“The upper part of the cortlandt building had tilted and hung still while a broken streak of sky grew slowly across it. As if the sky was slicing the building in half. Then the streak became turquoise-blue light. Then there was no upper part, but only window-frames and girders flying through the air, the building spreading over the sky, a long, thin tongue of red shooting from the centre, another blow of a fist, and then another, a blinding flash and the glass panes of the skyscrapers across the river glittering like spangles.”
This text from Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” is indeed one of my favorites as it gauges the extreme passion and inner strength that made a man (Howard Roark) reduce one of his finest creations to ashes and dust, just to save its integrity. It depicts how even after repeated tries to paralyze a man’s freedom of thought and independence of intellect, they could not conquer his soul.
I have met a lot of people belonging to many schools of thoughts for Roark’s such behavior and believe me; each one had a quiver full of arguments to shoot. Some people label Roark as an extremist, some fanatic and some plain idiot, but as I see it, the mortal had always looked beyond the horizon, experienced the ever joyful and clear sunshine, tasted the fresh morning dew and wanted that purity to sustain in his own creations. The slightest impurity in his designs ripped him off the thing he valued the most- "his originality" and made him realize that “Rulers of men are not egotists. They create nothing. They exist entirely through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects in the activity of enslaving. They are as dependant as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit.”
He realized that cortlandt was a double monster. In form and in implication and he had to blast both to settle the conflict in the city, his heart and his soul and thus he took back what he once gave to the people.
I don’t support any actions or take sides but I often wonder, was he wrong in what he did, or was he not? Anyways, this is my personal opinion and as they say, personal opinions don’t really matter in this world. OR DO THEY???
