The Iron Heel

The Iron Heel  

1st edition
Author(s) Jack London
Country  United States
Language English
Genre(s) Dystopian novel[1]
Publisher Macmillan
Publication date 1908
Media type Print (Hardcover)
Pages 354 pp
ISBN NA

The Iron Heel is a dystopian[1] novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1908.

Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian",[2] it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are most explicitly on display. A forerunner of soft science fiction novels and stories of the 1960s and 1970s, the book stresses future changes in society and politics while paying much less attention to technological changes.

The book is uncommon among London's writings (and in the literature of the time in general) in being a first-person narrative of a woman protagonist written by a man.

Contents

Plot summary

The novel is based on the (fictional) "Everhard Manuscript" written by Avis Everhard which she hid and which was subsequently found centuries later. In addition, this novel has an introduction and series of (often lengthy) footnotes written from the perspective of scholar Anthony Meredith. Meredith writes from around 2600 AD or 419 B.O.M. (the Brotherhood of Man). Jack London thus writes at two levels, often having Meredith condescendingly correcting the errors of Everhard yet, at the same time, exposing the often incomplete understanding of this distant future perspective.

Meredith's introduction also acts as a huge and deliberate "spoiler" (the term did not yet exist at the time of writing). Before ever getting a chance to get to know Avis and Ernest, how they fell in love or how Avis became politically involved, the reader is already told that all their struggles and hopes would end in total failure and repression, and that both of them would be summarily executed. This gives all that follows the air of a foreordained tragedy. There is still left the consolation that a happy end would come for humanity as a whole – though hundreds of years too late for Avis and Ernest as individuals; the cruel oligarchy would fall, and the two will be vindicated and respected by posterity as pioneers and martyrs. (George Orwell would forty years later specifically and explicitly deny that consolation to his Winston Smith though he confirms it in appendix, and so would other later dystopian writers.)

The Manuscript itself covers the years 1912 through 1932 in which the Oligarchy (or "Iron Heel") arose in the United States. In Asia, Japan conquered East Asia and created its own empire, India gained independence, and Europe became socialist. Canada, Mexico, and Cuba formed their own Oligarchies and were aligned with the U.S. (London remains silent as to the fates of South America, Africa, and the Middle East.)

In North America, the Oligarchy maintains power for three centuries until the Revolution succeeds and ushers in the Brotherhood of Man. During the years of the novel, the First Revolt is described and preparations for the Second Revolt are discussed. From the perspective of Everhard, the imminent Second Revolt is sure to succeed but, from the distant future perspective of Meredith, we readers realize that Everhard's hopes were to be crushed for centuries to come.

The Oligarchy are the largest monopoly trusts (or robber barons) who manage to squeeze out the middle class by bankrupting most small to mid-sized business as well as reducing all farmers to effective serfdom. This Oligarchy maintains power through a "labor caste" and the Mercenaries. Labor in essential industries like steel and rail are elevated and given decent wages, housing, and education. Indeed, the tragic turn in the novel (and Jack London's core warning to his contemporaries) is the treachery of these favored unions which break with the other unions and side with the Oligarchy. Further, a second, military caste is formed: the Mercenaries. The Mercenaries are officially the army of the US but are in fact in the employ of the Oligarchs.

Asgard is the name of a fictional wonder-city, a city constructed by the Oligarchy to be admired and appreciated as well as lived in. Thousands of Proletariat live in poverty there, and are used whenever a public work needs to be completed, such as the building of levee or a canal.

The Manuscript is, really, Everhard's autobiography as she tells of: her privileged childhood as the daughter of an accomplished scientist; her marriage to the socialist revolutionary Ernest Everhard; the fall of the US republic; and her years in the underground resistance from the First Revolt through the years leading to the Second Revolt. By telling the story of Avis Everhard, the novel is essentially an adventurous tale heavily strewn with social commentary of an alternate future (from a 1907 perspective). However, the future perspective of the scholar Meredith deepens the tragic plight of Everhard and her revolutionary comrades.

Analysis

Given that The Iron Heel is now a century old, this novel has a somewhat alternate history feel because, as with Orwell's 1984, the dating of these novels is now in our past. Jack London ambitiously predicted a breakdown of the US republic starting a few years past 1908 but various events have caused his predicted future to diverge from actual history. Most crucially, though London placed quite accurately the time when international tensions will reach their peak (1913 in "The Iron Heel", 1914 in actual history), he (like many others at the time) predicted that when this moment came labor solidarity would prevent a war that would include the US, Germany, and other nations. In reality, international solidarity of labor and socialists did not avert war.

Further, London assumed that the Socialist Party would become a mass party in the United States, strong enough to have a realistic chance of winning national elections and gaining power – while remaining a revolutionary party fully committed to the dismantling of capitalism, the whole book is based on Marx's view that capitalism was inherently unsustainable. This would precipitate a brutal counter-reaction, with capitalists preserving their power by discarding democracy and instituting a brutal repressive regime. Although this exact scenario never came to pass in the US, where the Socialist Party remained small and marginal, events closely followed London's script elsewhere – for example in Chile in 1973, where the government of Socialist president Salvador Allende was overthrown by a CIA backed coup and forces led by General Augusto Pinochet, prompting later publishers of London's book to use a cover illustration depicting a poster of Allende being ground beneath the heel of a boot.

The assumption of a powerful strong and militant mass Socialist Party emerging in the US was linked with London predicting that the middle class would shrink as monopolistic trusts crushed labor and small to mid-sized businesses. Instead the US Progressive Era led to a breakup of the trusts, notably the application of the Sherman Antitrust Act to Standard Oil in 1911; at the same time, reforms such as labor unions rights passed during the Progressive Era with further reforms during the New Deal of the 1930s. Further, economic prosperity led to dramatic growth of the middle class in the 1920s and after World War II.

Through the writing of Everhard and, particularly, the distant future perspective of Meredith, London demonstrated his belief in the historical materialism of Marxism which some have interpreted as predicting an inevitable succession from feudalism through capitalism and socialism, ending in an a period without a state, based on Marx's maxim of 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.'

However, since the 2008 world financial crisis, the book now seems more prescient as the general public is better aware of powerful capitalistic interests, especially in the U.S. The rise of corporations such as Walmart that have effectively "squeezed" out many of its smaller competitors seems to be the very description of the trust (monopoly) that Everhard spoke of.

Influences and effects

The Iron Heel is cited by George Orwell's biographer Michael Shelden as having influenced Nineteen Eighty-Four.[3]

Harry Bridges, influential labor leader in the mid-1900s, was "set afire" by Jack London's The Sea-Wolf and The Iron Heel.[4]

Granville Hicks, reviewing Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, was reminded of The Iron Heel: "we are taken into the future and shown an America ruled by a tiny oligarchy, and here too there is a revolt that fails."[5]

Chapter 7 of The Iron Heel is an almost verbatim copy of an ironic essay by Frank Harris (see Jack London: Accusations of plagiarism).

London's novella The Scarlet Plague (1912), and some of his short stories, are placed in a dystopian future setting that closely resembles that of The Iron Heel, although there is no actual continuity of situations or characters.

Frederic Tuten's debut novel The Adventures of Mao on the Long March uses extensive quotes from The Iron Heel, placing them alongside details of Chinese history from 1912 to Mao's rise to power.

Chronology

Events of 1900–1908

These events take place before the time of writing and most of them actually happened in our history, though the interpretation and significance given to them by London is not always the same as seen from a present-time perspective.

Events of 1908–1913

The following years are after the time of writing, and the events attributed to them are fictional and depart drastically from our history.

Events of 1913

Events of 1914–1942

Events of 1984 A.D.- 2632 A.D.

From here on, the continuous historical narrative ceases, with the end of the Everhard Manuscript and the events immediately following its completion, and only isolated events separated by decades or centuries are provided by the footnotes in the book.

Translations

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b Stableford, Brian (1993). "Dystopias". In John Clute & Peter Nicholls (eds.). The Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction (2nd ed.). London: Orbit. pp. 360–362. ISBN 1-85723-124-4. 
  2. ^ Fromm, Erich: 1984 (Afterword), page 316. New American Library (a division of Penguin Group), 1977.
  3. ^ Orwell: the Authorized Biography by Michael Shelden, HarperCollins ISBN 978-0060921613
  4. ^ "Harry Bridges", by Clancy Sigal; The New York Times, January 7, 1973, p. 388
  5. ^ Hicks, Granville (1952-08-17). "Player Piano". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1952/08/17/books/vonnegut-player.html. Retrieved 2011-08-27. 
  6. ^ a b Richard P. Benton. "The Iron Heel." Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition. Salem Press, 2000. eNotes.com. 2006. 17 Apr, 2011 <http://www.enotes.com/iron-heel-salem/ iron-heel>

References & further reading

External links

The novels of Jack London