The Fountainhead: Part 4: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

At the crowded trial, Roark sits alone at the defense table, calmly listening as the prosecutor calls his motive “monstrous and inconceivable.” He says that Roark let “such a vague intangible, such an unessential as his artistic opinions” dictate this “crime against society.” The jury members listen, “attentive and emotionless.” Roark had picked all 12 of them, and the prosecutor had agreed since Roark had chosen the “hardest faces” rather than “the gentlest types.”

The policeman who had found Roark, the night watchman, and the contractor’s superintendent who had noticed the missing dynamite are the witnesses on the first day. Peter Keating is the first witness on the second day. He says that Roark designed the homes at his request, since he was “not capable of doing it [himself].” When the prosecutor asks Keating why he objected to Prescott’s and Webb’s ideas, Keating says he was afraid of Roark.

When Roark takes the oath, the audience can see that he is “a man totally innocent of fear.” He speaks of the man who discovered fire and the man who invented the wheel, how they must have been considered transgressors by their fellow men, and yet these men had left “a gift they had not conceived.” He says there have been men like them throughout the centuries, “armed with nothing but their own vision.” They are the “unsubmissive and the first,” and “stood alone against the men of their time.” They weren’t motivated by a desire to serve, since their fellow men rejected their inventions. Their only motivation was their own personal truth. The creators were never selfless—they “served nothing and no one.” They lived for themselves, which is the nature of achievement.

Roark says that “Man cannot survive except through his mind,” and “the mind is an attribute of the individual.” There can be no “collective brain” or “collective thought.” While men can learn from one another, the ability to think and come up with new ideas cannot be given. Since man has to produce in order to survive, he can either choose to be independent or be a “parasite fed by the minds of others.” While “the creator’s concern is the conquest of nature,” the “parasite’s concern is the conquest of men” and he “lives second-hand” and “preaches altruism.” Men have been taught that dependence is a virtue.

Roark continues that the man who tries to live for others “is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves,” resulting in a relationship of “mutual corruption” and “servility of the spirit.” He says that one cannot give without first creating, and that charity is not a higher act than achievement. He says that men have been taught it is a virtue “to relieve the suffering of others,” but suffering is not the most important part of life. The nature of altruism is that man wishes to see others suffer so he can be virtuous. 

Roark says that while men have been taught “to agree with others,” the creator is the one who disagrees and goes against the current. He stands alone while men have been taught to stand together. The creator is “the egotist in the absolute sense” while the selfless man cannot “think, feel, judge, or act,” since these are “functions of the self.” He argues that the egotist does not sacrifice others—he does not use others and does not function through them.

The only way to determine the worth of a man, Roark says, is his “independence, initiative, and personal love for his work.” In all “proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone.” For instance, architects do not need to subordinate their wishes to clients, just as clients must be free to pick the architects who suit them. No work can be “done collectively.”

The struggle between the creator and the second-hander “has another name: the individual against the collective.” By citing the “common good” of the collective, all sorts of tyrannies are imposed on the individual. However, Roark says that their country, “The noblest country in the history of men,” is not based on selflessness and service, but “on a man’s right to the pursuit of happiness.” The “rule of the second-hander” has “poisoned every mind” and “swallowed most of Europe” and is “engulfing our country.”

Roark says he blasted Cortlandt because its “form was mutilated by two second-handers” who were permitted to do so “by the general implication that the altruistic purpose of the building superseded all rights.” He says that “the integrity of a man’s creative work is of greater importance than any charitable endeavor.” Roark claims that if his country no longer exists, he is willing to spend 10 years of his life in jail, in memory and gratitude for what the country used to be. He concludes by saying this his act is an act of loyalty to every creator. Before the spectators and Roark have even left the courtroom, the verdict is reached, and Roark is declared “Not guilty.”