves him. As she sees the world as needing to destroy Howard, she attempts to first because she believes the world doesn’t deserve his works and she feels the need to test his ability to uphold the standards that make him ideal. Dominique’s wanting to destroy Roark is, fundamentally in her eyes, an act of love. Dominique Francon of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead abhors society for its selflessness and mediocrity, making her the perfect counterpart to the selfish Howard Roark of unwavering convictions and unparalleled architectural brilliance, and her passionate love forces her to attempt to destroy Roark as a test, but ultimately as a means of protection from the rotten undeserving world which will inevitably destroy him.
Dominique Francon shares Howard Roark’s ideals of uber individualis...

... middle of paper ...

... the resolution of the novel. In addition, not only is Roark’s destruction a test of his strength, but it is a series of trials that prove his literary heroics and give him the ability to emerge in the denouement as a successful symbol of the proof of man’s ability to triumph with the help of his egoism.
The nature of Dominique’s need to destroy pure beauty is derived from her hatred of society. People are not just undeserving of seeing demonstrations of the true greatness of man, but are going to ruin its purity with their gaze and under appreciation. Rand purports that altruistic societies such as that of the one Ellsworth Toohey created, taint the honing of talent.
Perverse to us but understandable to them, Dominique engages in behaviors like publically trying to destroy Roark’s career and marrying his adversaries to punish herself, but also to protect Roark.

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