Introduction
first describes how bad men are under bad conditions. The second describes how good men are under bad conditions….”
There is much more to the same effect that I have not space to quote. Now turn, for illustration of the other method, to the suggestive analysis by Mr. Van Wyck Brooks (in his book of essays, Emerson and Others) of the reasons for Mr. Upton Sinclair’s failure as a social reformer through fiction:
“But suppose now, that one wishes to see the dispossessed rise in their might and really, in the name of justice, take possession of the world. Suppose one wishes to see the class-system abolished, along with all the other unhappy things that Mr. Sinclair writes about. This is Mr. Sinclair’s own desire; and he honestly believes that in writing as he does he contributes to this happy consummation. I cannot agree with him. In so far as Mr. Sinclair’s books show us anything real they show us the utter helplessness, the benightedness, the naïveté of the American workers’ movement. Jimmie Higgins does not exist as a character. He is a symbol, however, and one can read reality into him. He is the American worker incarnate. Well, was there ever a worker so little the master of his fate? That, in point of fact, is just the conclusion Mr. Sinclair wishes us to draw. But why is he so helpless? Because, for all his kindness and his courage, he is, from an intellectual and social point of view, unlike the English worker, the German, Italian, Russian, the merest infant; he knows nothing about life or human nature or economics or philosophy or even his enemies. How can he possibly set about advancing his own cause, how can he circumvent the wily patrioteers, how can he become anything but what he
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