The Fountainhead: Part 4: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

After a three-month vacation, Roark and Wynand return to New York. Roark sees an article about the Cortlandt Homes, citing Keating as the architect and Gordon L. Prescott and Gus Webb as associate designers. He goes to the construction site and sees that the first building is almost complete. It retains Roark’s basic structure, but several irrational additions have been made to it, like a vaulted roof and strings of balconies. Roark stands looking at the building “as he would have stood before a firing squad.”

The changes to the original drawings “had just happened.” Keating thinks that “Nobody [is] responsible. There [is] no purpose and no cause.” Toohey added Webb and Prescott as associate designers just to give them some position in the project, and a government employee asked them to add a gymnasium to the building. Before Keating knew it, this snowballed into several unnecessary, expensive changes, despite his many protests. He was sent to see several officials when he complained, none of whom helped him.

Keating goes to visit Roark on the evening that Roark returns, telling him he couldn’t help the changes. He asks Roark what he will do now, and Roark says to leave it up to him. He says that whatever he does won’t be done to hurt Keating, though it might be hard on him. He says they are both guilty—Keating for asking for help, and Roark for giving it. By helping him through the years, Roark “loaded [him] with more than [he] could carry.”

Dominique hears a car outside her house and thinks it must be Wynand. It turns out to be Roark. He asks for her help and she agrees at once. He tells her to drive up to the site of the Cortlandt Homes at 11:30 p.m. next Monday, on her way home from somewhere else. He wants her car to run out of gas and for her to honk her horn. The night watchman will come out, and she is to send him to the nearest garage to get gas. Then, she is to go to a nearby trench and lay down at the bottom of it.

Dominique agrees to it all and sees Roark smiling at her before he leaves. She knows he can find other ways to do this without her help, but he wants her involved to see if she is now free of the world’s grasp over her. She has agreed to this plan in serenity, even though she knows there will be trouble for Roark later. This pleases him.

The following Monday, Dominique has attended a dinner party and is driving back, past the Cortlandt Homes. She thinks that soon there will be nothing left of her car. She gets to the building and sends the night watchman on the errand to bring her gas, just like Roark had instructed her to. She rushes to the trench and lays down in it. She feels a powerful explosion under her, which throws her up to her feet. She sees the first half of the Cortlandt building collapse and flames shoot out of it. She stands to watch the building being torn apart by the explosives and thinks of Roark who must have expertly placed the explosives in the various parts of the building to bring it down, like “a doctor turned murderer.” She screams his name into the night, and is unable to hear it in the blast.

Dominique then makes her way to her car, which has crushed rear wheels and an elevator door over the hood. The broken glass everywhere cuts her feet, and she enjoys the pain. She hears sirens approaching. To pretend that she’d never left the car, she puts some shattered glass in her lap and in her hair. She slashes her neck, arms, and legs with a splinter. She feels free and invulnerable and laughs, not realizing that she has cut an artery. When she is found by the police, she is unconscious and has “a few minutes’ worth of life left in her body.”