logo

53 pages 1 hour read

Frank Norris

The Octopus: A Story of California

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1901

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Character Analysis

Presley

Presley is the organizing intelligence in the novel. He often disappears from the action for long periods before arriving to observe a pivotal moment in the narrative, often to contextualize the emotional elements within an outside perspective. His quest to compose a “Song of the West” (10) delimits the sprawling tale Norris has to unfold. Educated in Eastern colleges, Norris suggests Presley’s refinement was “gained only by a certain loss of strength” (8), situating him outside of the world of physicality embodied by the ranchers and marking him as a perpetual outsider. Presley is acutely aware of this status, and he struggles throughout the novel to come to terms with his inner contradictions: He wants to write of “the People” but is naturally repulsed by them, and he wants to write of the true romance of the West but can only find “grain rates and unjust freight tariffs” (13).

Only after he abandons his pretenses about composing an epic of a vanished frontier does Presley realize his true subject: the oppression of the people by the banalities that originally discouraged him. His intellect encouraged by Caraher’s socialistic anarchism and by a viewing of the Millet painting The Man with the Hoe, Presley finds a proper place for his sympathies and composes “The Toilers.” He is left unsatisfied, however, for the poem brings no change to the lives of the ranchers, and, after witnessing the slaughter at Hooven’s farm, he uncharacteristically chooses a rash action. Nevertheless, the novel allows him no such freedoms, stating, “Presley was essentially a dreamer, not a man of affairs” (395). Presley, like many characters in Naturalist fiction, cannot step outside of his character type and is confounded in his actions as well; his impassioned speech to the League has little effect, and the bomb he throws into S. Behrman’s residence proves ineffectual.

Unable to take concrete action, Presley’s widening consciousness forms the concluding action of the work. Adopting his awareness from both Shelgrim and Vanamee’s “larger view” (651), Presley better understands the dispassionate “Forces” that drive both the cycle of the wheat and the continuance of the Railroad. He is ready to begin his epic. 

Buck Annixter

Annixter provides the physical core of the novel. He is the primary experiencer of plot action and represents the reactionary energy that perpetuates that action—and, while his path strays from the common Naturalist course of decline, he comes to define the central, inevitable tragedy. Annixter’s body—that of a young, intellectually vigorous man, “rough almost to insolence” (25)—is cast into relief by his perpetual stomach issues (for which he continually eats prunes “by the pound” [24]) and his constant interior agitation. Much like Presley’s need to expand his worldly awareness, Annixter’s character arc traces an expanding self-awareness, and while he does experience the most personal growth, he does not live long enough to benefit from it.

Annixter’s approach to women characterizes his early, abrasive approach to life. He doesn’t hate women for any specific characteristic of theirs, but rather because their presence turns him into “a very bull-calf of awkwardness” (27). He can neither control nor trust himself, but rather than acknowledge his own faults (whereby he would relinquish some control), he blames the figure he haslabeledd as “Feemale” (27) and foists his anger upon the indifferent universe. His anger, displaced into the cosmos, gains no resolution, and he begins his cycle again. His “moral redemption” through coming to love Hilma is the sentimental core of the novel, and his progression into a man capable of love and experiencing “all the sweetness of life” (368) builds compassion where Norris intended: on the side of the slaughtered ranchers.

Vanamee

Vanamee represents the spiritual process of the story, as the outside-insider who recognizes the deeper aspects of the cosmic process that is taking place and can articulate its meaning to others. He has the most direct access to the spiritual dimensions of the San Joaquin Valley, and his spiritual realization—moving from cursing God and denying His existence, to embracing the overweening driving force of the universe—is the third major character arc expressing the novel’s philosophical thesis.

Placed outside human affairs, Vanamee is often characterized as “a Hebraic prophet” (214) and a “dweller in the wilderness” (33). He partakes in the bodily aspects of feasting but is distanced from the others, viewing them objectively. This suggests that Vanamee’s psychological plane is more significant than his physical actions, which are very few. Even Vanamee’s physicality presents through a largely mystical, supernatural manner. His most extraordinary characteristic is his ability to “summon” humans. Vanamee’s special senses are comparable to animal instinct, “the same thing that sends the birds south” (217). The comparison is legitimizing; it accommodates the Naturalist frame normally devoid of the supernatural. Vanamee’s power is animal in the sense that it is natural—of nature—and it is germane to the common Naturalist tenant that every human has an animalistic core.

Magnus Derrick

Known to most as “the Governor,” Magnus exudes the characteristics of authority with “a fine commanding figure, imposing an immediate respect” (63). He presents himself as a morally upstanding leader of men; this allows him to control the narrative of his political failures, as he tells himself that government is too corrupt for his like. However, his underlying character is less pragmatic and has a proclivity for gambling. He is nevertheless unable to detect the contradictions of his own character, and his cleaving to these dual characteristics eventually costs him his ranch, his community standing, his son, and any determinable personality. Magnus’s decline into corruption and eventual disgrace underlines Norris’s thematic focus on the morally degenerative effect of greed. His decline also offers a distinct counterbalance to the supposed corruption of P. and S. W.: By presenting Magnus’s corruption in the same terms as the Railroad’s, Norris is questioning the moral culpability of the League. Culpability aside, the League’s quest and characters provide a dramatic view of the idealistic “old world” being overtaken by the back-dealing of the “new world.”

Harran Derrick

Harran is the youngest son of Magnus and Annie Derrick. He resembles his father “in that he had the Derrick nose” (8), and his character is quite like Magnus’s. He is responsible for the day-to-day operations of Los Muertos and is heavily invested in the success of the ranch, coming to represent the dream of generational success fostered by Magnus and common throughout the community of Leaguers. He is excitable and quick to anger, arguing with S. Behrman, Annixter, members of the League. These qualities underlie his eagerness to engage in violence at the shootout at Hooven’s farm. He is shot in the gunfight and later dies, underscoring Magnus’s ruination.

Dyke

Dyke worked as an engineer for the P. and S. W. before losing his job for refusing to take a pay cut. He is naturally gregarious and doting upon his daughter, Sidney, and, “nearly twice the weight of Presley” (17), Dyke exudes community and physicality.

At the beginning of the novel, Dyke is even-tempered and good-natured, even when the Railroad cuts his pay unfairly; he says all he can expect is “ordinary justice and fair treatment” (18). He even fosters hopes of turning his hops farm into a successful enterprise. However ,he deteriorates from this position as the injustices of the Railroad pile up against him. His sense of fair-play and optimism—common traits of those directly pursuing the American Dream—is undermined when the Railroad changes its freight prices for hops, sending Dyke into financial ruin. Afterward, he spends his days drinking in Caraher’s saloon, where he falls under the sway of Caraher’s anarchist philosophy. It is the sight of Dyke’s destitution that leads Presley to compose “The Toilers.” Dyke later robs the P. and S. W. train and kills one of its operators, becoming a fugitive and descending into an animalistic fury when he is finally cornered and caught. Presley learns later that Dyke is sentenced to imprisonment for life. 

Hilma Tree

Hilma is the 19-year-old daughter of the dairy farmers who work on Annixter’s ranch. As the novel begins, she catches Annixter’s attention, and soon his affections, though a natural naivety prevents her from recognizing his interest. While Annixter frets over whether to kiss her, Norris characterizes her as “yet a great child, ignoring the fact that she had ever grown up, taking a child’s interest in her immediate surroundings” (168). As such, she is completely caught off-guard when Annixter does kiss her.

Hilma’s character shifts as her relationship develops with Annixter; she is depicted at the barn dance as “Hilma, the woman” (251) despite the passage of only a few months, and later, after her marriage to Annixter, as “the Mother” (496). Hilma’s “maturation” parallels and comes to reflect the growing and maturation periods of the wheat.

S. Behrman

S. Behrman is the primary antagonist in the novel and, as the local representative of the P. and S. W., is directly responsible for the hardships and tragedies that befall the primary characters. The narrative often emphasizes his large physical size and that he often sweats and wears clothing that appears finely made, when in fact his heavy watch chain contains “hollow links” and his vest buttons are “imitation mother-of-pearl” (66). His size symbolizes his power, while these aspects of his attire suggest his spiritual emptiness and the façade of his persona. He is the banker of Bonneville, the real estate agent, who buys grain and deals in mortgages; this gives power over all Bonneville residents.

In contrast to the volatile personality one might assume of a figure symbolizing such unbridled force, S. Behrman is calm and often meets others’ outrage with his refrain, “That all may show obstinacy, but it don’t show common sense” (70). His placidity counterintuitively accentuates his power; he is impervious, invulnerable. This quality finds nearly superhuman expression when both Dyke and Presley attempt to murder S. Behrman but are unsuccessful, and when he survives the gunfight at Hooven’s farm without a scratch, later admitting to Presley, “I guess there ain’t anything that can touch me” (627). As he is the Railroad’s primary representative, his immunity to these attempts on his life emphasizes not only his utter power but the indifference of the Railroad, the total inability of the League, or smaller farmers like Dyke, to remotely harm the colossal monster of the Octopus.

S. Behrman’s death comes only after he makes decisions in his own best interests, foregoing the bagging of his wheat to save money; as he is buried alive under the wheat as it is freely poured into the hull of a ship, his death underlies one of Norris’s themes: Greed leads to moral degradation and, spiritually, death. 

Caraher

Caraher owns the saloon outside Bonneville and is a fomenting voice amidst the community, taking every opportunity to decry the Railroad’s oppressiveness. While Caraher rarely appears in the novel, his name is the very first mentioned, and his presence and philosophy cast a long shadow over the other characters’ actions. Caraher’s socialistic and anarchistic philosophies run counter to the Railroad’s laissez-faire capitalism, and he goads the Railroad’s victims into action: He influences Presley’s composition of the socialistic poem “The Toilers”; he gives Dyke the impetus to rob the incoming train; and he instructs Presley on how to build a pipe bomb. Referencing a motif that runs parallel to virtually every mention of Caraher, Dyke states, “Caraher is right. There is only one thing they listen to, and that’s dynamite” (397). 

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text