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brycee8f83 's review for:
The Octopus: A Story of California
by Kevin Starr, Frank Norris
Enjoyed the story and the book had the potential to be great but the overall message seemed off to me/not in line with the story so I ended up feeling a little disappointed in the end. The story is well done - descriptive, interesting characters, building with emotions, the octopus theme throughout the book to describe the railroad, farmer vs. large corp during the industrial revolution, etc. etc.
Norris's overall message is basically that the bad outcomes of industrialization (destruction of farmers and their families in this story) provides the greatest good for civilization as a whole and is caused by natural forces and therefore you can't blame anyone for the negative consequences. He spends the whole book crafting this devastating story about the farmers to in the end say what happened was natural and wasn't anyone's fault.
I don't disagree that industrialization/capitalism is a natural outcome of human nature and providing the best good for the whole but I think stories like this are valuable in helping us step back and protect those that are vulnerable during times of change. Norris basically backed off his emotionally charged story in the end by saying it was all okay when he could have used it as an opportunity to remind us the costs of advancement.
Quotes:
"Falseness dies; injustice and oppression in the end of everything fade and vanish away. Greed, cruelty, selfishness, and inhumanity are short-lived; the individual suffers, but the race goes on. Annixter dies, but in a far distant corner of the world a thousand lives are saved. The larger view always and through all shams, all wickednesses, discovers the Truth that will, in the end, prevail, and all things, surely, inevitably, resistlessly work together for good."
"We are both of us fighters, it seems, Mr. Derrick," said Cedarquist. "Each with his particular enemy. We are well met, indeed, the farmer and the manufacturer, both in the same grist between the two millstones of the lethargy of the Public and the aggression of the Trust, the two great evils of modern America."
"Is it yourself you think of? You helper of the helpless. Is that your sincerity? You must sink yourself; must forget yourself and your own desire of fame, of admitted success. It is your poem, your message, that must prevail,—not you, who wrote it. You preach a doctrine of abnegation, of self-obliteration, and you sign your name to your words as high on the tablets as you can reach, so that all the world may see, not the poem, but the poet. Presley, there are many like you. The social reformer writes a book on the iniquity of the possession of land, and out of the proceeds, buys a corner lot. The economist who laments the hardships of the poor, allows himself to grow rich upon the sale of his book."
"Gambler that he was, he had at last chanced his highest stake, his personal honour, in the greatest game of his life, and had lost."
"Passers-by on the sidewalk, men and women in the great six o'clock homeward march, jostled them as they went along. With dumb, dull curiousness, she looked into one after another of the limitless stream of faces, and she fancied she saw in them every emotion but pity. The faces were gay, were anxious, were sorrowful, were mirthful, were lined with thought, or were merely flat and expressionless, but not one was turned toward her in compassion. The expressions of the faces might be various, but an underlying callousness was discoverable beneath every mask. The people seemed removed from her immeasurably; they were infinitely above her. What was she to them, she and her baby, the crippled outcasts of the human herd, the unfit, not able to survive, thrust out on the heath to perish?"
"Evil is short-lived. Never judge of the whole round of life by the mere segment you can see. The whole is, in the end, perfect."
Norris's overall message is basically that the bad outcomes of industrialization (destruction of farmers and their families in this story) provides the greatest good for civilization as a whole and is caused by natural forces and therefore you can't blame anyone for the negative consequences. He spends the whole book crafting this devastating story about the farmers to in the end say what happened was natural and wasn't anyone's fault.
I don't disagree that industrialization/capitalism is a natural outcome of human nature and providing the best good for the whole but I think stories like this are valuable in helping us step back and protect those that are vulnerable during times of change. Norris basically backed off his emotionally charged story in the end by saying it was all okay when he could have used it as an opportunity to remind us the costs of advancement.
Quotes:
"Falseness dies; injustice and oppression in the end of everything fade and vanish away. Greed, cruelty, selfishness, and inhumanity are short-lived; the individual suffers, but the race goes on. Annixter dies, but in a far distant corner of the world a thousand lives are saved. The larger view always and through all shams, all wickednesses, discovers the Truth that will, in the end, prevail, and all things, surely, inevitably, resistlessly work together for good."
"We are both of us fighters, it seems, Mr. Derrick," said Cedarquist. "Each with his particular enemy. We are well met, indeed, the farmer and the manufacturer, both in the same grist between the two millstones of the lethargy of the Public and the aggression of the Trust, the two great evils of modern America."
"Is it yourself you think of? You helper of the helpless. Is that your sincerity? You must sink yourself; must forget yourself and your own desire of fame, of admitted success. It is your poem, your message, that must prevail,—not you, who wrote it. You preach a doctrine of abnegation, of self-obliteration, and you sign your name to your words as high on the tablets as you can reach, so that all the world may see, not the poem, but the poet. Presley, there are many like you. The social reformer writes a book on the iniquity of the possession of land, and out of the proceeds, buys a corner lot. The economist who laments the hardships of the poor, allows himself to grow rich upon the sale of his book."
"Gambler that he was, he had at last chanced his highest stake, his personal honour, in the greatest game of his life, and had lost."
"Passers-by on the sidewalk, men and women in the great six o'clock homeward march, jostled them as they went along. With dumb, dull curiousness, she looked into one after another of the limitless stream of faces, and she fancied she saw in them every emotion but pity. The faces were gay, were anxious, were sorrowful, were mirthful, were lined with thought, or were merely flat and expressionless, but not one was turned toward her in compassion. The expressions of the faces might be various, but an underlying callousness was discoverable beneath every mask. The people seemed removed from her immeasurably; they were infinitely above her. What was she to them, she and her baby, the crippled outcasts of the human herd, the unfit, not able to survive, thrust out on the heath to perish?"
"Evil is short-lived. Never judge of the whole round of life by the mere segment you can see. The whole is, in the end, perfect."