This is the two-pronged goal that he attempts to reach: destroy the independent thinkers like Roark, and, by convincing individuals to surrender their judgment and values, turn them into followers like Keating. Toohey's conclusion is simple: his plan requires many Keatings and no Roarks. Just as Keating fawns over professors, employers, critics - anyone in authority - so he will toady to the political leaders. Toohey understands that Keating, in order to be liked, will yield his thinking and values to others.

But the Keatings will - in exchange for approval. He can establish a dictatorship only if the majority of individuals are willing to give up personal autonomy - to surrender their minds to a leader. Toohey knows that a Fascist or Communist state requires a citizenry willing to obey. With The Banner as a platform, Toohey hopes to spread the ideas necessary to establish a totalitarian state in America. Because he is a Marxist intellectual preaching communism to the masses, he desires to control editorial policy of the Wynand papers. Toohey seeks to establish a collectivist dictatorship in America. He is the one character in the story who has political goals. In this regard, he is the perfect antipode to Roark's creative genius.īut Toohey's power-seeking is not limited to his cult activities. Because he creates and contributes nothing, Toohey can exist only as a parasite. It is through and by means of his victims that Toohey - like a virus - gains survival. He controls the souls of various government bureaucrats, of numerous Wynand employees and of millionaires like Hopton Stoddard and Mitchell Layton. He gains a private army of unquestioning followers, some of whom occupy positions of authority. Toohey is never too busy to give them his full attention he is always there to tell them what to do.Īt the personal level, Toohey is a cult leader of a type such as Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Sun Myung Moon. His life is then empty, devoid of meaning and purpose, and he is incapable of internal direction. But when a man gives up his values, he necessarily gives up that with which he formed them - his own thinking. He succeeds with a number of weak-willed individuals, who then surrender the things and persons most precious to them. He tells them that virtue lies in selflessness, in the renunciation of personal desires, and that they must exist for the sake of others. Under the guise of offering spiritual guidance, Toohey convinces his followers to give up the things most important in their lives - their values. Toohey deceives his victims by posturing as a humanitarian, but the code he preaches - that of self-sacrifice - is utterly destructive. At the personal level, he acquires a legion of followers who blindly obey his every command. In various ways, he attempts to gain control over the lives of other men.

The fountainhead sparknotes