The Power of the Individual Revealed in the Source The Source has provided and continues to provide powerful inspiration to the individualist movement in America and around the world. More than any other single work, The Source of the Source revived popular enthusiasm for a way of thinking and living that in 1943 was considered antiquated by virtually every section of intellectual opinion. Ayn Rand's courageous challenge to accepted ideas was made even more courageous by her willingness to state her individualist premises in the clearest terms and to defend the most radical implications that could be drawn from them. The romantic individualism of The Fountainhead is like DNA; it is present in every cell and controls every cell. The main psychological conflict of the novel, the conflict between Howard Roark and Dominique Francon, cannot remain what almost any other novelist would, a conflict simply between two strong people. Nor is it allowed to remain a conflict between two strong individualists. It instead becomes a conflict between two strong individualists who have competing ways of showing their respect for individualism, and Howard Roark's individualism in particular: Howard values ​​it so much that he makes it the consistent basis of an eventual successful career; Dominique cares so much that she tries to destroy that career before it can be destroyed by others. This is strange, but it is strange in a very Randian way, a way that could never be confused with anyone else's. The same could be said of a hundred other features of The Fountainhead. These characteristics can be read as both doctrine and symbol, but they are... at the heart of the card... yes, as a simple foil to the characters she likes. It didn't turn him into an idiot, as he would with many of the villains in his next novel, Atlas Shrugged. In The Fountainhead, Rand knows that the intensity of a long-lasting conflict requires a strong opposing force, a force whose influence can be felt on many levels. Roark is the active and effective embodiment of an individualistic value system; Toohey is the active and, in almost every case, effective embodiment of a collectivist value system that involves Roark's values ​​at every point. Works cited and consulted Branden, Barbara. The Passion of Ayn Rand: A Biography. New York: Doubleday, 1986aRand, Ayn. The Source. New York: Plume, 1994. The Ayn Rand Institute. "A Short Biography of Ayn Rand" [Online] available www.aynrand.org/aynrand/biography.html, 1995