Erik Larson s The Devil - 1093 Words

Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City is a historical novel that portrays true events that occurred during the final years of the Gilded Age. Larson employs his vast research in order to write a historically accurate book, while filling in the subjective details all in order to make for an interesting read for the audience. Although the novel is based on historical facts, the actual goal for Larson is to portray a sharp contrast between good and evil, and he does this by presenting two main characters around which the plots of this novel is built. The entire novel shifts back and forth between Daniel Burnham, the protagonist, and H. H. Holmes, the antagonist. The book is outlined so that alternating chapters follows distinct plot†¦show more content†¦They are both dedicated to building a fair that will better the tarnished reputation the Chicago gives off to the rest of the country. They seek the help of architects throughout the country, but the ones in New York in particular are full of pride and do not want to be associated with Chicago. John Root eventually falls ill and dies, him being the architectural genius of the project. Burnham reads a newspaper that says that he will not be able to build such a fair on his own, and so pushes even harder to build a truly memorable fair. Chicago is at first described as a cheery place full of patriotism for their own city and this pride is what essentially produces good for the city. While pride may seem to produce good for the city, it actually causes the people to ignore the bad. This is evident with the story of H. H. Holmes. He is able to get away with so much in Chicago and pretty much runs a murder factory in the World Fair Hotel. No one cares enough to investigate it because Chicago is simply known as the city where one would marvel at â€Å"how easy it was to disappear† (Larson, 11). This disappearance refers to murderers and psychopaths like H. H. Holmes, but could also be a reference to the countless victims that were murdered by him and never found. Another example of preventable evil being ignored is that of Prendergast, who becomes progressively insane but the few people that notice it do nothing about it and