The Octopus

Frank Norriss work often includes depictions of suffering caused by corrupt and greedy turn-of-the-century corporate monopolies. In The Octopus: A California Story the Pacific and Southwest Railroad is implicated in the suffering and deaths of a number of ranchers in Southern California. At the end of the novel after a bloody shootout between farmers and railroad agents at one of the ranches (named Los Muertos) readers are encouraged to take a larger view that sees that through the welter of blood at the irrigating ditch ... the great harvest of Los Muertos rolled like a flood from the Sierras to the Himalayas to feed thousands of starving scarecrows on the barren plains of India. Though free-wheeling market capitalism causes the deaths of many of the characters in the novel this larger view always ... discovers the Truth that will in the end prevail and all things surely inevitably resistlessly work together for good.