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Fiction’s Most Diabolical Villain

By Marco den Ouden

December 3, 2023

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2023 marks the 80th anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand’s monumental novel, The Fountainhead. A companion volume, Essays on Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead—put together by Robert Mayhew—sheds a lot of light on the writing of the novel. In the lead essay, The History of The Fountainhead, Shoshana Milgram notes that it was heavily edited by Rand herself (pre-publication) and marks a significant change in her writing. “Her choices—in style and in substance—indicate not only the changes she made in the characterization of Roark, but also, perhaps, some changes in herself.”

Rand did extensive research on architecture before writing The Fountainhead, including working for a spell in architect Ely Jacques Kahn’s office.

Rand was a careful and precise writer. She did extensive research on architecture before writing The Fountainhead, including working for a spell in architect Ely Jacques Kahn’s office. Kahn built many skyscrapers in New York, and he used the modernism style characteristic of Howard Roark, as well as cubism and art deco.

After filling many loose-leaf binders with notes, Rand started the first draft of the novel on June 26, 1938. She completed Part 1 and six and a half chapters of Part 2. Then she paused for a year and a half before completing the book. During that eighteen month interlude her whole philosophy underwent a dramatic turn.

Nietzsche captured a sense of the heroic in man that greatly appealed to her. But his explicit philosophy was at odds with her own avowed views.

She had been enamored of Nietzsche since reading him while still in her teens in Russia. Nietzsche captured a sense of the heroic in man that greatly appealed to her. But his explicit philosophy was at odds with her own avowed views. She wrote in the introduction to the 25th anniversary edition that Nietzsche was “a mystic and irrationalist … but as a poet, he projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling for man’s greatness, expressed in emotional, not intellectual, terms.” (xii in hard-copy version. All further page numbers are from the hardcover 25th anniversary edition).

The initial draft had a Nietzsche quote at the beginning of the novel and her notes indicate further quotes at the beginning of each of the four Parts of the novel. The lead-off quote was “The noble soul has reverence for itself.” For the Part headings she had longer quotes. While she dropped them from the final draft, these quotes are particularly relevant and appropriate. The quote she used as an epigraph for Roark, is from On the Genealogy of Morals. Roark was her first portrayal of the ideal man. The Nietzsche quote she dropped reads:

But from time to time do ye grant me—one glimpse, grant me but one glimpse only, of something perfect, fully realized, happy, mighty, triumphant, of something that still gives cause for fear! A glimpse of man that justifies the existence of man, the glimpse of an incarnate human happiness that realizes and redeems, for the sake of which one may hold fast to the belief in man.

Indeed, throughout the novel, while Roark projects a sense of calm and peace within his soul, with malice toward none, he also projects a sense of self-confidence and competence that strikes fear in the hearts of lesser men, and especially in the hearts of second-handers like Keating and power lusting collectivists like Toohey.

An excellent example of the changes wrought by Rand in extirpating Nietzsche from the early drafts is Roark’s discussion with the Dean of the university regarding his expulsion.  The early draft has the following: “My dear fellow, who will want to give you work now?” To which Roark replies, “I believe I know someone who will.”

Milgram notes that this reply subordinates Roark to the Dean and implies that work is to be given as some sort of alms. The final version is strikingly different and asserts Roark’s independence of mind as well as being explicitly anti-Nietzsche. Altruism, which Rand assails throughout the novel, preaches that the collective, the mob, the majority should rule. Nietzsche’s “Will to Power” argues that the great man should subordinate others to his rule. Here is the change Rand made.

“I don’t intend to build in order to serve or help anyone. I don’t intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build.”

“How do you propose to force your ideas on them?”

“I don’t propose to force or be forced. Those who want me will come to me.” (14)

This is the first expression of a theme that resounds throughout Atlas Shrugged, something most of her critics don’t recognize or understand. Rand rejects the use of force outright. Individuals should not be ruled by other men nor should they seek to rule other men.

Throughout the novel Roark will relinquish potential commissions rather than turn his architectural drafts into butchered abominations at the hands of second-handers demanding changes. He stands firm on maintaining the integrity of his designs. At one point he has to resort to working as a day laborer in a quarry for lack of commissions.

As per the Nietzsche quote she later dropped, Roark is her vision “of something perfect, fully realized, happy, mighty, triumphant.”

Ayn Rand approaches The Fountainhead in terms of projecting ideas through the lives and actions of its characters. Because her goal is to present the ideal man, she creates Roark as an archetype. As per the Nietzsche quote she later dropped, Roark is her vision “of something perfect, fully realized, happy, mighty, triumphant.”

As Chris Matthew Sciabarra notes in Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, Rand recognized “that one of its (art’s) most important ‘secondary consequences’ is its ability to educate and influence.” (195) “Her characters became thought-concretes” he continues, “based on the ideas they embodied.” He quotes Rand herself on this: “My characters are persons in whom certain human attributes are focused more sharply and consistently than in average human beings.” (from Who is Ayn Rand? by Nathaniel and Barbara Branden)

Roark projects a calm and ease that can only be found later in Atlas Shrugged’s John Galt, the man “without pain or fear or guilt.”  He is the consummate individualist. But while Roark is her projection of the ideal man, The Fountainhead is unique in also projecting her archetype of the perfect villain. I described him above as “diabolical.” The definition of diabolical according to the Oxford dictionary is “characteristic of the Devil, or so evil as to be suggestive of the Devil.” Towards the end of this essay I will demonstrate this through a comparison with another great piece of literature.

Ellsworth M. Toohey is a brilliant man, erudite, knowledgeable and totally self-aware. His goal is power, but not in the crude physical sense. He seeks to gain power over men’s souls, to turn them into compliant servile non-entities serving the common good, the will of society; to destroy any remnant of self-respect and self-worth they might possess. Dominique Francon describes him as “a perfect blackguard…. Sometimes when I feel bitter against the world, I find consolation in thinking that it’s all right, I’ll be avenged, that the world will get what’s coming to it—because there’s Ellsworth Toohey.” (114)

After he had won the Cosmo-Slotnick competition, Keating meets Toohey for the first time. Keating fawns over this pre-eminent architectural critic to the point of telling him, “I even thought, so often, when drawing, is this the kind of building Ellsworth Toohey would say is good? I tried to see it like that, through your eyes.” (232)

Toohey tells him his plan for the Cosmo-Slotnick Building was “a most ingenious plan. A brilliant plan. Very unusual. Quite different from what I have observed of your previous work.” (233)

Keating then realizes that Toohey knows that he didn’t design the building. He had sought help from Roark, of course. But the sense that Toohey intuitively knows his secret doesn’t frighten him. “What frightened him was that he saw approval in Toohey’s eyes… as if Keating were a fellow conspirator.” Keating regurgitates the collectivist pap from Toohey’s newspaper columns. “That was my abstract theme, when I designed the building—the great masses and the flower of culture.”  He then realizes that Toohey knows this is also a lie but again Toohey nods approvingly.

Toohey has a way of worming into people’s minds, of dropping bits of poison to scuttle thoughts of independence or happiness.

When Toohey brings up the topic of his niece, Catherine, who is the only true love and passion Keating has, Toohey recognizes his sincerity and sets about destroying their relationship by trivializing it, comparing it to the love of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, noting how holding hands gets them to sweat. Sure enough, when Keating and Katie later go out for a walk, he notices his hands are sweating. And he thinks they look ridiculous, just like Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Toohey has a way of worming into people’s minds, of dropping bits of poison to scuttle thoughts of independence or happiness. Genuine happiness.

Later in the novel he drops a line at a party: “Happiness? But that is so middle-class. What is happiness? There are so many things in life so much more important than happiness.” (262)

Katie (Catherine), who lives with her uncle, intuitively understands this before Keating even meets Toohey. One day she tells Keating she wants him to marry her… right away. No delay. She tells him of her running out of the house after a morbid sense of the world closing in on her. She ran because “I was afraid of him. Afraid of Uncle Ellsworth who’s never said a harsh word to me in his life! … That was all, Peter. I can’t understand it but I’m afraid.” (149)

Katie is Toohey’s most tragic victim. Between Toohey, Keating’s mother and incredibly Dominique Francon (not by design but by happenstance), her desire for marriage to Keating, who loves her passionately, is thwarted again and again.

In preparing for this essay, I put sticky notes throughout the novel, around fifty of them, at points of particular note.

In preparing for this essay, I put sticky notes throughout the novel, around fifty of them, at points of particular note. One I labeled “Toohey at his most evil”. It comes just after half-way through the novel. He saw that his niece Catherine, whom he took in when her parents died, was ambitious and happy. He wanted to nip that in the bud. At this point in the novel she has been abandoned by Peter Keating, the man she truly loves. She had abandoned her ambition of going to university. She had forged a career as a social worker. Toohey played a role in all those mishaps. And now she comes to her uncle to reveal she is fundamentally unhappy. “When I’m honest with myself, I know that the only emotion I’ve felt for years is being tired. Not physically tired. Just tired. It’s as if…as if there were nobody there to feel any more.” (373)

More than that, she is beginning to hate people. She feels she should be appreciated and people should be grateful for all she does for them. “I find myself pleased when slum people bow and scrape and fawn over me. I find myself liking only those who are servile.” she confesses. She finds herself short-tempered and angry with people who defy her suggestions. “I feel they have no right to minds of their own, that I know best, that I’m the final authority for them.” Some of this resentment comes because someone finds a job without her help or has a happy marriage or pursues their ambition to go to university despite her suggestions to the contrary. She has, in fact, become a mini-Toohey. But her heart isn’t in it. “Why is it that I set out honestly to do what I thought was right and it’s making me rotten?” (374) she asks. This theme, of course, is played out to its logical conclusion in the depiction of the fall of the 20th Century Company in Atlas Shrugged.

Toohey’s answer reflects the Kantian notion of duty which Rand excoriated repeatedly in her non-fiction writing.

Toohey’s answer reflects the Kantian notion of duty which Rand excoriated repeatedly in her non-fiction writing.  “Don’t you see how selfish you have been? You chose a noble career, not for the good you could accomplish, but for the personal happiness you expected to find in it.” (375)

“You mean I must want to be unhappy?” Katie asks desperately. He responds with what I labeled as “Toohey at his most evil.”

“No. You must stop wanting anything. You must forget how important Miss Catherine Halsey is. Because, you see, she isn’t. Men are important only in relation to other men, in their usefulness, in the service they render. Unless you understand that completely, you can expect nothing but one form of misery or another.”

He continues, “One can’t jump from a state of animal brutality into a state of spiritual living without certain transitions. And some of them may seem evil… You must be willing to suffer, to be cruel, to be dishonest, to be unclean—anything, my dear, anything to kill the most stubborn of roots, the ego. And only when it is dead, when you care no longer, when you have lost your identity and forgotten the name of your soul—only then will you know the kind of happiness I spoke about.”

Then unexpectedly, Keating shows up at her door the next day, his first visit in six months. Keating is a mixed bag. He is essentially a second hander, a duplicitous liar and conniver and has achieved considerable success as an architect by throwing others under the bus. He’s just thrown Roark under the bus at the Stoddard trial. But there are elements of honor within him. His feeling of guilt over how he railroaded Roark at the trial pushed him to see Katie—to seek forgiveness because he can’t seek it from Roark. His genuine love for Katie is another element of honor in his soul. He asks her to elope tomorrow morning at nine am. She agrees. He leaves. She lies down on her bed sobbing with happiness. Toohey hears her and asks if Keating hurt her. She blurts out “something which she did not understand, but he did: ‘I’m not afraid of you, Uncle Ellsworth!’”  (379) Dominique’s proposal to Keating later that evening thwarts the elopement as he succumbs to the notion that Dominique will help his career more than Katie will.

When Katie meets Keating again accidentally six years later she is a mousey little creature devoid of any sense of self. Keating observes that “she seemed to have no consciousness of her own person.” (623) She has adopted the selfless personality Toohey foisted on her.

When Toohey finds out that Keating knows Roark and went to university with him, Toohey queries him, not about Roark’s architectural views but about his personal life and tastes. When the subject does come around to architecture, Keating tells him ‘“He’s a maniac on the subject of architecture. It seems to mean so damn much to him that he’s lost all human perspective.” (242) In other words, Roark is exactly the type of man Toohey wants to destroy.

As a writer, Dominique Francon, also an architectural critic on Wynand’s Banner newspaper, understands Toohey’s technique better than anyone. A woman of self-made soul who loves greatness, she sees what Toohey is after. And Toohey is quite candid when talking with her. Both recognize Roark’s greatness and share a common goal for different reasons. Toohey wants to destroy Roark because he is a great man and he can’t abide greatness in his dreamed-of collectivist world. Dominique wants to destroy Roark’s career as a pre-emptive strike so the Tooheys of the world can’t hurt him.

She sees a method in Toohey’s writing. The platitudes and bromides are window dressing in “the famous Toohey technique. Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end. Sneak it in where it’s least expected. Fill a whole column with drivel, just to get in that one important line.” (284)

Toohey candidly replies, “Quite. That’s why I like to talk to you. It’s such a waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don’t even know that you’re being subtle and vicious. But the drivel is never accidental, Dominique.”

Later they are looking out the window at the New York skyline and Toohey bares his soul. He notes the heroic achievement that is New York and adds, “It is said that but for the spirit of a dozen men, here and there down the ages, but for a dozen men—less, perhaps—none of this would have been possible… If so, there are two possible attitudes to take. We can say that these twelve were great benefactors, that we are all fed by the overflow of the magnificent wealth of their spirit, and that we are glad to accept it in gratitude and brotherhood. Or we can say that by the splendor of their achievement which we can neither equal nor keep, these twelve have shown us what we are, that we do not want the free gifts of their grandeur, that a cave by an oozing swamp and a fire of sticks rubbed together are preferable to skyscrapers and neon lights—if the cave and the sticks are the limit of our own creative capacities. Of the two attitudes, Dominique, which would you call the truly humanitarian one? Because, you see, I am a humanitarian.” (287-288)

The end point of Toohey’s so-called humanitarianism is the nightmare world Rand projects in her novelette Anthem, a world where even the word “I” has been expunged.

In a chapter describing Toohey’s youth and the development of his soul, his viciousness is apparent from an early age. At Harvard, Toohey excelled in all his studies. He had an air of superiority that led to his being called “Monk” Toohey. “He moved among all these unformed youths, with the assurance of a man who has a plan, a long-range plan set in every detail.” (307) Others were drawn to them and he talked to them in bull sessions.

“A man must be willing to take the foulest crimes upon his soul—for the sake of his brothers. To mortify the flesh is nothing. To mortify the soul is the only act of virtue. So you think you love the broad mass of mankind? You know nothing of love. You give two bucks to a strike fund and you think you’ve done your duty? You poor fools! No gift is worth a damn, unless it’s the most precious thing you’ve got. Give your soul. To a lie? Yes, if others believe it. To deceit? Yes, if others need it. To treachery, knavery, crime? Yes! To whatever it is that seems lowest and vilest in your eyes. Only when you can feel contempt for your own priceless little ego, only then can you achieve the true, broad peace of selflessness, the merging of your spirit with the vast collective spirit of mankind.”

The novel notes that his harangues did not find much appeal with the poorer students who worked their way through university. But he was a hit with ‘the young heirs,” (308) the rich. Indeed, socialist groups on campuses today are usually made up of the wealthy students, not the students who know what it means to work for a living.

Rand drops little gems of Toohey’s ideals and methods throughout the novel. His disdain for romantic love and sex, his views on career choice, service to others, on how to ruin a reputation, on the fragility of civilization.

Rand drops little gems of Toohey’s ideals and methods throughout the novel. His disdain for romantic love and sex, his views on career choice, service to others, on how to ruin a reputation, on the fragility of civilization. One great quote from his newspaper column is “We are all brothers under the skin—and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.” (312)

A few more quick points about Toohey’s worldview. In a conversation with some of his literary and artistic acolytes, the so-called avant-garde types, he explains why he thinks mediocrity should be promoted. Discussing Ibsen, the great Norwegian playwright, with his mediocre acolyte Ike, Toohey says, “Sure he’s good, but suppose I don’t like him. Suppose I wanted to stop people from seeing his plays. It would do me no good whatever to tell them so. But if I sold them the idea that you’re just as great as Ibsen—pretty soon they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.” (490)

At a private party he proclaims that “freedom and compulsion are one.” He gives as an example that “traffic lights restrain your freedom to cross a street whenever you wish. But this restraint gives you the freedom from being run over by a truck.” (579) He concludes with the very Rousseauian notion that “only by accepting total compulsion can we achieve total freedom.”

In The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau promotes the idea of the general will. Isaiah Berlin writes that Rousseau recognized that “there are two lines: that of absolute individual freedom, and that of social authority” and that “at some point these lines must intersect: there must be a central point, one and only one, at which the desires of the individual and the needs of society precisely coincide.” (Isaiah Berlin, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age, 112)

In Rousseau’s words “Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.” He continues, “Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the entire body; which only means that he will be forced to be free.” (Rousseau, The Social Contract, Chapter VII – italics added)

Toohey again reflects on this when Keating comes to see him about securing the contract to build Cortlandt Homes. He says the old adage of divide and conquer is obsolete. A “much more potent formula” he avers is “unite and rule.” (594) Again, pure Rousseau. (See Susan Dunn’s Sister Revolutions for the essential differences between the American and French Revolutions. The latter was built on Rousseau’s idea of unity and led to the Reign of Terror.)

Towards the end of the novel, Toohey visits Keating to confirm his suspicion that Roark designed Cortlandt Homes. He presses Keating relentlessly to confess. “Why do you want to kill Howard?” asks Keating. He doesn’t, Toohey tells him. “I want him in jail. You understand? In Jail. In a cell. Behind bars. Locked, stopped, strapped—and alive. He’ll move when he’s told to move and stop when he’s told… He’ll take orders!” (663)

Toohey’s viciousness takes full form as he badgers Keating into giving him the contract he signed with Roark. And he reveals his true frame of mind and his ultimate goal.

He holds Keating in contempt as a hypocritical sentimentalist. “But God! I get tired of it. I must allow myself a moment free of you. That’s what I have to put on an act for all of my life—for mean little mediocrities like you. To protect your sensibilities, your posturings, your conscience and the peace of mind you haven’t got. That’s the price I pay for what I want.—but at least I know that I’ve got to pay it. And I have no illusions about the price or the purchase.” (664)

“What do you…want… Ellsworth?”

“Power, Petey.”

He excoriates Keating for being willfully blind to his intentions. “I recognize it. I don’t like it. I didn’t expect to like it. Enjoyment is not my destiny. I shall find such satisfaction as my capacity permits. I shall rule.”

How?

“If you know how to rule a single man’s soul, you can get the rest of mankind. It’s the soul, Peter, the soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That’s why the Caesars, the Attilas, the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul, Peter, is that which can’t be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it—and the man is yours. You won’t need a whip—he’ll bring it to you and ask to be whipped.” (665)

He goes on to discuss how this can be achieved—by making “man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity… Preach selflessness…. His soul gives up its self-respect. You’ve got him. He’ll obey.”

What about great men, the Roarks of the world? “Great men can’t be ruled. We don’t want any great men. Don’t deny the conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept—and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection… Enshrine mediocrity—and the shrines are razed.”

But if that fails, as it must with someone of unbridled integrity? “Can you see Howard Roark in this picture? No? Then don’t waste time on foolish questions. Everything that can’t be ruled must go. And if freaks persist in being born occasionally, they will not survive beyond their twelfth year.” (668)

Though Rand held C.S. Lewis in great contempt based on her reading of his book The Abolition of Man, calling him an “abysmal bastard,” a “monstrosity,” a “cheap, awful, miserable, touchy, social-meta­physical mediocrity,” and a “pickpocket of concepts,” in her marginal notes in the book, nevertheless, they have some things in common. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters critiques both the concept of selflessness and the concept of democracy in terms very much like Rand’s. The book is a series of letters from a senior devil, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood, on how to corrupt men’s souls. He sounds amazingly like Ellsworth Toohey.

At one point he explains the value of selflessness in corrupting men’s souls. “In discussing any joint action, it becomes obligatory that A should argue in favour of B’s supposed wishes and against his own, while B does the opposite. It is often impossible to find out either party’s real wishes; with luck, they end by doing something that neither wants, while each feels a glow of self-righteousness and harbours a secret claim to preferential treatment for the unselfishness shown and a secret grudge against the other for the ease with which the sacrifice has been accepted.”

There is a superb quote capturing the essence of selflessness. “She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can always tell the others by their hunted expression.” A perfect description of the reason behind Katie’s fear of Toohey. She knows at some gut level that she’s being hunted. That her soul is in jeopardy.

In the final chapter, Screwtape the devil praises democracy for its leveling effect. Like Toohey he promotes the idea that everyone is as good as anyone else. He enshrines mediocrity. And like Toohey, he seeks to destroy those of superior ability. He relates the story of one tyrant schooling another in how to rule. He takes him into a cornfield and with his sword snicks off the tops of corn plants that have grown taller than the others.

“The moral was plain,” Screwtape continues, “Allow no pre-eminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser, or better, or more famous, or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level; all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus tyrants could practice, in a sense, ‘democracy’. But now ‘democracy’ can do the same work without any other tyranny than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big stalks. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks.”

This democratic impulse applied in education means “The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age-group throughout his school career.”

He concludes that “democracy or the democratic spirit (diabolical sense) leads to a nation without great men, a nation mainly of subliterates, morally flaccid from lack of discipline in youth, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and soft from lifelong pampering. And that is what Hell wishes every democratic people to be.”

If Rand had read The Screwtape Letters, she surely would have agreed with Lewis’s assessment.

What sets Toohey apart from any other villain in fiction is his own self-awareness and his candidness about what he is after.

What sets Toohey apart from any other villain in fiction is his own self-awareness and his candidness about what he is after. He summarizes it in his confession to Keating. Keating used people to get ahead and gain an unearned glory. But Toohey confesses: “I want nothing for myself. I use people for the sake of what I can do to them. It’s my only function and satisfaction. I have no private purpose. I want power. I want my world of the future. Let all live for all. Let all sacrifice and none profit. Let all suffer and none enjoy. Let progress stop. Let all stagnate. There’s equality in stagnation. All subjugated to the will of all. Universal slavery—without the dignity of a master. Slavery to slavery. A great circle—and a total equality. The world of the future.” (668)

“We’ve taught men to unite,” he concludes. “This makes one neck ready for one leash. We’ve found the magic word. Collectivism… Kill the individual. Kill man’s soul. The rest will follow automatically”

Toohey is Screwtape, the devil incarnate.

 

The author thanks Kurt Keefner, Roger Bissell, and Vinay Kolhatkar for their insightful comments on a prior draft.

 

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