The Fountainhead: Part 1: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

Lucius Heyer recovers from his stroke and returns to the office, ignoring the protests of his doctor and of Francon, who offers to buy him out and is refused. Keating ignores him, and Heyer cannot understand why. He complains to Francon that Keating is rude to him, and Francon tells him that he is only overstraining himself and imagining things.

There is to be a worldwide competition to pick the architect for the Cosmo-Slotnick Building, a skyscraper that will be the New York office for a Hollywood studio. Francon encourages Keating to enter. Keating reworks his project several times, hating “every girder of that building before it was born.” He thinks of all the other architects who would be competing and “who might win and be proclaimed publicly as his superior.”

Keating is uncertain about his final sketch. He knows Holcombe is on the jury, so he’s made the building look like a tall Renaissance palace—a style he knows Holcombe favors. He is angry when he realizes that he has to get Roark’s opinion because he doesn’t know what to think of it. When Roark sees Keating’s sketches, he says, “It’s rotten. And you know it.” He then proceeds to work all night to help Keating fix the design. He asks Keating to fix the elevation himself, making it a simpler Renaissance. Keating is impressed and asks why Roark won’t enter the competition himself, and Roark says he would not be able to give the jury what they want.

All winter, Roark gets no more work. By spring, his money is running out. The Fargo Store has opened, but since it is in a neighborhood that is losing business, it isn’t a success. However, it is often blamed for the decline of the neighborhood. Roark reads about Roger Enright in the papers—an oil millionaire who wants to build an apartment building in which each unit would be self-contained. Enright doesn’t want it to “look like anything anywhere” and he has already rejected other architects. Roark tries to meet Enright, but he is only granted a meeting with his secretary who looks at Roark’s work and says Enright wouldn’t be interested. 

In April, Roark has money for only another month’s rent, and he is asked to submit drawings for the new building of the Manhattan Bank Company. Sanborn’s son (who loves the house) has recommended him, but the board still has to decide.

In the meanwhile, Cameron suffers a relapse and asks for Roark, who immediately comes to him. Cameron asks him to stay in the house, and Roark stays for three days, eating his meals with him and providing him with a “sense of family.” On the third day, Cameron struggles to speak. He says that Gail Wynand represents “everything wrong with the world” and the “triumph of overbearing vulgarity.” He tells Roark that it’s Wynand he’ll have to fight, and Roark would need to show the world “what wealth the human brain has made for them.”

Right before he dies, Cameron asks Roark to forget what he’d said to him all those years ago when he’d tried to fire him. He knows that Roark is struggling but tells him not to be afraid. Cameron tells Roark his own struggle was worth it.

Meanwhile, Keating visits Catherine often. He tells her that if he wins the competition for the Cosmo-Slotnick Building, he’d be set for life and they can marry. He also says he’s waiting for Heyer to die, but Catherine doesn’t like him being “so terribly selfish.”

Keating also spends more time with Dominique, who seems to find him suitable “as an inconsequential companion for an occasional, inconsequential evening.” He has begun to desire her, and not just because she is Francon’s daughter. One evening, after a ball, Keating asks to come up to her apartment and she agrees. Keating tells her he loves her, but she doesn’t respond or object. He kisses her and is revolted by her passivity, thinking that “what he had held and kissed had not been alive.” He asks her if she’d wanted him to kiss her and she says yes, she’d wanted to try it. She says she wanted to fall in love with him because “it would be convenient” but that she “can’t feel anything.”

Keating now forgets his desire for Dominique but remembers that she’s Francon’s daughter. He asks her to marry him, saying he loves her and understands her. Dominique laughs for a long time and then promises to marry him if she ever wants to “punish [herself] for something terrible.” Keating says he’ll wait, no matter what reason she chooses. Dominique tells him he doesn’t have to do it because she knows he’ll get the partnership anyway.