The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead

1.The fountainhead is about this guy named Howard Roark and his journey of being an innovative architect. It starts out by Howard being at school but then gets expelled for abandoning historical architecture which is what they were teaching for a newer innovative and creative looking architecture. Howard tries to find work and he gets hired by this guy named Cameron. There is a big scene where Cameron throws something at his office window then collapses and is taken to the hospital and while on the drive there tells Howard to burn his ideas and sketches and not follow in his footsteps. Howard then goes back and burns them but takes inspiration from some. He then turns down an offer from some people on designing a building but they would have a say in it and make changes to his design to make it more classy. Even though Howard does not have a job and no money he turns them down because of how much he believes in his ideas. This forces him to go work a labor job where he meets this woman who stood up for his designs when she worked at the paper company and she takes an interest in him. He works there for a couple of years until he gets an offer to design a building and quits his old job to go do that. After a while of designing buildings and being successful at it he then gets into some trouble. This guy named Keeting requested for Roark to help him and Roark agrees under one condition that there are no changes to the building. When Roark comes back from a couple month vacation on a yacht he finds that the building has been built and changed from his designs so he devises a plan and it is for him to blow up the building. In court he defended himself with a speech about personal will, honesty and ambition and the jures do not find him guilty. It is entrepreneurial because he had an innovative mind that society was not comfortable with yet and would try to limit or change his ideas but he was persistent and eventually found success.

1. This movie was interesting because of how many people were against him and how much weight there was if he didnt do what they said but yet he stuck to his guns and it turned out good for him. Up until the very end, the newspaper was against him and always tried to defame him or pick apart his work. You also had other architects critiquing his work because they had never seen anything like it. You also had people trying to change his ideas and so much so that he refused the thought of that and decided to turn it down which forced him to work a day job. I mean the thought of turning down a great offer even if there was changes to your original idea, it still would have helped you become stable to turning it down because you believe in your idea so much is inspiring.
   3A. Roark affected society by just standing up for himself and introducing the idea that you don't have to conform. An example of this was when he was in the ambulance with Cameron and Cameron said don't do what I did. Listening to them was very telling of how much pressure was on Roark to stop being innovative and conform to society and he didn't. 3B. Society tried to make Roark conform. You see it all throughout the movie of people telling him to add a bit of normalcy to his designs. Also at the end when they were trying to prosecute him and telling the people of society that what he is doing is destructive and damaging and different. But it did not affect Roark at all and multiple times he turned down offers and denied people because he believed in his “product”. 3C. The interaction between society and Roark was interesting because he inspired a lot of people at the end when he gave his speech and also the effect it had on his wife and her ex husband. He was fascinated with him and looked up to him because he didn't conform to societal norms. But at the same time a lot of society did not like his innovative way of thinking.