The Fountainhead | Style

The Fountainhead Style

Structure

Rand was a great admirer of Aristotle, especially his literary theories. She believed that a novel should exhibit an Aristotelian logic, that all of its parts (plot, characters, and setting) should unite to reveal theme, reflected through and controlled by the imagination of the author. In her The Romantic Manifesto, she insists that these parts, or "attributes" as she calls them "unite into so integrated a sum that no starting point can be discerned." In a letter to Gerald Loeb she declares, "A STORY IS AN END IN ITSELF.... It is written as a man is born—an organic whole, dictated only by its own laws and its own necessity." Stephen Cox writes in his book on The Fountainhead, as noted by scholar Chris Sciabarra, that Rand's fiction reveals this "startling intensity of integration." The Fountain-head exhibits this organic unity as the characters, who reflect Rand's philosophy, come into conflict with...
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