Frank Norris's Influences On Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism, coming from Charles Darwin’s theory on the evolution of plants and animals and how they evolve and change over time, had been created to describe how human’s social classes and backgrounds influence their survival in the world, and if you try to change your class of living you will end up right back where you had started. Frank Norris, a famous writer of the late 1850’s and early 1900’s, had written many famous and well known books about naturalism among the realism movement of writers in his time, with works such as McTeague, The Pit, and the Octopus . And with his naturalist writing style, Frank had received a lot of criticism on the way he had portrayed social Darwinism, and many people didn’t like his books at first. But as time passed, people would realize that these views had not been far off, thus influencing others views on social Darwinism for years to come and how it affected how people had lived their lives back then. …show more content…
His parents, Gertrude Doggett and Benjamin Franklin Norris, had brought Frank and his brother Lester up in a wealthy life style with his mother being an actress and father being a wealthy jeweler. Frank studied art in Paris for 2 years until he had realized his passion for writing, which then would lead him to the University of California at Berkley and Harvard to further guide him in the ways of being a writer. And it was at Berkley where he had found a French novelist by the name of Emile Zola, whose naturalist writing style had influenced frank in a lot of his literary ideas and had made him one of the first Naturalistic writers of his time. After his years in college, Frank would get married to Jeannette Norris Black in the year 1900. He would then continue writing and being an editor in places like South Africa and Cuba. Appendicitis would later strike him in 1902 which would lead to his