The Fountainhead

[Leevan]

I recently read The Fountainhead for the first time, and I enjoyed it. I, however, was not able to discern Howard Roark's motivation. Yes, he was an architect, but why? He didn't seem all that concerned about the buildings, his clients, either's destiny, money, fame, fortune, or anything at all. Even the act of continuing to design buildings, when threatened by his dying practice, didn't seem all that important to him. He pivoted to construction smoothly; he wasn't pining to design. Did he just have a passion for creating buildings? Have I missed something?

[Pepin]

It was his primary means of relating his will and his values into reality.

 

 “Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values--that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others--that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human--that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay--that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live--that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road--that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up--that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.” -Atlas Shrugged

 

There are a number of lectures on Objectivism which might help out with this. Reading Atlas Shrugged would help out a lot as it is more speech heavy, whereas The Fountainhead is more subtle. This Cliffnotes link may be a quicker source to look up, but I highly suggest reading or listening to Atlas Shrugged.

 

Personally, I understood Roark very quickly as I was quite like him growing up.