«The Iron Heel» essay example

Thesis Statement: The socio-economic and political conditions at the turn of the 20th century highly influenced and inspired Jack London’s novel. In fact, without these conditions, the novel may never have been written.

It is against such a backdrop that Jack London set out to write his novel, ‘The Iron Heel’. The actions described in the novel begin some time after it was actually written. Big businesses are plundering the small businesses and labor relations are deteriorating. Due to this, labor relations between the owners of capital and the workers are poor and the economy is affected. Crime rates are high and so is poverty among the lower masses. Just as poverty spreads quickly, so does the socialist ideology that seeks to correct the injustices of the capitalist system. This is the socio-economic condition depicted at the beginning of the novel. The story is told as a memoir of one of the lead characters, Avis Everhard. Ernest Everhard, Avis’s husband is the leader of the labor movement and a firm believer in socialism. The memoirs begin by giving accounts of Avis’s pampered lifestyle before she met and married Ernest. She comes from a middle class family where she is sheltered from all the evils of the world only a few blocks from her home.