Using the Master’s Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House: The Fountainhead Reads Doctor Faustus

ABSTRACT:Largely by the use of allegory, Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead repurposes and reinterprets the religious morality of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus to espouse an Objectivist, rather than theist, view of salvation and damnation. The Faustian narrative no longer belongs to Faustus alone, but is read against itself in order to theorize that giving up one’s ego and independence, rather than giving up one’s membership to the societal collective, is the straightest road to perdition.