Why does Roark think "it's too late" for Peter?

[goldmonkee]

I haven't read _The Fountainhead_ in a long time, but this quote's been bugging me for days. I don't have the book by me to reference, but it's toward the end when Howard looks at the paintings by Peter. After, he tells him that "It's too late." For what? To change his life, his career, both, or something else entirely? I don't think it's ever too late.

Probably bugging me more than it should, since I look up to Howard even though he's fictional

[Som Guy]

I haven't read _The Fountainhead_ in a long time, but this quote's been bugging me for days.  I don't have the book by me to reference, but it's toward the end when Howard looks at the paintings by Peter.  After, he tells him that "It's too late."  For what?  To change his life, his career, both, or something else entirely?  I don't think it's ever too late.

Probably bugging me more than it should, since I look up to Howard even though he's fictional 

Well I think it meant it was too late for him to create something asthetic since he lacked a self.

[stephen_speicher]

I haven't read _The Fountainhead_ in a long time, but this quote's been bugging me for days.  I don't have the book by me to reference, but it's toward the end when Howard looks at the paintings by Peter.  After, he tells him that "It's too late."  For what?  To change his life, his career, both, or something else entirely?  I don't think it's ever too late.

Earlier the narrative revealed that painting was an "unborn ambition" for Peter and that he was swayed by his mother towards architecture instead. Later in life Peter went away for a couple of days each month to a cabin he rented somewhere, secretly painting and drawn by the sense that he had given up something that he no longer could even enjoy doing. He knew any passion for painting was far gone, and he knew his paintings contained no meaning, and Roark was the only one he ever showed his paintings to. Roark acknowledged, taking longer than necessary, what peter already knew, that Peter had given up his chance for any passion in painting long ago.

[Thoyd Loki]

I don't think it's ever too late.

That is a nice rosy thing that is popped around nowadays, that is utterly false. You can't get away with actions with impunity. You can't deny yourself, and expect it (what it?) to pop up, formed, twenty years later. You can't bury an inspiration forever, and expect it to survive. It might, for a time, but what is the cost? And what happens to the nature of that inspiration? Do you think that it will survive your "spiritual" death, when you have given up on life?

This is not about a guy that pursued other passions knowing that he would accomplish this other thing as well at a later date. Like a football player that takes up photography after he can no longer pursue his passion for football.

He was finished as a real person. That was the sense in which it was too late for him. He had lived in and through others. If there is a field in which you absolutely cannot get away with that in, it is art most certainly.

Sure, he could make a killing as a hack artist (especially if he lived now). But, he had already done that as a hack architect. What he wanted, he could no longer have, probably only wish for, wistfully. He quite literally killed himself.

[jlew]

Thoyd Loki...but couldn't Keating "come back to life" if he accepted Roark's philosophy? Sure, to go through life the way he did, then up and decide one day that he was going to paint again - that was an impossibility. But if he looked back at his life, saw what he had done to himself, and consciously decided that he'd had enough, then couldn't it not be too late?

I'm not saying its a matter of seconds - "I'm going to think." - and then - BOOM - everything is all better. It would've taken years and years for Peter to come out of the woods. BUT if he was intellectually honest with himself, if he worked hard at being responsible, self-aware, and proud of himself and whatever achievements he could gain in the time remaining to him, then, and only then, could he come back from the brink and becoming something. (As opposed to the "nothing" he had become by the end of the book.) Whatever he had attained would be a testament to his life.

To say, "It's too late" ignores free will as its understood by Objectivism: the choice to think or not to think. If Peter Keating had chosen to think (and with that choice accepted all the responsibilities that go with it), then it would not have been "too late." As long as one chooses thinking over non-thinking its never too late.

[Thoyd Loki]

Peter had been given all the opprotunities and taken all the attempts he had open to him in the course of the story. He tried several times in the story to stand on his own two feet so to speak, and each time he failed. He failed himself-volitionally. That is what you can't recover from with impunity.

[jlew]

I guess I'm looking at the story beyond the end of the book. Judging from the book itself, I agree with you, Thoyd Loki - it was too late. However, imagining Peter Keating as a real person, I still believe that it isn't too late for him. All he has to do is choose to think. (And not want to commit suicide when he actually understood everything he'd done by not thinking.)

I'm not saying that he wouldn't come out of it unscathed. I agree with what you say about not being able to recover from a life such as his with impunity. But if you accept the responsibilities with a reasoning mind, then your life can be your own again.

[Inspector]

I guess I'm looking at the story beyond the end of the book. Judging from the book itself, I agree with you, Thoyd Loki - it was too late. However, imagining Peter Keating as a real person, I still believe that it isn't too late for him. All he has to do is choose to think. (And not want to commit suicide when he actually understood everything he'd done by not thinking.)

I'm not saying that he wouldn't come out of it unscathed. I agree with what you say about not being able to recover from a life such as his with impunity. But if you accept the responsibilities with a reasoning mind, then your life can be your own again.

Read "The Compraccicos" (sp?) in The New Left to get an idea of just how wrecked a consciousness can become.

[McGroarty]

Read "The Compraccicos" (sp?) in The New Left to get an idea of just how wrecked a consciousness can become.

Off the topic, but a Google search for "comprachico" offers "Sexy Comprachico Singles" in the sponsored links.

Most disturbing.

[Jay P]

Yes, I think Roark was right. By the end of the novel, it was too late for Peter Keating.

Mistakes have costs; otherwise, there would be no harm in making them. Even when they are made innocently, they have a detrimental effect on one's life.

For instance, suppose a good man (a first-hander) chooses the wrong career and spends 25 years pursuing it. Or maybe he chose the wrong philosophy and now realizes it. Or married the wrong person. He finally comes to the realization that he's made a mistake. For him, it is probably not too late, but it will take a great deal of courage, soul-searching (introspection) and effort to correct his mistake. To walk away from 25 years of being on the wrong path. Perhaps give up ideas that he now sees are wrong, but that used to be a big part of his life. He will have to abandon things he has worked for in the past, but that he now sees do not serve his life and happiness. The key to his survival will be his independent thinking. He'll need to do a lot of it.

But in Keating's case, the problem is compounded by the fact that none of his mistakes were made innocently. He gave up his values, which he had barely caught a look at, one by one. Volitionally, and with evasion. He sold his precious life very cheaply: to please his mother; to impress incompetent fools; to gain fame and fortune which, when they were his, he had no way of enjoying.

What would it mean for him to start over? He would have to, first of all, understand what he had done wrong. And he would have to approach the problem as a first-hander, completely ignoring what other people were telling him. But the problem is, Keating is a second-hander. So he not only has to toss out false values, but he has to learn from the start how to think for himself. It doesn't come naturally to him. (What I mean here is that he has not automatized any healthy thinking habits.)

He has spent a lifetime pleasing crowds. That's all he knows how to do. If he is going to change, he needs to go against everything (almost!) that he has ever done. For instance, he'll have tremendous "peer pressure" to stay the course in his architectural pseudo-career. Peter Keating has developed a lifetime of habits that will lead him to cave in to this pressure.

What will inspire him if he decides to change and pursue his long lost love of art? The problem is: his art is only a faint potentiality at this time; he has no achievements in it to remind himself what he's capable of. In fact, every time he contemplates art, it will be a source of depressing feelings, because he will constantly be reminded in his own mind of how he ditched this value of his.

......

When was the point of no return for Keating? Was there a time he could have, with excruciating effort, turned around?

Yes. I think the point of no return came when he abandoned Katherine Halsey and married Dominique.

At that time in the story, he has given up many values, but he still has one. Katie. She is the one value he clings to and has managed to not betray. He doesn't understand the issue fully, but we are shown time and again that he knows he has done bad things in his life, but that he wants to keep Katie and his love for her somehow separate and unsullied from his role in life as a manipulator and sycophant. I think he sees Katie as his refuge from an evil world. What she in fact is, is his refuge from the treason he has committed to himself.

Every time I read this sequence, I'm always thinking to myself, when Dominique shows up at his door "Peter, don't do it!". If he had had enough strength of character to slam the door in her face and then marry Katie, there would have been some hope for him. Only a little, but some. Of course this action would have been completely inconsistent with the Peter Keating we've met.

The choice could not have been clearer to him, and yet he betrays his last remaining value, almost automatically. At that point, the man is finished.

Values are not to be surrendered with impunity.

[drdriveby]

I haven't read _The Fountainhead_ in a long time, but this quote's been bugging me for days.  I don't have the book by me to reference, but it's toward the end when Howard looks at the paintings by Peter.  After, he tells him that "It's too late."  For what?  To change his life, his career, both, or something else entirely?  I don't think it's ever too late.

Probably bugging me more than it should, since I look up to Howard even though he's fictional 

Changing the murderer Keating's life at this stage would have achieved little. The point Miss Rand was making-I think-is that time and biology are finite for the individual. These limitations make man's life on earth all the more precious. One can't have his potential and eat it too. Through second-handing Peter Keating ate his at an early age. Ultimately, it's morality that forbids second chances.

[Thoyd Loki]

Yes.  I think the point of no return came when he abandoned Katherine Halsey and married Dominique.

I agree. If love and work are the two main pursuits of life, he abandoned them both. He betrayed one, and then betrayed the other. He tried to go back to the first, and it was too late.

[source]

Leaving aside the story of Peter Keating, what has to happen in order to get beyond the "point of no return"? Does it take to fail "volitionally" as Thoyd Loki says, or is it enough to fail because no alternative was ever learned (ie. one's always been taught and fed with the idea that one must sacrifice himself for the sake of others, and never that one should pursue his own goals and how)?

On another note, is that what happened to Gail Wynand?

[Thoyd Loki]

I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you asking whether it is a matter of volitional choice vs. nurture (one's upbringing)?

I am going to throw my two cents in that. It is a volitional failure, although one can be hampered by bad ideas. But, there is simply too much data out there for it to be simply a matter of one's upbringing. You can say that one can fail due to one's upbringing, but only if that person has been out of focus or drifting and evading their entire life. There are just too many counter-examples of successful behaviour out there for one not to have to confront their own premises.

On that note let me also note that Keating had the best example and role model in the person of Roark (who explicitly on several occasions gave him the correct principle to live by) and he still would not take the right action.