Who Is The Fountainhead And Toohey's Quest For Power?

In the Fountainhead, the quest for power consumes many characters. In fact, it seems to consume almost every character except Howard Roark, the very person in whom these characters wish to take the most power from. However, even if Roark continues in his own individualistic world, people like Ellsworth Toohey and Gail Wynand still manage to thrive on gaining and achieving an increasing amount of power. The forms of these powers are starkly different from each other and insurmountably contrasted from Roark’s goals and motivations to gain power. Ellsworth Toohey is a cunning and convincing man who is constantly charming people into his way of thinking. This is most easily identified in his niece Catherine who he manipulates without her even knowing. Catherine knows that she is being persuaded into …show more content…
“dominque quote”. Toohey is a writer for The Banner, an excellent example of scandalous yet intelligent journalism and he writes several critiques about Roark in order to damage Roark’s reputation as an architect. Because of these articles, one leading to a court case against Roark, society as a whole renounces Roark and abhors his architectural work. Toohey benefits most when he is able to prove to the public that someone is a threat to the conventional society in which they all feel comfortable and complacent, therefore establishing opportunity for himself to have more influence and power. In the eyes of Toohey, if people like Roark gain any kind of power they threaten the very threads that hold together their ideal society and in consequence need to be put back in their place. Roark was expelled from a prestigious architecture school. Peter Keating graduated at the top of his class. For Toohey, one of these men deserves power and the other doesn’t. Toohey naturally and