The Devil in the White City Literary Elements

Nonfiction, American history, crime

Chicago at the turn of the 20th century (1890-1905), around the time of the World's Fair (1893)

Anonymous third-person omniscient narrator, written in past tense

Tone: expectant, officious, apprehensive, ominous, joyous,

Mood: predatory, brooding, anxious, exhilarated, hopeful, passionate

Daniel Burnham, John Root, and Louis Sullivan are protagonists, and architects who rise to fame during the World’s Fair. The serial killer H.H. Holmes, though not directly interacting with the protagonists, is the antagonist.

The struggle to carry out the World’s Fair is the main conflict for the architects. H.H. Holmes attempting to satisfy his murderous desires while evading police is the major conflict for the alternate plot line.

It is possible to argue the climax of the Fair narrative is its opening, but it is more likely the assassination of Harrison. For the Holmes storyline, it is the murder of Julia, as it is the first explicitly violent act that prefigures all of Holmes' murders to come.

1. Larsen foreshadows Millet's death when he says that Burnham's telegram was returned by the operator (4)
2. As a child, wherever Mudgett went, "troubling things seemed to occur" (42), foreshadowing his later grisly deeds
3. Larsen foreshadows Root's death by comments about his ill health
4. Larsen foreshadows Holmes's behavior through his explanations of the strange aspects of the building and the things within it (such as the kiln)
5. Holmes's dangerous nature is foreshadowed through Myrta's great-uncle's fear of him

The Fair not accepting the Ferris Wheel for the exhibition because it cost “many thousands of dollars” (280), Larson writes, is an understatement. The Exposition Company’s actions not only cost them the increased ticket sales they would have gotten if the wheel was ready for the Fair’s opening, but also made the Fair look unfinished, tarnishing its reputation.

1. Jack the Ripper, the monstrous murderer of prostitutes in London in 1888
2. The Titanic, which hit an iceberg and sank in 1912
3. Jane Addams, founder of the prominent settlement house Hull House (11)
4. "Only Poe could have dreamed the rest" (34) -Edgar Allen Poe, the 19th American writer of macabre and gothic tales
5. The German writers Goethe and Schelling call architecture "frozen music"; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was a prominent writer and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) was a philosopher
6. "his aptly named head gardener, E. Dehn" (180) refers to Eden, of the Garden of Eden

The images of light and dark are seen throughout the book. The White City of the World’s Fair is depicted as a contrast to the poor, industrial Black City, through the images of streetlights and white exposition halls.

The Cold Storage tower required boilers and a smokestack in order to create the cold interior. “Paradoxically, heat was required to produce cold” (301). This heat, and the construction of the smoke stack, would soon prove to be a major problem.

1. The nature of the alternating plot lines in the story highlight the parallelism between Burnham, a protagonist, and Holmes, the antagonist. The similarities between their physical descriptions, like the focus on their blue eyes, and the illustration of both of their extreme ambitions, shows that the two men, though very different in the world’s eyes, actually have many of the same qualities.
2. The weather of Chicago seems to parallel the glowing gloom of the economic downturn: "In Chicago, before the news arrived, brokers spent a good deal of time discussing the morning's strange weather. An unusually 'murky pall' hung over the city. Brokers joked how the gloom might be the signal that a 'day of judgement' was at hand" (60).
3. Holmes and the Jack the Ripper are paralleled: "Eventually, much would be made of the fact that Holmes had erected his building during the same period in which Jack the Ripper, thousands of miles away, began his killings" (70)
4. "The fair had begun with death, and now it had ended with death" (332)

Synecdoche:

1. "Hunt was fierce, a frown in a suit" (79)
2. "the Cigrand and Connor families had hired 'eyes' to search for their missing daughters" (199)

1. Throughout the book, the White City and the Black City are personified to strengthen the differing vibes of the two places. “The White City had drawn men and protected them; the Black City now welcomed them back, on the eve of winter, with filth, starvation, and violence” (323). This personification puts the White City in the nurturing, motherly role, while the description of the Black City makes it out to be poor, dirty, and dangerous.
2. "At the time of the vote, with the city's pride at stake, all Chicago had sung with one voice" (48)
3. "'The wind,' the Tribune observed, 'seems to have a grudge against the World's Fair grounds" (174)