[yummyfajitas]

That's why in all Ayn Rand novels, the protagonist's problem isn't just the fact that the masses interfere with his projects and thwart his greatness - the problem is that they do this because they don't recognize him as superior.

I have no idea why so many people feel the need to comment on Ayn Rand without reading it.

If you read the Fountainhead to the end, you'd realize that Roark was completely happy toiling in anonymity, as long as his building was built properly.

[alsomike]

A farmer who has difficulty plowing straight lines because his oxen are recalcitrant doesn't get his feelings hurt and write lengthy books in oxen language for the oxen to read whining about how he is a superior type of animal and why can't they just realize that! Then the farmers says "I'm tired of being unappreciated!" and leaves the farm in a huff just to show the oxen that if without him, there'd be no-one to feed them or clean out the stables. The reason this doesn't happen is that the farmer really is superior to the oxen, so he doesn't need to prove anything - for him, recalcitrant oxen are just one of many obstacles involved in farming.

Despite all claims to the contrary, the very fact that Rand even bothered to write a book at all betrays her secret, perhaps unconscious need for recognition. Here, the medium is a message - if Rand's audience is the superior people, why did she choose to communicate her ideas in the format most accessible to the "oxen" of society, the novel, instead of a dense philosophical treatise? She even helped to make the movie version of The Fountainhead, an even more accessible format.