The Fountainhead: Part 2: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Roark has been working at the granite quarry for two months, and he likes the work of drilling and breaking the hard rock. He likes being exhausted at night. He keeps to himself in the house where he boards, and he likes taking walks into the woods after dinner, laying on his back and pressing down into the earth, enjoying the sensation as the ground gives way under him. Sometimes, he thinks of all the buildings he could have been designing and will probably never design again, and he observes the pain this calls up in himself. He feels contempt for this pain and fights against it—he feels like he has to drill through to it and blast it out of him, just as he does with the granite.

Meanwhile, Dominique is spending the summer at her father’s house, which is three miles from the quarry town. She sees only the old caretaker and his wife. Dominique had previously surrounded herself with people in order to feel alone, but she experiences actual solitude and allows herself the weakness of enjoying it. Sometimes, she can hear the explosions at the quarry, and she likes the “sound of destruction.”

One hot day, Dominique walks to the quarry because she knows it will be hotter there, and because she wants to be alone and knows she will have to face a lot of people there. She is revolted by its obscene heat and watches the men working who look like they are “serving an unspeakable penance.” Dominique, in her expensive green-blue dress, seems to carry the “coolness of the gardens and drawing rooms from which she came.”

Dominique notices a man with orange hair, who is Roark, looking up at her. She feels it like “a slap in the face.” She thinks his face is beautiful because it is “the abstraction of strength made visible.” He looks at her with “ownership.” She thinks that she has now found her “aim in life—a sudden, sweeping hatred for that man.”

Dominique walks away from Roark and is greeted effusively by the superintendent, who calls her “Miss Francon.” She hopes the man with the orange hair has heard that, since he is only “a common worker” while she is “almost the owner of this place.” The superintendent gives her a tour, after which she returns to watch Roark work. She hopes the drill he is using hurts his body. He looks up like he expects her to be there watching him, and smiles. She finds this insulting and walks away.

Later, Dominique remembers the hands of the quarry worker with the orange hair. The image of Roark’s hand resting against the granite captures the meaning of the day for her. She thinks of the contrast between her luxurious fragility and his dust and sweat, and she feels it degrades her. She thinks of “being broken” by a man she loathes, and she feels “weak with pleasure.”

Dominique gathers her travel documents and makes plans to go on a trip, despite knowing she will not really leave and will head back to the quarry. She goes back after three days and stands watching Roark, who notices her presence and continues working. When the superintendent reprimands him in her presence, Dominique is glad.

When Dominique returns again many days later, she finds herself unexpectedly face to face with Roark and she asks him why he stares at her. She hopes that the words will be a means of estrangement, since their understanding was “offensively intimate” when it was built on silence. Roark answers that he stares for the same reason she does. She says she can have him fired for being insolent. She then asks him if the work is tiring. Roark says it is, and he describes being exhausted and pained by it. Dominique understands that he is saying these things because he knows she wants to hear it, and she feels anger at him. She also wants to press her arm alongside his. She asks him why he is working here since he doesn’t talk like a worker, and Roark says he wants the money she is paying him. Dominique shrugs and leaves.