The Fountainhead: Part 1: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Peter Keating has spent a year with Francon and Heyer and has ingratiated himself with both partners. Francon likes to take him out to lunch and invites him to client meetings, where Keating’s easy manner is a hit. Lucius Heyer, the other partner, usually doesn’t notice his employees but he likes Keating because Keating fakes an interest in old porcelain, which is Heyer’s hobby. 

Keating slowly begins taking on more and more of Tim Davis’s work. Davis thinks Keating is his friend and is helping him out, but soon the higher-ups at the firm find Davis to be redundant, since Keating is doing the bulk of his work—so they fire him. This has been Keating’s plan all along, but he finds Davis another job at an unknown firm and feels pleased at his own gesture.

Keating goes to Roark’s quarters to talk to him about work, but while Roark answers all his questions, Keating finds it frustratingly impossible to get Roark to give him the validation he seeks. Keating feels superior when he notices Roark’s shabby clothes, but he feels uneasy about his own life when he leaves Roark’s apartment.

Two years into his work at the firm, Keating sets his sights on the job of the chief designer, Claude Stengel. Unfortunately for Keating, Stengel is immune to Keating’s charms, and he has to come up with another way to get rid of him. He knows Stengel wants to start his own firm but he lacks projects and capital. So, Keating convinces one of Francon’s potential clients, Mrs. Dunlop, to giving her project to Stengel by telling her in confidence that Francon designs nothing and that Stengel is the real talent at the firm. Stengel is happy to leave and take on Mrs. Dunlop’s project, but he tells Keating that he is “a worse bastard” than he thought he was because he understands his motivations in the whole plot. Keating gets Stengel’s job after he leaves.

Keating’s first task as chief designer is to design a house, and he is happy that he has beaten several others who wanted to be in his position. But when confronted by the blank sheet of paper, he feels insecure and terrified and “hate[s] himself for having chosen to be an architect.” He imagines being mocked for his work by Toohey and by his clients. The only way he can work is to tell himself that he can do it if others like Stengel and Francon could. He copies Classic photographs of houses but is unsure of the end product and goes to Roark for his opinion, just like he used to at Stanton.

In Roark’s presence, Keating feels very vulnerable because he usually gets a sense of his own value from the effect he has on others, but Roark doesn’t react to him in the expected ways. Keating is angry that Roark makes him so anxious. He asks for Roark’s help with the house and Roark agrees, redesigning it completely. He gets rid of the superfluous design details Keating has added—like three pilasters and two plaster eagles by the entrance—and designs a bright, airy residence. Keating reworks his design based on Roark’s drawings.

When Keating shows the design to Francon, Francon says it is daring, but exactly what he’d hoped. Keating tells him he’d learnt his technique by observing Francon’s work. Francon seems pleased at this compliment but Keating realizes that Francon doesn’t really believe him. They are both bound by “a common method and a common guilt.”

Meanwhile, Cameron and Roark have been working late nights to land a project to design a bank. However, the bank’s president is a fan of the Classical style and gives the project to another firm. Cameron is in deep debt and feels completely hopeless. He gestures to a popular tabloid on his desk, the Banner, which is part of the Wynand chain of newspapers. He says the fact that “it exists and is liked” is evidence of a world gone crazy with low standards of art and entertainment. The only choice seems to be to “give them what they want.”

Cameron regrets not being able to see Roark get a real start in his career, but he declares that he is done with trying. He leaves Roark to find an answer to these problems, telling him that he is “the answer, […] and some day, [he’ll] find the words” to answer the world.