Gail Wynand Character Analysis

“Do you know what you’re actually in love with? Integrity. The impossible. […] like a work of art. That’s the only field where it can be found—art. But you want it in the flesh. […] Well, you see, I’ve never had any integrity. […] I hate the conception of it. […] I’m perfectly indifferent to slugs like Ellsworth Toohey or my friend Alvah, and quite willing to leave them in peace. But just let me see a man of slightly higher dimension—and I’ve got to make a sort of Toohey out of him. […]”

“Why?”

[…]

“Power, Dominique. The only thing I ever wanted. To know that there’s not a man living whom I can’t force to do—anything. Anything I choose. The man I couldn’t break would destroy me. But I’ve spent years finding out how safe I am.”

“I like to see a man standing at the foot of a skyscraper,” he said. “It makes him no bigger than an ant—isn’t that the correct bromide for the occasion? The God-damn fools! It’s man who made it—the whole incredible mass of stone and steel. It doesn’t dwarf him, it makes him greater than the structure. It reveals his true dimensions to the world. What we love about these buildings, Dominique, is the creative faculty, the heroic in man.”

“Do you love the heroic in man, Gail?”

“I love to think of it. I don’t believe it.”

“I think it hurts you to know that you’ve made me suffer. You wish you hadn’t. And yet there’s something that frightens you more. The knowledge that I haven’t suffered at all. […] The knowledge that I’m neither kind nor generous now, but simply indifferent.”

“Look Gail.” Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree, held it in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists and knuckles tensed against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly into an arc. “Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That’s the meaning of life.”

“Your strength?”

“Your work.”

“It’s what I couldn’t understand about people for a long time. They have no self. They live within others. They live second-hand. Look at Peter Keating. […] He’s paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself he’s been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy—all that which comes from others. […] And isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. […] They’re second-handers.”

He walked at random. He owned nothing, but he was owned by any part of the city. It was right that the city should direct his way and that he should be moved by the pull of chance corners. Here I am, my masters, I am coming to salute you and acknowledge, wherever you want me, I shall go as I’m told. I’m the man who wanted power.

[…] You were a ruler of men. You held a leash. A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends.

My masters, the anonymous, the unselected. They gave me a penthouse, an office, a yacht. To them, to any one of them who wished, for the sum of three cents, I sold Howard Roark.

“Do you know what you’re actually in love with? Integrity. The impossible. […] like a work of art. That’s the only field where it can be found—art. But you want it in the flesh. […] Well, you see, I’ve never had any integrity. […] I hate the conception of it. […] I’m perfectly indifferent to slugs like Ellsworth Toohey or my friend Alvah, and quite willing to leave them in peace. But just let me see a man of slightly higher dimension—and I’ve got to make a sort of Toohey out of him. […]”

“Why?”

[…]

“Power, Dominique. The only thing I ever wanted. To know that there’s not a man living whom I can’t force to do—anything. Anything I choose. The man I couldn’t break would destroy me. But I’ve spent years finding out how safe I am.”

“I like to see a man standing at the foot of a skyscraper,” he said. “It makes him no bigger than an ant—isn’t that the correct bromide for the occasion? The God-damn fools! It’s man who made it—the whole incredible mass of stone and steel. It doesn’t dwarf him, it makes him greater than the structure. It reveals his true dimensions to the world. What we love about these buildings, Dominique, is the creative faculty, the heroic in man.”

“Do you love the heroic in man, Gail?”

“I love to think of it. I don’t believe it.”

“I think it hurts you to know that you’ve made me suffer. You wish you hadn’t. And yet there’s something that frightens you more. The knowledge that I haven’t suffered at all. […] The knowledge that I’m neither kind nor generous now, but simply indifferent.”

“Look Gail.” Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree, held it in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists and knuckles tensed against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly into an arc. “Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That’s the meaning of life.”

“Your strength?”

“Your work.”

“It’s what I couldn’t understand about people for a long time. They have no self. They live within others. They live second-hand. Look at Peter Keating. […] He’s paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself he’s been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy—all that which comes from others. […] And isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. […] They’re second-handers.”

He walked at random. He owned nothing, but he was owned by any part of the city. It was right that the city should direct his way and that he should be moved by the pull of chance corners. Here I am, my masters, I am coming to salute you and acknowledge, wherever you want me, I shall go as I’m told. I’m the man who wanted power.

[…] You were a ruler of men. You held a leash. A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends.

My masters, the anonymous, the unselected. They gave me a penthouse, an office, a yacht. To them, to any one of them who wished, for the sum of three cents, I sold Howard Roark.