Chicago in 1893: Bright City, Dark Menace
In the historical novel “The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America,” author Erik Larson portrays Chicago as both the city of opportunity and simultaneously as a hotbed of crime and human exploitation (Larson). Chicago in the 1890’s was quite rough because jobs and murders have made the city a place of both danger and opportunity. Numerous murders have led to turmoil in the city. In addition, the changes that came with the World’s Fair that took place in 1893 added to the sense of confusion. Theodore Dreiser’s novel Sister Carrie gives a sense of the opportunities available to individuals to develop themselves, but for the victims of H.H Holmes (Herman …show more content…
Although he was a serial killer, H. H. Holmes was also a successful person. In The Devil in the White City, H.H. Holmes practiced his peculiar arts in a city that was bustling, vibrant with industry and preoccupied with making money. It was crowded with Eastern European immigrants who worked at low pay jobs and young country people like Carrie, attracted by the chance to make more money than they could back on the farm. The excitement of city life also drew people into the path of H.H. …show more content…
He developed control of a small hotel, which he set about redesigning and remodeling apparently for the sole purpose of using it as a murder laboratory. He was also an accomplished con man who managed to convince the authorities that the disappearances of people around him were natural occurrences. It is tempting to risk what he could have accomplished had he confined his efforts to honest labor rather than murder and the marketing of human skeletons to the medical schools of Chicago. Holmes might have remained an obscure nobody had he stayed in his home town of Gilmanton, New Hampshire; the world might never have taken any notice of the hotel owner. For author Larson, the significance of Holmes is that he portrays the transformation of a person into a non-person, one who started out with a fixed place in life and somehow lost his bearings. By moving into the alien environment of the big city, he lost contact with everything that keeps humans in contact with other humans. While the city of Chicago panicked over the multiple disappearances, Holmes busied himself with his grizzly occupation, possibly not even realizing the chaos he was
In the historical novel “The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America,” author Erik Larson portrays Chicago as both the city of opportunity and simultaneously as a hotbed of crime and human exploitation (Larson). Chicago in the 1890’s was quite rough because jobs and murders have made the city a place of both danger and opportunity. Numerous murders have led to turmoil in the city. In addition, the changes that came with the World’s Fair that took place in 1893 added to the sense of confusion. Theodore Dreiser’s novel Sister Carrie gives a sense of the opportunities available to individuals to develop themselves, but for the victims of H.H Holmes (Herman …show more content…
Although he was a serial killer, H. H. Holmes was also a successful person. In The Devil in the White City, H.H. Holmes practiced his peculiar arts in a city that was bustling, vibrant with industry and preoccupied with making money. It was crowded with Eastern European immigrants who worked at low pay jobs and young country people like Carrie, attracted by the chance to make more money than they could back on the farm. The excitement of city life also drew people into the path of H.H. …show more content…
He developed control of a small hotel, which he set about redesigning and remodeling apparently for the sole purpose of using it as a murder laboratory. He was also an accomplished con man who managed to convince the authorities that the disappearances of people around him were natural occurrences. It is tempting to risk what he could have accomplished had he confined his efforts to honest labor rather than murder and the marketing of human skeletons to the medical schools of Chicago. Holmes might have remained an obscure nobody had he stayed in his home town of Gilmanton, New Hampshire; the world might never have taken any notice of the hotel owner. For author Larson, the significance of Holmes is that he portrays the transformation of a person into a non-person, one who started out with a fixed place in life and somehow lost his bearings. By moving into the alien environment of the big city, he lost contact with everything that keeps humans in contact with other humans. While the city of Chicago panicked over the multiple disappearances, Holmes busied himself with his grizzly occupation, possibly not even realizing the chaos he was