Happiness: A Journey rather than a Destination in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead

Sugeetha K¹ & Harini Jayaraman²

¹PhD Research Scholar, Department of English and Humanities, Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham,India. ORCID id: 0000-0002-2668-7440. Email id: k_sugeetha@cb.amrita.edu

²Professor, Department of English and Humanities, Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India. ORCID id: 0000-0002-9747-2850. Email id: j_harini@cb.amrita.edu

  Volume 10, Number 2, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.07

Received November 27, 2017; Revised April 02, 2018; Accepted April  15, 2018; Published May 06,  2018.

 Abstract

The protagonists in the fictional world of Ayn Rand seem to possess the recipe to happiness that matches Hungarian psychologist Csikszentmihalyi’s conditions for a “flow experience”. This study examines the conditions that lead to the state of “flow” in Ayn Rand’s fiction The Fountainhead, with the aim of discovering the criteria that contribute to the leading of a happy life. Although a few critics have discussed the pursuit of happiness in Rand’s novels, the objective of this research is to make a difference by attempting to use Csikszentmihalyi’s psychological theory to understand Rand’s characterization and ascertain the factors that play a major role in the making of a psychologically healthy individual, who as a consequence is frequently in a state of “flow”.

Keywords: flow, happiness, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Fountainhead, novelist-philosopher.