Handout 4

READING LIST:
Frank Norris, McTeague (1899);
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900);
Jack London, Call of the Wild (1903) [NOVELLA].
Frank Norris, McTeague (1899)
1. Usually the dentist was slow in his movements, but now the alcohol had awakened in him an apelike agility. He kept his small eyes upon her, and all at once sent his fist into the middle of her face
with the suddenness of a relaxed spring. Beside herself with terror, Trina turned and fought him
back; fought for her miserable life with the exasperation and strength of a harassed cat; and with
such energy and such wild, unnatural force, that even McTeague for the moment drew back from
her. But her resistance was the one thing to drive him to the top of his fury. He came back at her
again, his eyes drawn to two fine twinkling points, and his enormous fists, clenched till the knuckles
whitened, raised in the air. Then it became abominable. In the schoolroom outside, behind the coal
scuttle, the cat listened to the sounds of stamping and struggling and the muffled noise of blows,
wildly terrified, his eyes bulging like brass knobs.
2. McTeague did not know how he killed his enemy, but all at once Marcus grew still beneath his
blows. Then there was a sudden last return of energy. McTeague's right wrist was caught,
something licked upon it, then the struggling body fell limp and motionless with a long breath. As
McTeague rose to his feet, he felt a pull at his right wrist; something held it fast. Looking down, he
saw that Marcus in that last struggle had found strength to handcuff their wrists together. Marcus
was dead now; McTeague was locked to the body. All about him, vast interminable, stretched the
measureless leagues of Death Valley. McTeague remained stupidly looking around him, now at the
distant horizon, now at the ground, now at the half-dead canary chittering feebly in its little gilt
prison.
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (1900)
1. Among the forces which sweep and play throughout the universe, untutored man is but a wisp in the
wind. Our civilisation is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by
instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. On the tiger no responsibility
rests. We see him aligned by nature with the forces of life--he is born into their keeping and without
thought he is protected. We see man far removed from the lairs of the jungles, his innate instincts
dulled by too near an approach to free-will, his free-will not sufficiently developed to replace his
instincts and afford him perfect guidance. He is becoming too wise to hearken always to instincts and
desires; he is still too weak to always prevail against them. As a beast, the forces of life aligned him
with them; as a man, he has not yet wholly learned to align himself with the forces. In this
intermediate stage he wavers--neither drawn in harmony with nature by his instincts nor yet wisely
putting himself into harmony by his own free-will. He is even as a wisp in the wind, moved by every
breath of passion, acting now by his will and now by his instincts, erring with one, only to retrieve by
the other, falling by one, only to rise by the other--a creature of incalculable variability.
2. "Don't you think it rather fine to be an actor?" she asked once. "Yes, I do," he said, "to be a good one. I
think the theatre a great thing." Just this little approval set Carrie's heart bounding. Ah, if she could
only be an actress--a good one! This man was wise--he knewand he approved of it. If she were a fine
actress, such men as he would approve of her. She felt that he was good to speak as he had, although
it did not concern her at all. She did not know why she felt this way. At the close of the show it
suddenly developed that he was not going back with themOh, the half-hours, the minutes of the
world; what miseries and griefs are crowded into them!She said good-bye with feigned indifference.
What matter could it make? When she went into her own flat she had this to think about. She did not
know whether she would ever see this man any more. What difference could it make--what difference
could it make? Back in the dining-room she sat in her chair and rocked. Her little hands were folded
tightly as she thought. Through a fog of longing and conflicting desires she was beginning to see. Oh,
ye legions of hope and pity--of sorrow and pain! She was rocking, and beginning to see.

Jack Londons Call of the Wild (1903)

3. He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance
against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That
club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law, and he met the introduction
halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it
with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused. As the days went by, other dogs came, in crates and
at the ends of ropes, some docilely, and some raging and roaring as he had come; and, one and all, he
watched them pass under the dominion of the man in the red sweater. Again and again, as he looked
at each brutal performance, the lesson was driven home to Buck: a man with a club was a lawgiver, a
master to be obeyed, though not necessarily conciliated. Of this last Buck was never guilty, though he
did see beaten dogs that fawned upon the man, and wagged their tails, and licked his hand. Also he
saw one dog, that would neither conciliate nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery.
4. He was not homesick. The Sunland was very dim and distant, and such memories had no power over
him. Far more potent were the memories of his heredity that gave things he had never seen before a
seeming familiarity; the instincts (which were but the memories of his ancestors become habits) which
had lapsed in later days, and still later, in him, quickened and become alive again. Sometimes as he
crouched there, blinking dreamily at the flames, it seemed that the flames were of another fire, and
that as he crouched by this other fire he saw another and different man from the half-breed cook before
him. This other man was shorter of leg and longer of arm, with muscles that were stringy and knotty
rather than rounded and swelling. The hair of this man was long and matted, and his head slanted
back under it from the eyes. He uttered strange sounds, and seemed very much afraid of the
darkness, into which he peered continually, clutching in his hand, which hung midway between knee
and foot, a stick with a heavy stone made fast to the end. He was all but naked, a ragged and firescorched skin hanging part way down his back, but on his body there was much hair. In some places,
across the chest and shoulders and down the outside of the arms and thighs, it was matted into almost
a thick fur. He did not stand erect, but with trunk inclined forward from the hips, on legs that bent at
the knees. About his body there was a peculiar springiness, or resiliency, almost catlike, and a quick
alertness as of one who lived in perpetual fear of things seen and unseen. At other times this hairy man
squatted by the fire with head between his legs and slept. On such occasions his elbows were on his
knees, his hands clasped above his head as though to shed rain by the hairy arms. And beyond that
fire, in the circling darkness, Buck could see many gleaming coals, two by two, always two by two,
which he knew to be the eyes of great beasts of prey. And he could hear the crashing of their bodies
through the undergrowth, and the noises they made in the night.