Toohey now judges the moment propitious to strike. When Wynand is out of town, he goes against policy and attacks Roark in The Banner; Wynand fires Toohey. The union of Wynand employees, organized and controlled by Toohey, goes out on strike. Wynand and Dominique, with virtually no assistance, put out the paper by themselves; it comes back unread. The newspaper’s board of directors meets and points out the huge sums of money The Banner is losing. Mitchell Layton, a wealthy follower of Toohey, who owns the second largest block of the paper’s stock, offers to buy Wynand out. The board makes clear that the choice is simple: Either accept back the men fired and alter the paper’s stand on Roark, or close the newspaper. Wynand relents; in order to save The Banner he agrees to publicly reverse his position on the Cortlandt dynamiting.
Dominique leaves him and moves in with Roark, who awaits trial. On their first morning together, she calls the police and newspapers to report her jewelry stolen in the night. She knows that the story of Mrs. Wynand spending the night alone with another man—especially the accused dynamiter, Howard Roark—will be front page news on the New York tabloids. Dominique realizes that if Gail Wynand, in order to save the tawdry, pandering Banner, publicly calls the noble Roark “a reprehensible character, a dangerous, unprincipled, antisocial type of man,” then justice requires his own wife and reputation to be offered up to his public in as lurid a story as possible. Even though Dominique knows that what she is doing makes it harder for Roark, that it adds scandal to everything else society throws at him, she is happy. For now she is unafraid of society’s judgment—willing to face whatever it does to her or to Roark—and is free to pursue her values.
At his trial, Roark defends the right of a creator to his creation. He argues that, through the centuries, individuals have had new ideas and developed new methods and processes, and often these individuals have been rejected by their peers because their theories or products were new and upset the established routine of people’s lives. Roark points out that the first-handed creators have carried mankind on their backs, but have often been kicked in the teeth for their efforts. Roark had the new ideas that enabled Cortlandt to be built; the housing project was a product of his thinking, and remains his intellectual property. An individual is morally and legally entitled to be paid for his work, and the payment he demands is that the building be erected as he designed it. According to this definition, Roark was not paid. Society gladly took the product of his mind and effort, but refused to pay him his asking price. This is an injustice. Because it is not possible to sue the government, he was left with no recourse but to blow up the project and make it a test case for the courts to decide. Roark stands for an individual’s right to his own mind and to ownership of the product of his efforts. The jury understands Roark’s argument, and he is acquitted. Roger Enright buys Cortlandt from the government and hires Roark to build it. Gail Wynand, though morally and psychologically broken, hires Roark to build the Wynand Building, the world’s tallest skyscraper. Roark and Dominique marry. He has achieved both commercial and romantic success—and has done so on his own terms.
Peter Keating is exposed publicly as a fraud at the Cortlandt trial—and his career is finished. Ellsworth Toohey is reinstated to his position at The Banner by the labor board. Wynand has Toohey report back to work at 9:00 p.m. and waits for him in the door of his office. Wynand stands silently as Toohey arrives early and takes again his accustomed place at his desk. Toohey is made nervous by the specter of Wynand hanging over him in the doorway, but is reassured by the sound of the rolling presses—the constant accompaniment of a newspaperman’s life. Then the presses stop. Wynand looks at his wristwatch and says, “It’s nine o’clock. You’re out of a job, Mr. Toohey. The Banner has ceased to exist.” Wynand refuses to turn his life’s work over to Toohey, so he closes the paper. Standing alone with the man he recognizes as the most contemptibly evil member of society, Wynand says, “This was the end of The Banner . . . I think it’s proper that I should meet it with you.” Toohey must start over again at another newspaper, having failed in his attempts to both stop Roark and to control Wynand’s Banner.
