Animal Rights

           Before settling on the title of McTeague, Frank Norris had considered entitling his novel Greed instead, but I offer another alternative title that would prove just as appropriate: Animals. Animals run wild throughout the novel, either directly mentioned or implied indirectly by Norris’ syntax, and it is one of his primary means of conveying his critical intentions.

           
          As Sam has correctly noted, Norris intentionally uses the Irish setter and the Border collie to characterize Marcus and McTeague, pointing out not only the dignity of the actual beasts in relation to their human counterparts but how the two men bark and fight each other as if they were dogs. McTeague in particular is given the most beastly characterization in the novel, depicting his life before Trina as brutish and simplistically sensual and his effect on her to be one of trepidation and powerlessness. It is much like King Kong and Ann Darrow, except in this story Ann Darrow becomes just as frightening as McTeague except for much different reasons. The language employed by these people is gruff and weighty, and the motivations of most of these characters in base and pleasure-focused, designed to emulate the temporal passions of mere beasts, and in the same way that a beasts’ life is devoid of spirituality and purpose thus falls the Sententia of our central characters (a few characters’ stories will end happily, but I’ll just avoid that for now).  There is no positive connection to nature or our possible origins as animals, but a somewhat Renaissance-esque understanding of the superiority of humanity to animalism and how far we can fall into primalnality.

           All of these examples of animal behavior are meant to distinguish a difference between the realization of how humans should interact and be motivated and the stark reality of how they actually live. There is no positive connection to nature or our possible origins as animals, but a somewhat Renaissance-esque understanding of the superiority of humanity to animalism and how far we can fall into not the banal but the primal instead. It is a portrait of how humanity has been perverted by the American Dream and how we foolishly pursue base desires and hurt others in the name of greed. Norris is not interested in idealism or sentimentality, however, and uses direct imagery and clarity of purpose to create what he feels is an honest (re: negative) portrayal of the West as it has become.