The Oppressive Iron Heel

After reading some of Jack London's works, I wanted to read his dystopian novel The Iron Heel.

A month ago I went to the library and picked up a book of London's novels and social writings published by The Library of America. The collection was the only text that had The Iron Heel in it.

The next day at home I wanted to read something. I pulled out a different book from my own collection and started reading. I liked the short story so much when I was at the library the next day I grabbed a second book of more writings by this author. After I read most of that book, I was at the library again and picked up a third book on a completely unrelated subject and started reading that. Then I picked up a fourth library book, but my Dad started reading it before I could.

After these four other books intervened, I thought I should start reading The Iron Heel before it was due back at the library.

The Iron Heel was published in 1908 and most of the action in the narrative takes place in the subsequent years. It covers how the wealthiest people create an oligarchy which takes control of the country and how people organize against them. The term Iron Heel refers to the Oligarchy's oppressive rule and their ability to crush dissension.

The book has an interesting structure. Most of it is a first person account written by Avis Everhard. She talks about her life as well as the political and social changes that occur within the Unites States. This Everhard Manuscript is then framed with a forward and footnotes from a historian writing hundreds of years in the future. This historian will give background information to some characters and explain how history developed between the manuscript's time and the historian's day hundreds of years later.

The book illuminates London's political and social views. If any lukewarm socialists read this book they will become passionate and devoted socialists. I should mention the Unnamed Geniuses report an entire chapter of the book was plagiarized.

While the early years of the Twentieth Century did not play out as the novel suggests, there is still value in reading the book today. In the last hundred years, socialist empires have risen and fallen. London's ideas, assumptions, and fears can be tracked in real world examples.

I liked The Iron Heel better than any of London's other works I have read, including The Sea-Wolf, The Call of the Wild, and some other stories. This could stem from the more personal writing style or the pseudo-historical nature of the book. I am a fan of history.

If you want another interesting fact, the first half of the book takes place in the town of the University of California, Berkeley.