American Dream

The Octopus is a stunning novel of the waning days of the frontier West. To the tough-minded and self-reliant farmers, the monopolistic, land-grabbing railroad represented everything they despised: consolidation, organization, conformity. But Norris idealizes no one in this epic depiction of the volatile situation, for the farmers themselves ruthlessly exploited the land, and in their hunger for larger holdings they resorted to the same tactics used by the railroad: subversion, coercion, and outright violence. wheat …

…come not to settle, but to get rich and to move on. Soil was meant to turn a profit, and, he predicted, "When at last, the land...would refuse to yield, they would invest their money in something else; by then, they would all have made fortunes. The Octopus depicts the strangle hold railroads had on farmers and small town life. A decidedly unromantic view on just how nasty the "Robber Baron" mentality could be.