The Verdict: Inconclusive

I thought that once I read the last line of the novel, I would be able to pass my verdict. But The Fountainhead has left me more confused now than at the end of the first chapter.

The whole time I was reading the book, my effort was focused on defragmenting it, making sense of it, applying it to myself. Throughout, I was tossed around, from one extreme to another. There are words Ayn Rand has written that I hate for their seeming illogicality and impracticality. And then there are paragraphs after paragraphs that I have marked, loving every word.

It is this theme of extremes that Ayn Rand has adopted in the book, most obviously with her characters Howard Roark and Peter Keating. She is extreme in her stand, going against all that is considered conventional or mainstream, redefining ‘selfless.’ What the world has deemed selfish and evil she brands noble. And it shakes your very core.

The Fountainhead is not just another tale with philosophical overtones. Words fail me at this moment to adequately describe its impact, an impact so violent and possessing. It elicits an inner battle, where the mind is shredding every page in an attempt to swallow the words they hold.

I am torn. I cannot decide whether I loved the book or hated it. But I know it is one of these emotions or both subsisting simultaneously.

I laugh out loud at the insanity of the words I just wrote. And that’s the only way, I believe, I can aptly describe this book. It’s insane!