The subtlety of Ayn Rand's style can be understood by examining a representative scene. Near the end of Part One, Roark is offered the commission to design the Manhattan Bank Building. It is a major commission at a time when he needs it desperately, but the board wishes to alter his design. Roark, to whom the integrity of his design is far more important than money or recognition, refuses. The means by which Ayn Rand presents the scene is revealing.
The board presents Roark with an altered sketch of his building. The first thing Roark does is get up: "He had to stand. He concentrated on the effort of standing. It made the rest easier." He leans on the table with his right arm. When he answers, the men of the board cannot tell whether he is too calm or too emotional — but because his words move forward evenly, with neither anger nor excitement, they conclude he is calm, despite the fact that "the air in the room was not the air that vibrates to a calm voice." The board members also notice that Roark's demeanor and posture are normal; he is exhibiting no strange mannerisms, except that his right hand clings to the table's edge, and he moves the drawings with his left hand, as if his right is paralyzed. What is the significance of these details?
Notice that Ayn Rand chooses to narrate the scene through the eyes (and ears) of the board members. The reader gets only the sensory information available to the men in the room, seeing and hearing what they do. Ayn Rand does not tell the reader what emotions Roark is feeling. Instead, she shows the observational details that the reader would get were he sitting in the room, too. After all, an individual has no direct way of experiencing another person's emotions; all he can do is observe the sensory clues and infer. If a man's face is red, his eyes wild, and his voice loud, we can infer that he is angry. The readers of The Fountainhead discover a character's emotions the way they do it in real life: by inference from observational evidence.
