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white supremacist racism too, his failings could well
have turned him to Fascism were it not for the strength
of his commitment to the working-class cause. Race
itself is almost absent from the novel altogether, a good
thing given London’s proclivities, though an obvious
and glaring blind-spot in a novel about an American
class-war. A curious fear of “the mob” when pushed to
its limits is in evidence too, the auto-snobbery against
workers who don’t follow your cause:- the perennial
flaw of theoretical socialists.
Far more importantly though as a novel, by the test of
plot, persona and prose it is not up with London’s best
either, and in that sense too falls well short of Orwell
or Huxley. The cult of personality London indulges
in sadly undermines the characterisation of the hero
Ernest Everard, who is ever-so-slightly too much of
the Nietzchean superman to convince, even given his
occasional endearing awkwardness. He veers too close
to an icon in a Soviet mural. There is a slightly stilted
characterisation in other main players too. In the grand
epic of human destiny being described in book less
than 300 pages long, people come can close to being
ciphers, including the narrator Avis herself.
There is no doubt that as a convincing and holistic
piece of writing, The Call Of The Wild, that thrilling
adventure story which also laid bare London’s Nietzchean
sadism, is a better read, more deserving of its
ubiquitous place on the world’s school curricula, and a
BUY Jack London books online from and
better example of London’s gift with the written word.
The Iron Heel is a great deal more than an insightful
piece of propaganda however. London always writes
with a stern poetic vividness. Both stark and lurid,
passage after passage in the book grasp so hard it’s
impossible not to be drawn in. The narrative is charged
with honest emotional energy, and it convinces as a
blood-curdling thriller too. This is a short novel dealing
with an enormous scope of ideas and events, essentially
attempting to dramatise a Marxist analysis of US society.
Yet there is never a dull moment. London has the
gift of investing the forays into theory with the same
excitement as exists in the scenes of bloody conflict.
The “footnotes from the future” device tagged at
the end of each chapter (in which we discover Avis’
memoirs have supposedly been discovered in a future
socialist age) give the novel a lighter satirical edge
too, off-setting the book’s occasional slouch into
portentousness.
And while individual characters may stray near
caricature, in the bigger picture London possesses a
rather more nuanced insight into the psychology of
those at both ends of the class conflict. The workers
are the heroes of course, but London does not shirk on
the corrupting and brutalising effect revolution inevitably
has on its agents. And, even more importantly, he
recognises that the ruling-class are not just crooks and
thugs. They’d be a lot easier to deal with if they were.
327
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