Building a Masterpiece: Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead by Dr. Shoshana Milgram   Howard Roark, the heroic protagonist of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, described as follows his architectural credo and technique: "Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it."   In The Fountainhead, the central idea, the principle that sets every detail, is the conflict—within the human soul—between individualism (intellectual sovereignty, acting on one’s independent judgment for the sake of one’s chosen values) and collectivism (intellectual dependence, the failure to see through one’s own eyes and to act for one’s own sake). The Fountainhead shows how and why individualism, not collectivism, prevails (and should prevail) in the world, or: the morality and efficaciousness of first-handedness, or, speaking colloquially, hero vs. zero. Every episode, every sequence, every detail of the novel—all are set by the central idea, which gives the novel its soul, and every wall, window, and stairway to express it. The integration of The Fountainhead itself, as constructed by Ayn Rand, matches the integrity of its hero.