The Pit: A Story of Chicago

by Frank Norris

Overview

The story of Frank Norris's The Pit could be taken from today's headlines: a businessman begins speculating in the commodities market on a small scale until, overcome by greed, addicted to the art of the deal, and harboring an ever-increasing appetite for power, he gambles recklessly in the market while the fortunes of farmers and small investors hang in the balance. At the same time, his independent-minded young wife, bored with domesticity and feeling abused by his neglect of her, risks her marriage by contemplating an affair with a former suitor. By interweaving the conventions of the business plot and the romance plot in this manner, Frank Norris broke with the traditions of his time and brought a fresh perspective to the American novel

Product Details

BN ID:	2940161073551
Publisher:	Black Box Publisher
Publication date:	08/20/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Benjamin Franklin Norris, Jr. was an American novelist, during the Progressive Era, writing predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague (1899), The Octopus: A California Story (1901), and The Pit (1903). Although he did not openly support socialism as a political system, his work nevertheless evinces a socialist mentality and influenced socialist/progressive writers such as Upton Sinclair. Like many of his contemporaries, he was profoundly influenced by the advent of Darwinism, and Thomas Henry Huxley's philosophical defense of it. Norris was particularly influenced by an optimistic strand of Darwinist philosophy taught by Joseph LeConte, whom Norris studied under while at the University of California, Berkeley. Through many of his novels, notably McTeague, runs a preoccupation with the notion of the civilized man overcoming the inner "brute," his animalistic tendencies. His peculiar, and often confused, brand of Social Darwinism also bears the influence of the early criminologist Cesare Lombroso and the French naturalist Emile Zola.