Date of Award

1-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College/School

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department/Program

English

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Melinda Knight

Committee Member

Willard Gingerich

Committee Member

Laura Nicosia

Abstract

During the latter half of the nineteenth century, when railroads were consolidating their control, their executives soon learned their power of controlling rates, and by extension, the entire economy. Dissecting the capitalist machine of the railroad corporations in California, Frank Norris’s 1901 novel The Octopus presents a fictionalized account of the very real circumstances of one fight against the monopoly, the Mussel Slough Tragedy of 1880 in the San Joaquin Valley. This thesis explores Norris’s presentation of the forces that drive humans to lack empathy for those around them as well as the forces that drive others to fight back against a seemingly impenetrable monopoly. The thesis also weighs Norris’s unique interpretation of Naturalism as a synthesis of Realism and Romanticism, as well as Social Darwinism as a vehicle to expose the brutal, unforgiving forces that drive human development.

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