The Fountainhead: Part 1: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

When Keating discovers that Cameron has retired, he is determined to bring Roark to work at Francon and Heyer. He has prepared a long speech to convince Roark to join them, but as soon as he walks into Roark’s apartment, Roark says he knows what Keating wants and that he will do it. Roark has one demand—that he won’t work on design and will instead stick to engineering. Keating wants to know why Roark agreed to this job, and Roark says that he is selling himself. Since there is no architect in New York he wants to work with, it is immaterial to him where he works.

Keating tries to get Roark to go out with him for a drink and Roark refuses. Keating is frustrated and asks Roark why Keating must always choose between the rest of the world and Roark, especially because Keating doesn’t like being an outsider. He asks Roark why he hates him, and Roark says he doesn’t. Keating says it would be a kindness to at least acknowledge people’s existence by hating them, since he is sure Roark doesn’t like him. Roark says, “I’m not kind, Peter.”

As a draftsman at Francon and Heyer where he draws the steel beams for buildings, Roark struggles to “obey and draw the lines as instructed.” He has to choke the impulse to “achieve a thing of splendor” and wonders “why ineptitude should exist and have its say.” But he knows he has to wait this out.

While Roark has no friends in the drafting room, the chief of the engineering department is impressed by his work. When Keating asks Roark for his help on the buildings he designs, Roark resists the impulse to “throw them at Keating’s face and resign” and instead tries to save the buildings “like others would save a drowning man.” When Keating’s designs are better than usual, Roark sometimes compliments him, and Keating treasures this. But as “compensation for his submission to Roark,” Keating orders him around, in the other employees’ presence—and Roark never protests. Keating wants to “break him down to an explosion,” but he doesn’t succeed.

Roark enjoys going on building inspections, where he is at ease among the beams and planks. One March day, he observes an electrician working on the wiring for an apartment hotel. Roark tells him that the best way to do it would be to make a hole through the beam, but the man is indignant. Roark takes his torch and does it himself. The electrician, whose name is Mike Donnigan, is very impressed by Roark’s expertise. Mike is “a master in his own field and he felt no sympathy except for mastery.” He tells Roark he despises all architects except Henry Cameron and is impressed that Roark worked with him for almost three years.