The Octopus by Frank Norris

As 2019 winds down, I'm continuing to chip away at my Classics Club list. This is my third year of working on it, and I'm almost completely caught up to where I'm supposed to be. After falling behind last year, I've made up a lot of ground in this one. This is book number 58 for me, and if I can make it to 60 books read by the end of the year, I will be right back on track.

For my next read, I picked up The Octopus by Frank Norris. I had this one on my list because I read Norris' McTeague in college and I really enjoyed it. I had always wanted to try another novel by him, and The Octopus is regarded as one of his most notable works, so I decided to give it a try.

The plot tells the story of an epic battle between several wheat farmers in the San Joaquin Valley in California and the Pacific and Southwestern Railroad (P&SW) in the late 1800s. As the novel begins, the farmers and the railroad are locked in a struggle regarding how much the P&SW charges for shipping wheat across the country. The farmers believe that the railroad's grain rates are predatory and attempt to take legal action against them, but the railroad has so many judges and lawyers in their pocket that their efforts are fruitless. Intense anger continues to simmer between the two groups as the farmers continually try and fail to push back against the railroad's financial abuses. Eventually, all of this hostility boils over when the P&SW tries to take direct ownership of the largest ranches in the area using some shady legal maneuvering. Enraged, the farmers prepare to do battle against this impossibly large enemy with an endless reserve of resources. The Octopus is a novel about corruption, big business, corporate greed, and what happens when people try to stand up against these seemingly unstoppable forces.

On it's face, a book about a conflict between old-timey wheat farmers and railroad tycoons does not exactly seem like thrilling reading, but this was actually an engaging story. The California setting felt very quintessentially American, almost like a Steinbeck novel. The vast wheat ranches were lovingly written, with a clear appreciation for both nature's bounty and for the hardworking men who pull sustenance from it. Interestingly, Norris' description of the farming process frequently drifted into the sexual, with passages like this appearing regularly:

It was the long stroking caress, vigorous, male, powerful, for which the earth seemed panting. The heroic embrace of a multitude of iron hands, gripping deep into the brown, warm flesh of the land that quivered responsive and passionate under this rude advance, so robust as to be almost an assault, so violent as to be veritably brutal. There, under the sun and under the speckless sheen of the sky, the wooing of the Titan began, the vast, primal passion, the two world-forces, the elemental Male and Female, locked in a colossal embrace, at grapples in the throes of an infinite desire, at once terrible and divine, knowing no law, untamed, savage, natural, sublime.

I bet you never knew plowing could be so...stimulating.

The railroad itself is described in far more vicious terms. While it is clear that Norris wanted the farmers and their wheat to be seen as a natural, right, and almost holy partnership, the railroad is a crass invader, the eponymous octopus whose tentacles reach out and strangle everything in its path. As one character describes it, it is a "...galloping monster, [a] terror of steel and steam, with its single eye, cyclopean, red, shooting from horizon to horizon...the symbol of a vast power, huge, terrible, flinging with the echo of its thunder over all the reaches of the valley, leaving blood and destruction in its path; the leviathan, with tentacles of steel clutching into the soil." Just as the ranchers are likened to lovers of the earth, the railroad is likened to a rapist, invading the soil and leaving fear and destruction in its wake.

What makes all of this artistic hyperbole especially intriguing is the fact that both elements can't really survive without the other. The farmers need a way to ship their crops over large distances, and the railroad needs freight to ship. It's an interesting relationship to analyze, as both sides are big industries trying to make a profit that have to work together. While the farmers are undoubtedly supposed to be the sympathetic characters, they are far from perfect. Norris describes how they farm recklessly, ignoring good practices like allowing the land to rest between planting seasons in the interest of earning as big of a payout as possible each year. Their way of work will eventually deplete the land they so claim to love and revere. In many ways, they are the same in their ruthless ambitions as the railroad, it's just that they have less power, less money, and they take advantage of a resource that can't fight back - the soil. It's not so much a battle of good versus evil going on here as it is a battle of light evil versus heavy evil, and this idea was really thought-provoking.

The narration of the novel shifts around between several characters involved in the conflict, giving you the perspectives of people at many different levels of power. This is why I haven't mentioned specific character names up to this point. There is no one main character here. Everyone, from the rich to the poor and the loved to the reviled, get a turn in the spotlight. All of the characters have distinct personalities and concerns too, which kept the story moving and interesting. One of my favorites was definitely Annixter, one of the irascible, eccentric ranch owners. He had a secondary storyline in which he reformed himself through love that was rather sweet. Another favorite was Dyke. an railroad engineer that was fired after refusing to accept a pay cut from the P&SW after ten years of faultless service. His love for his young daughter Sydney, who he calls "the little tad" was charming. 

The sheer volume of different people involved in the story did get a bit confusing at times, so I ended up keeping a page of notes while I read. I jotted down the main characters and a few key personality traits for each as I went along, and this really helped me keep everything straight in my mind. I ended up keeping track of 18 different people, and I could have added a few more as the novel progressed, but I stopped once I got most of the way through. While the novel isn't difficult to read, and taking notes certainly isn't necessary to understanding it, if you are the kind of reader who struggles to remember character names, I recommend doing it.

Another element of the story that I ended up taking a few notes on were the various schemes and plans going on between the farmers and the railroad. The P&SW is a corrupt organization, and making a little chart keeping track of the legal gymnastics they did to cheat the farmers was very helpful. Similarly, when the farmers dabbled in some bribery themselves, keeping track of who was paying off who and what the results were supposed to be kept me engaged with the story. Norris does a good job of explaining everyone's plans (and repeating the details enough to clear up confusion), but I liked having key points written down. At 652 pages, there was a lot going on in The Octopus, so notes helped.

Overall, I thought the novel was interesting and epic, but there were definitely some parts of it that I didn't think worked very well. Norris' female characters leave a lot to be desired. Most of them are submissive and weak, and defined mostly by their physical traits, like "oriental eyes" or "milk white arms." There's also a character named Vanamee who inexplicably has a supernatural power to call people to him telepathically. His inclusion in the story feels random and odd, like he belongs in a different book. Even worse, all his powers end up yielding him is an unsettling sexual relationship with a young girl. The symbolism was also very heavy-handed. Norris really spelled out his metaphors across the text, frequently leaving little to the imagination.

I was somewhat disappointed in the end of the novel as well. The Octopus is from the Naturalism period. These types of novels are characterized by realistic depictions of the tough parts of society. One expects brutal realism, many failures, and lots of death while reading one of these novels. While The Octopus had all of those elements (including some scenes that were so depressing they were difficult to read), Norris takes a strange turn in the novel's closing pages. After 650 pages of the railroad delivering blow after blow to the farmers, the last two pages of the book assert that readers shouldn't give up hope, because although things may be tough now, life goes on and everything will turn out right in the end. This theme is a complete mismatch to all of the events that came before it and was a strange way to end the story.

Despite those issues, however, The Octopus was an interesting and memorable read. It reminded me a lot of other novels dealing with the abuses of big business, like The Jungle and Germinal. This felt like one of those novels so rich in symbolism and historical significance that it should be taught in schools. In truth, it's way too long for that, but there is a lot of material in it that is easy to analyze and would sound great in a term paper. I felt like I was back in English class while reading it and taking my little notes, in a good way.

This book was meant to be the first in a trilogy all centered around wheat. The second book, The Pit, deals with Chicago wheat speculation, and the third book The Wolf, was meant to be about introducing wheat to Europe or Asia after a famine. Sadly, Norris died before he could write The Wolf, but I have The Pit sitting on my bookshelf, and I will definitely get around to it one day. I just can't get enough of wheat, I guess. In any case, I am quite happy with The Octopus, and I am very glad to have chosen it for my Classics Club list.


Challenge Tally
Classics Club (#34 on my list): 58/100 


Total Books Read in 2019: 74