Progressivism Of Frank Norris - an American Journalist & Writer

The progressive era was a big time in our country's history. With it brought huge growth to our country. In these few years we had more growth than we had ever had before. In this time there were also many writers and journalists. Frank Norris is one of these many writers/ journalist. In this paper I will be talking about his early life and some of his big success with progressivism.

Firstly Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois March 5, 1870 and died in San Francisco, California in October 25, 1902.

His father was Benjamin Norris and he was a self made Chicago businessman and his mother was Gertrude Glorvina Doggett and she was a stage performer. When Norris was young he studied painting for 2 years in Paris. From 1890 to 1894 he attended school at the University Of California and here is where he got into writing. After his parents divorced he went and studied at Harvard in the English department. There is where he met Lewis E.

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Gates who encouraged him to be a writer.

Secondly he has written a bunch of stuff but most of his work is talking about and depicting suffering caused by corrupt and greedy corporate monopolies. In the novel The Octopus: A California Story they are talking about the railroad and how it was the cause of the death some ranchers in Southern California. Towards the end of the book after a fight between a group of ranchers and the railroad agents at a ranch named Los Muertos. It is just basically saying that we need to look at the bigger picture of things and see that things all end up turning out and end up being a good thing in the end.

Thirdly his novels weren’t always loved by all.

Many critics hated in his work like Donald Pizer. He said, ”Frank Norris's racism, which included the most vicious anti-Semitic portrayals in any major work of American literature, has long been an embarrassment to admirers of the vigor and intensity of his best fiction and has also contributed to the decline of his reputation during the past several generations." He was a very hated person because he basically just stated what he was thinking. Just like in today’s time like with Trump he states his mind and doesn’t have people write his stuff for him so that he sounds good and makes everyone feel good because he just doesn’t care what people think about his writing. He was very good at finding and digging up stuff in big companies and basically just exposed them and showed the world what was really going on behind the scenes of these big companies.

So basically Frank Norris was a writer/journalist who exposed people and business for what was truly going on and he was a man that was not afraid to speak his mind even though many critics hated and wrote bad stuff about his work he still went on with his writings. So I hope that you learned more about how Frank Norris was a great writer in the progressive era and more about his life.