The Fountainhead: Part 4: Chapter 16 Summary & Analysis

The board of directors of the Wynand papers meet without being summoned by Wynand. The strike has been on for two months. The directors reprimand Wynand, asking him to call off this stunt and telling him this is a “business organization” and not “a charitable society for the defense of personal friends.” Mitchell Layton, who is the biggest shareholder in the Banner after Wynand, calls for “teamwork, one big orchestra” to run the paper rather than one man at the helm. Alvah Scarret tells Wynand that it’s no use fighting any more, and to reverse his position on Cortlandt and to re-hire Toohey. The choice is between this and closing the Banner. Wynand finally agrees to reverse his position on Cortlandt and re-hire the other employees he fired—but not Toohey. The board accepts.

Wynand walks out of the office without talking to Dominique and goes to his penthouse. He then walks the streets of the city at night, thinking that he used to think he owned the city but in reality, everyone in the city had owned him. His “masters, the anonymous, the unselected” had given him “a penthouse, an office, a yacht. To them, to any one of them who wished, for the sum of three cents, [he] sold Howard Roark.”

Wynand sees the new edition of the Banner, and he sees an editorial that Scarret has penned in Wynand’s name, saying that he has been too lenient with Roark and that he “must be made to bear the fullest penalty the law can impose on him.” He walks to Hell’s Kitchen and realizes that he has never run things—he only added himself “to the things they ran.” He thinks that “those who lack the courage of their own greatness” can never be forgiven.