The power of the moral ideal in The Source The Source is a novel of gigantic proportions. It's about great talent and great mediocrity, with great love and great hate, with great ambition and equally great self-satisfaction. He unpretentiously chooses to steer clear of the much-hyped common man, with his banal dreams and aspirations. The theme of The Fountainhead can be summed up in the author's famous phrase: "man's ego is the source of human progress." The novel glorifies selfishness, which is generally viewed with great antipathy in our world. The protagonist, Howard Roark, is a man used by the author to exemplify this philosophy. He is a man of exceptional genius whose only fault seems to be that the world is not ready for him. This man's genius remains unrecognized by society, he is shunned and ridiculed, but numerous attempts to bend him, to force him to confine his work within the parameters established by society, fail. The innate talent in this man and the source of inspiration in his soul cannot be held back by any force on earth. Individualism is the doctrine on which the novel is based. "No man can live for another." If a man is talented and recognizes the potential within himself, he has the right to be selfish. Selfishness should not be equated with false pride. A man who believes in himself gains the strength to fight the whole world. This is the case of Howard Roark. What places him on a much higher plane than any other character in this novel is the sheer power and self-belief he exudes in the face of the most severe adversity. Howard Roark is as powerful as he is not because he has any control over society or the minds of others, but because... middle of paper... redeemable strength can never be destroyed. He may physically be open to destruction, but the source of inspiration within him and his extraordinary self-belief can never be shattered. Works cited and consulted Berliner, Michael S., ed. Letters of Ayn Rand. By Ayn Rand. New York: Dutton, 1995. Branden, Barbara. The Passion of Ayn Rand: A Biography. New York: Doubleday, 1986aBranden, Nathaniel. My Years with Ayn Rand. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999.Garmong, Dina. Personal interview. November 2, 1999.Peikoff, Leonard. The philosophy of objectivism, a brief summary. Stein and Day, 1982. Rand, Ayn. The Source. New York: Plume, 1994. The Ayn Rand Institute. "A Brief Biography of Ayn Rand" [Online] available at www.aynrand.org/aynrand/biography.html, 1995Walker, Jeff. The cult of Ayn Rand. Carus publishing house, 1999