Examples Of Greed In Mcteague

Greed in the Form of Inherited Racial Qualities in McTeague

In Mcteague, Frank Norris depicts the lives of working class, mostly non Anglo Saxon, residents living in a San Francisco apartment complex. Norris characterizes most of these residents by their uncontrollable avarice though strays from presenting them as the stereotypical gilded age Americans, a common literary theme at this point in the late 18th century, obsessed with the glamour provided by wealth. Instead, Norris presents their need for gold as inherit racial flaws, flaws that results in their ultimate demise. The character’s de evolution and loss of morality throughout Mcteague can be gauged by their progressive need for more and more wealth.
Norris’ depiction of the character’s
Once Trina comes into contact with the fortune, her ancestral traits takes over and she begins to de evolve into an animal like creature whose sole purpose is to hoard and accumulate wealth. Zerkow is the first resident of the apartment complex to hear of Trina’s winnings and his reaction is one of jealousy and rage. Zerkow’s reaction is explained “as though a knife had been run through the Jew; a spasm of an almost physical pain twisted his face-his entire body. He raised his clenched fists into the air, his eyes shut, his teeth gnawing”(99). Zerkow’s Jewish ancestry fuels his envious rage, and Norris comments on Zerkow’s greed when he writes, “It was impossible to look at Zerkow and not know instantly that greed-inordinate, insatiable greed-was the dominant passion of the man”(36). Zerkow’s voracious avarice is so unappeasable that Maria’s mythical tale of a golden dining set sets him into frenzied passions. Zerkow is the only one who truly believes Maria’s story, and his deranged madness only increases as he hears the story more and more. He even marries Maria, so he can hear the story whenever he wants. Zerkow and Maria eventually have a baby, though the baby dies, seemingly a result of the mixing of Zerkow’s and Maria’s racial impurities’. Norris explains the baby as a “strange, hybrid little being, come and gone with a fortnight’s time, yet combining in its puny little body the blood of the Hebrew, and the Pole, and the Spaniard (185). Zerkow is even relieved by the baby’s death “since it had a mouth to be fed and wants to be provided for” (185). The baby’s death results in Maria finally gaining some semblance of sanity, and she entirely forgets the story of the golden plates, much to the dismay of Zerkow who feeling the increasing detachment of this potential fortune kills Maria, and he