Independence, Selfishness, and Fulfillment in The Source Ayn Rand said that the theme of The Source is "individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in the soul of man." I want to comment on three specific aspects of this theme, as it is embodied in the character of Roark and his interactions with the other figures in the novel. Roark is an independent man, he is an egoist and he is a creator, an example of productive results. These three concepts - independence, selfishness, and fulfillment - are key to understanding The Fountainhead's moral sense and the ways in which it differs from the conventional ethos. Rand makes it clear from the beginning that independence does not consist of nonconformity. Henry Cameron tells Roark: "I wouldn't care if you were an exhibitionist who behaves differently as a stunt, as a joke, just to draw attention to yourself. It's a clever racket, to antagonize the crowd, amuse them and collect entrance to the side show." Later we meet a series of artists, protégés of Toohey, who are engaged in precisely this type of racket; the writer who didn't use capital letters, the painter who "didn't use canvases, but did something with birdcages and metronomes" and the like. When Toohey's friends ask him how he can support such fanatical individualists, he smiles blandly. He knows that these "iconoclasts" are simply playing with conventions, for the sake of shock; they depend on others as much as the most abject conformist. And most of them, like the writer Lois Cook, have a kind of smug awareness that they're getting away with something, foisting rubbish on a gullible public. (I sometimes think that Andy Warhol got his ideas from these passages in the Source... middle of the paper... The Greeks, for their part, considered wisdom a virtue, but their conception of wisdom always contained a conventional element , conservative. ... "Wisdom" is not the term one would use to describe a scientific genius, a brilliant artist, an innovator in any field. These, for Rand, are the highest examples of rationality to reason, Rand severed its association with subjectivism, with the arbitrary impulses of the iconoclast, with the dark realm of Dionysian passion. Instead, by linking reason with independence, he gave it a romantic quality as an instrument of freedom creative, not as compulsion. Works Cited and Consulted Peikoff, Leonard. The Philosophy of Objectivism, a Brief Summary Stein and Day, 1982. Rand, The Fountainhead New York: Plume, 1994. Walker, The Ayn Rand Cult, 1999