The Iron Heel a Book Review
“It cannot be said that the Everhard Manuscript is an important historical document. To the historian it bristles with errors—not errors of fact, but errors of interpretation. Looking back across the seven centuries that have lapsed since Avis Everhard completed her manuscript, events, and the bearings of events, that were confused and veiled to her, are clear to us. She lacked perspective. She was too close to the events she writes about. Nay, she was merged in the events she has described.
Nevertheless, as a personal document, the Everhard Manuscript is of inestimable value. But here again enter error of perspective, and vitiation due to the bias of love. Yet we smile, indeed, and forgive Avis Everhard for the heroic lines upon which she modelled her husband. We know to-day that he was not so colossal, and that he loomed among the events of his times less largely than the Manuscript would lead us to believe.”
The Iron Heel Chapter 1
Jack London is famous for both his fiction and non-fiction writings. His fictional writings generally deal with outdoor manly activity or animal point of view stories: White Fang, Call of the Wild and The Sea Wolf. His non-fiction work was often political in nature and revolved around socialism and the class struggle. The Iron Heel is a marriage of both themes fiction and direct action along with his socialism. The premise of this work is that in the far future 700 years after the dawn of the twentieth century a global socialist commonwealth exists. A historian Antony Meredith is investigating the early history of the struggle against the Oligarchy/Iron Heel which was an aristocratic dictatorship arising out of the industrial and banking magnates of the United States. He is investigating the memoirs of one Avis Everhard, known as the Everhard manuscript. She was the wife and lover of the great revolutionary hero Ernest Everhard. The story is told from the super position of this future socialist society. For example, there are references made to events that are in the future with regard to the Everhard manuscript, but in the past from Mr. Meredith's perspective. This leads to a very interesting sense of time that puts one into the mindset of a historian. This account moves toward the end of the manuscript, which ends abruptly. Major themes covered in the work include: love between revolutionaries in a revolution; history and historical narrative; revolution as struggle and scientific necessity.
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