The Ayn Rand Institute is sponsoring some incredible scholarships in relation to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. This is an essay scholarship with several questions to choose from. Each year, multiple winners are selected: 1 first-prize winner ($10,000), 3 second-prize winners ($2,000), 5 third-prize winners ($1,000), 20 finalists ($100), and 20 semifinalists ($50).

This is an annual essay contest for 11th and 12th graders. This year’s essay topics include the following:

1. The conventional view is that in life one can either achieve practical success or be moral, but not both. What view of this relation do you think emerges in The Fountainhead? What is the novel’s conception of success? Of morality? Explain by reference to characters and events of the story.

2. For each of the following quotations from The Fountainhead, explain its meaning in the story and its wider significance.

a. Gail Wynand (to Howard Roark): “There’s a particular kind of people that I despise. Those who seek some sort of a higher purpose or ‘universal goal,’ who don’t know what to live for, who moan that they must ‘find themselves.’” (Part IV, Chapter 5)

b. Peter Keating (to Dominique Francon): “I’d rather you’d express an opinion, God damn it, just once!” (Part III, Chapter 2)

c. Howard Roark (to Ellsworth Toohey): “But I don’t think of you.” (Part II, Chapter 15)

3. In Roark’s courtroom speech, he discusses the conflicts of the creator versus the second-hander and of egoism versus altruism. What is the nature of these conflicts and the relationship between the creator and egoism and between the second-hander and altruism? How do characters and events of The Fountainhead dramatize these conflicts and relationships? Explain.

According to the website, essays will be judged on a variety of factors—style, content, organization, and logic. Applications and essays can be submitted online or at the following address:

The Fountainhead Essay Contest, Dept. W
The Ayn Rand Institute
P.O. Box 57044
Irvine, CA 92619-7044

Posted Wed, 01 Aug 2007 07:50:16 and filed under Politics, Scholarships. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.