Objectivism In Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead

The ideal person to Ayn Rand, author of “The Fountainhead,” is someone that does not allow their decisions in life to be affected by external sources, and is able to deal with the struggle of staying an individual in a collectivist world. However, unless this person lives in complete isolation, that is nearly impossible. Peter and Toohey are both affected by the events in their past, meanwhile Roark is unchanged throughout the entire book. Staying an individualist requires one to deal with the conflict of staying independent by not letting outside ideas change their thinking merely because everyone else thinks it.
Achieving absolute individualism is almost impossible when one is completely surrounded by others. However, Howard Roark never changes

A true Objectivist does not rely on other people. Therefore, Ellsworth Toohey is not an Objectivist, or an individual. He also fails at being an individual, because of the way he dealt with the problems of his life. Toohey was constantly ignored growing up, and he hated that, so he dealt with that by making sure he would never be ignored again, Toohey is just as much of a parasite as Peter, because “[He] create[‘s] nothing. [he] exist[‘s] entirely through the persons of others.”(Source 9, For the New Intellectual, 82) Toohey spends his entire life building up his collection of souls. He creates a giant army of “sacrificial animals.”(Source 3, The Virtue of Selfishness, ix) who will obey his every command. All his followers have given up their morals and values. Without them, they are unable to make decisions on their own, leaving them to Toohey. Without other people, Toohey“[is] just as dependent as the beggar.”(Source 9, For the New Intellectual, 82) With this power he has, Toohey uses it to teach people that the only way to achieve happiness is to do acts for others. But seen through the life of Katie, “human good does not require human sacrifices, and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone,”(Source 1, The Virtue of Selfishness, 31) as she if left miserable after listening to Toohey. Toohey poorly deals with his struggle to be an individualist by becoming a control freak, and trying to lower everyone to his level. For both Keating and Toohey, the reasoning of them losing their true individuality, goes back to the past, where they let the events that happened to them, affect their motives and