The board members of the Manhattan Bank Building accuse Roark of selflessness. This accusation is false. But there is a character in the story who is specifically designed by the author to be the essence of selflessness: Peter Keating. According to conventional ethics, Keating is a ruthless example of egotism. He lies, cheats, flatters, manipulates, and virtually murders Lucius Heyer in order to attain partnership in the country's most prestigious firm. It looks as though Keating does all this for himself. But Ayn Rand challenges us to analyze the issue at a deeper level. A self, she argues, is exactly what Peter Keating lacks.
If a person's self is the values he chooses and the independent judgment by means of which he makes the choices, then these are the very things Keating has abdicated. His values and his mind have been turned over to others. In his youth, for example, painting was a budding passion for him. Had Keating pursued painting, it may have brought him a fulfilling career. But he does not; he surrenders his desires in order to please his mother. Mrs. Keating is concerned with respectability; she wants social acceptance. To her, painting is a bohemian — not a respectable — lifestyle. An artist, after all, wears torn, paint-splattered jeans, he freezes in a garret in New York City's Soho district, he has nude women in his apartment as models. But architecture, she believes, offers a very different kind of life. Architects wear double-breasted, pin-striped, Brooks Brothers suits; they have offices on Park Avenue; they draw their clients from the Social Register. For these reasons, architecture is a respectable career. Keating gives up a career he would have loved not because he loves architecture more (he doesn't love it at all) but because others want him to. He surrenders a career in art not merely to meet his mother's expectations, but to meet her understanding of society's expectations. Keating is a conformist. Other people, not his own judgment, dominate his career choice. He is selfless.
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.
