The Fountainhead Analysis

Ah, the city that never sleeps. The site of American ambition. The hustle and bustle of the Big Apple. There's really no other place that The Fountainhead could have taken place: New York City, lik...

The narrator here is wholly omniscient, meaning that the narrator can let us in on any character's inner thoughts at will. However, we get most of the story filtered through the point of view of ou...

The Fountainhead is all Objectivism, all the time. Objectivism is Ayn Rand's pet philosophy, and it urges people to act in a way that is (according to the Ayn Rand Institute, so it must be true) se...

You might be wondering "What tone?" given how matter-of-fact (and even dry!) the narrative can be. Well, just because it isn't overly emotional doesn't mean that the novel lacks a definable tone, s...

Blunt ObjectThe book's diction, or word choice, is generally quite blunt and to the point. This book doesn't go much for nuance, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Rand was writing a book about a...

When she was writing the book that was to become The Fountainhead, Rand used a different title: Second-Hand Lives. This idea of living a second-hand (or conventional) life crops up near the end of...

She rose above the broad panes of shop windows. The channels of streets grew deeper, sinking. She rose above the marquees of movie theaters, black mats held by spirals of color. Office windows stea...

Yup, The Fountainhead is a big one. This is an overly long book about architecture, philosophy, and 1930s politics, with some rape (or is it kinky sex?) thrown in for good measure. Sometimes it can...

The first section of the novel parallels the start of Keating and Roark's respective careers. When Roark finally strikes out on his own, it represents a turning point in the action.After setting up...

Roark leaves architecture school, apprentices himself to Henry Cameron, and then sets up his own practice. The "call" here is basically Roark answering his own professional calling in life, and we...

The first act of The Fountainhead basically follows our boys Keating and Roark, from the time they leave architecture school until Roark meets his icy beloved, Dominique. We see Keating the shmooze...

Ayn Rand was a staunch anti-communist, largely because of her bad experiences in Soviet Russia. She actually testified as a "friendly witness" at the rather infamous McCarthy Hearings, which starte...

There is a lot of sex in this book—it's sort of accepted as a fact of life.Hey, The Fountainhead is set in the Roaring 1920s: things were naughty back then. The sexual attraction between Dominiqu...

"It's time to talk of many things," reference to "The Walrus and the Carpenter" poem in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (2.12.6)Romeo and Juliet (4.16.56)The Parthenon (1.1.126)Beau Arts...