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Allen, Eric

English

2004

M.A.

Though written in 1906, Jack London's much-maligned "socialist utopia," The Iron Heel, was not published until 1908. A war-in-the-streets tale of political intrigue and armed confrontation, it also incorporates the popular turn-of-the-century romance by its use of the prolitarian protagonist's wife as its primary narrator. Taking place at three main points across the seven centuries it encompasses, the novel adds a unique twist to such contemporaneous utopias/dystopias as Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Ignatius Donnelly's Caesar's Column, by fusing elements of both through its addition of a reversely-informing second narrator, who, from his privileged vantage point in the far distant future, provides a running footnote-commentary on the fictional events the novel describes as having transpired in the early twentieth century (a time that of course would have been its own more. immediate future). In short, it is a sharp social critique of what London took to be the failings of his current socio-political environment, encased in the stylistic innovation" of a dual-narrated intertextuality and dramatized with such popular conventions as action-drama and romance.
Though currently nowhere near as well known as such other London staples as The Call of the Wild and The Sea Wolf, this thesis contends that The Iron Heel is worthy of both popular exposure and canonical consideration. Arguing the book less as a lost classic than as a found contender of significant merit, it proceeds along two distinct avenues of inquiry. By way of providing insight into the context and various ideologies that are so vital to a deeper understanding of the book's thematics, it begins by offering topically relevant paraphrases of the biographical and compositional evolutions of the author and novel respectively. This established, it focuses more specifically on two of the book's most theoretically challenging components: its politics and aforementioned incorporation of a daring, "polyphonic" narrative strategy.
Departing from popular critical approaches to assessing the book's problematic political theory, this thesis maintains that, rather than reducing it to a study of capitalist/socialist philosophies, it is more constructive to view The Iron Heel as an expanded attempt to provoke readers to political thought/action of any kind. In short, to regard it more as an attack on political indifference, than one on simply capitalism itself. As concerns the novel's narrative strategy, it argues that the elaborate checks-and- balances this structure introduces is still another way of denying a reader the simple political conclusions that too many have maintained are at the book's core; a way of provoking a more reflective sympathy with either of its polarized extremes, or the myriad variants between. In all, this thesis is devoted to offering new readings of The Iron Heel, in the hopes of elevating its current status as "political curiosity" to one worthy of canonical consideration. There is much more than politics among its pages; much more that is as culturally relevant as it is enduringly inspirational. And finally, much more that too few in its author's native country have had exposure to.