child - laborer hero, while Norris was a spectator of poverty in San Francisco, having
been raised in an upper - middle - class home and well educated at home and abroad.
Paradoxically, London offers a sense of hope, an idealistic and romantic sense of hope,
whereas Norris ’ s narrator seems a hardened cynic, laughing at his debased characters.
Frank Norris and Jack London
183
Also, while Norris uses small spaces and presents a generally claustrophobic sense of
space into which progress will not enter, London uses time, as represented in the light
and dark imagery, to delineate the days and nights of the life of his hero. The dark-
ness into which Johnny escapes in the end is a reversal: this darkness he has chosen
and it is the way toward his eventual freedom in the daylight to come.
One of London ’ s most provocative portraits of social injustice, “ The Apostate ”
presents a semi
-
autobiographical hero, a half
-
starved boy named Johnny, a child
laborer who seemingly exists only to work in a garment factory and bring his meager
earnings home to his mother and brother. After becoming ill and spending an unchar-
acteristic number of days at home – in fact, actually seeing the daylight after having
risen before dawn and returned home after dark for so many years – Johnny experiences
two revelations in feverish clarity. First, he calculates the number of movements his
body has made in his years of toil (a reference perhaps to the “ time and motion ” studies
of Frederick Taylor in The Principles of Scientifi c Management [1911]). Second, he experi-
ences an epiphany of nature as he observes day after day recovering on his porch a small
spindly tree growing through the sidewalk. In the end, despite his mother ’ s protesta-
tions that he get back to work so that his younger brother will be spared child labor,
with his vision of the tree he bolts, jumping into an empty box - car on a freight train
headed into the countryside. He lies back in the empty box - car: “ The engine whistled.
Johnny was lying down, and in the darkness he smiled ” (London, Complete 1129). There
is perhaps no clear resolution, in the sense that we know what happens to Johnny, but
this is more resolution than “ Fantaisie Printani è re , ” to say the least, and it is a positive
ending for Johnny, one is sure. Like Eliot ’ s Fisher King at the end of The Waste Land ,
Johnny at least hears the thunder and smells the rain approaching, as it were.
London praised the value of hard work, but detested what he saw as “ wage slavery, ”
the kind of back - breaking, endless, low - paid physical labor he experienced working
in a cannery, a rope factory, a boiler room, a laundry, and elsewhere as a boy. Johnny
is no more than a machine, literally a cog in the system:
He worked mechanically. When a small bobbin ran out, he used his left hand for a
brake, stopping the large bobbin and at the same time, with thumb and forefi nger,
catching the fl ying end of twine. Also, at the same time, with his right hand, he caught
up the loose twine - end of a small bobbin. These various acts with both hands were
performed simultaneously and swiftly. Then there would come a fl ash of his hands as
he looped the weaver ’ s knot and released the bobbin. There was nothing diffi cult about
weaver ’ s knots. He once boasted he could tie them in his sleep. And for that matter, he
sometimes did, toiling centuries long in a single night at tying an endless succession
of weaver ’ s knots. (1115)
Johnny is praised by the overseer for his accuracy and speed:
Some of the boys shirked, wasting time and machinery by not replacing the small
bobbins when they ran out. And there was an overseer to prevent this. He caught
Johnny ’ s neighbor at the trick, and boxed his ears.
184
Jeanne Campbell Reesman
“ Look at Johnny there – why ain ’ t you like him? ” the overseer wrathfully demanded.
Johnny ’ s bobbins were running full blast, but he did not thrill at the indirect praise.
There had been a time … but that was long ago, very long ago. His apathetic face was
expressionless as he listened to himself being held up as a shining example. He was the
perfect worker. He knew that. He had been told so, often. It was a commonplace, and
besides it didn ’ t seem to mean anything to him any more. From the perfect worker he
had evolved into the perfect machine. (1116)
“
And small wonder,
”
the narrator observes. There has never been a time when
Johnny was not “ in intimate relationship with machines. ” He was born on the factory
fl oor:
Twelve years before, there had been a small fl utter of excitement in the loom room of
this very mill. Johnny ’ s mother had fainted. They stretched her out on the fl oor in the
midst of the shrieking machines. A couple of elderly women were called from their
looms. The foreman assisted. And in a few minutes there was one more soul in the loom
room than had entered by the doors. It was Johnny, born with the pounding, crashing
roar of the looms in his ears, drawing with his fi rst breath the warm, moist air that was
thick with fl ying lint. He had coughed that fi rst day in order to rid his lungs of the
lint; and for the same reason he had coughed ever since. (1116)
The birth scene reinforces London
’
s portrait of Johnny
’
s family life as similarly
mechanical and unfeeling. His mother is willing to sacrifi ce him to spare his brother
and treats him like a machine she must keep sending to work. As Norris distinguishes
between “ house ” and “ home ” in “ Fantaisie Printani è re ” ( “ The Ryers ’ home [or let us
say, the house in which the Ryers ate and slept], adjoined the house in which the
McTeagues ate and slept ” [175 – 6]), Johnny ’ s house is no home. For example, his only
memory of his father is as follows:
This particular memory never came to Johnny in broad daylight when he was wide
awake. It came at night, in bed, at the moment that his consciousness was sinking down
and losing itself in sleep. It always aroused him to frightened wakefulness, and for the
moment, in the fi rst sickening start, it seemed to him that he lay crosswise on the foot
of the bed. In the bed were the vague forms of his father and mother. He never saw
what his father looked like. He had but one impression of his father, and that was that
he had savage and pitiless feet. ( Stories 1123)
As in “ Fantaisie Printani è re , ” home life and social life (like work life) is lived under
cruelly restrictive paradigms of manhood and womanhood as well as class, taken to a
ridiculous extreme of what passes for pride among the lowly. Johnny, for example,
should be proud of his effi ciency according to the factory foreman, and proud to be
the breadwinner for his family according to his mother.
Yet Johnny fi nds neither pride nor joy in life, only miserable toil. Like the two
couples in Norris ’ s story, he is locked into a seemingly inescapable prison of behaviors
he seems powerless to resist, both family and social pressures:
Frank Norris a
nd Jack London
185
[H]is consciousness was machine consciousness. Outside this his mind was a blank. He
had no ideals. … He was a work - beast. He had no mental life whatever; yet deep down in
the crypts of his mind, unknown to him, were being weighed and sifted every hour of his
toil, every movement of his hands, every twitch of his muscles, and preparations were
making for a future course of action that would amaze him and all his little world. (1124)
When Johnny fi nally bolts, we sense that whatever he fi nds on the open road, it will
be better than what he has left. Yet the dilemma remains: was this “ fair ” to his mother
and brother? Such a lingering question parallels Norris ’ s conundrum about how to
“ take ” the McTeague/Ryer situation, whether comic or something else. Like Norris,
London believed in the regenerative powers of the countryside and the deleterious
effects of urban squalor. Both authors choose titles for their stories that are ironically
at odds with their content. Norris ’ s title, which translates to “ Spring Fantasy, ” evokes
the genres of the pastoral, the lyric, the lovers ’ reverie, hardly the tone set by the
story. London ’ s title describes someone who loses his faith, but the ending is a life -
saving affi rmation. Both titles point to what is not: for faith in either the family
system modeled by the McTeagues, Ryers, and Johnny ’ s family, or in the industrial
system that destroys them all, would be faith in false and dangerous ideals.
References and Further Reading
Berkove , Lawrence . “ The Romantic Realism of
Foner , Philip S. Jack London: American Rebel . New
Bierce and Norris . ” Frank Norris Studies 15
York : Citadel Press , 1947 .
( 1993 ): 13 – 17 .
Furer , Andrew . “ ‘ Zone - Conquerors ’ and ‘ White
Bryson , Michael . “ Glands, Perverts, and Misers:
Devils
’
: The Contradictions of Race in the
Economics of Dominance and Submission in
Works of Jack London . ” Rereading Jack London .
Relation to Productive and Unproductive Labor
Eds. Leonard Cassuto and Jeanne Campbell
in Frank Norris ’ McTeague . ” < www.brysons.net/
Reesman . Stanford : Stanford University Press ,
academic/mcteague.html > .
1996 . 158 – 71 .
Campbell , Donna . “ ‘ One Note of Color ’ : The
Furst , Lilian R. , and Peter N. Skrine . Naturalism .
Apprenticeship Writings of Frank Norris
.
”
London : Methuen , 1971 .
Frank Norris Studies 25 ( 1998 ): 3 – 5 .
Furst , Lilian R. , and Peter N. Skrine , eds. Realism .
Davison ,
Richard
Allan .
“ Zelda
Fitzgerald,
London : Longman , 1992 .
Vladimir Nabokov and James A. Michener: Howard , June . Form and History in American Liter-
Three Opinions on Frank Norris
’
s
McTeague . ”
ary Naturalism . Chapel Hill : University of
Frank Norris Studies 9 ( 1989 ): 11 – 12 .
North Carolina Press , 1985 .
Dickey , James . Introduction to
“
The Call of the Howells , William Dean . “ The Prudishness of the
Wild, ” “ White Fang, ” and Other Stories, by Jack
Anglo - Saxon Novel . ” Criticism and Fiction . New
London . Ed. Andrew Sinclair . New York :
York : Harper & Brothers , 1891 .
Penguin , 1981 . 7 – 16 .
Labor , Earle , and Jeanne Campbell Reesman . Jack
Duncan , Charles . “ Where Piggishness Flourishes:
London . Rev. edn. Twayne US Authors Series .
Contextualizing Strategies in Norris and
New York : Macmillan , 1994 .
London . ” Frank Norris Studies 14 ( 1992 ):
Lawlor , Mary . “ Naturalism in the Cinema: Erich
1 – 6 .
Von Stroheim
’
s Reading of
McTeague . ” Frank
Eby , Clare . “ Of Gold Molars and Golden Girls:
Norris Studies 8 ( 1989 ): 6 – 8 .
Fitzgerald ’ s Reading of Norris . ” American Liter-
London , Charmian Kittredge . The Book of Jack
ary Realism 35 ( 2003 ): 130 – 58 .
London . 2 vols. New York : Century , 1921 .
186
Jeanne Campbell Reesman
London , Jack . “ The Apostate . ” When God Laughs .
The Literary Criticism of Frank Norris . Ed. Donald
New York : Macmillan , 1906 . Rpt. in The Com-
Pizer . Austin : University of Texas Press , 1964 .
plete Short Stories of Jack London . Eds. Earle Labor ,
75 – 8 .
Robert C . Leitz , III , and I. Milo Shepard . Stan-
— — — . “ Zola as a Romantic Writer . ” The Wave
ford : Stanford University Press . 1112 – 29 . All
(June 27, 1896 ): 3 . Rpt. in The Apprenticeship
quotations used in text are taken from this
Writings of Frank Norris, 1896
–
1897 . Eds.
edition.
Joseph R. McElrath , Jr. , and Douglas K.
— — — . The Call of the Wild . New York : Macmil-
Burgess . Philadelphia : American Philosophical
lan , 1903 .
Society , 1996 . 85 – 7 .
— — — . “ The White Silence . ” The Son of the Wolf .
Pizer , Donald . “ The Biological Determinism of
Boston : Houghton Miffl in , 1900 .
McTeague in Our Time . ” American Literary
London , Joan . Jack London and His Times . Seattle :
Realism 29 . 2 (Winter 1997 ): 27 – 33 .
University of Washington Press , 1968 .
— — — . “ Frank Norris ’ s McTeague : Naturalism as
McElrath , Joseph R. , Jr . “ Frank Norris . ” Dictionary
Popular Myth . ” ANQ 13 . 4 ( 2000 ): 21 – 6 .
of Literary Biography . Vol. 71, American Literary
— — — . Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth
-
Critics and Scholars, 1880 – 1900 . Eds. John W.
Century American Literature . Rev. edn. Carbon-
Rathbun and Monica M. Green . Detroit : Gale
dale : Southern Illinois University Press , 1984 .
Research , 1988 . 168 – 79 .
— — — . Twentieth - Century American Literary Natu-
— — — . Frank Norris Revisited . New York :
ralism: An Interpretation . Carbondale : Southern
Twayne , 1992 .
Illinois University Press , 1982 .
— — — . “ Frank Norris and The Wave : 1894 . ”
Reesman , Jeanne Campbell . Jack London: A Study
Frank Norris Studies 1 ( 1986 ): 4 .
of the Short Fiction . New York : Twayne , 1999 .
— — — . “ Frank Norris and The Wave : 1895 . ”
— — — . “ ‘ Never Travel Alone ’ : Naturalism,
Frank Norris Studies 3 ( 1987 ): 4 .
Jack London, and the White Silence , ” American
McElrath , Joseph R. , Jr. , ed. “ Special Issue: Per-
Literary Realism, 1870 – 1910 29 . 2 ( 1997 ):
verted Tales . ” Frank Norris Studies 15 (Spring
33 – 49 .
1993 ).
Star
r , Kevin . “ Introduction . ” McTeague: A Story of
Norris , Frank . Complete Edition of Frank Norris . 10
San Francisco by Frank Norris . New York :
vols. Garden City, NJ : Doubleday, Doran , 1928 .
Penguin , 1994 .
— — — . “ Fantasie Printani
è re . ” The Wave 16
Tavernier - Courbin , Jacqueline . The Call of the
(November 6, 1897 ): 7 . Rpt. in The Apprentice-
Wild: A Naturalistic Romance . New York :
ship Writings of Frank Norris 1896 – 1898. Vol.
Twayne , 1994 .
2: 1897 – 1898 . Eds. Joseph R. McElrath , Jr. ,
Walcutt , Charles C. American Literary Naturalism:
and Douglass K. Burgess . Philadelphia : Ameri-
A Divided Stream . Minneapolis : University of
can Philosophical Society , 1996 . 175 – 83 .
Minnesota Press , 1956 .
— — — . “ Frank Norris ’ s Weekly Letter . ” Chicago
Werner , Mary Beth . “ ‘ A Vast and Terrible Drama ’ :
American (August 3, 1901 ). Rpt. in Frank
Frank Norris
’
s Domestic Violence Fantasy in
Norris ’ s McTeague . Ed. Donald Pizer . New York :
McTeague . ” Frank Norris Studies 19 ( 1994 ):
W. W. Norton , 1977 . 275 – 7 .
1 – 4 .
— — — . McTeague: A Story of San Francisco . New
Zola , É mile . “ Preface ” to the 2nd edition of Th é r è se
York : Doubleday and McClure , 1899 .
Raquin . 1868 . Rpt. in Th é r è se Raquin by É mile
— — — . “ A Plea for Romantic Fiction . ” Boston
Zola. Trans. Leonard Tancock. London : Penguin ,
Evening Transcript (December 18, 1901 ). Rpt. in
1962 . 21 – 8 .
13
From “ Water Drops ” to General
Strikes: Nineteenth - and Early
Twentieth - Century Short Fiction
and Social Change
Andrew J. Furer
I perceived that the whole energetic, busy spirit of the age tended wholly to the Magazine
literature – to the curt, the terse, the well - timed, and the readily diffused, in preference to the
old forms of the verbose, the ponderous and the inaccessible.
– Edgar Allan Poe (1844?)
I became a socialist, fi rst, because I was born a proletarian and early discovered that for the
proletariat socialism was the only way out; second … I discovered that socialism was the only
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 41