The Octopus: A Story of California

Chapter 4 introduces a spiritual element to the narrative landscape. Vanamee, who is constantly likened to a Hebraic prophet, embodies the ethereal side of the relationship that farmers have (at least in Norris’s world) with their wheat and its cultivation. Beginning in the temporal, fleshly world of humans, at a feast compared to those in Homer, Vanamee’s connection with the earth compels him into spiritual territory. This plays into the larger symbolic storyline within the novel’s philosophy of nature’s spiritual benevolence (most emphatically represented by wheat).

Norris openly reveals his inspiration for wheat’s symbolism of immortality when Father Sarria intones 1 Corinthians 15:38-44. The biblical image of the wheat represents physical death begetting spiritual life; a seed is supposed to “die” underground and be “reborn” as a new plant. Vanamee’s rejection of this idea indicates that Norris isn’t directly appropriating this spiritual narrative, but he will use it to develop his own philosophy—one that Vanamee will gradually apprehend. Norris’s philosophy, too, will use wheat as a central symbol of the universal life force.

In contrast to the spiritual setting of the former chapter, Chapter 5 focuses on the earthly matters of desire and the practical matters of land management. Annixter, whose intellect has won him respect, cannot control his “baser” self—the animal center that Naturalism supposes—nor can he realize that this may lay in a fault of his own, highlighting the obliviousness (and even willful ignorance) people have toward their own motivations. The control Annixter seeks over himself he attempts to exert over the Railroad as he tries to buy his land outright, but his naked desire is rejected. Dyke provides a contrast to his figure, with his prudent rate-seeking and his prospective mortgaging against a large bumper crop. Meanwhile, Father Sarria, whose “baseness” is revealed with the gamecocks he transports, provides an analog to Annixter’s lack of control in the face of desire. Annixter’s lack of self-awareness extends further into his talk with Hilma, which almost becomes a negotiation and concludes with his further rejection.

The fifth chapter also begins to chart Hilma’s progress as an analog for the fecundity of the land. The farmers seed their fields, an act that alters the atmosphere of the valley; this action finds a mirror in Hilma’s characterization. Her character first appears in the light of the morning: “radiant of youth” (209), her arms wet with life-giving milk, “joyous as the dawn itself” (210), standing as a symbol of the seeded earth yet unsprung. A month later, Hilma undergoes a secondary transformation when Annixter sees her in her dress at the dance, where she takes on aspects of maturation. She is a woman now, suggesting the further maturation of the wheat.

While the sixth chapter presents Vanamee’s early confession of receiving an “answer,” which ultimately suggests a call forward (he describes it as the “call of the sun” [216], symbolizing the progress of natural process), the chapter then counterbalances this against the nostalgic (backward-looking) event of Annixter’s barn dance. The dance evokes the idealized past from which the ranchers draw their frontier values of self-sufficiency and communal celebration. Annixter’s gunfight with Delaney, and the adulation he receives afterward (265) reflect the frontier reality that Presley wants to convey with his epic poem. However, Delaney is an agent of change (a role he will later fill for the Railroad), and his appearance and banishment signal the impossibility of reclaiming the past that the ranchers cling to and desperately seek. Soon afterward, word arrives that the Railroad will not honor its promises regarding the ownership of the land; the news jars the characters into the present and inspires their reactionary formation of the League.

These broken promises mark the first move of the Railroad and represent the breadth of its disproportionate power, and the incident is a portrait of Norris’s cosmos: With every decision affecting the ranchers’ lives, the action occurs without their presence, and they only learn of the fact after it is too late. This dynamic emphasizes their unmitigated lack of agency in the world, reflecting the Naturalist vision of an impersonal, mechanistic determinism behind the universe.