Part 1, Chapters 1-3 Summary
Howard Roark stands naked at the edge of a cliff, looking down into the lake that has filled the granite quarry. He feels, not that he is one with the earth, but that the earth was made to support him. He thinks of that morning, when he was expelled from the Stanford Institute architectural program. He returns to his boarding house run by Mrs. Keating, whose son, Pete, is graduating that morning. Mrs. Keating tells Roark that the Dean wants to see him immediately. At his own pace, Roark goes to the Institute to talk with the Dean. In their conversation, Roark is at odds with the Dean’s notion that architecture is based on tradition. Roark does not want to follow tradition—he wants to create one. For this “originality,”...
(The entire section is 615 words.)
