{"id":482,"date":"2022-02-02T11:48:35","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T16:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/?p=482"},"modified":"2022-02-18T14:52:02","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T19:52:02","slug":"liting-weng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/2022\/02\/02\/liting-weng\/","title":{"rendered":"Liting Weng"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liting Weng<\/strong> is an MA student in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University. She also completed her undergraduate studies in Foreign Languages and Literatures, and Political Sciences at National Taiwan University. Liting is interested in the themes of social orders, means of control, extremist regimes, and traumas of political violence in political, utopian, and dystopian fiction.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Objections upon Objections: Synthesizing Jack London\u2019s Utopia in The Iron Heel<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The experimental form of Jack London\u2019s The Iron Heel <\/em>teases scholars with a future utopia that is never fully depicted. The novel consists of a manuscript set in the early twentieth century by Avis Everhard with a series of footnotes that Anthony Meredith adds seven centuries in the future. Avis writes about her husband Ernest Everhard and her life with him between 1912 and 1932 as revolutionaries under an oppressive capitalist regime, the Iron Heel, and its bureaucrats, the Oligarchy. The manuscript is incomplete because it is suggested that Avis is interrupted by a raid by the fighting men of the Oligarchy and is compelled to hide her unfinished manuscript in her bedframe. The Everhard manuscript remains undisturbed until it is discovered seven centuries later, when the Iron Heel\u2019s reign has ended and the Brotherhood of Man has been established for over four centuries. Meredith takes it upon himself to annotate and publish the manuscript. The juxtaposition of the manuscript and footnotes makes the novel enigmatic. It is \u201csurprisingly utopian in tone and structure\u201d despite its undeniably dystopian theme.[1]<\/sup><\/a> It is a story of revolutionists, even if the revolutions and their outcomes remain unseen. It features a protagonist who \u201cappears at the same time superior, equal, and inferior\u201d to other characters.[2]<\/sup><\/a> It imagines a future where the origins of people no longer matter without acknowledging \u201cthe heterogeneity of the American wage-earning class.\u201d[3]<\/sup><\/a> The novel is full of inconsistencies. However, rather than highlighting the inconsistencies as the flaws of the novel, reading them as part of London\u2019s writing strategies might be more productive in comprehending his dissatisfaction about his contemporary world. The inconsistencies of novel embody London\u2019s nuanced messages of objection against his contemporary world that do not fully align with the popular ideologies of his time.<\/p>\n

Other scholars\u2019 remarks on the inconsistency and lack of clarity in London\u2019s writing highlight the duality in The Iron Heel<\/em>. Gorman Beauchamp claims that The Iron Heel <\/em>\u201cpresents a double vision of the future . . . [but both] are never entirely discrete.\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/a> The novel strikes the readers as immediately dystopian because of the Everhard Manuscript\u2019s emphasis on the oppression and conflicts under the Iron Heel, but \u201cultimately, it is a utopia\u201d because of Meredith\u2019s footnotes.[5]<\/sup><\/a> Nevertheless, this utopia is never explicitly described. The Brotherhood of Man appears utopian because it is \u201cglorified at the expense of the present\u201d rather than its merits. [6]<\/a><\/sup> The present under the Iron Heel, on the other hand, \u201cis both the point in time at which oppression is imposed and the moment in which resistance to that oppression is acutely desirable.\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/a> London does not elaborate on how the increasingly violent conflicts between the revolutionists and the Oligarchy led to the peace in the Brotherhood of Man. The transition between the two regimes is not depicted, leaving a void of information. Alessandro Portelli takes a harsher stance, concluding that the lack of description of revolutions, the working class, factories, and the Brotherhood of Man creates \u201c\u2018black holes\u2019 which form the structure of the novel.\u201d[8]<\/sup><\/a> He further criticizes that \u201crather than imagining something which political theory cannot yet visualize, it divulgates a fully developed theory but cannot countenance its consequences.\u201d[9]<\/sup><\/a> However, as the next section argues, London and The Iron Heel<\/em> does not fully conform to the predominant ideologies of his time. He folds together arguments from different lines of political philosophies and weaves his warning against the pitfalls of them into the novel.<\/p>\n

The experimental form of The Iron Heel<\/em> creates a temporal gap between the coexisting dystopian and utopian vision and challenges the readers to interpret the future London envisions. While the scholars (including Horan, Portelli, and Beauchamp) have not yet agreed on what London\u2019s utopia entails, they agree on one thing, that is by leaving the Brotherhood of Man undescribed, London fails to explicitly illustrate his utopia. Few interpret the lack of a clear vision for utopia as an authorial choice and fewer still question the premise that the Brotherhood of Man is London\u2019s utopia. The overwhelming attention on London\u2019s absent utopian mission begs the question whether the Brotherhood of Man is indeed the utopian vision London wishes to promote. This paper argues that the Brotherhood of Man is not a utopia but merely a world that is better than the Iron Heel. His pursuit of a utopia does not end in the Brotherhood of Man. Rather, the Brotherhood of Man is a phase in the process of London\u2019s search for utopia. By contrasting the Iron Heel and the Brotherhood of Man, London imagines a future where the inevitable clashes between social classes end in a peaceful regime.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Objects of Objection: Reading the Unvoiced Words in The Iron Heel<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Inspired by the exhibition curated by Ian Hislop \u201cI Object: Ian Hislop\u2019s Search for Dissent\u201d (2018), this paper proposes the concept of \u201cobject of objection\u201d as an approach to understanding the veiled messages and objections in the text of Jack London\u2019s The Iron Heel<\/em>. In the exhibition, Hislop selected items from the British Museum that appeared, at first glance, as nothing out of the ordinary, but carried rebellious messages that resist the official version of history that is conventionally defined by the monarchs and victors of wars. As Hislop observed, dissidents \u201cleft their objects, their objections to the official view, you just need to know where to look.\u201d[10]<\/sup><\/a> Objects of objection implicitly carry the dissents of their creators against a certain state of affairs and hence are \u201cobjects that everyone knows what [the dissidents are] up to but [. . .] can\u2019t quite prove it.\u201d[11]<\/sup><\/a> The concept is different from objections per se in the sense that the objects are both the messages and their carriers. These objects codify messages, hiding them in the plain sight of official narratives. To unveil the essence of the dissent, receivers of the objects of objections are tasked to interpret them and unpack the subtlety that gives voices to the sentiments that wouldn\u2019t be accepted or couldn\u2019t be expressed without fear of retaliation.<\/p>\n

The novel, the manuscript, and the annotations exist as objects of objection because they embody the authors\u2019 implicit criticism of the world. The novel can be republished in a different format and layout or in a different language, it would still be an object of objection, as long as the content remains the same. The dissent is embedded in the text itself as well as in the existence of the book. Therefore, rather than knowing where to look, understanding The Iron Heel<\/em> requires readers to know how to read the layers of text; the novel, the manuscript, and the annotations, alongside and against each other to build up a fuller (but still incomplete) picture of dissent. By reading the texts as objects of objection, the inconsistencies throughout The Iron Heel<\/em> are charged with meaning. They obscure the messages of dissent.<\/p>\n

Reading The Iron Heel<\/em> as an object of objection accentuates the nuances London embeds in the frames of narrative. Its connections to the social disputes in London\u2019s time ought to be put in the context of London\u2019s experience. It is written \u201cin response to the major political crisis unleashed by the Russian Revolution of 1905\u201d and a series of setbacks in his personal life and American politics.[12]<\/sup><\/a> The novel may also be London\u2019s attempt to avoid retaliation for his support for socialism and resolve \u201cthe troubling contradiction between his literary and political vocations<\/em>,\u201d which he experienced personally.[13]<\/sup><\/a> Kenneth K. Brandt deems the novel London\u2019s endeavors to \u201cre-present his socialist ideas through the potentially more popular genre of the novel.\u201d[14]<\/sup><\/a> By delivering his argument in the emotional tone of a loving wife and with the\u2013\u2013albeit feigned\u2013\u2013objectivity of a historian writing with the perspective of seven centuries ahead, London seeks to soften his political arguments and make them more palatable to the general public.<\/p>\n

Given London\u2019s reputation as a well-known socialist, the socialist theme of the novel is not unexpected. However, he does not adopt the predominant socialist ideology of his time unquestioningly. London\u2019s decision to obscure the proletariats in The Iron Heel<\/em> indicates that he \u201coffers a reformist image of social relationships\u201d instead of the revolutionary. And, his modification of Marx and Engels\u2019 Communist Manifesto<\/em>\u2013\u2013while the original text claims that the proletariat has \u201ca world to gain,\u201d London\u2019s \u201cpeople of the abyss\u201d would gain \u201cnothing, save one final, awful glut of vengeance\u201d from revolutions\u2013\u2013demonstrates that \u201cextreme forms of struggle are not incompatible with a reformist analysis of society.\u201d[15]<\/sup><\/a> London also strays away from Marx\u2019s vision of an immediate revolution and instead suggests that \u201cthe prolonged form that struggle was likely to take\u201d casts a more pessimistic light onto the socialist revolutions.[16]<\/sup><\/a> The challenges to socialism \u201cplaces London, not in the Marxist tradition, but in that of the 19th-century popular novel, with its emphasis on the \u2018excessive\u2019 consequences of capitalistic social relationships rather than on the relationships per se<\/em>.\u201d[17]<\/sup><\/a> In other words, London simultaneously criticizes capitalism and socialism. Therefore, London had to encrypt his dissent into the form of a novel that provides cover for him to express his criticisms and resist two ideologies both of which were prominent in the 19th and 20th centuries. Adopting Everhard, Avis, and Meredith\u2019s voices enables him to compartmentalize these objections to his contemporaries.<\/p>\n

At first glance, the Everhard Manuscript is straightforwardly socialist and can hardly be interpreted as something that is not androcentric and anti-capitalist. The manuscript centers around Everhard\u2019s discontent with the oppressive regime that only works in the favor of the capitalists. There is no shortage of portraits of capitalists\u2019 selfishness and cruelty, nor that of the incompetence and inaction of the middle class. Throughout the manuscript, Everhard barely says anything that is not a criticism against the Oligarchy. Nevertheless, it is critical to read beyond Everhard\u2019s speeches and scrutinize the hidden messages within Avis\u2019s writing. In the spaces that have not been occupied by Everhard, Avis voices her opinions. The retrospective nature of the manuscript enables Avis to contemplate the legacies of the revolutionary activities in her time. Although Avis glamorizes Everhard\u2019s contributions, her characterization of the revolutions is not as generous. She laments the repercussions for deflected revolutionists being so horrible \u201cthat it bec[o]me[s] a greater peril to betray [the revolutionists] than to remain loyal.\u201d[18]<\/sup><\/a> Amidst an ocean of praises for Everhard, there lies Avis\u2019s objection against the increasingly violent nature of revolutions and her anxiety over the escalating violence between the Iron Heel and the revolutionists. The manuscript that looks intuitively like a socialist document transforms into an object of objection where Avis reconsiders the potential flaws of socialist movements.<\/p>\n

Such an interpretation reads the Everhard Manuscript against its grain, but it is not unsolicited. Meredith\u2019s foreword directs readers\u2019 attention to the negative emotions of the text. According to Meredith, the manuscript is not valuable for its historical accuracy, but its emotional sway. More specifically, it argues that the value of the manuscript lies in its ability to \u201c[communicate] the feel<\/em> of those terrible times.\u201d[19]<\/sup><\/a> While it is conventionally believed that Meredith is commenting on an undesirable period from the past, his attention to the emotions in the manuscript urges readers to question why he does so. Emotions contradict the rationality, peace, and equality that his \u201cenlightened age\u201d champions.[20]<\/sup><\/a> Although he does not elaborate on his reason for re-introducing emotions to his readers and helping them empathize with these feelings, the fact that he feels the need to do so hints at a sense of lack in the Brotherhood of Man. Or, to put it another way, Meredith initiating a dialogue with the past indicates that his time is not a static utopia where everything has reached perfection.<\/p>\n

Elements in the list of what Meredith terms the portrayal of the \u201cpsychology of the persons that lived in that turbulent period embraced between the year 1912 and 1932\u201d are not always the flaws of capitalists.[21]<\/sup><\/a> While some of them are equally applicable to the revolutionists and the Oligarchy, other qualities\u2013\u2013\u201dmisapprehensions,\u201d \u201cviolent passions,\u201d and \u201cinconceivable sordidness\u201d\u2013\u2013are directed at revolutionists rather than capitalists.[22]<\/sup><\/a> At the expense of London himself, London dismisses the conventional understanding of socialist revolutions, because not only was he a supporter of socialist movements, Everhard\u2019s arguments also echo London\u2019s speeches and essays.[23]<\/sup><\/a> Connections between the novel and London\u2019s time create reference points for criticism. The interrelations between the texts allows the reading of any one text to extend beyond the text itself and lend weight to the interpretation of others. Hence, the messages of objection that are hidden within each text can eventually be woven together to reveal London\u2019s message in his object of objection. He imagines a future where the people enjoy an efficient and peaceful life.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Parallel Criticism: The Use of Narrative Frames<\/strong><\/p>\n

London utilizes the voices of Everhard, Avis, and Meredith to weave together three threads of objections, embedding an object of objection (i.e. the Everhard Manuscript) in another (i.e. Meredith\u2019s commentary) and that in a third (i.e. London\u2019s novel itself). The voices frame the ideological discussions London tries to capture and demonstrate how each point of view might respond to each other. As creators of objects of objection, these narrators cannot be taken at face value. Their efforts to embed objections in the manuscript and the footnotes make them less reliable narrators. The unreliability of the narrators guides the readers\u2019 reading of it. Ansgar F. N\u00fcnning\u2019s research on unreliable narrators provides a new perspective; N\u00fcnning argues that the \u201cunreliability is not so much a character trait of a narrator as it is an interpretive strategy of the reader.\u201d[24]<\/sup><\/a> Examinations of Avis and Meredith\u2019s writing are valuable to the readers because they may develop strategies for understanding The Iron Heel<\/em> based on the interpretations of their intention to write, rather than providing historically factual information. Meredith\u2019s accusation of Avis writing to beatify her late husband after the success of the second revolution invites questions about his reasons for reintroducing emotions to his contemporaries in the Brotherhood of Man. To a certain degree, Meredith\u2019s commentary on the Everhard Manuscript attempts to coach readers in how to interpret the text.<\/p>\n

As I have suggested in the previous section, understanding The Iron Heel<\/em> requires \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0resisting the urge to take the text at face value and investigate the veiled messages of dissent. Harry E. Shaw\u2019s research on the \u201cimplied author\u201d provides some theoretical grounds for understanding the authors and their intentions. Shaw argues that narrowing the scope of the \u201cimplied readers\u201d is \u201ca way of specifying matters buried so deeply in culture that they precede and undergird the real of the conscious persuasion that characterizes the implied author.\u201d[25]<\/sup><\/a> Deducing the target audience of each text is, hence, an integral step in making sense of the texts and their implied authors. Shaw\u2019s argument creates links between the implied readers, the implied authors, and their surroundings. Identifying the addressees of the texts\u2013\u2013American citizens during the second revolution for Avis and Brotherhood of Man citizens for Meredith\u2013\u2013opens up the mindsets of the authors. To London, his novel is an attempt to approach the public that suffered under capitalism but were suspicious about socialism.<\/p>\n

The emphasis on implied readers and authors helps with interpreting the Everhard Manuscript and Meredith\u2019s annotations as objects of objection. Such an approach focuses on the fictionality of the novel and lacks a connection to the historical circumstance that London responds to. Shaw\u2019s theory on the implied authors directs the attention to Avis\u2019s concerns of the seemingly unresolvable violent confrontation of her time and Meredith\u2019s discontent over the bland and emotionless life in the Brotherhood of Man, but it is unable to ground the messages of dissent in London\u2019s context. Hence, to understand The Iron Heel<\/em> as London\u2019s object of objection, the fictionality of the novel needs to be contextualized. Richard Walsh\u2019s pragmatic approach to fictional narrative suggests using fictionality as a tool to \u201cidentif[y] something [readers and critics] are not doing . . . . [a]nd challenges [them] to explain the force and effect of fictionality itself in [their] experience and understanding of fiction.\u201d[26]<\/sup><\/a> That is to say, to read fictionality is a way of reflecting on the contemporary world of the author and the readers after the author\u2019s time.<\/p>\n

Across the two narrative frames and London\u2019s contemporary moment, the criticisms that are presented in one particular context seem applicable to the others. Since the implied authors \u201c[provide] a terminologically acceptable way of talking about the author and his or her intention . . . [and] serve both as a yardstick for an ethical kind of criticism and as a check on the potentially boundless relativism of interpretation,\u201d the frames of the novel encourage readings that transcend the bounds of fictionality.[27]<\/sup><\/a> For example, Avis\u2019s observation of the increasingly violent confrontations between the revolutionists and the Oligarchy alludes to the brutality between the capitalists and proletariat which London believes to be \u201ca necessary evil.\u201d[28]<\/sup><\/a> She criticizes the blind righteousness of both the revolutionists and the Oligarchy with examples of revolutionists accusing agents of the Oligarchy executing militia members with \u201cno investigation, no trial\u201d despite prosecuting General Lampton of the Iron Heel without a proper trial themselves.[29]<\/sup><\/a> \u201c[T]he impromptu killing [of Lampton] . . . highlights the discrepancy between the idealistic rhetoric of the socialists and their actual behavior,\u201d and hence creates parallelism of criticism between the fictional world and reality.[30]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

In the tradition of utopian and dystopian literature, it is not rare to see \u201cevident resemblances between dystopian and existing society [that would] encourage a parallel process, whereby readers are encouraged to judge their own society by the extent to which it embodies dystopian features.\u201d[31]<\/sup><\/a> This process serves as an \u201ceffective rhetorical device [to] secur[e] the reader\u2019s assent to the author\u2019s point of view.\u201d[32]<\/sup><\/a> Meredith\u2019s efforts to \u201c[undermine] the reliability of the manuscript is a long-term premise for the establishment of socialism [that] encourages the readers to speculate beyond [the novel].\u201d[33]<\/sup><\/a> To put it differently, Meredith\u2019s scrutiny of the Everhard Manuscript invites readers to dissect London\u2019s The Iron Heel<\/em> with similar attention. The multiple frames of The Iron Heel <\/em>invite readers to compare and contrast each frame. Effectually, London\u2019s words and experience lend meaning to each other. The connections between fictionality and reality assist in persuading the readers of London\u2019s point of view or his objections.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Where Does the Argument Lead?: A Dialectical Approach<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite the palpable violent theme towards the end of the Everhard Manuscript, there is a leap from conflicts to peace between Avis\u2019s and Meredith\u2019s time that is unaccounted for in the novel. While Meredith claims that violence is incomprehensible in his time, Avis\u2019s contemporaries are caught in irresolvable conflicts. Violence and confrontations lurk in the background throughout the manuscript long before they take over the plot\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0during the chapter on the Chicago Commune. Matthew A. Taylor criticizes London\u2019s willingness to promote violent revolutions, his decision to write only a \u201cshort-lived\u201d period of peace in the novel and being fundamentally incapable of imagining a peaceful resolution for class-struggles \u201cbecause of [his] commitment to the notion that socialism could prevail only through a \u2018survival of the fittest\u2019 contest with the forces of capitalism.\u201d[34]<\/sup><\/a> Similarly, Horan argues \u201cfor London, socialist ends justify both savage and manipulative means . . . . [B]rutality was not simply a necessary evil; it was, as [Tony] Barley makes clear, also frequently an appealing one.\u201d[35]<\/sup><\/a> Scholars\u2019 criticisms of London\u2019s partiality towards violence, however, overlook the peaceful future London imagines the Brotherhood of Man to be.<\/p>\n

Meredith has claimed that life in the Brotherhood of Man is so peaceful that the people \u201cby personal experience know nothing of bloodshed.\u201d[36]<\/sup><\/a> In fact, not only is the Brotherhood of Man\u2019s attitude towards violence drastically different from the Iron Heel, the revolutions that lead up to it might not have been as bloody as Meredith\u2019s foreword portrays them to be. Once again, the manuscript and footnotes provide little detail on the conciliation of the discords and how the violent clashes subside. Instead, the parallel criticisms embedded in the narrative frames exacerbate the conflicts rather than resolve them. The fact that the infrastructure of the Iron Heel remains intact in the Brotherhood of Man even suggests some degree of continuity between the two regimes. In other words, at some point during the seven unaccounted-for centuries, the surging violence in the Everhard Manuscript is conciliated. The Brotherhood of Man builds upon the foundation of the Iron Heel, rather than emerging from the ruin of the oppressive regime. Understanding the transition between the regimes more as an accumulation than a revolution enables a new reading. Arguments that initially appear to be contradictory become theses and antitheses for a more comprehensive argument. Avis and Meredith engage in an ideological dialogue in the sense that their texts act as objects of objections that interact with each other. The interactions capture a phase in the spiraling path, resembling the pattern of Hegelian dialectics, towards London\u2019s vision of utopia.<\/p>\n

The pattern of Hegelian dialectics consists of a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis. The synthesis resolves two contradictory arguments and creates a new argument that would later be the foundation of further dialectical processes. Guglielmo Carchedi adopts a dialectical approach to understand social phenomena, which he defines as the \u201cstarting point of the enquiry . . . into social life with a class-determined analysis of phenomena as the unity-in-contradiction of relation and processes.\u201d[37]<\/sup><\/a> He concludes that social phenomena \u201care always both reali[z]ed and potential,\u201d \u201cboth determinant and determined,\u201d and are \u201csubject to constant movement and change.\u201d[38]<\/sup><\/a> The nuanced nature of dialectics can be a helpful tool in understanding the unrealized utopia in The Iron Heel.<\/em> Without being fully depicted, the utopian vision is the potential that is \u201cformless [and] can never be observed because observation implies reali[z]ation.\u201d[39]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

A dialectical reading of The Iron Heel <\/em>helps comprehend the contradictory arguments and criticisms in the novel and potentially synthesizes the ideological arguments between Avis and Meredith. Horan suggests reading Everhard as a paradoxical figure\u2013\u2013although he is born working class, Everhard no longer works alongside the proletariats nor does he identify with the capitalist elites\u2013\u2013that synthesizes \u201cthe corruption of the boss class and the ignorance of the worker.\u201d[40]<\/sup><\/a> Aaron Shaheen concurs that Everhard can be interpreted as a synthesizing figure and argues that Everhard \u201crepresents a third structure in his embodiment or perhaps even transcendence of\u201d their perspectives.[41]<\/sup><\/a> While Horan\u2019s argument focuses solely on the conflicts under the Iron Heel, Shaheen extends his attention to the Brotherhood of Man\u2019s position in the dialectical pattern of the novel. Additionally, he picks up on the theme of socialist revolutions in the novel and reads the Brotherhood of Man as a \u201cMarxian synthesis of previous class-based dialectical forces.\u201d[42]<\/sup><\/a> Given the limited depictions of the Brotherhood of Man and the time that leads up to it, Shaheen is unable to elaborate on London\u2019s synthesis of class struggles. Yet, despite the limitations of Horan\u2019s and Shaheen\u2019s dialectical approach to the Iron Heel, they successfully address the interrelations of the Everhard Manuscript and Meredith\u2019s footnotes.<\/p>\n

Taking a different approach from identifying a synthesis in the novel, Nathaniel Teich suggests the possibility of not being able to pinpoint the object or character that embodies the synthesis. Instead, he argues that \u201c[t]he way [Avis and Meredith] inform each other produces the cumulative effects and meaning of the novel.\u201d[43]<\/sup><\/a> His approach grasps the dynamics of dialectics. While the Brotherhood of man is part of the \u201csocial processes [that] are the form of manifestation of social relations, of something which has already left the realm of potentialities and has already become reali[z]ed,\u201d the true synthesis lies beyond it.[44]<\/sup><\/a> The interrelations between the manuscript and footnotes illustrate the manifestation of social relations as the two texts are constantly \u201cboth the \u2018cause\u2019 and \u2018effect\u2019 of each other\u201d and lead the readers closer to the utopian vision.[45]<\/sup><\/a> Consequently, The Iron Heel<\/em> embodies a dialogue \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0between two objects of objection or between the layers within the object. Its dialectical spiral that consists of synthesis after synthesis emerges as a prototype to understand London\u2019s utopian vision.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the seven-hundred-year long intermission between the two texts, the violent undertone of class struggles is subdued and gives way to a world without violence. In the Brotherhood of Man, not only is the world free from the oppression of the Oligarchy, but it is also rid of the revolutionists\u2019 violent passions. A dialectical approach does not necessarily fill in the gap, but it proposes a possible way of comprehending the seven-century lapse between the Iron Heel and the Brotherhood of Man. Furthermore, it sheds light on the trajectory of the search for London\u2019s utopia. Beauchamp has demonstrated a possible approach of deducing the life in the Brotherhood of Man by looking into the \u201cwhole array of evils\u2013\u2013rents, strikes, thieves, lawyers, lap dogs, Wall Street\u2013\u2013[that] must be explicated by the editor, since they no longer exist in the twenty-seventh century.\u201d[46]<\/sup><\/a> In Meredith\u2019s footnotes, he supplies additional information that may not have been available to his contemporary readers. The unavailability of information and their incomprehension of certain practices hints at the possibility that these behaviors have been eradicated over the years. To understand the progress that happens in the void London chooses not to narrate, the readers have to read into the unsaid words or the implicit dropping of hints about the different social reality indicated in Meredith\u2019s footnotes. In the same way that Avis disagrees with her contemporaries, Meredith alludes to the insufficiency of his time. Ultimately, the book gives cover to London\u2019s messages of dissent that might otherwise be retaliated against. He explicitly criticizes the faults of the capitalist society of his time and, more significantly, he expresses his concerns over the flaws of his fellow socialists. In a similar fashion of negative space drawing, London\u2019s vision for the future emerges from a list of qualities he does not look forward to in the world.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Imagination and the Unimaginable: The Iron Heel<\/em> as a Dialectical Model<\/strong><\/p>\n

A dialectical approach to The Iron Heel<\/em> enables a reading where seemingly contradictory arguments function as theses and antitheses and through which a higher level of knowledge can be reached. As objects of objection, the manuscript and the footnotes interact with one another to demonstrate the synthesizing process of oppositions. In other words, the novel captures the process of deliberating a better world rather than providing its reader with a clear vision of a better world. This approach to the novel contradicts Portelli\u2019s argument that the novel \u201cis the reverse of the utopian discourse: rather than imagining something which political theory cannot yet visualize, it divulgates a fully developed theory but cannot countenance its consequences.\u201d[47]<\/sup><\/a> London builds upon the developed theory as an approach to get closer to utopia. The Brotherhood of Man is not the utopia itself but one of the phases in the process of approaching utopia and The Iron Heel <\/em>provides the model of how to do so.<\/p>\n

Throughout the novel, London refrains from straightforwardly describing life under the Brotherhood of Man. The Brotherhood of Man is not illustrated as what it is, but how it is different from the Iron Heel instead. In the footnote entries, London sparsely provides his imagination in the form of supplementary information for Meredith\u2019s contemporaries. The absent qualities of Meredith\u2019s time form a negative space where readers envision what the Brotherhood of Man is like. Some of Meredith\u2019s footnotes seem almost abrupt and irrelevant to Avis\u2019s text, but they reveal aspects\u2013\u2013or rather, the missing pieces\u2013\u2013of the life under the Brotherhood of Man. For example, Meredith claims that people in the past \u201cfill the living rooms with bric-a-brac\u201d because they have not yet \u201cdiscovered simplicity of living.\u201d[48]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 He also accuses people of \u201ccrudely extract[ing . . . cream and butter] from cow\u2019s milk [because t]he laboratory preparation of food had not yet begun.\u201d[49]<\/sup><\/a> These comments indicate that life in the twentieth century seems primitive and savage to Meredith and that it may have completely changed in the intervening centuries.<\/p>\n

The footnotes supply little additional information to the ideological debate of capitalism and socialism that underlines The Iron Heel<\/em>. Although Meredith annotates on the historical facts of socialist movements, his commentary on socialist concepts and events aligns with Avis\u2019s description. For example, when Meredith criticizes the harsh working conditions of the past, he explains that in the past \u201cthere [were] many thousands of these poor merchants called pedlers<\/em>[, who] carr[ied] their whole stock in trade from door to door.\u201d[50]<\/sup><\/a> Counterintuitively, the significance of the entry is not the criticism of laboring conditions, but of the societal structure. Meredith quickly turns to larger social issues such as how the \u201c[d]istribution [was] a confused and irrational as the whole general system of the society.\u201d[51]<\/sup><\/a> The entry suggests that efficiency and rationality in the structure of Meredith society are so common that his contemporaries cannot imagine what life had been like in the past without sufficient elaboration. It is with the help of the information in addition to the socialist-capitalist clash can the ideological debate escape the confrontational to-and-fro that leads to the surging violence by the end of the manuscript. The additional information indicates that the synthesis of the class struggles may not be dependent solely on the ideological debate, but also on the reformations on other aspects of society.<\/p>\n

In order to make sense of the transition from violence to peace, it is worth pointing out that Meredith says nothing of the continuity of violence. Meredith does not say much of the success of the socialist movements. Instead, his words hint at a discontinuity of the revolutions and the possibility of the socialist movements gradually losing their violent nature in the span of three hundred years. The eventual arrival of the Brotherhood of Man is established \u201c[o]ut of the decay of self-seeking capitalism.\u201d[52]<\/sup><\/a> Contrary to the destructive force that revolutionists of Avis\u2019s time have become, they grew practical and less willing to take a destructive approach. The Brotherhood of Man subsequently establishes order and utilizes the infrastructure built by the Oligarchy. People of Meredith\u2019s time \u201ctread the roads and dwell in the cities that the oligarchs built.\u201d[53]<\/sup><\/a> The lack of destruction invites further examination of the violent image that Meredith first presents in the foreword: \u201cmany Revolts, all drowned in seas of blood, ere the world-movement of labor should come into its own.\u201d[54]<\/sup><\/a> Rather than understanding revolutions as destructive yet pivotal points of history, the continuation between the Iron Heel and Brotherhood of Man suggests understanding them as stages of transition towards utopia. Namely, as the previous regime falls and the new regime rise, history does not start anew but continues on a path that resembles the pattern of dialectics.<\/p>\n

Progress would be impossible in the dialectical process of synthesizing London\u2019s vision for a better world if the Brotherhood of Man is interpreted as a utopia. A utopia is static because there would be nothing to object to. Perhaps satirically, Meredith\u2019s footnote addresses the concept of utopia head-on. Meredith criticizes people in the past for being \u201cphrase slaves\u201d whose minds are \u201c[s]o befuddled and chaotic [. . .] that the utterance of [the adjective Utopian] could negative the generalization of a serious research and thought.\u201d [55]<\/a><\/sup> His criticism seems especially paradoxical when, throughout the book, a utopia is never explicitly depicted and the adjective \u201cutopian\u201d remains merely an adjective. Who\u2019s to say that this is not a challenge directed to readers and scholars who are trying to work out what utopia London has in mind? This entry serves as a reminder not to obsess over the term utopia. The Iron Heel<\/em> does not imagine a utopia, but merely a world that is better than the present. Meredith\u2019s intention to introduce the horrible history of the Iron Heel\u2013\u2013including the \u201cmistakes,\u201d \u201cignorance,\u201d \u201cdoubts,\u201d \u201cfears,\u201d \u201cmisapprehensions,\u201d \u201cethical delusions,\u201d and \u201cviolent passions\u201d\u2013\u2013to the Brotherhood of Man indicates his intention of breaking the status quo and possibly restarting the pursuit of a better world. London is not creating a utopian vision but developing a dialectical model of synthesizing utopia[56]<\/sup><\/a>. As a model, the novel objects to the notion that Brotherhood of Man is the pursuit of a better world.<\/p>\n

Although both the manuscript and footnotes in The Iron Heel <\/em>are written in retrospect, they exist in the future that is fictional to London. The time frames of the novel add to the potential complexity of the analysis. Henry Yiheng Zhao follows \u00c9mile Benveniste in distinguishing the \u201cthree moods\u201d of narratives\u2013\u2013the indicative (retrospective), interrogative (present), and imperative (future)\u2013\u2013which he argues indicate the \u201cintention behind the text, a kind of intersubjective attitude that runs through the narrative communication, in correspondence with a certain type of expected response.\u201d[57]<\/sup><\/a> His analysis ignores the contexts in which London wrote The Iron Heel<\/em>. London does not write to recount history. Instead, he writes to show his objections to his contemporary world. It is interrogative and imperative about the struggles in his present and near future. Regardless of the retrospective nature of the narrative, the novel carries the urgency of works that engage with the world around it. To read the novel is to pull apart Avis\u2019s and Meredith\u2019s texts and reassemble them into London\u2019s ideological debate.<\/p>\n

Avis\u2019s reflection on the revolutionists\u2019 excessive use of violence exposes the parallel between the Oligarchy and the revolutionists. She warns against the stalemate that violent conflicts may inevitably lead to. Through Avis\u2019s words, London calls into question the overwhelming belief in an inevitable violent class between the capitalist and proletariat classes. Although he is unable to see a peaceful way of standing up against the capitalists, London imagines a less destructive outcome where the infrastructure survives and serves as the foundation of a new era. He might not have found a way to harmonize the conflicts, but London curates a conversation with Avis\u2019s and Meredith\u2019s texts as objects of objection. Namely, he \u201cplace[s] the accent on the fight for the utopian goal\u201d over presenting a utopia to his readers.[58]<\/sup><\/a> London codifies his objections and embeds them in a larger and more mainstream narrative. While he does not present readers with a solution, he presents them with a novel that carries his dissent towards his contemporaries in a dialectical model that is the formula of a less destructive outcome. The novel is not the snapshot of a utopia. Instead, London imagines a future where the overwhelmingly violent discourse surrounding the class struggles can be resolved. The Iron Heel <\/em>is London\u2019s object of objection that contains the instructions of how to imagine a utopia, or perhaps, eventually build one.<\/p>\n

End Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1]<\/sup><\/a> Thomas Horan, \u201cThe Sexualized Proletariat in Jack London\u2019s\u00a0The Iron Heel,<\/em>\u201d\u00a0in Desire and Empathy in Twentieth-Century Dystopian Fiction<\/em> (Charleston: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 26.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/sup><\/a> Alessandro Portelli, \u201cJack London\u2019s Missing Revolution: Notes on The Iron Heel<\/em>,\u201d in Science Fiction Studies<\/em> 9, no. 2 (July 1982): 181.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/sup><\/a> Christopher Phelps, \u201cThe Novel of American Authoritarianism,\u201d in Science & Society<\/em> 84, no. 2 (April 2020): 240.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/sup><\/a> Gorman Beauchamp, \u201cThe Iron Heel <\/em>and Looking Backward<\/em>: Two Paths to Utopia,\u201d in American Literary Realism<\/em> 9, no. 4 (Autumn 1976): 307.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/sup><\/a> Beauchamp, \u201cLooking Backward<\/em>\u201d, 307.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/sup><\/a> Horan, \u201cSexualized Proletariat,\u201d 36.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/sup><\/a> Horan, \u201cSexualized Proletariat,\u201d 36.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/sup><\/a> Portelli, \u201cMissing Revolution,\u201d 184.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/sup><\/a> Portelli, \u201cMissing Revolution,\u201d 187.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cIan Hislop\u2019s Search for Dissent,\u201d Youtube (The British Museum, September 6, 2018), https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=A6xazq5o7uk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cWe\u2019ll let anyone in these days I Guest Curator\u2019s Corner with Ian Hislop #CuratorsCorner,\u201d Youtube (The British Museum, September 10, 2018), https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=A5qLyGWDpWM.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/sup><\/a> Phillip E. Wegner, \u201cThe Occluded Future: Red Star and The Iron Heel as \u2018Critical Utopias.\u2019\u201d in Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity<\/em> (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 100.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/sup><\/a> Wegner, \u201cOccluded Future,\u201d 131. Emphasis original. Wegner points out that London was frustrated by the conflicts between his vocation as a writer and an activist after refusing \u201ca desired assignment to write an expos\u00e9 on mill conditions in the southern United States because he was afraid of the consequences for future book sales.\u201d<\/p>\n

[14]<\/sup><\/a> Kenneth K. Brandt, \u201cClass Struggle: Socialist Writings and The Iron Heel<\/em>.\u201d in Jack London<\/em> (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018), 64.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/sup><\/a> Portelli, \u201cMissing Revolution,\u201d 184. The example is provided in Portelli\u2019s argument.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/sup><\/a> Brandt, \u201cClass Struggle,\u201d 68.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/sup><\/a> Portelli, \u201cMissing Revolution,\u201d 184, italicization original.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/sup><\/a> Jack London, The Iron Heel<\/em> (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 179.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 5.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 6.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 6.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 6.<\/p>\n

[23]<\/sup><\/a> Scholars such as Portelli and Paul Stein have noted the resemblance between Everhard\u2019s speeches and London\u2019s political writing. See Portelli, \u201cMissing Revolution,\u201d 181, and Paul Stein, \u201cJack London\u2019s The Iron Heel<\/em>: Art as Manifesto.\u201d Studies in American Fiction<\/em> 6, no. 1 (`1978): 77-92.<\/p>\n

[24]<\/sup><\/a> Ansgar F. N\u00fcnning, \u201cReconceptualizing Unreliable Narration: Synthesizing Cognitive and Rhetorical Approaches,\u201d in A Companion to Narrative Theory<\/em>, eds. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz (MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 95.<\/p>\n

[25]<\/sup><\/a> Harry E. Shaw, \u201cWhy Won\u2019t Our Terms Stay Put? The Narrative Communication Diagram Scrutinized and Historiciszed,\u201d in A Companion to Narrative Theory<\/em>, eds. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. (MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 302.<\/p>\n

[26]<\/sup><\/a> Richard Walsh, \u201cThe Pragmatics of Narrative Fictionality,\u201d in A Companion to Narrative Theory<\/em>, eds. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz (MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 163.<\/p>\n

[27]<\/sup><\/a> N\u00fcnning, 92.<\/p>\n

[28]<\/sup><\/a> Horan, \u201cSexualized Proletariat,\u201d 34.<\/p>\n

[29]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 174.<\/p>\n

[30]<\/sup><\/a> Horan, \u201cSexualized Proletariat,\u201d 33-34.<\/p>\n

[31]<\/sup><\/a> Chris Ferns, Narrating Utopia: Ideology, Gender, Form in Utopian Literature. <\/em>(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), 109.<\/p>\n

[32]<\/sup><\/a> Ferns, Narrating Utopia<\/em>, 109.<\/p>\n

[33]<\/sup><\/a> David Seed, \u201cFraming the Reader in Early Science Fiction.\u201d Style<\/em> 47, no. 2, (Summer 2013): 145.<\/p>\n

[34]<\/sup><\/a> Matthew A. Taylor, \u201cAt Land\u2019s End: Novel Spaces and the Limits of Planetarity,\u201d in Novel: A Forum on Fiction<\/em> 49, no. 1 (2016): 131. Taylor is quoting from London\u2019s \u201cThe Minions of Midas.\u201d<\/p>\n

[35]<\/sup><\/a> Horan, \u201cSexualized Proletariat,\u201d 34. Horan is referring to Tony Barley\u2019s \u201cPrediction, Programme and Fantasy in Jack London\u2019s The Iron Heel<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

[36]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 178.<\/p>\n

[37]<\/sup><\/a> Guglielmo Carchedi, Behind the Crisis: Marx\u2019s Dialectics of Value and Knowledge<\/em> (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 3.<\/p>\n

[38]<\/sup><\/a> Carchedi, Behind the Crisis<\/em>, 4-22.<\/p>\n

[39]<\/sup><\/a> Carchedi, Behind the Crisis<\/em>, 8.<\/p>\n

[40]<\/sup><\/a> Horan, \u201cSexualized Proletariat,\u201d 39.<\/p>\n

[41]<\/sup><\/a> Aaron Shaheen, \u201cThe Competing Narratives of Modernity in Jack London\u2019s The Iron Heel<\/em>.\u201d American Literary Realism<\/em> 41, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 45.<\/p>\n

[42]<\/sup><\/a> Shaheen, \u201cCompeting Narratives,\u201d 39.<\/p>\n

[43]<\/sup><\/a> Nathaniel Teich. \u201cMarxist Dialectic in Content, Form, Point of View: Structures in Jack London\u2019s The Iron Heel<\/em>,\u201d Modern Fiction Studies<\/em> 22, no. 1 (Spring 1976): 91.<\/p>\n

[44]<\/sup><\/a> Carchedi, Behind the Crisis<\/em>, 8.<\/p>\n

[45]<\/sup><\/a> Carchedi, Behind the Crisis<\/em>, 18.<\/p>\n

[46]<\/sup><\/a> Beauchamp, \u201cLooking Backward<\/em>\u201d, 307.<\/p>\n

[47]<\/sup><\/a> Portelli, \u201cMissing Revolution,\u201d 187.<\/p>\n

[48]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 57.<\/p>\n

[49]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 208.<\/p>\n

[50]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 35, emphasis original.<\/p>\n

[51]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 35.<\/p>\n

[52]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 7.<\/p>\n

[53]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 163.<\/p>\n

[54]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 8.<\/p>\n

[55]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 62.<\/p>\n

[56]<\/sup><\/a> London, Iron Heel,<\/em> 6.<\/p>\n

[57]<\/sup><\/a> Henry Yiheng Zhao, \u201cThe Problem of Time in a General Narratology,\u201d in Neohelicon <\/em>38 (July 2011): 334.<\/p>\n

[58]<\/sup><\/a> Nadia Khouri, \u201cUtopia and Epic: Ideological Confrontation in Jack London\u2019s The Iron Heel<\/em>,\u201d Science Fiction Studies<\/em> 3, no. 2 (July 1976): 176.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Liting Weng is an MA student in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University. She also completed her undergraduate studies in Foreign Languages and Literatures, and Political Sciences at National Taiwan University. Liting is interested in the themes of social orders, means of control, extremist regimes, and traumas of political violence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19530,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19530"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/ampersandjournal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}