He receives his high grades not by earning them, but by copying from the masters of the past, giving his teachers what they want and enlisting Roark's aid in solving structural problems. Keating, whose son, Peter, graduates from Stanton with high honors on the same day that Roark is expelled. But Roark could walk the streets naked without concern he has no regard for the evaluations of others. In fact, he often arouses resentment in strangers, who somehow cannot explain what they feel when they see Roark. People notice Howard Roark when he walks on the streets he notices no one. Roark's attitude is similar with strangers. The school's action will make his future more difficult, but it cannot stop him. Even though he recognizes that the career path ahead of him will be arduous, he laughs at his expulsion from school. Roark's independence extends to matters other than architecture. All three rules necessitate an architect's rational assessment of the facts of a building's requirements none of them can be applied by blind obedience to the work of the past. He tells the Dean that, in his judgment, there are three rules of design - the building's material, its site, and its purpose. He does not accept the Dean's belief that the rules of architecture come from the thinkers of the past and should, therefore, be uncritically followed by modern designers. Roark, however, is a modernist designer and a man who thinks for himself. Roark's designs are radically new, never before seen in the field of architecture, 'sketches of buildings such as had never stood on the face of the earth.' The Dean and members of the faculty are advocates of traditional designs they want Roark to build in accordance with the established styles of the past.

As the novel opens, the hero, Howard Roark, has just been expelled for insubordination from the Architectural School of the Stanton Institute of Technology.

Peter keating the fountainhead