The Story Of Rand And Roark

By Author: peter
Total Articles: 188
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The master of nature is likewise the master of his or her own response to others; in Roark's case, "indifferent," as Rand characterizes him, to how "the world whips [him] with its displeasure" for his nonconformity (Emerson 24). The plot is driven by the conflict between society and this supremely self-possessed male hero. Rand claims to write primarily for her own satisfaction in visualizing her ideal man, as he deflects and inevitably triumphs over the slings and arrows of a fallen world of lost integrity. Secondarily, she aims at readers who recognize her values (Romantic Manifesto 161—62).

Rand claims that her fiction is Romantic in that its elements adhere to internal necessity not to traditional rules or imposed didacticism, but to characters operating out of which they are Juicy Couture Jewelry illuminated by the author's vision (Romantic Manifesto 17-29). Rand's vision, however, sneaks in didacticism by creating her ideal hero as being superimposed on a bleak naturalistic world. The inevitable plot flows from Roark's right choices, antagonists' wrong choices, ...
... and various shades of confused choices in between. Roark is the least-developed major character, having sprung fully formed from his author, like Athena from the head of Zeus, remaining fixed throughout.1 Students in my class who valued character development considered him to be unrealistic. All that we know of Roark's history is that, when he was a boy, his working-class father died and he had to fend for himself. He thus learned to make his own choices in following the building trades and aspiring to become an architect. There is no mention of a mother to ameliorate his all-masculine qualities. Rand privileges a hard, linear physique, as she does linear thinking. Roark is all lean angularity, with only a shock of wild orange hair to symbolize his passion for what he does.

Roark's opening exultation is to celebrate his expulsion from a renowned school of architecture that was dominated by traditionalists whom he calls "second-handers," mere imitators. Because they dictate artistic taste, the only teachers that he respects and who respect him as competent are those of the engineering faculty, who do not claim aesthetic credentials. Rand assumes that her aesthetic values are as objective as her moral values and that those Juicy Couture Nacklaces who think for themselves somehow agree on taste. Glad to be done with the traditionalists, Roark turns to a modernistic mentor whose buildings he admires for their original designs, an architect who once achieved fame but who was drummed out of further success by the establishment. Only those who share one's independent philosophy are able to influence one, as Emerson also implies: "A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me". Roark is pleased enough by his mentor to learn from him.