The Power of the Moral Ideal in The FountainheadThe Fountainhead is a novel of gigantic proportions. It is about great talent and great mediocrity, great love and great hatred, great ambition and equally great complacency. He unpretentiously chooses to avoid the high-profile, common man with his mundane dreams and aspirations. The theme of The Fountainhead can be summed up in the author's famous phrase: "man's ego is the source of human progress." The novel exalts selfishness, generally viewed with great aversion in our world. The protagonist, Howard Roark, is a man used by the author to illustrate this philosophy. He is a man of exceptional genius whose only fault seems to be that the world is not ready for him. The genius of this man remains unknown to society, he is rejected and ridiculed, but no attempt to break him, to force him to confine his work within the parameters set by society, succeeds. This man's innate talent and the inspiration of his soul cannot be curbed by any force on earth. Individualism is the doctrine on which the novel is based: "No man can live for another." If a man has talent and recognizes his potential, he has the right to be selfish. Selfishness should not be equated with false pride. He who believes in himself gains the strength to fight the whole world. This is the case of Howard Roark. What places him on a much higher level than all the other characters in this novel is the power and conviction he exudes in the face of the gravest adversity. Howard Roark is as powerful as he is not because he has any control over society or the minds of others, but because... middle of paper ... redible force cannot never be destroyed. be open to destruction, but the source of inspiration within him and his incredible self-belief can never be broken. Works cited and consulted Berliner, Michael S., ed. Letters from Ayn Rand. By Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton, 1995. Branden, Barbara. Ayn Rand's Passion: A Biography. New York: Doubleday, 1986aBranden, Nathaniel. My years with Ayn Rand. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999. Garmong, Dina. Personal interview. November 2, 1999. Peikoff, Leonard. The Philosophy of Objectivism, a Brief Summary. Stein and Day, 1982. Rand, Ayn. The Source of the Source. New York: Plume, 1994. Ayn Rand Institute. “A Brief Biography of Ayn Rand” [Online] available www.aynrand.org/aynrand/biography.html, 1995Walker, Jeff. The cult of Ayn Rand. Carus publishing house, 1999