Ayn_Rand_Institute_Essay

The goal of The Fountainhead is a pursuit of human perfection with Howard Roark and Peter Keating in this eternal race to fulfillment. Each has his own standard of fulfillment and perfection. Each will do what he thinks necessary to reach his own goals. How far should one go in this pursuit; should he sell his soul' But, what is the soul' Is it this that makes a person who he really is' Or is it just a part of the flesh in the human body' Roark is the image of Rand with her sense of innate human value, the pillar of objectivism. She represents the soul of American mindset which contrasts the heartless communist ideology. The soul is the immaterial part of a person. It consists of one’s thoughts and personality. But what did Roark really mean when he told to Keating: “To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul—would you understand why that’s much harder'” The souls of each living person in our world are different. They have all evolved or have been perfected with contacts made with other people and life experiences. Their soul may be pure, indifferent or evil. Howard Roark’s background was a much dimmer one compared to Keating’s, but with all the things he had learned throughout his life and challenges, he became a man, a perfect one. He had to stand up for himself throughout his life and had established his owns standards of life and architecture. He didn’t need anyone to tell him what is wrong or right, unlike Peter Keating, the “best student in Stanton” in the year of 1922. Peter Keating was considered a good student because he followed the standards set by the Dean and the Stanton Institute. He was very good at following rules, but when it came time to make his own rules in his company and make stressful decisions for the good of his corporation; he was the worst one at it. He never realized what life was really about. Life is a series of decisions you take for the good of your own self or society. From the point of view of different people, the same action may be considered in a different way. Thus, some are less important than others, like choosing your brand of shampoo; but others have a devastating effect on the rest of your life if you don’t take the right decision, like murdering your ex-wife because you never got over the divorce. One of Keating’s wrong decisions was giving an emotional shock to Heyer so he could die of another heart attack and he then learns that he had inherited all of Heyer’s belongings. Keating’s soul and his ideas were shattered. Keating has spent all his life manipulating and using every person he has met for his own selfish ends. When he learns this harsh truth, he falls into a psychological crisis that makes his life, his company and his family crumble into pieces. He starts questioning all he has done until that day. Was he worth being a human being' That is when Ellsworth Toohey makes Keating and other people in crisis become his “puppet”. Selling one’s soul happens gradually and in a rather subtle series of seemingly innocent and rational choices. With these patterns, we clearly see Peter Keating’s life unfolding before us. When he is young, he sells his soul to his mother, which is right, but it becomes an easy way to get out of trouble for Keating and he starts getting used to it. Next, he sells his soul to the Dean and his architecture standards to become the best student of his year. He arrives in New-York and starts working for the architecture firm of Francon & Heyer. Keating sells his soul to his boss, Francon, to become his boss’s favorite employee. While doing all this, he takes bad decisions and he then becomes an easy prey for the soul collector, Ellsworth Toohey. Keating poisons himself each time he sells a bit of his soul. The more he commits himself to other people, the more the poison spreads in his body. There’s no one telling him to stop himself from perpetrating that same act that gave him fame, money and misery. There’s only one person who really cares about him. His name is Howard Roark. Even though Roark doesn’t explicitly show it, Roark is sucking the poison out of him. He’s the only that tells Keating to keep his own standards and make himself a new life if he wants to save himself and his company. He’s giving himself as a model to Peter Keating for him to follow and for him to learn what real life is all about, but he always chose the easy way out by committing himself to everyone he meets. Since he has been doing it since he is like 5 years old, it is harder for him to change his “lifestyle”. When Roark tells him to not sell his soul, he’s trying to stop the poison to spread any further. He tries to make him realize that he will be in a worse condition if he doesn’t stop selling his immaterial part of his body. Roark has always been there for him, but Keating felt he was superior to him. If he does stop, he can restart his life and try to determine his own standards. He can do it if he starts to go after the image of the perfect man like Roark did and not sell his soul. “I'm giving it free because you'll never make use of it. You'll never know how. You're brilliant in some respects, Howard, I've always said that--and terribly stupid in others." (p. 261, Centennial Edition)