The Fountainhead: Part 4: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Roark hasn’t seen Keating in six years and is shocked to see how old and haggard he looks. Keating asks Roark if he is “turning the other cheek” by agreeing to see him, and Roark says he doesn’t “think a man can hurt another, not in any important way. Neither hurt him nor help him.” So he says he has nothing to forgive Keating for. Keating says it would be less cruel if Roark had been hurt, and that he hasn’t changed at all. Keating understands that this is the punishment he has to take. Roark says that Keating certainly has changed, and Keating says he knows he has.

Keating says he has been a parasite all his life, since he has “fed on [Roark] and on all the men like [Roark] who lived before.” He hasn’t added one original idea to the field of architecture. He admits all this, and asks Roark to help him again. He says he has a last chance and knows he can’t do it, and says he won’t even bother to bring Roark a mess to correct. He just wants him to design to Cortlandt Homes and let Keating put his name on it. He tells Roark all about his conversation with Toohey, and gives him all the papers and details about the project. Roark studies them for a long time, and tells Keating he will think it over and give him his answer the next day.

The next evening, they meet at Roark’s apartment. Roark tells Keating he will do the project if Keating gives him a good enough offer. Keating offers him money, and his soul, and when that doesn’t persuade Roark, he tells him he’d be working on a humanitarian project that would help many. Roark asks him to be honest, and Keating tells Roark he should do it because he “will love designing it.” Roark says that is a good reason, and that he is very interested in the challenges that come with building “cheaply, simply, intelligently.” He says he has been working on solving this problem for years.

Roark wants Keating to think about why Roark has spent years on this problem. The “poor people in the slums” are the clients and Roark has never given much thought to clients, except for their “architectural requirements.” He says that “to get things done, you must love the doing. […] The work, not the people.” He doesn’t care about the residents of housing projects or the altruism of building for the poor. He only cares about the building and wants it built right.

Since Roark knows he will never be able to make his way past Toohey or committees of any sort to land this challenging project himself, he needs Keating. He loves the work and wants to do it. He says he will do it only if Keating can guarantee it will be “built exactly as [he] design[s] it.” Keating agrees, while acknowledging that it will be hard to pull off since it is a government project and a lot of people will be involved. Still, he gives Roark his word, and they even sign a contract to finalize the deal. Roark says he will publicize the contract—which states that Roark is the one who designed the project—if Keating doesn’t hold up his end of the bargain, and Keating agrees to these terms.

Later, Keating admits to Roark that if the situation were reversed, he would not have been kind to Roark. He tells Roark that he isn’t conceited like Keating is. Roark says he is, in fact, conceited since he “never think[s] of [himself] in relation to anyone else.” Keating says Roark is “the most egotistical and the kindest man” he knows.

Before Keating leaves, he shows Roark his paintings and wants to know what he thinks about them. Roark tells him gently that “It’s too late,” and Keating agrees. After Keating leaves, Roark feels “sick with pity.” He’d never felt pity before—“the complete awareness of a man without worth or hope, this sense of finality, of the not to be redeemed”—and he feels ashamed of the feeling, that “he should know an emotion which contained no shred of respect.” He thinks “there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.”