She teaches her son to put the values of others before his own.
He even codifies his toadying attitude into a formal principle: "Always be what people want you to be." Keating is an outstanding example of a status-seeking conformist. He lacks the backbone to ever stand alone, and spends his life forever seeking the approval of others. Francon's tutelage helps Peter Keating develop into an even more unscrupulous manipulator than his boss. His great financial success despite his unprincipled methods provides some of the evidence on which Dominique originally bases her conclusion that the world is essentially corrupt. A phony architect, who achieves commercial success by two means: copying from the great classical designers, and wining and dining prospective clients with urbane wit and charm. Dominique, though a brilliant woman, holds a pessimistic philosophy throughout much of the novel that prevents her from fulfilling her vast potential.
Dominique is Roark's lover, his greatest admirer, and, simultaneously, an ally of Roark's most implacable enemy - Ellsworth Toohey - in the attempt to ruin his career. His life exemplifies the fate of many innovators who have discovered new knowledge or invented a revolutionary product, only to be repudiated by society.ĭominique Francon An impassioned idealist who loves only man the hero. Roark admires Cameron as he does no one else in the novel. He is an early modernist, one of the first to design skyscrapers and a man of unbending integrity. He is an aged, bitter curmudgeon - and a commercial failure - but he is the greatest architect of his day.
Roark is the embodiment of the great innovative thinkers who have carried mankind forward but are often opposed by their societies. His independent functioning serves as a standard by which to judge the other characters - either they are like Roark or they allow others, in one form or another, to control their lives. It is his struggle to succeed as an architect on his own terms that forms the essence of the novel's conflict.
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