Structural flaw in The Fountainhead


Mike11

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An oldie-but-goodie. I was wondering how to thank Mike for being a very gracious host and a much-valued peer.

Quoting him is a good first step. He speaks with such precision (and playful humor) that I find I have to listen intently.

There is a strong militia element in Objectivism -- the Guns, Gold and God crowd -- who want to destroy Islam and bomb America's enemies and kill Islamo-fascists now that they can no longer kill commies and their mommies. Virginia Postrel wrote about these right wing millennarians in The Future and Its Enemies. This has more to do with personal issues of "psycho-epistemology" than with mere political debates over technicalities...

Many Objectivists need evil people around them in order to be virtuous.

They abrogate the responsibility to mind their own business.

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Yep...

We have an all star team here at OL.

I will resume my desire that Carol [Daunce] and Ted Keer would "re-enlist."

A...

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  • 1 year later...

The Fountainhead is one of my favorite books and one I often come back to, however something has always bugged me about it thematically. The fundamental conflict between Roark and Toohey was best seen in the Stoddard Temple, its theme being Human potential, its enemy an ascetic delusional old man yet the ending conflict was about ..... public housing decorations?

The theme of the novel was summed up by the Temple perfectly, its enemies summed up the theme perfectly. The apartment building's theme was .... um .... something about welfare? The enemy was Peter Keating's enemies? The great crime was having a building you never admitted to designing being altered? The penalty for the crime was arson? Arson that was found legal? What??

Would the novel had been better if it had been based around the Temple and its fate?

PS - I get the conflict about the apartment building, and why Roark did it, and what Rand was trying to prove.

A good point. Had hardly thought about this before. After reading your post, I too think that the temple incident would have kept best at last.

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The Fountainhead is one of my favorite books and one I often come back to, however something has always bugged me about it thematically. The fundamental conflict between Roark and Toohey was best seen in the Stoddard Temple, its theme being Human potential, its enemy an ascetic delusional old man yet the ending conflict was about ..... public housing decorations?

The theme of the novel was summed up by the Temple perfectly, its enemies summed up the theme perfectly. The apartment building's theme was .... um .... something about welfare? The enemy was Peter Keating's enemies? The great crime was having a building you never admitted to designing being altered? The penalty for the crime was arson? Arson that was found legal? What??

Would the novel had been better if it had been based around the Temple and its fate?

PS - I get the conflict about the apartment building, and why Roark did it, and what Rand was trying to prove.

A good point. Had hardly thought about this before. After reading your post, I too think that the temple incident would have kept best at last.

Before you try to make it a better novel try reading it better. However, this is an interesting idea.

--Brant

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  • 4 months later...

This is no flaw.  The stoddard temple is a example of an individual who privately amassed wealth & destroyed it.  The government is the compulsor of taxes & thus destroys wealth, not of 1 man's(Roark's), but the entire society's.

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