The Iron Heel by Jack London: The Dystopian Novel That Influenced George Orwell’s 1984

Jack London had some range as a writer, from Call of the Wild to Martin Eden, and The Sea-Wolf to his stories about boxing. With The Iron Heel, he stretched that range even further with a novel about a Dystopian version of America where corporations have all the power. I mean, just check out this banger of a passage:

“Never in the history of the world was society in so terrific flux as it is right now. The swift changes in our industrial system are causing equally swift changes in our religious, political, and social structures. An unseen and fearful revolution is taking place in the fibre and structure of society. One can only dimly feel these things. But they are in the air, now, to-day. One can feel the loom of them–things vast, vague, and terrible.”

Sounds kinda familiar, huh?

The book is a fictional manuscript that is found some 700 hundred years in the future and has been fictionally edited by a fictional editor who adds context to the manuscript. It’s a nifty literary device, one not often seen in fiction. Like London’s A Daughter of the Snows, this is a first-person narrative of a male-written female protagonist. Jack London was certainly ahead of his time the first time with Daughter in 1902.

Despite being written over a hundred years ago, this book seems pretty applicable to life in the 21st century, and could almost be called prophetic. Jack London seemed to have noticed that kind of primitive in humans brewing that has led to the rise of the oligarchs and dictators. The ideas of modern-day capitalism and class oppression are also prevalent here, and Jack London’s hard-scrabbled life sailing the seas and braving the Yukon wilderness and experience as a hobo gave him a perspective on socialism that so very few people could have.  

Then there is The Iron Heel’s direct influence on George Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four. In fact, Erich Fromm called The Iron Heel “the earliest of the modern dystopian fiction” in the Afterword he wrote for the 1977 edition of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Orwell biographer Michael Shelden said that this 1908 Jack London novel is a big influence.

Indeed, George Orwell pointed out how Jack London saw Fascism coming, according to a 1943 BBC broadcast about London, and George even pointed out that London had a such an understanding of the primitive mind, more “than many better-informed and more logical thinkers,” that he was able to spot fascist behaviors in humans from a mile away. In Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, his leading man Winston Smith keeps a diary of all his defiant thoughts. Orwell bit that from Jack London’s Avis Everhard. George Orwell published the banger Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949, a classic still be read and referenced to over 75 years later.

That book owes a huge debt to Jack London’s The Iron Heel, and so does Zamyatin’s We and Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz and Huxley’s Brave New World. Make no mistake, Jack London’s socialist leanings are on full display here in The Iron Heel. It would not be unfair to call this book propaganda, but just because a piece of media is propaganda doesn’t mean there’s a lot of prophetic truth here.

Click on the cover to buy The Iron Heel by Jack London!

We also covered other works of Jack London, including White Fang and Call of the Wild and Iron Heel and The Game and The Sea-Wolf and John Barleycorn and Before Adam and Martin Eden and A Daughter of the Snows and The Cruise of the Dazzler.

Cover Image Credit: Sketch of wrought iron filler is circa 1912 and part of the public domain per Wikimedia Commons. The photo of Jack London is by the photographer Arnold Genthe is also a part of the public domain, per Wikimedia Commons. No copyright claim is made for any work in the public domain.

*****This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a commission. Thank you for reading Content Bash!*****