The Fountainhead: Part 1: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Howard Roark stands naked on a granite cliff, laughing as he recalls the events from that morning. He knows that some difficult days lie ahead, but he is already sure of what he needs to do next. When he looks at the rocks around him, he thinks that they are waiting for him to transform them into walls, while the trees will be turned into rafters and a streak of iron ore in the granite will become girders.

Roark dives into the lake and swims to where he left his clothes on the shore. He looks around him sadly because, during the three years he has lived in Stanton, Massachusetts, he has come to this lake to relax and be alone. But he knows he won’t be coming here anymore because he was expelled from the Architectural School of the Stanton Institute of Technology that morning.

As Roark walks back into town, people stare at him and many feel an inexplicable “sudden resentment.” Roark, however, doesn’t notice anyone. When he gets to the house where he has boarded for the past three years, his landlady, Mrs. Keating, tells him that the Dean called when he was away and wanted to see him. Roark remains impassive, and Mrs. Keating thinks that if she could elicit an emotion from him, it would be like seeing him “broken,” and something about him “had always made her want to see him broken.” She then brags to Roark that her son, Peter Keating, would be graduating that day and was sure to become the greatest architect in America.

When Roark gets to his large, bare room, he is so immersed in his “austere and simple” architectural drawings that he forgets about the Dean’s call until Mrs. Keating reminds him again. She secretly worries that the Board’s decision to expel Roark might be revoked, and she is shocked to realize that Roark might actually be happy to be expelled.

The Stanton Institute of Technology looks like a medieval fortress with a Gothic cathedral within it, both of which do not allow light or air through. The Dean’s office looks like a chapel, with a stained-glass window, gargoyles, and a fireplace that has never been used.

The Dean expects Roark to plead against his expulsion, but Roark doesn’t. The Dean explains that Professor Peterkin, the critic of design, had threatened to resign unless Roark was expelled, though a few other professors supported Roark. The Dean tells Roark that his design principles are “sheer insanity” and are contrary to “established precedents and traditions of Art”—they look “like a lot of boxes piled together.” He says Roark’s insubordination is “too much” and mentions the Renaissance villa he’d had to design for his final project—he hadn’t followed the traditions of design and couldn’t be passed. Roark says he doesn’t expect to be, and that he shouldn’t have waited to be thrown out—he should have left long ago. The Dean proposes taking Roark back after a year, because of his brilliant record, but Roark declines.

Roark explains that he wants to be “an architect, not an archeologist,” and that he has learned enough about the structural sciences to achieve this. He has no interest in traditional designs, and he doesn’t care about the opinions of the majority, so he doesn’t want to come back to the school. He believes the “purpose, the site, the material” should determine the design of a building. The Dean argues that the “proper creative process” is an “anonymous, collective one, in which each man collaborates with all the others and subordinates himself to the standards of the majority.” Roark disagrees, saying he would like to find joy in his work, which he can do only by setting his own standards. The Dean says that Roark will outgrow these ideas, and that modernists are only a fad.

The Dean knows that Roark has worked his way through high school and college, getting jobs at construction sites. He tells him not to ruin his future and that he must be sensible and submit to the will of his clients. Roark says he doesn’t want to build for his clients—he only wants clients so he can build. The Dean is annoyed and dismisses Roark. As he leaves, Roark thinks he never understood people like the Dean, but that he had “never learned the process of thinking about other people” and didn’t care. He is distracted by the sunlight hitting the rock building and dreams of what he can build with that stone.