Study Guide

The Fountainhead Part 1, Chapter 4

By Ayn Rand

Part 1, Chapter 4

Keating and Roark are settling into their careers.
Let's see how our guys are doing.
Keating is making his way up the social ladder and continues to do unoriginal work and ride on the coattails of others.
Well-played, Keating. Way to be a lazybones.
We learn about a guy named Ellsworth Toohey, who is a big architecture critic.
Keating decides to initiate Project Suck Up to Toohey.
After work Keating goes to visit his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Catherine Halsey, a.k.a. Katie.
She is rather plain and very sweet and is crazy about Keating.
Keating ignores her in his quest for social greatness, but he always comes back and is happy when he is with her.
Keating starts admitting nasty things to Katie, like the fact that he thinks Francon is kind of a tool.
Katie is totally calm about everything Keating says and does. She lurves him.
Bombshell alert though: Katie's uncle is Ellsworth Toohey. Oh. Dang, Keating.
Keating, doing something bizarrely moral that contrasts with his shmoozy ways, says he doesn't want her to introduce him to Toohey since he doesn't want to use Katie to further his career.
Meanwhile Cameron yells at Roark a lot and tries to convince him to quit.
Roark essentially says that he's destined to be an architect, come hell or high water.
Cameron says Roark's life will be super-tough, since society doesn't appreciate geniuses. And Roark, presumably, is a genius-caliber architect.