When Liberty Fails: Oligarchy and the Suppression of Freedom in Jack London’s The Iron Heel

This thesis examines how American Author Jack London’s dystopian novel The Iron Heel
(1908) depicts freedom as limited and unattainable under the conditions of concentrated
economic power from an oligarchy. While previous discourse on The Iron Heel has focused on
the intentions behind the creation of the novel, seeing it as either a work of protest, propaganda,
or a way to endorse a Marxist ideology, this essay instead analyses the novel’s thematic
discourse. Furthermore, this essay draws on English philosopher John Stuart Mill’s theory of
liberty and how to protect it, as presented in his essay On Liberty (1859), where he concludes
that freedom of expression, freedom of pursuit, and freedom of association must be upheld for
true individual liberty to be achieved. This essay thus uses the framework of Mill, along with
the structure of oligarchy, to investigate how the oligarchy in The Iron Heel makes individual
freedom impossible in the novel. Additionally, although formal rights appear to exist within the
novel's society, the analysis demonstrates that lived freedom is significantly restricted, creating
an illusion of freedom for all. To accomplish this, an analysis has been made of all Mill’s three
liberties and their correlation to the freedom presented in The Iron Heel.