deals primarily with the social conflicts arising out of the industrialisation of the USA. It places these relations between human beings within a larger context of the relationship of humans with nature in its totality, understood by Frank Norris as supernatural “force”; a turn of the nineteenth century precursor of what we might think of today as ecology. Thus Norris conceptualised

as the first part of a three-volume “Epic of the Wheat”.

focused on the production of wheat in California, while a second part,

(1903) went on to describe the financial processes of speculation centred on the wheat exchange, or pit, in Chicago. A final volume (never completed, due to Norris's early death) was to be concerned with the export of wheat to feed…

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Citation: Davies, Jude. "The Octopus". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 October 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=31, accessed 23 November 2024.]