McTeague: A Story of San Francisco

These chapters show the McTeagues’ fast decline. Their new room is “grimy” and rank, creating “an aspect of desolation and cheerlessness lamentable beyond words” (301). The desolation of the room reflects the desolation of their marriage. McTeague now “dislike[s] Trina,” finding her to be “a perpetual irritation” (306). All that used to attract him to her now “annoy[s]” him (306). The “blind, sightless appearance” (345) of McTeague’s empty “Dental Parlors” as Trina sits outside reflecting on their former happiness represents the meaningless, fleeting nature of that life.

Trina’s sexual attraction to McTeague has been instinctive and animal in nature, something she could not rationally understand. When McTeague loses interest in her, Trina’s sexual drive is transferred to her money. She spends hours playing with it; she shines it, buries her face in it, and puts it in her mouth. After McTeague steals her savings, it is not enough for her to have a piece of paper merely representing her lottery winnings; she “must have her money in her hand,” to feel it physically (355). Her frustration is alleviated only when she fully immerses herself in it. After coercing Uncle Oelbermann to give her the winnings, she plays with her money “in an ecstasy of delight” (356), almost “quivering with pleasure” (357). In her desire her cheeks become “flushed” and “her breath became short” (358). Her stripping naked and sleeping with it, “taking a strange and ecstatic pleasure in the touch of the smooth flat pieces the length of her entire body” (361), is the culmination of her “passion” (357).

This force overtakes her to the exclusion of all other passions. She used to be “scrupulously tidy” (287), but now she does not care if her bed is made or the dishes washed. Despite having nightmares about Maria’s murder, she decides to live in an upstairs room of Zerkow’s house because “[i]t’ll be money in [her] pocket” (334). She loses “her pretty ways and her good looks,” and “[h]er charming little figure grew coarse, stunted, and dumpy” (335). Their room in Zerkow’s house is messy and overcome with cockroaches, and “[a]ll the filth of the alley invaded their quarters like a rising muddy tide” (337). She “begrudge[s] even the food that she and McTeague” eat (296). By the time she is living above the kindergarten, she is seeing “gold pieces” even in the sunlight that “fell in round golden spots upon the floor” (352).

Most importantly, Trina “even neglect[s] her hair, the wonderful swarthy tiara, the coiffure of a queen” (336). The animal-like description—“by evening it was an unkempt, tangled massy veritable rat’s nest” (336)—further reinforces her descent into animal nature. It is not only in humanity that Trina falls: By the time she is living above the kindergarten, she is “alone, a solitary, abandoned woman, lost in the lowest eddies of the grade city’s tide—the tide that always ebbs” (353). Trina is at the mercy of both internal instincts and a social hierarchy that is indifferent to individual struggles. The devolving beauty of Trina’s queenly hair suggests the failure of this “little bourgeoisie” to fight against these forces.

McTeague’s decline demonstrates the tenuous nature of the boundary between human and animal, and suggests social conventions are inefficient at squelching humans’ animal nature. Having “cultivated tastes […] which now could not be gratified” (285), McTeague “slip[s] back into the old habits […] with an ease that [is] surprising” (286). As he declines, he lapses into drink, which brings out “the brute” in him, and he takes “pleasure” in “abusing and hurting” Trina (305). After giving up finding work, he spends his days walking along “the tremendous, tumbling ocean” (333), where he fishes for lunch and eats as an animal, “without salt or knife or fork” (333). Later, when he murders Trina in the kindergarten cloakroom, he traps her with “ape-like agility” (375) imparted to him by the alcohol. McTeague’s true state is that of an animal, and as the social fetters fall, the animal is free to emerge.

The descent from human to animal is evident in Trina’s final moments, in which a cat witnesses her murder. Throughout McTeague Trina’s smooth manners have been likened to those of a cat. In the cloakroom of her kindergarten Trina is instinctively aware of the presence of danger when the cat that is watching her stops purring. The cat, “wildly terrified” (375), listens outside the cloakroom as McTeague beats Trina to her death; Trina herself fights “for her miserable life with the exasperation and strength of a harassed cat” (375). Like the dogs that chose not to fight, the cat is better off than the human it represents.

McTeague devolves not only into his animal state but also back to his natural state as a miner. McTeague has “[t]he miner’s idea of money quickly gained and lavishly squandered” (307). He terrifies Trina by raising his hand at her, threatening to hit her with “the fist of the old-time car-boy” (300). After murdering Trina, he returns to his room, where he makes a canvas sack with “a half hitch such as miners use” (377). Though characters can try to rise in the social hierarchy, they cannot escape their natures, which fill the gaps left by their crumbling social standing.

All this suggests that characters’ decisions are not truly their own. Throughout the novel characters who perform the most egregious acts show signs of goodness that are overwhelmed by irresistible animal drives. McTeague is warm with Trina upon leaving her for the last time. Trina wishes he could come back, believing she “wouldn’t mind anything, if only Mac was home all right” (346). When Uncle Oelbermann suggests she take all her winnings at once, Trina, feeling “instinctive apprehension” (359), at first refuses. After denying McTeague money as he stands starving at her window, Trina begins to feel guilty, asking herself, “what have I come to be that I would see Mac—my husband—that I would see him starve rather than give him money?” (364). Even McTeague’s original refusal to drink whiskey because it “did not agree with him” (293) shows an inherent desire for good. However, just as McTeague is enticed to drink whiskey because it makes him feel “very comfortably warm in the pit of his stomach” (293), other characters are unable to resist their animal needs. Their inability to make their own choices makes the story more tragic, for their potential goodness is squashed by forces stronger than they are.

Human life is thus depicted as insignificant, our efforts futile. This is evident when the city goes on as normal as Maria lies murdered in her home. Emerging from the murder scene, Trina looks frantically up and down Polk Street, where cable cars are filled with passengers and customers laugh in Frenna’s saloon. Trina wonders how “all this was going on, [how] people were laughing and living, buying and selling, walking about out there on the sunny sidewalks, while behind her in there—in there—in there—” (317). The world is indifferent to human suffering, and our effect on the world is minimal.

Like the rest of the novel, these chapters rely heavily on symbolism. McTeague finally kills Trina because she sold his concertina, an item that has separated McTeague from animals. Once the concertina is gone, McTeague’s full brutality emerges. The concertina also represents McTeague’s old life as a miner. Shortly after finding it in the music store, he returns to the mine. McTeague remains surprisingly gentle with his canary in its “gilt prison” (301). He clings to it “obstinately,” taking it with him even when he flees the city; fearful that the canary would starve there, McTeague decides to bring it, “gently” tying cloth around it to protect it from the wind (377). Readers should note that miners used to use canaries to detect poisonous gasses: When the canary died, a miner knew the air was not safe. McTeague’s imprisoned canary represents how in the city, McTeague is forced to go against his nature by striving for superficial material possessions. His gentleness with the canary shows the better side of his nature and his sympathy with his true self, who would be free of the fetters of the city. The superficiality of these possessions is demonstrated in the fate of the golden tooth, which is now used as a table to hold “greasy dishes” (337) and is rejected as “vulgar” (338) by the Other Dentist. Finally, the minimizing effects of Norris’s ubiquitous quotation marks becomes clear when Trina’s fingers must be removed due to her use of the “non-poisonous” paint. Like the “Made in France” stickers, the paint professes to be something better than what it is.

Of all the characters in McTeague, only Old Grannis and Miss Baker overcome oppressive forces to find happiness. Old Grannis’s regret that he “sold his happiness for money” (323) is a refreshing example of selflessness. Miss Baker’s bringing him tea despite her crippling shyness and her fear of being unladylike suggests resisting one’s compulsions is possible. The novel leaves them without their usual awkwardness, in a tender embrace as they enter “upon the long retarded romance of their commonplace and uneventful lives” (330). Though small and unnoticed by the universe, Old Grannis and Miss Baker manage to create “a delicious garden where it was always autumn” (330). By working together, they not only cheat their internal forces but also destiny and death.