The Fountainhead Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary

  • Keating manages to get his best friend at work, Tim Davis, fired. Wow, Keating. Way to be a dirtbag.
  • He then manages to get the firm's chief designer, Stengel, to leave. Keating takes over his job. This is Rand's blazing neon flashing sign saying: You should hate Keating. You should hate Keating.
  • Then Keating gets stage fright and has to go to Roark for help on designing his first building as chief designer.
  • Roark helps him out and Keating is relieved yet embarrassed. There's that flashing neon sign again: You shouldn't respect Keating. You shouldn't respect Keating.
  • Cameron's firm is having a really awful time. Hmm. Cameron kind of warned Roark about this.
  • He and Roark lose a big commission, and they are pretty much broke.
  • Cameron shows Roark the newspaper of his arch-nemesis, Gail Wynand. The paper is tabloid garbage, and Cameron insists that society is beyond horrible. Yeah, when you judge society as a whole on a rag that promotes stuff like baby-bump watches and snarky red-carpet event coverage, it's going to look fairly bleak.
  • Roark can't even pay his rent, and Keating gives him some money. Roark refuses it. The neon sign flashes: Roark has pride. Roark has pride.