As I close the book, I thought-one does not read The Fountainhead without changing afterward. But I heard from many that people don't change so maybe change is not the right word to use. Maybe untouched and unviolated is more appropriate.I never liked the person who brought this book to our lives. I speak of ours because this book belongs to my sister and somehow what she reads, I get to read too.I don't like this man in a way I can't desribe that everytimeI I happen to glance at this book in my sister's book shelf, I think to myself, ah Suhas, you are a fool. The Fountainhead is his most loved book. And he shared it to my sister, like a part of himself.I always knew in my subconscious mind how I think these things toward him without reasons or justifications.So I let the book sit on the shelf for years and years. Five days ago, I picked it up from the shelf, at a most defining moment and read voraciously, continuously. Laughing and crying at the same time.
It's deplorable though to attached such romantic notion on a masterpiece. And I dissapoint myself and others deliberately, but I will not discuss the plot of the book on this entry. It's because just like Howard Roark said, the work of others is the end, the material on which we must begin to create.It is not be reused again. Howard Roark, as man ought to be.I will not discuss it but my refusal is not a big deal because I know, one click of the mouse and numerous materials will sprang out of search engines. I will not discuss it because it is now sacred to me, an offering to someone else to experience the delight, shame and violation I have felt in reading this book.
It maybe a crude analogy but there are times in many people's lives that they are confronted to ask for the grace from a person they have abused in their lives at one time or another, to ask for their understanding and even forgiveness. To plead them to look on our face and see that we could mean something too, that we are sincere to make the most of our lives. That we can be of great things. Such is the Fountainhead is for me. Or maybe I have become blasphemous in people's religious standards.
Shall I compare it to the book I loved the most? The Last Mohican by James Fenimore Cooper. It has been many years ago that I first read it but I can still reason out why I love this book. Uncas. He was good and brave. I know the same thing now, but only better. It's Uncas' core quality like what Howard possess. To live only for yourself, to love yourself too much that to depend on others is betrayal and suicide. To be self-sufficient. To ask not from others to tell you that you are a human, heroic, simply because you have yourself to say that already. To be selfish--to do everything to fuel yourself the means, any means, of your survival. But only on what you create, on what you do and not what others do for you or what others would not do for you.
But what of feeling violated? It's because the pages became blades, tearing through every garment of pretense I held and still held for that matter even in tatters, that through all these years I have been Peter Keating. Should I persecute myself? It has merit.But I choose to understand myself and how I have come to be what I have and to look inside and see if I am not as hopeless as Peter Keating had been. Hope, as far as I know, was never used as a word by Howard Roark. I wonder why.Pity too. Do you feel how violated you feel when one gives you their pity, even with the best intentions? I hate pity.It makes you feel that every inch of yourself is useless. Unable to summon a will to turn things around. One of the reasons of the outrage I feel towards myself, because I was taught that I must accept pity. Another character from the book, Dominique Francon, could relate.
Howard Roark, the orange-haired man. Uncas the savage. They gave all the will that they had, without asking for approval from others.Even the thought of asking is unthinkable. Only that which drives them from deep inside, their birthright to justify their egos. Their will to master themselves and nature and come out triumphant in the end.
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand first published 1936
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