The Devil in the White City - Book Report/Review Example

The Devil in the White An Historical Analysis History may be recounted in many different ways. There is the cold, calculating recounting of facts and often soporific analysis to be found in many textbooks; then there is scholarship that seeks to examine the events of history in a theoretical, often obscure manner. The Devil in the White City presents a different kind of history: Eric Larson places the history of post-Civil War American as the background to a recounting of the true story of America’s first serial killer, HH Holmes. The dichotomy between Holmes’s murders (at least 27 and maybe as many as 200) and the World Fair that was going on at the time in the same city produces a vivid picture of America that presents both its best and its worst sides. The two stories, of creation and destruction, come together to create a whole: Taken together, the stories of how Daniel Burnham built the fair and how D. Homes used it for murder formed an entirety that was far greater than the story of either man alone would have been. I found it extraordinary that during this period of nearly miraculous creativity there should exist a serial killer of such appetite and such industry.1 The so-called Gilded Age of American history was indeed a time of remarkable productivity. After the damage and chaos of the civil war a sudden spurt of energy occurred throughout America, but especially in Northern and mid-Western cities such as Chicago. An echo of the English Industrial Revolution that had transformed Britain a century before, American industry blossomed, and with it is cities. However, as Larson suggests, along with the growth of great cities with populations measured in the millions comes the anonymity, strangeness and loneliness associated with them. Holmes was both a product of these tendencies, and also took advantage of them. His comments regarding his own moral state, while melodramatic, may also encapsulate the great battle that was occurring between Labor (ie. individual human beings) and Capital (the great productive force) that was producing highly efficient, but somehow inhuman cities: I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing . . . I was born with the Evil One standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since.2 While obviously self-serving, Holmes brings up an important factor – the sense of powerlessness within the modern cities as the battle between Labor and Capital played out. The idea of creation is vital within the book, in the sense of an industrial construction of various worlds that both clash with and yet strangely compliment one another. Thus, Daniel Burnham struggles against an unforgiving landscape (swamps) and government bureaucracy to see his dream rise above the city; and all the while Homes is building (and then secretly adapting) his torture and murder house. The fact that Holmes was a Doctor of Medicine adds a further layer of irony to the book. A person trained to help and cure people, who one might expect would be least likely to actually enjoy doing the opposite, enjoys doing just that. Industrialization, and the science and creativity that both creates it and which it nurtures, can be used for a variety of means. Thus Holmes was very particular about the exact temperature his crematorium would reach so that it would destroy any evidence of the bodies he put there. It needed to reach 3000 Centigrade, and it did. He provides an ironic contrast to the similarly careful struggles of Daniel Durnham, who is trying to produce a visible celebration of life and a country’s new vitality while Holmes is secretly creating a rather different edifice. Holmes uses the anonymity and isolation of modern cities, something that is often hidden behind the glamorous facades that people like Burnham produce, for his own ends. Thus, as Larson details, after the Civil War women started to come cities to find apartments, work and live on their own. The old structures of social life that had kept them protected but restricted were giving way to a new liberation that also placed them in a vulnerable position. Holmes, his education, good looks and charm at the ready, persuaded many of these young women to move into his “hotel”, and many were never seen again. At about the time that the events recounted in this book were taking place a whole new understanding of the human being was starting to emerge and dominate discourse. Darwin’s The Origin of Species3 suggested that men were animals, and thus subject to the harsh stricture of survival of the fittest. At the same time Freud was starting to argue that human beings are in fact dominated by a subconscious over which they have little control. Specifically, there is the ego (sense of self), the superego (social controls) and the id (will to destruction) that are constantly fighting for control.4 Burnham had a need to exhibit his own ego through the wish to outdo the recent Fair in Paris. Thus the 264-foot high Ferris Wheel, invented, designed and built by a man of the same name, was meant to dwarf the Eiffel Tower in the French Capital. The need to dominate, and be seen to dominate and conquer is central to both Darwin’s and Freud’s theses regarding nature. While Holmes’s need to dominate is perhaps more obvious, Burnham exhibited the same tendencies, albeit in a very different way. The contrasting story lines, with the two men juxtaposed against one another, suggest that in one way at least they are merely two sides of the same coin. The city is an extreme place that engenders many energies, and which rewards men who exhibit the same qualities. Both Burnham and Holmes were, at least for a while, very successful within their chosen activities. But these activities were more than just a way of passing the time, they were a raison d’etre to each man. What these two men did, on the cusp of the Twentieth Century, becomes symbolic of a whole time, both presently and what was about to come. Larson expresses it best himself: What better metaphor for the forces that would shape the Twentieth Century into a time of monumental technical achievement and unfathomable evil?5 It would be frankly difficult to think of a better one. So while the stories of Burnham and Holmes belong to a particular place and time: Chicago in 1893, and may thus be regarded as specific representatives of that Gilded Age, they are also representative of much more. They are representative of what Nietzsche would call “the will to power”, something which brought great good and yet monstrous evil to the world in the next century. ____________________________________________________ Works Cited Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. Signet, New York: 2003. Freud, Sigmund. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. Modern Library, New York: 1995. Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City. Vintage, New York: 2004. Read More