Nature Symbol Analysis

Though nature is viewed positively in The Fountainhead, it is not glorified—it is simply the means to an end, with the end being a person’s desire to create something out of it. Since nature is pliable and subservient to people’s wills, it symbolizes the impressive power of human beings to  harness materials like steel and rocks to use as they wish. According to the novel, people have the right to shape the world into what they will—buildings, skyscrapers—and take freely from nature in the process. In Dominique’s words, “the earth […] [is] such a great background, but it has no meaning except as a background.” At the very beginning of the novel, Howard Roark’s thought when he sees a cliff of granite and a tree is that they are waiting to be “split, ripped, pounded” by him so they can be “reborn.” While his last name is a close homonym for “rock” and he is similarly hard and unyielding, the novel shows how Roark is in fact more powerful than rock, and he is seen drilling and breaking it when he works at the granite quarry. He builds his houses in hard-to-reach places, like the edges of cliffs, which makes his contractors nervous—but Roark ends up proving that nature always yields to his desires. Gail Wynand and Dominique discuss people who say they “feel small” when looking at nature, like oceans or the Grand Canyon, and they mock these sentiments as “vicious bromide.” They instead think of the “greatness of man” when they see these things, because man has conquered them.