A person generally pursues long-term happiness in two areas: career and love. Because Keating is not excited by architecture, he has condemned himself to a career of unrelieved drudgery. His one chance at lasting happiness lies in the area of romantic love. The good news is that he and Catherine Halsey love each other. The sincerity of Keating’s love is shown by his refusal to use Katie. He desires to meet Ellsworth Toohey, the rising star of architectural criticism, whose patronage is sufficient to make or break an architect. Catherine, Toohey’s innocent niece, is willing to introduce Keating to Toohey immediately, but Keating refuses. He confesses to her that he uses people, and vows that he will not do it to her; he wants their relationship clean, untainted by his manipulative methods. Gail Wynand says in another context that “love is the exception-making,” that a person will do for the loved one things he would do for no other. Keating manipulates everyone. Katie is the only one he relates to honestly; she is the one exception in his life. He loves her and he would be happy with her. But he leaves her the night before his wedding to marry Dominique Francon.
Keating does not love Dominique; he does not even like her. Because Dominique sees clearly Keating’s fraudulent nature and is unafraid to state the truth openly, she intimidates him. He jilts the woman he loves and marries a woman he does not love for the very reason he originally became an architect: to impress other people. Keating doesn’t leave Katie just because she’s plain. In addition to beauty, Katie lacks poise and elegance; she has none of the social graces that Dominique has. If Keating walks into the grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria with Katie on his arm, not one head in the room will turn; no one will be impressed. But Dominique is quite another matter. In addition to her beauty, Dominique possesses the charm and poise lacking in Katie. She impresses people. This is the exchange Keating makes: He gives up the woman he loves and a lifetime of happiness in order to impress other people with the “trophy” wife he has in Dominique. Love and happiness for prestige—this is the trade Keating makes. Again, Keating betrays what he wants, and what will make him happy, in order to gain social approval.
The deeper point in Keating’s life is that, in giving up his values, Keating gives up his mind. His life is no longer ruled by what he thinks, knows, and wants—but by what others believe and want. Their values and thinking now govern his life, not his own. Keating has abdicated his self; he has betrayed it so fully that, by the end of the story—before he is even forty—there is nothing left of him. He is an empty shell of a man, with nothing uniquely his own. Every personal vestige has been sacrificed in order to please others. He has reached a state of selflessness in its literal meaning—he is without self. He is the opposite of Howard Roark.
The results of selfishness and selflessness are obvious. Roark, no matter the duration and difficulty of his struggle, is on a value-quest; his life is filled, from top to bottom, with the things he loves. A life full of designing structures like the Aquitania Hotel and the Enright House, of intimate moments with the woman he loves, of hours with friends such as Wynand, Mallory, Mike Donnigan, and, of course, Henry Cameron—this is the impassioned, value-driven existence of Howard Roark. Even though at times he struggles, Roark has surrounded himself from morning until night with the things, people, and activities most important to him. Roark’s life, therefore, is an ongoing love affair.
The exact opposite is true of Keating. He has abandoned the things most important to him—painting and a relationship with Catherine Halsey. The things his day is filled with—architecture and a relationship with Dominique Francon—are not important to him. His life is a series of meaningless actions, an existence of drudgery. For several years, he has all the prestige and social approval a man can ask for, but this is external. Internally, he has nothing. The heartbreaking scene near the end, when Keating returns to his abandoned childhood love—painting—and brings his canvases to Roark, shows this. Roark, looking at the crude, childish work, is overcome with pity and can barely bring himself to speak the truth. But it is too late for Keating. A lifetime of betraying his mind, his thinking, his artistic judgment, has killed whatever creative spark he may have possessed long ago. Creativity, by its very nature is a self-driven activity; it is not borrowed from others. On the contrary, it necessarily involves new ideas, thoughts that others have not had. One can choose to follow the crowd or one can choose to be creative, but one cannot be both. Keating’s stated lifelong policy, “Always be what people want you to be,” is the credo of blind followers. As such, it is anathema to creativity. Consistent acts of self-betrayal cannot be performed with impunity.
