Question

Frank Norris


The Octopus: A Story of California tells the story of a struggle between poor California farmers and railroads owned by the wealthy. Annie, the wife of Magnus Derrick, an ambitious owner of El Rancho de Los Muertos, is forced to watch her life fall apart when her family becomes involved in corrupt dealings with the railroad companies.

1 Magnus Derrick’s wife Annie looked hardly old enough to be the mother of two sons as old as Harran and Lyman Derrick. She was not far into her fifties, and her brown hair still retained much of its brightness. Her eyes were large and easily assumed a look of inquiry and innocence, such as one might expect to see in a young girl. By disposition she was undemonstrative, easily withdrawing herself from the spotlight. She was not made for the harshness of the world, but she had known some degree of it in her younger days. Magnus had married her when she was twenty-one years old, at a time when she was a graduate from the State Normal School and was teaching literature, music, and penmanship in a seminary in the town of Marysville. She overworked herself there continually, loathing the strain of teaching, yet clinging to it with a tenacity born of the knowledge that it was then her only means of support. She was dependent upon herself. Her one ambition was to see Italy and the Bay of Naples. Hawthorne’s “Marble Faun,” Raphael’s “Madonnas,” and Verdi’s opera, “Il Trovatore,” were, to her, exemplary representations of literature and art. She dreamed of Italy, Rome, Naples, and the world’s great art centers. There was no doubt that her affair with Magnus had been a love match, but at the time, Annie would have loved any man who would have taken her from the droning routine of the class and music room. She had followed Magnus unquestioningly. First, there was the time at Sacramento, during the discord of his political career; later, at Placerville in El Dorado County, after he had interested himself in the Corpus Christi group of mines; and finally, here at Los Muertos, after selling his fourth interest in Corpus Christi, he had turned rancher and had seized the opportunity of the new tracts of wheat land just thrown open by the railroad.

2 She had lived here in Los Muertos for nearly ten years. But never for one moment since the time her first glance lost itself in the unbroken immensity of the ranches had she known a moment’s content. Continually there came into her pretty, wide-open eyes—the eyes of a young doe—a look of uneasiness, of distrust, and aversion. She remembered the days of her young girlhood on a farm in eastern Ohio—five hundred acres, neatly partitioned into the water lot, the cow pasture, the corn lot, the barley field, and wheat farm; all cozy, comfortable, and homelike, where the farmers loved their land, caressing it, coaxing it, nourishing it as though it were a thing almost conscious. There, the seed was sown by hand, and a single two-horse plow was sufficient for the entire farm.

3 But this new order of things—a ranch bounded only by the horizons, where, as far as one could see, to the north, to the east, to the south and to the west, there was only one holding, a principality ruled with iron and steam, bullied into a yield of three hundred and fifty thousand bushels. To her mind there was something inordinate about it all; something almost unnatural. The vision of ten thousand acres of wheat, nothing at all but wheat as far as the eye could see, stunned her a little.

4 When Presley appeared on Los Muertos, she had welcomed him with delight. Here at last was a congenial spirit. She looked forward to long conversations with the aspiring writer on literature, art, and ethics, but Presley had disappointed her. That he—outside of his few chosen idols—should care little for literature, shocked her beyond words. His indifference to “style” and elegant English was a positive affront. She could not see with him any romance, any poetry in the life around her; she looked to Italy for that. His “Song of the West” was a work which he once had incoherently tried to explain to her, but its truth and savagery had revolted her.

5 The monotony of the ranch continued to eat into her spirit hour by hour, year by year. And with it all, when was she to see Rome, Italy, and the Bay of Naples? Magnus had given her his promise that once the ranch was well established, the two of them would travel. But continually he had been obliged to put her off, now for one reason, then for another. He declared that the machine would not as yet run by itself and he insisted that he must still feel his own hand upon the lever; next year, perhaps, when wheat should go to ninety1, or the rains were good, he could arrange a trip. With this in mind, she obliterated her own aspirations, only allowing, from time to time, her questioning eyes to meet his. In the meantime, Annie retired within herself.

1ninety – 90 cents, or more than what it was worth at the time


Norris, Frank. The Octopus: A Story of California. Doubleday. 1901. United States. In the public domain. Adapted by Educational Leadership Solutions, Inc.

Choose a phrase for each blank to correctly complete the sentence.

The role of paragraph 3 is to

and to create effects of

.

Answer 1

The role of paragraph 3 is to **contrast the vastness of the modern ranching system with Annie’s nostalgic memories of small farming** and to create effects of **unease and disconnection from nature**.