Roark Is Simply Too Good for This World
Although Keating’s descent into vile actions to get ahead loses students’ sympathy, he does not become an unalloyed second-hander. He continues to be plagued by inner conflict between his true impulses and the dictates of society that his mother embodies. Even later, when he ineffectually tries to redeem himself by attempting art, some students sympathized with him in contrast to Roark’s condescending pity especially because Roark “enabled” Peter to succeed in the wrong career by allowing him to claim credit for Roark’s designs. Rand implies that Roark’s complicity in plagiarism (with indifference to Peter’s choices) is justified as self-interest in seeing his plans materialize. Thomas Sabo Bracelets However, Roark is justly punished: these projects turn out to be as compromised as those that he refused out of integrity to execute.
Had Roark been a doctor dedicated to his patients’ health, his integrity could still have been supported without it making him aloof. Besides having technical expertise, a successful doctor would be more mindful of the doctor-patient relationship, as well as the psychosocial factors of his patients’ situation, and could be effective by listening rationally and empathically to their perceptions. But Rand’s idea of compassion, like Emerson’s, focuses on an exemplar that inspires others to self-reliance, as happens with Roark’s benign effect on a hostile crowd that is ready to condemn him in court. His fearless equanimity arouses their sense that “no hatred was possible to him. And for that instant, each man was free enough to feel benevolence for every other man in the room”. Herein contrast to everywhere else in the novel Roark’s indifference allows people to identify with, rather than feel alienated from him. Surpassing Roark’s unsociabiliry is his heroine Dominique’s antisociability. A very beautiful, rich young woman, she has been alienated by the world of second-hander conformists like her father, a renowned architect alumnus from the school that expelled Roark. For her own amusement, she writes a column whose subtle satire falls below the radar of her targets, and she specializes in whimsical unpredictability, to the vexation of her father. Students disliked Dominique and were perplexed by her behavior. First, she marries the pathetic Keating in a fit of masochism and then divorces him only to marry someone she regards as even worse, the ruthless tycoon and playboy, Gail Wynand, who owns the tabloid for which she writes. Still worse, she tries to destroy Roark’s reputation in her column, writing about how his work does not meet the current criteria of good architecture, which is her way of mocking society for being unable to appreciate his superior work. He is simply too good for this world.
That’s how she would save him from it, as she is saving herself by the martyrdom of enduring with disdains the worst that it can inflict, as her active choice, instead of passively at others’ hands. Even when Dominique becomes Roark’s open ally and returns to him as a lover, most students considered it too late for her to be redeemed in their Thomas Sabo Charms eyes, but not in Roark’s. Although some students gave Dominique credit for modifying her perverse behavior, her heroic stature was lost on the class.
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