Juxtaposition The Devil In The White City

Superior Essays
In The Devil in the White City, a novel published in the year 2003, Erik Larson describes the greatness of both the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and one of America’s first serial killers, H.H. Holmes. In the novel, Larson uses juxtaposition, imagery, and repetition to emphasize the characteristics of good and evil for the reader.
In his implementations of juxtaposition, Larson directly contrasts the characteristics of opposing elements. In his contrast between “the moral” and “the wicked, Larson describes the argument between “free love” and “divorce” to show the degradation of the boundary between the two for the reader (12). His use of juxtaposition strengthens the similarities between good and evil. Characteristically, the argument
…show more content…
For example, by repeating the phrase “so easy” in his description of crime, Larson emphasizes the facile amount of effort in committing evil acts during the greatness of the surrounding events of the fair (12). Emphasizing how darkness is easily covered up in the midst of the darkness surrounding the fair, Larson contrasts the greatness of the fair with the evil that surrounds it. This causes the contrast to highlight how ambitions were used in different ways during the fair, thus adding to the characteristics of both good and evil. Some used it to create greatness; others used it to take advantage of the darkness that overpowered their darkness. Consequently, this causes the reader to understand the characteristics of both the goodness and evil that coexisted during the events of the Chicago World’s Fair. Larson characterizes Holmes’s, the embodiment of evil in the novel, as breaking societal rules; thus, he repeats the word “too” as a means of describing each of Holmes’s actions used during his manipulation (36). This repetition serves to emphasize Holmes’s habit of breaking all of the rules, yet doing it in such a way that compliments the character of his extreme deftness. Larson’s repetition creates a parallel structure that adds to this fact, as every rule is broken equally. This highlights the social inappropriateness of Holmes’s actions for the reader, emphasizing how Holmes’s actions are an anomaly from the societal expectations of the behavior of a gentleman. Another characteristic of the embodiment of evil described in the use of repetition is Holmes’s ability to have “power” over his those that he wishes to manipulate (146). His facade is undetected by most, and Holmes’s feeds off of this ability. This dominance over others gives Holmes a kind of joy that he craves. Larson uses this repetition to highlight for the reader

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    H. Holmes, which also forces the reader to read further, no matter if they are interested in the architects or the murderer. After Holmes’s sections, Larson employs usually disturbing situations or feelings Holmes had to leave the reader tense, somewhat confused, and generally disgusted. However, this helps intrigue them, as he does effectively by leaving a section with the line, “Which terrified her” (pg 73), after describing Holmes calmly telling a woman not to be afraid of him. Presenting this with gruesome and vague details about Holmes’s preoccupation, anyone would be willing to go on.…

    • 428 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Devil in the White City follows the exploits of two men with radically different lives, yet they still bare similarities to one another. The first is Daniel Burnham, the architect challenged with the task of making the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago stand out with an attraction to rival the Eiffel tower. The second central character, and serving as the other side of the coin to Burnham, is Dr. H.H. Holmes; a career criminal, pharmacist and serial killer who designed elaborate traps and mechanisms designed to increase the ease of his kills and disposal of bodies. The lives of these two men are told as two separate stories until they quickly become intertwined, when Holmes arrives in Chicago in anticipation of the World's Fair, hoping to…

    • 1022 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Brent Weeks stated, " I think that fiction is an excellent place for us to struggle with question of good and evil and humanity and inhumanity." Throughout time the words good vs. evil always have an affect on history. Why do humans battle good and evil? In fiction we read of some of the most famous battles with good vs. evil. Two of the most classic stories that we read in this course are The Cask of the Amontillado, and Othello.…

    • 1677 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    The desperation and agony of a flawed and failed view of a dream consorts to the genesis of fault and immorality. Sometimes it takes a great occurrence to produce a change. The humanization of a murderer is difficult idea to grasp but is a necessity to clearly define the blindness and innocence of the killer. Ultimately, the confection of these concepts sets the stage for a murder novel. In his book, In Cold Blood, Truman Capote illustrates the murder of a family with strong metaphors and symbolism to attempt to display the humanization of the murderers and the American Dream with the ideological changes in the town of Holcomb.…

    • 1688 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “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” (Larson 109.) In the book, The Devil in the White City, Burnham, an architect, is having many different struggles in building the World’s Fair by opening day, but after the many struggles he ends up making the fair a dreamland. At the same time, Holmes, the first serial killer, is luring young women into his hotel and killing them without getting caught; however, when he does eventually get caught he considers himself with having the devil inside of him. In The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson effectively uses juxtaposition in characters, events, and setting to convey to his readers that when good is…

    • 1491 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Erik Larson is argued to have a difficult time creating realistic details for a book about a time period he could only research about. In The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson uses brilliantly constructed figurative language in order to insightfully display his interpretation of the story (entailing the events of the Chicago World Fair and the serial killer H. H. Holmes) and realistically and informatively describe the details of people, places, and events in the novel. The first figurative language tool that will be addressed is the simile. The first simile that is used to describe one of the main "characters" of Larson’s novel, Holmes, is “As he moved through the station, the glances of young women fell around him like wind-blown petals”…

    • 947 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Based on a study presented by the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology featuring 50 serial killers, troubled childhoods showed a higher percentage than the societal average. “Over one-third were shown to have a history of physical abuse, 26 percent were sexually abused, 50 percent were psychologically abused and 18 percent were neglected.” The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson is a depiction of how H.H. Holmes (Herman Webster Mudgett) uses his skills of manipulation, charm, and deceit to commit several crimes, including theft, insurance fraud, and murder during the 1893 Chicago World 's Fair. Herman Webster Mudgett was a notorious criminal, responsible for hundreds of deaths, however he was not completely at fault. Many serial killers,…

    • 1174 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1a. Jane Addams and the Hull House- She was an american activist and reformer. The Hull house was founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr.…

    • 987 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Devil in the White City by: Erik Larson Crown Publishing Group, 2003, and 447 The book "The Devil in the White City" is about the serial killer H.H. Holmes and the architect of the World's Fair Daniel H. Burnham. Who was Daniel H. Burnham? Burnham was a man who rose to prominence. In 1893 Chicago won the bid for the World's Exposition.…

    • 1157 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In Erik Larson’s The Devil in The White City, the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, also known as the World’s Columbian Exposition had a groundbreaking effect on people all over the world. During the Chicago World’s Fair there was a notorious and psychotic murderer that exploited the fair by reeling in young women and killing them. Aside from the murderer, the reader saw that the fair turned out to be one of the most beautiful and extraordinary events for the people that had the opportunity to attend. In this novel, Larson’s use of literary techniques such as vivid imagery, descriptive word choice, and diverse tone throughout the entire novel creates a picture for the reader of the fair, Chicago, and H.H. Holmes, the murderer. Throughout the novel,…

    • 1298 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Take Home Exam No.2 The Devil in The White City, by Erik Larson , is a wonderful deception of Chicago in the late nineteenth century. Larson writes the book in the style of a novel but it is a historical non-fiction. Larson follows the journey of two contrasting characters.…

    • 758 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the time of the fair the rate at which men and women killed one another rose sharply throughout out the nation but especially in Chicago” (Larson 12). Equally important, the story of Holmes signified the horrendous atrocities that were being committed against workers in the U.S. and were being concealed by The Chicago World Fair. Not only was work badly paid for many Americans but just living in Chicago was a disordered chaos. Even though H. H. Holmes was a really disturbing man with serious problems his story connected well with the history of the late 1800’s because it exposed the corruption, greed, and unorganized policing with the twist of a serial…

    • 1458 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Eric Larson's book, The Devil In The White City, takes place in Chicago during the Gilded age. Big business was on the rise, America was experiencing vast economic expansion, however, poverty still affected millions of Americans. Larson communicates the essential features of the Gilded age through his novel by showing the struggle that the architects and investors faced to make the world fair a success in the struggling economy, while also using the story of H.H Holmes as an analogy to depict the false perception of what America was during the Gilded age. The 1893 Chicago world's fair was a risky venture even by today's standards.…

    • 762 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Don’t be deceived by appearances... people aren’t always as they seem to be. In the short story “The Possibility of Evil”, Shirley Jackson writes about Miss.Strangeworth, an elderly woman, who writes rude judgmental letters to the people in her town about all the things she think is wrong with them. Though on the outside Miss. Strangeworth seems like some nice old lady who has spent her entire life here in the little town, she is really a mean, rude and selfish person who doesn't seem to care about other people’s feelings.…

    • 705 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Border Crossing is a novel written by English author Pat Barker that explores the controversial plot of a child murderer, furthermore the effectiveness of the rehabilitation of such a young offender. Barker explores the techniques of symbolism and contrasting characters throughout the novel. Barker explores the true meaning of morality and how society defines the line between right and wrong, good an evil. Symbolism is largely apparent technique in Border Crossing to represent the mentally skewed mind that is of Danny Miller and what it says about society. When Tom was strolling along a deserted river path he spotted a young man swallow a handful of pills and jump into the river.…

    • 1050 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays