The Fountainhead: Part 2: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

The Stoddard Temple is scheduled to be opened on November 1. It has been much publicized, and people are talking about the “architectural masterpiece.” Stoddard returns from his trip around the world the day before, and then issues a brief statement that there will be no opening. On November 2, Toohey writes in the Banner that Howard Roark has botched up this assignment with “deliberate malice,” and that the building “glorif[ies] the gross pleasures of the flesh above those of the spirit.” Toohey writes that, inside a temple, a person “finds fulfillment in a sense of abject humility” while Roark’s temple is not “a house of God, but the cell of a megalomaniac” and “an insolent mockery of all religion.” 

The next day, Stoddard files a lawsuit against Roark for “breach of contract and malpractice, asking damages.” Toohey had found it easy to persuade Stoddard to do this since he’d been so upset on seeing the Temple. Toohey convinced him that “God has chosen this way to reject [Stoddard’s] offering” and that he must “atone to [his] fellow men” before atoning to God. The way to do this, Toohey had said, would be to sue Roark and use the money to build a “home for subnormal children.”

Many people are very upset with Roark, including women’s clubs, a Committee of Mothers, and actresses and professors. Gail Wynand is away on vacation and Alvah Scarrett is pleased at the newsworthiness of the event, so the Banner joins the crusade against Roark. Roark does not defend himself and even refuses to hire a lawyer for the trial, explaining to a furious Austen Heller that he cannot compromise and do things “their” way, in the way of the world.

When Dominique comes to see Roark, he tells her that “What [she is] thinking is much worse than the truth,” and that he doesn’t think the knowledge that they are going to destroy the Temple matters too much to him. He tells her that if she wants to carry the weight of the sorrow for him, she should not carry more than he does, since he is “not capable of suffering completely.” The pain “goes only down to a certain point and then it stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it’s not really pain.” Roark says the pain stops where he “can think of nothing and feel nothing except that [he] designed that temple” and built it, and that nothing else seems very important. Dominique is upset, saying this is what she was trying to save him from by taking his commissions away.

Toohey is very pleased by these events, confessing to Dominique that he finds it very interesting that “by pressing your little finger against one spot” in the “huge, complicated piece of machinery” that is our society, one “can make the thing crumble into a worthless heap of scrap iron.” He says he has learned how to do it, with help from the “many experts” who came before him, and that he thinks he will be “the last and the successful one of the line.” He asks her if she will be a witness for the plaintiff at the trial, and she agrees.

The case of Hopton Stoddard vs. Howard Roark opens to a packed courtroom in February 1931. Roark sits alone at the defense table, and the “crowd [has] stared at him and given up angrily, finding no satisfaction. He [does] not look crushed and he [does] not look defiant. He look[s] impersonal and calm. […] The crowd would have forgiven anything, except a man who could remain normal under […] its collective sneer.”

Stoddard’s attorney opens by saying that Stoddard had expected a temple, and the building in question could not be considered a temple. Roark refuses to make an opening statement. Toohey is the first witness for the plaintiff and testifies that the temple has no architectural merits and that it is “one man’s ego defying the most sacred impulses of all mankind.” The audience is so moved by his testimony that it bursts into applause, even though most have never seen the Stoddard Temple. Roark has no questions for Toohey.

Keating is the second witness, and he seems cheerful even though he never looks at Roark. He says that Roark was expelled from Stanton and that he showed no talent as an architect. He says that Roark’s work is immature and that he doesn’t care about his clients, and that Keating doesn’t see “what’s so wrong with trying to please people.” He rambles on in the same vein for a bit, and people realize that he is drunk. Keating concludes by saying, with closed eyes, that the temple shows no “artistic integrity.” Roark has no questions for him, either.

The trial continues for three more days, with several witnesses—including Ralston Holcombe, Gordon L. Prescott and John Erik Snyte—testifying for the plaintiff, and Roark has no questions for any of them. Dominique is the final witness. She says that she agrees with Toohey that the temple is sacrilegious, and that Roark should not only pay alteration costs to Stoddard but also demolition costs. She says that Roark had “built a temple to the human spirit” and that he “saw man as a heroic being.” Roark thought that exaltation comes from “seeing the truth and achieving it, of living up to one’s highest possibility” and that “joy is man’s birthright.” Dominique reminds the audience that Toohey, however, had said “this temple was a monument to a profound hatred of humanity” because to him, exaltation means “to fall down and grovel.” 

Dominique continues, saying that she doesn’t condemn Toohey but that she does condemn Roark since he has flung pearls at swine. She says that the Stoddard Temple is a threat because, after looking at it, “nobody would dare to look at himself in the mirror.” She says the “Stoddard Temple must be destroyed. Not to save men from it, but to save it from men.” She says that she understands her testimony is futile, and that it is her own personal Stoddard Temple—“[her] first and [her] last.” Roark has no questions for her, either, and does not defend himself. He only submits ten photographs of the temple to the judge.