Didacticism in Frank Norris’ McTeague

Didacticism in Frank Norris’ McTeague

Frank Norris’ Mcteague’s niche in American Literature has been characterized again and again as strictly Naturalist. The novel does well in this genre. Among other things, it is a scientific, representative, pessimistic study of the common people or lower and middle classes which ultimately ends in tragedy. It is not the purpose of this essay to dispute these qualifications; rather to question the genre itself.

The scientific novel is impossible for a variety of reasons. Practitioners of Naturalism, including Norris, attempted to create representative characters with inherited biological traits (traits which they have no control over), plant these characters in a meticulously defined setting, and produce/predict the resulting behavior. The naturalistic novel relies on the assumption that this behavior is, indeed, predictable. This assumption is, at the very least, questionable.

The Scientific Method, in its simplest form, is essentially made up of four basic elements. According to an on-line encyclopedia, they are as follows:

1. Characterization (Quantification, observation and measurement)

2. Hypothesis (An explanation of the Characterization)

3. Prediction (Logical deduction from the hypothesis

4. Experiment (Test of all of the above)

It is not the intent of this essay to investigate whether Dreiser, Zola, London or other Naturalists practiced these methods successfully within the context of the novel. It is clear however, that Norris did not. Mcteague may successfully incorporate the observatory and explanatory elements of the Scientific method as well as other nuances of the Naturalistic genre; however, his study is worthless without elements three and four.

It is these elements, moreover, the logical deduction from the hypothesis and the testing of the other elements to prove consistency which are practically impossible for a writer of fiction to accomplish. Character, setting and nearly ever aspect of a novel are not mere observations of the physical world but are created in the subjective mind of the author.

It must be conceded, then, that Naturalism, like most literary genres and movements is neither definitive nor rational. At most, it is an application of somewhat murky scientific values to fiction, and nothing more. If Norris’ McTeague does not, then, produce a rational conclusion to hypotheses and experimentation in and scientific manner, what is the novel’s function?

One significant consideration (in the attempt to answer this) may be the novel’s adaptation into a silent film in 1924: Greed. The title alone is significant. It is not the story of Mcteague or even the story of San Francisco. It is the story of the sin, sentiment, or value (depending on your outlook): greed and, perhaps more significantly, it’s effect on the main characters of the story: McTeague, Trina, and Macbeth. Seen in this light, McTeague or Greed is starting to look less like detached scientific determinism and more like a sermon, or at the very least didacticism. Reviewers of the film agree:

The 'lost' film masterpiece is a dark study of the oppressive forces that decay and corrupt three people - a simple, uneducated former miner and dentist (McTeague) in turn of the century San Francisco, his miserly, vulgar and pathological wife (Trina), and their mutual friend and McTeague's ultimate nemesis (Marcus) - all are caught up by their squalid, debased passion, compulsion and greed for gold. The wife's fixation on money causes the dentist to lose everything - he kills her, becomes maddened with the same lust for gold, then takes flight only to find himself handcuffed to his dead pursuer in the fateful conclusion. The film is a morality tale about how the characters are dehumanized by the influence of money upon their lives. (Dirks)

Greed, in the novel, is not strictly attributed to these three characters. It is the fate of two other characters to also fall prey to this demon:

"Now, then, Maria," said Zerkow, his cracked, strained voice just rising above a whisper, hitching his chair closer to the table, "now, then, my girl, let's have it all over again. Tell us about the gold plate -- the service. Begin with, 'There were over a hundred pieces and every one of them gold.'" (204)

Zerkow,