Howard Roark's Courtroom Speech Analysis

In this paper I will argue that altruism does not corrupt our lives, rather enrich and helps to fulfil it. I will do so by responding to Howard Roark’s Courtroom Speech, where he strongly opposes altruism and highly favors the egotism. Howard begins his speech by elaborating the unfortunate stories of individuals who were rejected by other people living at the time because of those individuals’ pioneering works. He states that throughout the history “the great creators-the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors-stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced” (Rand 105). Roark asserts that the first man that discovered fire was “probably burned at the stake

For Roark himself says “nothing is given to man on earth”, when a person is born all he has is his mind (Rand 106). Nobody even gets to choose where he wants to be born, or weather he wants to be born at all. While men come to this world with nothing, where they grow up and in which family they were born can have significant effect on what they could achieve. For example, if someone grows up in poor a family, most of the time that person will have less opportunities in his life than a person who grows up in a rich family. While all of us come from nothing, there are still inequalities in the world we live. Therefore, we must care for one another, we cannot be always independent and only think about our achievement. It is important to serve others, in fact the entire reason why Roark could give this speech was because others were serving selflessly. For example, if the country Roark was living in at that time did not have military people who served their lives for the country, he probably would have no safety. Here because some people decided to serve their country, others like Rand could create things. Selfless acts or the altruism does not corrupt but rather helps to fulfil our lives. Without selfless people, the world would be much worse than what it is. Selfless people are the ones that gives up their life to help others in need, they are the ones who put their life in danger to save others. For example, Raoul Wallenberg, who was responsible of saving as many as 120,000 lives during the holocaust. Now he could have stayed at home and not care for anyone, he could have chosen to continue his life as a businessman and simply focus on his achievement, but he chose to serve those in danger (Rachels). As a result he saved many lives of the Jews who were oppressed by the Nazis. The world has so much