Discussion Topic
The most significant event in Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City
Summary:
The most significant event in The Devil in the White City is the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. This event serves as the backdrop for the dual narratives of architect Daniel Burnham's efforts to build the fair and serial killer H.H. Holmes's heinous crimes, intertwining themes of innovation, ambition, and dark human nature.
What is the most important event in The Devil in the White City?
Usually the most important event in a story is the climax. This is the turning point, where things change from the way they were before. The conflict is not resolved, but it reaches its height. In this case, it would be the struggle to build the structure.
Obviously this is a question which each reader must answer for himself and to which there is not only one right answer. The best help I can give you is to point out some important moments which might qualify as important events in Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City.
- The first moment is when Chicago is chosen for the World's Fair. It is an unlikely choice in every way, and the selection of this "Wild West" city sets the rest of the country--and particularly New York--against the endeavor from the beginning.
- Another moment is when Daniel Burnham...
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- chooses the location near Lake Michigan as the site for theexposition. While that choice proved to be brilliant, it was also the cause of many struggles and reconfigurations along the way.
- When the east coast architects finally--FINALLY--decide to work on the project, there is a sense that great things will be accomplished; and they were, despite the attendant obstacles.
- In terms of Holmes, the serial killer, probably two moments are the most crucial. When he kills his first victim that we "know," his sister-in-law Anna, the rampage begins. When he is finally caught, the tragic deaths end.
- One last grand, significant event actually takes place over the course of the Fair--the influx of visitors to the spectacle of the best the world had to offer and such as no one had ever seen. In the end, the total number of visitors to the Fair was more than the country's total population.
The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition was the greatest feat of engineering and attraction the world had seen in modern times. These are all significant events, and a case can be made for each of them as well as for others you may think of as you read.
What is the most effective event in Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City?
Obviously the answer to this question will be different for each reader, and I am certain your teacher wants to hear what you think was the most effective event in the novel. For me, the most effective moment (event) in Erik Larson's The Devil and the White City is when the White City is first revealed to the public.
"At precisely 12:08 he touched the gold key." First one engine starts, then "thirty other engines in the building began to thrum." Soon the pumps feed the water through the pipes and
millions of gallons of water began surging through the fair’s mains.... An American flag the size of a mainsail unfurled from the tallest flagpole in the Court of Honor, and immediately two more like-sized flags tumbled from flanking poles, one representing Spain, the other Columbus. Water pressurized by the Worthington pumps exploded from the MacMonnies Fountain and soared a hundred feet into the sky, casting a sheet rainbow across the sun and driving visitors to raise their umbrellas against the spray. Banners and flags and gonfalons suddenly bellied from every cornice, a huge red banner unscrolled along the full length of the Machinery Building,... [and] men and women [had] to shield their eyes. Two hundred white doves leaped for the sky. The guns of the Michigan fired. Steam whistles shrieked. Spontaneously the throng began to sing “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” which many thought of as the national anthem although no song had yet received that designation.
What a glorious moment that had to have been for those who envisioned and created the White City. The dazzling white buildings set against the shoreline of the dark lake, the dazzling electric lights which so many of the crowd had never before seen. The wonders of the White City, both on the inside and the outside, must have been even more amazing to the visitors who had no idea what to expect, as Larson describes them weeping at the beauty they see and experience.
This grand moment must, at times, have seemed unachievable to Daniel Burnham, but the visitors only saw the results, a triumph of human invention and innovation.
“Beneath the stars the lake lay dark and sombre," Stead wrote, "but on its shores gleamed and glowed in golden radiance the ivory city, beautiful as a poet's dream, silent as a city of the dead.”
Of course this is only half the story of the Chicago World's Fair. A man calling himself Doctor Henry Holmes is using this city and this spectacular event to pursue his heinous, deviant behaviors on unsuspecting women. In fact, as the fair opens and the crowd is spontaneously singing, Holmes is already at work.
It is this moment, when the White City is revealed, which most demonstrates the stark contrast between the glistening achievements as well as the dark depravity of the human mind and body in this one place. It is the contrast in this moment which makes this the most effective event in the book for me.
In the end it is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black.