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View allThe Iron Heel
London
1908
A hidden manuscript, footnoted seven centuries later, tells how democracy died and a revolution began.
The Iron Heel
Jack London · 1908
Published in 1908, The Iron Heel imagines an American oligarchy that answers a rising labor movement not with reform but with a private army, a bought press, and naked force — and it does so through a double-framed narrative: the hidden, urgent manuscript of Avis Everhard, wife of the revolutionary orator Ernest Everhard, discovered and footnoted seven centuries later by a historian writing from a socialist utopia that eventually wins. Often cited as a direct ancestor of Orwell's 1984 and other 20th-century dystopias, it is less a polished novel than an argument with a plot wrapped around it — London puts his own economic and political convictions in Ernest Everhard's mouth, and the fictional distance of Meredith's footnotes lets him claim, from the vantage of an imagined future, that the coming catastrophe was survivable.
26 chapters · 87,768 words · ~6.6 hr read
Contents
Foreword
Anthony Meredith, writing from a socialist utopia seven centuries later, introduces the rediscovered Everhard Manuscript and its imperfect witness.
Awakening
Avis Everhard meets Ernest at her father's philosophers' dinner table, and his debates with the establishment begin to radicalize her.
The Rising Storm
A bishop's crisis of conscience, machine-breaking, and a general strike — the labor movement gathers force against the trusts.
The Iron Heel Descends
The oligarchy answers with force: the Everhards go underground, and the scarlet livery of the Mercenaries fills the streets.
The Second Revolt
Revolution and its crushing — the Chicago Commune, the abyss of the disinherited, and the terrorists left behind when the Cause is broken.