Howard Roark, Superman

 

Howard Roark is a superman, and thus is not quite believable. Here is what Ayn Rand wrote about him on Page 26 of The Fountainhead: “Look here, Roark,” said the Dean gently. “You have worked hard for your education. You only had one year to go. There is something important to consider, particularly for a boy in your position. There’s the practical side of an architect’s career to think about. An architect is not an end in himself.  He is only a small part of a great social whole. Co-operation is the key word to our modern world and to the profession of architecture in particular. Have you thought about your potential clients?”

 

“Yes,” said Roark.

 

“The Client,” said the Dean. ‘The Client . . . Your only purpose is to serve him. You must aspire to give proper artistic expression to his wishes . . .”

 

“Well, I could say that I must aspire to build for my client the most comfortable, the most logical, the most beautiful house that can be built. I could say that I must try to sell him the best I have and teach him to know the best. I could say it, but I won’t. Because I don’t intend to build in order to have clients. I intent to have clients in order to build.”

 

“How do you propose to force your ideas upon them?”

 

“I don’t propose to force or be forced. Those who want me will come to me.

 

My response: Ayn Rand was a great soul. Howard Roark is a fictional great soul. I am a great soul. It is possible that there are emotional supermen or psychopathic narcissists like Roark that are so supremely self-confident and wholly independent and able to stand on their own without any effort to cooperate or please the groups around them, that they remain unaware of their pure unpopularity and being hated by all around them, but I doubt it. They would be rare birds indeed.

 

We are social creatures, and we should self-realize and go against the group, the zombie-like peers, against educational thugs and bureaucrats like the Dean that break all the young people that enter their programs. But such noble and obligatory rebellion against collectivized institutions comes at a very high emotional price: it hurts like hell, but that is the route the maverizer must take. Roark’s ability to care not one whit what anyone thinks or recommends is not credible: it is inhuman. Rand often seems too idealistic, and her paragons and their standards of self-expectations are a little too severe, too pure. He does not seem flesh and blood real to me.

 

She must have suffered at the hands of similar groupists thugs pushing against her all the time but she lived the life of the creative rebel, pushing back against the conformists pushing at her, just as she encourages Roark to do.

 

The Dean is horrified that Roark is indifferent to the opinions of others and does not even care to try and persuade them to his point of view. The Dean dismisses him as a dangerous monster not to be encouraged but thwarted at every turn.

 

The Dean seems quite believable to me.

 

Roark, Rand’s paragon individuator and creative rebel, is so consistently individual and self-directing, not caring a whit what anyone else thought, that he does not come across as real. We feel, we hurt when others shun us, we doubt ourselves when everyone denounces our goals, our values.

 

Still, though Rand is too idealistic in her portrayal of Roark, that we should all aspire to be as perfect and strong and unfeeling as he is, her basic advice that each person should maverize is wisdom itself.

 

Rand again is too idealistic that the architect or artist of any kind should work to create original excellence, never pandering to popular taste, just doing his own lonely thing, until the public wakes up and realizes that products crated by this genius are worth buy and supporting.

 

The creator or artist should do his own thing, on his own, in his private life, and then slowly introduce it to the public to see what the reaction is: if it is favorable and supportive, he can introduce more and more of his works for sale.

 

We all must cooperate a little bit and be a bit practical and lower our standards so that we can make some money, and our family can eat. The Dean is not completely mistake, and Roark the elitist snob is not totally correct in his pure, uncompromising stance.

 

Still, overall, my sympathies lie with Roark and Rand, not the Dean and the masses. I am not against the masses though: I just want them to self-realize so that they can become superior humans and brilliant artistic creators per capita.