The Octopus by Frank Norris (1901)
BOOK ONE
characters:
Presley – “It could be seen that morally he was of that sort who avoid evil through good taste, lack of decision, and want of opportunity.” Wants to write Song of the West in hexameter. Sun-browned.
Mrs. Derrick – 50, pretty
Magnus Derrick “Governor” – from North Carolina. mines > rancher
Hooven (“Bismarck”) – Derrick’s tennant, German with perpetual grievance
Caraher
Harran Derrick – Derrick’s son
Ulsteen – juedge, decides against lower grain rate
S. Behrman – works for the railroad
Mrs. Hooven – faded, colorless
Hilda Hooven – Hooven’s younger daughter, in overalls
Minna Hooven – Hooven’s eldest daughter, pretty
Dyke – engineer for railroad where he has been a loyal employee, resigns after big pay cut
Old Spanish Mexican man – talks to Presley about old times
Annixter (Buck) – clever businessman, owner of Quien Sabe ranch, Yankee, reads David Copperfield, educated but rough, intolerant in opinions, intelligent, studied finance, political economy, scientific agriculture
Vanamee – had loved beautiful Angele, who was raped and died in childbirth. Travels far. Works as sheepherder, then on Quien Sabe ranch.
Father Sarria
Phelps – foreman of Derrick Home Ranch
Lyman Derrick – Harran’s brother – studied law and went into politics
S. Behrman – Bonneville banker
Hilma Tree – Tree daughter, helps in kitchen and w/housekeeping
Old Man Tree – runs Annixter’s dairy
Mrs. Tree – run Annixter’s dairy
Delany – hand on Annixter’s ranch, flirts w/Hilma
Geslinger – editor and proprietor of Bonneville Mercury
Broderson – thoughtful rancher
Osterman – friendly, many hobbies, rancher
Shelgrim – President and owner of Pacific and Southwestern
Disbrow – political man for the Denver, Pueblo and Mojave lines
Darrell – LA man
Cyrus Blakelee Ruggles – works for the railroad
Solotari – owns Spanish-Mexican restauraunt
Billy – Annixter’s stableman]
Caraher – saloon-keeper
druggist
druggist’s wife
Spanish-Mexican family – father, mother and five children @ Annixter’s dance
Vacca - son of one of the division superintendents at Quien Sabe
City Band of Bonneville
“Skeezicks” – Frenchman in the City Band of Bonneville
Cutter – Magnus Derrick’s division superindendent at Los Muertos
Mrs. Cutter
Mrs, Cutter’s two cousins
Osterman’s tennants – Portuguese
Garnett – from the Ruby rancho
Keast – from the Ruby rancho
Gethings – from the San Pablo ranch
Chattern – from the Bonanza ranch
Dabney – nothing known but his name
setting:
Bonneville, Tulare County, San Joaquin Valley, S. Central CA
plot:
CHAPTER 1
Presley is biking to the Quien Sabe Ranch. He is stopped by Hooven, who complains of injustice in being potentially ejected as a tenant. He sees Harren, who complains of shipping rates. He sees Dyke, who has lost his railroad job. He sees an old Mexican who tells romantic story of past. He sees Annixter, who has indigestion and tells him to go see the sheep that have been brought in to graze on wheat stubble. He sees Vanamee, the shepherd, and recalls the tragic story of Angeéle. He climbs to the summit of a hill and reads Ulysses, then looks out over the ranches and feels inspiration for his epic Song of the West. Returning home, he is nearly hit by a racing locomotive and sees slaughtered sheep hit by the train. His feeling of inspiration is lost.
CHAPTER 2
Harran thinking about business – market and forces keep wheat prices right at bottom of where it can be farmed profitably. Decides must bluestone seeds soon. Goes to pick up father at train. Mrs. Derrick dislikes Presley’s literary taste. Background re: Magnus – runs ranch like a mine. Harran and Magnus argue with S. Barnum because plows have arrived at train station but must go to San Francisco and then back according to regulation / system designed to maximize railroad profit. Annixter likes Hilma, gets angry and fires Delaney with little excuse after seeing him talk with her.
CHAPTER 3
At the dinner, Genslinger says his paper is printing a story about railroad land going on sale – he’s surprised that the ranchers expected it to be $2.50/acre. He leaves and Osterman arrives. Magnus announces that he has lost legal case against the railroad over rate hikes. Osterman suggests buying members onto the RR commission because honest means have not worked. Others agree but Magnus only says that he will think it over. It’s raining harder, so Annixter and Osterman stay. Osterman takes a sauce that Annixter found disgusting at dinner and pours it in his bed, and Annixter leaves furious vowing not to be a part of the scheme.
CHAPTER 4
Plowing starts on Quien Sabe - coordinated and powerful. Vaname is one of the hands hired for plowing. That night Vaname can’t sleep, goes to see father Sirius, asks God to bring back Angéle, mourns on her grave, calls to her mentally, feels drawn to pear trees, feels a ripple “on the black pool of the night” and goes back to the ranch confused.
CHAPTER 5
Annixter talks to Hilma and tries to kiss her, scaring her. He goes to Los Muertos to see Magnus Derrick, ostensibly to ask what he should do about invitations for his barn dance. Mrs. Derrick is there and prevents him from talking much with Magnus, who Annixter wants to convince to join the effort to buy railroad commission members. Mrs. Derrick tries to make her husband promise not to become involved and he is on the point of doing so when he remembers that he has already promised Annixter not to decide before speaking with him again. Annixter goes to Bonneville where he sees Harran and talks to him about supporting the effort. He then goes to the Freight and Passenger Office to try to buy his land, but Ruggles claims not to have authority to sell it. He sees Dyke in the office inquiring about rates for hops (Dyke was a railroad engineer but resigned and now wants to grow hops), and sees him again later entering the Loan and Savings Bank of Tulare County. Annixter runs into Father Sarria on his way home and sees that he is carrying chickens in a wicker basket – he is amused when they turn out to be fighting cocks. He asks Hilma to forget what happened and to like him, and she refuses.
CHAPTER 6
The day of Annixter’s barn-dance – Presley and Vanamee spend the day together w/lunch at Sotari’s and a long walk in the afternoon. Vanamee tells Presley of his experience at the Mission. They take the same walk Presley did before, stopping at Dyke’s hops farm for a cold beer. Annixter’s barn dance – Harran has decided to come in for one sixth of the Committee’s expenses, and things are going well. Annixter runs into Hilma while looking for his hat in the barn, and gets her to agree to like him. Dance gets underway and Annixter retreats to harness room to drink punch w/the ranchers. Presley and Vanamee join them, and Presley tells Annixter that Delaney is in town with the stolen buckskin threatening to shoot Annixter and break up the party. Annixter ignores the warning and is dancing awkwardly with Hilma when Delaney shows up on Buckskin and brandishing a gun. Annixter tells Hilma to step aside because of the danger and her solicitude for his health alters him that she cares about him too. Delaney shoots at Annixter, who returns from inside his coat pocket. As Annixter takes more definite aim with his last bullet, Delaney falls from the buckskin, his wrist bloody. The buckskin runs around the barn in terror but is finally subdued by the men and placed in a stall. The dance resumes, and dinner soon served. An envelope arrives with separate sealed envelopes for each of the ranchers, in which it is announced that their land is to be offered for sale to anyone at $22-30/acre. They form a League with the original Committee as its nucleus and, over his wife’s protest, Magnus Derrick as its president.
quotations:
“Listen, it is something like this: On Quien Sabe, all last week, we have been seeding the earth. The grain is there now under the earth buried in the dark, in the black stillness, under the clods., Can you imagine the first – the very first little quiver of life that the grain of wheat must feel after it is sown, when it answers to the call of the sun, down there in the dark of the earth, blind, deaf; the very first faint premonition of life? Well, it is something as illusive as that.” He paused again, dreaming, lost in a reverie, then, just above a whisper, murmured: “ ‘ That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die,’ . . . and she, Angéle . . . died.” (149).
“I believe,” answered Vaname, “in a sixth sense, or, rather, a whole system of other unnamed senses beyond the reach of our understanding. People who live much alone and close to nature experience the sensation of it. Perhaps it is something fundamental that we share with plants and animals. The same thing that sends the birds south long before the first colds, the same thing that makes the grain of wheat struggle up to meet the sun. And this sense never deceives. You may see wrong, hear wrong, but once touch this sixth sense and it acts with absolute fidelity, you are certain. No, I hear nothing in the Mission garden. I see nothing, nothing touches me, but I am certain for all that.” (149)
BOOK TWO
characters:
Lyman Derrick – lawyer, Magnus’s son, Railroad Commission member, ambitious, wants to be Governor
the typewriter
office boy
man from the Standard Lithograph Company
Mr. Darrell
Jones McNish – Railroad Commission member – railroad man
James Darrell – Railroad Commission member – bought by ranchers
Hartrath – artist, member of Lyman’s club, lacks decency
Mr. Cedarquist – was head of big Atlas Iron Works, a capitalist
Mrs. Cedarquist – involved in the arts, in Relief Committee for famine in Central India
Max – train passenger, drummer
doctor – train passenger, well-dressed
school-teacher – train passenger
whiskered gentleman – English, sleeps through hold-up
brakeman – identifies Dyke as the holdup man, then dies of two gunshot wounds in the lung
Archie Moore – sheriff
Christian – cousin of S. Behrman
Tentell – a bookkeeper for the railroad who is a family man and a good worker, but who occasionally goes on drinking benders
assistant manager – at Railroad office, urges Shelgrim to fire Tentell
Mrs. Field – a woman in Lorin whose nursemaid had suddenly quit
Mr. Gerard – a vice-president of the S&P
Honora Gerard – pretty, leaving for Europe soon
Mrs. Gerard
Julian Lambert – pale-face, languid, at Gerard house with Presley’s cousin Beatrice
Beatrice – Presley’s cousin
Stephen – Julian’s brother, with Beatrice’s sister
Fallon – buys wheat
Holt – buys wheat
setting:
Lyman Derrick’s office in SF
plot:
CHAPTER 1
Lyman dictates a letter and then takes a break and some maps arrive. He keeps one railroad map and directs others to a main office, and then Presley, Harran and Magnus arrive. The four go to Lyman’s club, where they see Mr. Cedarquist of the Atlas Iron Works, which has shut down, and the artist Me. Hartrath, who is excited about a Million-Dollar Fair and Flower Festival. Cedarquist dismisses the fair and Hartrath’s argument that it will being business and investment to the area, saying that industry is what is needed. He blames public disinterest for the growth of trusts everywhere. Presley has abandoned is planned Song of the West and his books of poems and, since the harness room meeting, become enthralled with the political situation. He reads Mill, Malthus, Young, Pushkin, Henry George, and Shopenhauer, and writes in a journal. Some ladies enter the club and Cedarquist reminds Lyman that it is Ladies’ Day (women are allowed in only twice each year). Lyman regrets his relatives’ dress but there is nothing to do about it. As the women arrive, the smoothness of conversations and movement though the room appears in stark contrast to the initial awkwardness at Annixter’s barn dance. When Mrs. Cedarquest praises Shelgrim for supporting the Million-Dollar Fair and Flower Festival, he suggests that to do so is in the railroad owner’s best interest, and Mr. Cedarquest invites him to converse privately in the wine room. Meanwhile Harran and Magnus get ready to leave, and happen to hear some guests reading from a newspaper that the land title case has been decided in favor of the railroad. As Presley leaves, Cedarquest picks up on his own earlier comment saying of San Francisco, “Not a city, Presley, not a city, but a Midway Plaisance.” (221)
CHAPTER 2
Hilma Tree is drinking, cooling herself off at a stream beneath the railroad bridge when Annixter arrives unexpectedly. He tells her that she wants her and she, assuming that he has marriage in mind, reciprocates. He balks at the mention of marriage and she, more frightened than offended, runs off. The next morning, League business calls Annixter to Bonneville to meet with Magnus and the firm lawyers The same morning, Dyke had gotten up early to pick up a shipment of poles for his hope. At the railroad station, he asks the clerk casually wheather if he got together a collective they could ship hops at a rate of 1.5 cents and the clerk laughs – the rates have been raised from last falls two cents to five cents. Dyke is already under contract to a buyer, and at this rate his profits will disappear and he will be left in debt and unable to pay his mortgage. He is devastated and tell his story to everyone he meets, so that it is waiting for him when he arrives at the lobby of the Yosemite House. Friends offer advice and even financial assistance, but Dyke cannot see a way out of his trouble His horses, which he bought from Derrick, take the familiar route and he does not realize their direction until they stop at a trough outside Caraher’s roadside saloon. The saloon-keeper commiserates with him and remembers his own troubles as Dyke drinks. Presley sees him there and then goes back to Los Muertos, where he tells Magnus and Annixter. Annixter returns to Quien Sabe thinking of Hima, angry at her failure to understand him, haughty at what he presumes is her desire to marry his property, and then doubtful for the first time of his own interpretation. The Tree cottage is dark and the foreman tells Annixter that the family has left for San Francisco that morning. Walking off by himself, Annixter realizes how important Hilma is to him, that he wants to take care of her, and his emotion overcomes the vision he has always held of marriage as something like death that happens to other men or to him only much, much later. He cries, unashamed – “The little seed, long since planted, gathering strength quietly, had at last germinated” – he cries that he loves Hilma, and then sees that the wheat has sprouted around him.
CHAPTER 3
Chapter opens with a description of Presley’s room, which includes both a reproduction of the Reading from Homer and Presley’s own charcoal drawing of the mission of San Juan de Guadalahara. The day he overhear’s Dyke at Caraher’s saloon, Presley goes home and begins to write prose that soon picks up and becomes the end of an unfinished poem “The Toilers.” The writing’s strength seems to come from Presley’s connection to the people (in conrast to his vision for the impersonal Song of the West) but poetic concerns take over and when Presley is unsure whether the poem is brilliant or drivel, he goes off in search of Vanamee Vanamee says that the poem is great and that Presley has clearly been aroused to write more than “sounding literature” but insists that Presley should publish it for the toilers, in the daily press, and not in a magazine to gain recognition for himself. Vanamee returns to the Seed Garden, where the vision has been coming closer each night. On the most beautiful night yet, it comes and he looks to see Angéle in sleep. The priest arrives and explains that this is the girl’s daughter, but Vanamee is still joyous. The wheat has sprouted all around. “The seed dying, rotting and corrupting in the earth; rising again in life unconquerable, and in immaculate purity – Angéle dying as she gave birth to her little daughter – the pure, the unconquerable, coming forth from the defiled” (269).
CHAPTER 4
Presley’s poem enjoys great success and earns him fame. Mrs. Dyke comes to Los Muertos asking to use the phone to find Dyke, who it turns out is in a saloon. Dyke, discouraged, paces at night then sits long hours staring at his hands while the hops farm falls into disrepair. He expresses agreement with Caraher’s idea that the only thing the railroads will listen to is dynamite. Magnus has become a prominent man but does not stand erect or enjoy it because it comes through bribery. Annixter goes to SF to woo Hilma. First convincing her parents that he is in earnest, he then waits outside the house where she is staying until she goes out to take a walk in the park. He apologizes and tells her of his love, and, and she forgives and agrees to marry them. Annixter sends word to have the house replastered and painted, and they go into a flurry of furniture-buying. They leave for home in a Pullman car, saying goodbye to the Trees (who will be supplying dairy to their friends who own a hotel) at the station. Annixter has trouble sleeping on the train, and then it stops suddenly. A robber had pulled the bell cord to stop the train, shot one brakeman, and then pushed forward the engine to dynamite open the safe. The conductor comes back looking for a doctor, and a young doctor from Annixter and Hilma’s car goes to tend to the brakeman. Returning, he tell his fellow passengers that the brakeman has died and enough about the culprit that Annixter realizes it was Dyke. When Hilma and Annixter get back to Bonneville the town is busy – several posses search for Dyke but with no luck and, except for S. Behrman with his cousin Christian and Delaney, eventually give up. A while later, Annixter suggests to his wife that they go to check on Mrs. Dyke and Sidney, and they end up bringing the two back with them to the Quien Sabe. The next day, Annixter goes to a special meeting of the League to hear Lyman’s news about the tariff rates. Lyman equivocates with them, touting a 10% average reduction in statewide rates that in fact rests on low rates to areas with no wheat production while rates in the San Joaquin remain the same. The ranchers call him a bribe-eater an Annixter punches him. Magnus instinctively readies to defend Lyman, but then says he only has one son. Lyman leaves calling the ranchers bullies and hypocrites. Presley, who has observed the meeting, goes outside disturbed.
"And there before him, mile after mile, ililimitable, covering the earth from horizon to horizon, lay the Wheat. The growth, now many days old, was already high from the ground. There it lay, a vast, silent ocean, shimmering a pallid green under the moon and under the starsl a mighty force, the strength of nations, the life of the world. There in the night, under the dome of the sky, it was growing steadily. To Presley's mind, the scene in the room he had just left dwindled to paltry insignificance before this sight. Ah, yes, the Wheat - it was over this that the Railroad, the ranchers, the traitor false to his trust, all the members of an obscure conspiracy, were wrangling. As if human agency could affect this colossal power! What were these heated, tiny squabbles, this feverish, small bustle of mankind, this minute swarming of the human insect, to the great, magestic, silent ocean of the Wheat itself! Indifferent, gigantic, resistless, it moved in its appointed grooves. Men. Lilliputians, gnats in the sunshine, buzzed impudently in their tiny battles, were born, lived through their little day, died, and were forgotten; while the Wheat, wrapped in Nirvanic calm, grew steadily under the night, alone with the stars and with God" (307).
CHAPTER 5
Men from the ranches in the league are training for rifle use. Genslinger comes to Magnus at Los Muertos and says he knows all about the attempted buying of the railroad commission, and that Lyman was in the railroad’s pocket two years earlier on the promise of its backing in his run for governor. Genslinger asks Magnus for $10,000 to keep quiet. The same day, Magnus receives a letter from a League member (Gething) in Visalia saying that some there believe Lyman’s insinuation about bribery and suggesting that Magnus send out a letter describing how the campaign was managed. A few days later, Presley is planning to go for a picnic with Annixter, Mrs. Dyke and Sidney for Hilma’s birthday and Magnus asks him to bring an envelope to Genslinger and deliver it to him directly, which Presley does. Shortly after Presley arrives at Quien Sabe, Dyke comes racing in on a beat horse. The posses still after him have been blocking him from springs and he asks for water and a horse. Annixiter gives him the buckskin, and he rides her to Booneville where he takes a waiting engine. His pursuers throw a derailment switch down the line but he sees it and puts his engine in reverse, trading shots with the posse as they pass on another engine. His hip grazed by a bullet, Dyke jumps from the trail and gets a horse at a Quien Sabe division house. The posse finds where he jumped off and chases him to where his horse falls and then runs off leaving him on foot. S. Behrman comes riding in where the posse has surrounded Dyke under cover and Dyke takes a sure shot at him from ten feet, only to have his pistol misfire. The rest of his shots go wild and, with great difficult, four of the posse manage to fight him into handcuffs. A special train – one engine, one car, would take him to the Visalia jail.
CHAPTER 6
Osterman cuts his wheat before the other ranchers and organizes a jack-rabbit drive. Christian and Delaney, the railroad’s dummy buyers, are eager to take possession of Los Muertos and Quien Sabe. The railroad claims that the cases taken up in the Supreme Court are not test cases as the ranchers claim and therefore that Derrick and Annixter have lost their cases by default. Hilma is pregnant. “Motherhood dawned, the old simplicity of her maiden days came back to her. It was no longer a simplicity of ignorance, but of supreme knowledge, the simplicity of the perfect, the simplicity of greatness” (340). Annixter, who once thought only of himself, now thinks only of Hilma – and of Mrs. Dyke and Sidney – “In time, starting from this point, it would reach out more and more till it should take in all men and all women, and the intolerant selfish man, while retaining all of his native strength, should become tolerant, and generous, kind and forgiving. Tens of thousands of jack rabbits are driven into a corral, where the dogs refuse to kill them. Most people go off to the barbeque, while men and boys from Guadalajara and Bonneville and from the ranches kill the rabbits in the corral. “The Anglo-Saxon spectators round about drew back in disgust, but the hot, degenerated blood of Portuguese, Mexican, and mixed Spaniard boiled up in excitement at this wholesale slaughter” (345). Vanamee comes with a message that a San Francisco Marshall with S. Behrman and a dozen deputies have put Delaney in possession of Annixter’s ranch. The 600-strong League balks at defending the ranches, and 9 ride to Hoovens where they can watch the roads to both Osterman and Derrick’s ranches. Preseley turns back some Prortuguese on their way from Los Muertos to Guadalahara so that they cant bring the deputation any news. A butcher’s cart is intercepted and made to wait. Harran spots the deputation on the road to Derrick’s and Hooven, who has been missing, comes riding up with a more detailed description of the deputation. As the deputation approaches, Magnus, Garnett and Gethings stop it and talk with the marshal while Annixter, Osterman, Dabney, Harran, Hooven, Broderson, Cutter and Phelps wait in the ditch. The position of some deputy horsemen between the older men and those in the ditch and the gradual forward movement of some other deputies make the men in the ditch nervous, and when Harran thinks Magnus is calling him and Osterman gets up to pull him back, the men in the ditch misunderstand and move forward. When Christian’s horse accidentally knocks down Garnett, Hooven shouts in German and opens fire. Delaney is shot through the stomach and crawls off. Christian is killed. Hooven is shot through the throat and dies. Old Broderson is shot and falls in the ditch. Osterman retreats across the ditch shot and bleeding from the nose and mouth. Harran is shot in the stomach. Dabney is shot and dies silently and Annixter is killed instantly.
CHAPTER 7
Vacca is driving Hilma and Mrs. Derrick to the Derrick ranch house when they hear the fighting and Hilma insists over Mrs. Derrick’s reluctance that they go to Hooven’s. They pull up at Quien Sabe because the road is blocked by Hilma and Annixter’s furniture. Seeing deputies on Annixter’s porch, Vacca refuses to go further. Hilma takes Mrs. Derrick by the hand and they walk to Hooven’s on foot. The doctor is there trying to save Harran from a bullet wound to the lung and Magnus sends Mrs. Derrick to the other room while Hima cries silently holding the head of her dead husband. “The surviving members of both League and deputies – the warring factions of the Railroad and the People – mingled together now with no thought of hostility” (363). Minna and Mrs. Hooven come home to find that Hooven is dead. A crowd gathers for a quarter of a mile around. Old Broderson is brought up to the house in a carry-all and dies. Harran dies despite the efforts of a Bonneville surgeon. Caraher the saloon-keeper asks Presley about Harran and, hearing he has died, says it is the way they killed his wife as well. Presley declares to Caraher that he too is now a communist. That night, the Derricks take in Mrs. Dyke and Sidney. Mrs. Dyke comforts Hilma and, in the middle of the night, has Presley call a doctor because Hilma suffers a miscarriage. Presley writes in his journal that night and for the first time we see what he writes. The next day, Presley reads two local papers but does not glance at the railroad-sponsored Mercury. Osterman has a chance of living and 300 members of the League have gathered in Bonneville where they are patrolling to keep the peace. The railroad withdraws from the fight that they say is between the Leaguers and the Govt., and Congress has forbidden the use of troops for civil purposes so that the League-Railroad battle is temporarily suspended. The Railroad isolates Bonnneville, stopping no trains there and making sure that telegraphers send only Railroad messages. Presley wants to kill S. Behreman, and spends hours talking to Caraher. He attends a mass meeting at the Opera House. Some older men from the league speak on stage and distance the League from responsibility for what happened, saying that the leadership had failed to effectively monitor the railroads and the stand in the ditch was not, like the planned mass armed presence, an effective and bloodless deterrent. Presley gives a speech that he audience responds to, but he feels it is too literary and that they have not understood him. Magnus goes to the Opera house to speak and Keast, ever loyal, describes and condemns to him the tenor of the speeches so far. Magnus begins to speak but some in the crowd are ready with accusations of bribery and copies of the Boneville Mercury in which Genslinger, despite the bribe, has published an account of how the Railroad Commission was elected. Magnus retreats to an actor’s room backstage where Keast tracks him down and he admits – to Keast, Garnett and Gethings – that he had bribed the commissioners. That night, a bomb through the window of S. Behrman’s dining room leaves him miraculously unharmed.
CHAPTER 8
Presley goes to see Cedarquist in SF. He is looking after Hooven’s family to look after them, tells Cedarquist that the ranchers will soon be dispossessed, and asks to take passage on one of the manufacturer’s wheat ships to regain his health. Railroad had offered to lease land to farmers on nominal terms but requiring that they acknowledge Railroad ownership (Magnus had not been extended even this offer). Presley seems somewhat persuaded by Shelgrim’s arguments, and muses about nature’s inhospitability toward man. Presley is unable to find the Hoovens at the hotel where they started, and walking by the Railroad office he stops in to speak with Shelgrim. Immediately, he is surprised by the man when he hears Shelgrim show sympathy for the plight of the drinking bookkeeper Mr. Tentell. The Railroad owner criticizes Presley’s poem The Toilers for not being as good as the painting that inspired it, and also suggests that supply and demand, not individuals, drive the wheat and railroad industries. Eating alone at his club Presley thinks he sees Minna Hooven and tries to follow her, but is unsuccessful. Minna has lost her mother and sister because they were evicted while she was at work. Mrs. Hooven had left a note, but the landlady had lost it and then used indignation to cover up her mistake. Unsure what to do, Minna walks with a feigned sense of purpose which goes well enough until, attempting to avoid the saloons and concert halls of the Barbary Coast, she accidentally turns toward China-town which terrifies her and which she is unable to escape until dark. She buys a bag of fruit and tries to purchase a bed for the night, but the place where she applies is for men only. She wanders the streets all night and in the morning hears some nursemaids at a park talking about a position that has just opened up. Minna pays 20 of her 30 cents for the ferry but the position has been filled. The woman directs her to a sister’s house in North Berkeley but that position is filled as well, and thanks to a mistake about the direction of the electric car Minna is now penniless. She wanders onto the state university campus and begins to cry and is approached by a well-dressed woman who had seen her on the ferry and offers her a job as her companion who turns out to be a madame. Preseley runs into Minna on the street and realizes that she is working as a prostitute. He mourns the loss but apparently does nothing to help her. Arriving at Cedarquist’s for dinner, Presley finds that they are going out themselves and that he is invited to the home of Mr. Gerand – one of the vice presidents of the Railroad. From a desciption of the opulent and exquisitely decorated Gerand home, the narrative turns to Mrs. and baby Hilda Hooven. Turned from the boarding house without her trunk (which held her few cents of money), Mrs. Hoven waits on a nearby street corner for Hilma but is ejected by an officer who threatens to arrest her. She looses her way and then walks aimlessly, afraid that she will be arrested if she stops. She tries to ask a young man the way to the boarding house and he gives her a quarter. She thinks of tossing it after him but Hilda is hungry and they eat dinner then sleep on a park bench. The next day, she begs. Mrs. Hooven goes on begging and falling ill, and the narrative cuts back to Presley. Dinner is being served at the Gerand house and Presley partakes distractedly, looking around as his fellow diners discuss the French wine, purée á la Derby, hors d’oeuvres. Gerard has a winery in France and French sprinkles the conversation. Presley reflects that, “For this, then, the farmers paid” (415). The narrative cuts to Mrs. Hooven, who is struggling to keep moving and not collapse on the cold concrete, and then back again to Presley who likens the feast he is attending to an act of cannibalism – the rich eating those who have suffered to bring them wealth. The narrative cuts back to Mrs. Hooven, who collapses and then tells Hilda that they will rest. At the dinner, Lambert goes on praising the exquisite food. Hilda can barely rouse Mrs. Hooven, who says she is sick. The diners have moved on to their dessert. Hilda is roused by a policeman and two or three men bending over her. The mistress of the house at the top of the hill takes up Hilda and says she will care for her, and they call a doctor for Mrs. Hooven. She has died from starvation.
CHAPTER 9
S. Behrman surveys his ranch and discusses the harvest of a bonanza crop with his foreman. He tells his superintendent that he has sold a shipload of wheat to some women working for Indian famine relief and will ship it on a chartered ship the Swanhilda. Presley rides up and S. Behrman informs him that Dyke has been sentences for life. Presley rides on and does not stop at Caraher’s saloon, “for the heat of his rage had long since begun to cool, and dispassionately, he saw things in their true light. For all the tragedy of his wife’s death, Caraher was none the less an evil influence among the ranchers, an influence that worked only to the inciting of crime. Unwilling to venture himself, to risk his own life, the anarchist had goaded Dyke and Presley both to murder; a bad man, a plague spot in the world of the ranchers, poisoning the farmers’ bodies with alcohol and their minds with discontent” (426). The Derricks have very little money left and will go to Marysville for Mrs. Derrick to take her old place teaching literature at the Seminary. Presley goes in to see Magnus, who has aged and seems confused. S. Behrman comes in to make arrangements for his carpenters to tear down the wall of Magnus’s office and to offer Magnus a salaries job as assistant in the local freight office. Magnus takes it, agreeing to “turn ‘Railroad’” and take orders from S. Behrman. Presley’s fury has become a profound contempt and he talls S. Behram calmly that he could not stay in the area where he would have to see all S. Behrman had done. He admits to being the one that threw the bomb. S. Behrman continues to humiliate Magnus, and Presley leaves the room. He takes a few things from his old room and sees Hilma - thinner, more serious, dressed in black. She plans to stay at Los Muertos and tells him that her father is there now too. He feels a surge of emotion for her. Sidney and Mrs. Dyke will go to SF, where a sister will care for the tad and Mrs. Dyke expects to soon die. Walking to the hills by Broderson’s creek, Presley meets Vanamee who tells him about life, nobility and love always regenerating, going on even through small deaths. Presley leaves and Vaname meets Angéle in the wheat at the corner of Quien Sabe ranch. S. Behrman goes to SF to look over the Swanhilda. Looking into the hold where the wheat is to be shipped in bulk without bags, he trips and then eventually suffocates in the wheat. “A hand, fat, with short fingers and swollen veins, reached up, clutching, then fell limp and prone. In another instant it was covered. In the hold of the Swanhilda there was no movement but the widening ripples that spread flowing from the ever-breaking, ever-reforming cone; no sound, but the rushing of the wheat that continued to plunge incessantly from the iron chute in a prolonged roar, persistent, steady, inevitable” (444).