Ayn Rand/The Fountainhead

I had a teacher in high school, a few actually, that had us read Ayn Rand books. The first was Anthem and then for our AP senior English course, one of our summer reading books was The Fountainhead, which of course probably no one read in its entirety. We didn’t study much of her work because in both instances it was summer reading, so most of the “analyzing” was done solo, and our teacher actually made us submit essays for prizes to the Ayn Rand foundation. So I was surprised to learn later in life that Rand has such a polarizing reputation. If you even have a copy of one of her novels on your shelf, a host of assumptions are made, but I’m not sure what about.

I honestly should just research more about her and her philosophies, but I was curious about what people’s knee jerk reactions are when they hear about Ayn Rand and The Fountainhead in particular?