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Anarchism and the Brute: Frank Norris, Herbert Spencer, and Anti-Government Atavism

Anarchism and the Brute: Frank Norris, Herbert Spencer, and Anti-Government Atavism Anarchism and the Brute Frank Norris, Herbert Spencer, and Anti-Government Atavism Dan Colson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign The Octopus was first published in April 1901, a mere five months before self-proclaimed anarchist Leon Czolgosz assassinated President William McKinley. Composed at the turn of the century, the first volume of Frank Norris's wheat trilogy not only takes up the era's anti-trust sentiment and progressive skepticism toward corporate power, but also evokes the anarchist menace, which threatened the existence of national governance. In the wake of Chicago's 1886 Haymarket bomb and Alexander Berkman's 1892 shooting of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, American anarchists like Johann Most, Emma Goldman, and Benjamin Tucker rose to prominence with their vocal calls for revolution and their highly publicized, yet far from consistent support for political violence. Late in The Octopus, when a bomb is thrown through S. Behrman's window, anarchism's violent potential appears: Presley acts only after a lengthy conversation with Caraher, an anarchist. Caraher is the only concrete instance of anarchism in Norris's work, but all of his major novels were written during an era of widespread anti-radicalism intermittently reignited by visible acts of aggression and perpetually haunted by anarchist rhetoric. Little attention has http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Studies in American Naturalism University of Nebraska Press

Anarchism and the Brute: Frank Norris, Herbert Spencer, and Anti-Government Atavism

Colson, Dan.
Studies in American Naturalism , Volume 6 (1) – Feb 24, 2011
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Publisher
University of Nebraska Press
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Copyright © University of Nebraska Press
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1944-6519
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Abstract

Anarchism and the Brute Frank Norris, Herbert Spencer, and Anti-Government Atavism Dan Colson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign The Octopus was first published in April 1901, a mere five months before self-proclaimed anarchist Leon Czolgosz assassinated President William McKinley. Composed at the turn of the century, the first volume of Frank Norris's wheat trilogy not only takes up the era's anti-trust sentiment and progressive skepticism toward corporate power, but also evokes the anarchist menace, which threatened the existence of national governance. In the wake of Chicago's 1886 Haymarket bomb and Alexander Berkman's 1892 shooting of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, American anarchists like Johann Most, Emma Goldman, and Benjamin Tucker rose to prominence with their vocal calls for revolution and their highly publicized, yet far from consistent support for political violence. Late in The Octopus, when a bomb is thrown through S. Behrman's window, anarchism's violent potential appears: Presley acts only after a lengthy conversation with Caraher, an anarchist. Caraher is the only concrete instance of anarchism in Norris's work, but all of his major novels were written during an era of widespread anti-radicalism intermittently reignited by visible acts of aggression and perpetually haunted by anarchist rhetoric. Little attention has

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Studies in American Naturalism – University of Nebraska Press

Published: Feb 24, 2011

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