The Iron Heel

Summary

The Iron Heel, published in 1908, is Jack London's dystopian novel about the rise of an oligarchy in the United States, often called one of the first modern dystopias. It is presented as the Everhard Manuscript, a memoir written by Avis Everhard and discovered seven centuries later, edited with footnotes by a scholar named Anthony Meredith in a future socialist society called the Brotherhood of Man. Avis, the daughter of a Berkeley physicist, tells how she met Ernest Everhard, a powerful working-class socialist philosopher, at dinner parties where he challenges clergymen and businessmen. He predicts that the great capitalists, threatened by the growth of labor and socialism, will combine into an oligarchy that will crush all opposition, and he calls it the Iron Heel. Avis investigates the case of Jackson, a worker who lost his arm in a mill and was denied compensation, and discovers the corruption of the courts, press and churches. Her father, Bishop Morehouse and other independent men are ruined when they question the system. Ernest is elected to Congress, but the oligarchy uses a staged bombing to arrest the socialist congressmen. The oligarchs buy off the strongest unions, creating a privileged labor caste, and use mercenaries to destroy the rest. Ernest and Avis join an underground resistance, and the First Revolt in Chicago is drowned in blood by the oligarchy's forces. The manuscript breaks off mid-sentence, and the editor's notes reveal that Ernest was executed and that the Iron Heel ruled for three centuries before the Brotherhood of Man arose. London's novel is openly political, and its predictions of fascist-style power influenced later writers including George Orwell. Students can study it as a work of political prophecy written decades before the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and as a powerful example of the dystopian form, while weighing the strengths and weaknesses of its argument.

Top Lessons

• Dystopian warning

  London imagines how democracy could be overthrown. Students can compare his predictions with later history.

• Frame narrative

  The future editor's footnotes give a long perspective.

• Faith and justice

  Bishop Morehouse tries to live by the Gospel and is declared insane.

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