Analysis Of The Devil In The White City By Erik Larson

H.H. Holmes personifies the stereotypical murder. Throughout his killing spree, Holmes pretended to be a gentleman, even marrying some of his victims. When Holmes was interrogated later, he described himself as Satan.(6) Using a friendly outward appearance, Holmes was able to escape suspicion when the victims’ family questioned disappearances. Holmes gave those families false hope that the victims would be found, or had just run away and had not died. When in reality Holmes had brutally murdered each one and hid all of evidence.

The antagonist of the novel, H.H. Holmes, is depicted as quite the ladies’ man. Larson helps the reader to recognize that Holmes’ good lucks and charms will help him lure in his future murder victims later in the novel. Holmes has no apprehension when it comes to making a mess of people’s lives’. Especially, when it comes to getting what he wants. Throughout, the story Homes continues to convince multiple women to marry him without legal documentation. He then disposes of them in various ways, gaining joy from their deaths. Holmes always concocted a story to get the attention off of him when asked

Throughout the novel, Larson repeatedly expresses Holmes’ wicked, yet, alluring nature through figurative language. In order to convey Holmes’ twisted feelings after a killing and project how joyous and fulfilling murdering truly is for him, Larson uses a simile to compare the sensation to a “warm languor (148)” one would obtain from “sitting too long in front of a hot stove. (149)” This association tends to make the reader think of happiness and fullness, as many link it with warmth, making them feel a similar emotion to Holmes. Later, with the purpose of expressing Holmes’ proneness to psychoticness, Larson writes of a simile comparing the office Holmes built for himself to the “corner of a room where the gaslight could not reach. (266)” This dark alliance makes the reader think of emptiness, linked with loneliness. A trait of a psychopath is detachment and dissociation, and the fact that Holmes has no issue working on his own in an empty, dim place highlights

Dr. H. H. Holmes has a passion for murder, and he hides his true personality behind an act of a charming man managing a hotel. Since Holmes uses his creativity to disrupt the lives of innocent people, he brings out the Black City of Chicago. As a result of Holmes’s passion for murder, he has to keep his psychotic talent secret. Only very few people know Holmes’s true lifestyle, and if they do, he kills them. Holmes weaves his way into to his victims’ lives to manipulate them for his personal benefit.. Even though the White City masks some of Chicago’s problems, evil still

“Holmes was charming and gracious, but something about him made Belknap uneasy. He could not have defined it. Indeed, for the next several decades alienists and their successors would find themselves hard-pressed to describe with any precision what it was about men like Holmes that could cause them to seem warm and ingratiating but also telegraph the vague sense that some important element of humanness was missing.” (pg 23) There are two levels of power, emotional and physical power. Holmes was the kind of man who had learned to master both. He was stunningly handsome, and emotionally manipulative, a poison for anyone who could get close to him. In this quote, it shows just how addictive Holmes was to the people around him. He’s like candy. After you’ve had a piece or two, deep down you know it’s not good for you, but the feelings it gives you trump all doubt you have. A deadly mix of youthful exhilaration and feelings of lust, and the combined fact that the man they want so badly is a cold serial

Holmes had been born into a wealthy New Hampshire family and was given the name Herman Webster Mudgett (America’s Serial Killers). “If Mudgett or his brother or sister were bad, their strict Methodist parents sent them to the attic for a full day without speaking or eating,. Mudgett’s father was especially abusive after he’d been drinking - which was often” (Spikol). However, his father was a wealthy and respected citizen and had been the local postmaster for nearly twenty five years (Taylor). It is surprising an important member of the community was a child abuser. The abuse of his father may be one of the

Erik Larson’s 2002 novel titled, The Devil in the White City, spans the years of the famous Chicago’s World’s Fair. This book coincides with the issues of a serial killer by the name of H.H Holmes and the World Fair. The World’s Fair was sought out to help bring a marvelous feel the city of Chicago with the creation of buildings. In actuality, the buildings were only temporary. To take the picturesque feel away from something that was supposed to be a well remembered beauty, Larson brings in the character of Holmes to mask the beauty with an evil feel. The task of this ended in success telling the story of the devil in the white city. The Devil in the White City embarks a journey set to make the city of Chicago marvelous through architecture and a new serial killer. Throughout the book there are strong and weak points as well as characters that peak interest.

Holmes was born into a well to do family, he often got in trouble and punished by his abusive father. He was also bullied because of how small he was. Researchers say that serial killers are “frequently the products of broken, or severely brutal homes, where they have themselves been subjected to gross cruelty, sexual abuse, and in some cases prolonged and systematic torture” (Whittington-Egan 327), this shows that Holmes’ home life was a contributing factor on how he became as sadistic as he was. Why would he later want to prey on women? He wanted power and people to feel how he felt when he was younger, hopeless and alone. According to Richard Whittington-Egan, Holmes’ motive for murder was “financial profit—admixed with sexual advantages” (351). As a young boy Holmes, like most serial killers in the making, had a fascination for torturing and dissecting animals. It was said that he left them “reveling in their pain and took care to make sure they stayed alive, helpless, and distressed for as long as possible” (Gibson 212), this shows how much his psychopathic tendencies were starting to develop at a really young age, and how he felt pleasure in other’s pain. Eventually, Holmes moved

The beauty of cities is that a person can walk by another hundred people all different from the others. In Eric Larson’s book, The Devil in the White City, two individuals walk in Chicago at the same time. One is Daniel Burnham who is the overseer of the 1893 World’s Fair and the other is a charismatic serial killer named H. H. Holmes. Two opposites, the annihilator and the designer, never meet but both transform Chicago and the world forever. Larson builds suspense which thrills readers at every page, shows perspectives that filter the story through many eyes, and recalls history with enough detail to relive it in the present.

The character of Sherlock Holmes

The book The Devil In the White City by Erik Larson re-tells the story of Chicago’s World Fair, while H.H. Holmes, also known as “America’s first serial killer”, emerges as a dark force within the fair. Switching back and forth between the experiences of the head fair administrator, Burnham, and the other directors along with the evils of Holmes, the reader begins to understand the world of tragedy and crime that lies behind the public’s excitement. From a devastating storm to the deaths of multiple builders, suspense builds as tragedy is followed by more tragedy. Through the use of contrasting ideas and ethical clauses highlighted by symbolisms and descriptions within the book, Erik Larson creates an underlying argument that one’s pursuit of pride and success often causes destruction and comes at the price of another’s well-being.

“ a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital than from a hunt, and that when the initials ‘C.C’ are placed before that hospital the words ‘ Charing Cross’ very naturally suggest themselves” Holmes makes these observations and is able to profile a man just from a stick that he left behind. It's not only Holmes’s intelligence that makes him and his story interesting but the way

But the secret behavior, the back stage behavior is something only the victims will see”. Larson shows us just that sort of behavior of Holmes throughout the book. “He cast himself as a demanding contractor” (Larson 67), this shows his front stage behavior. Then in another part of the story he shows his back stage behavior. “He could open the door and look in on Anna and give her a big smile, just to let her know this was no accident, then close the door again, slam it, and return to his chair to see what happens next” (Larson 296). Profiling these characteristics is an important way to catch them sooner and end up with fewer victims.

Holmes is a man who very

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s, The Hound of the Baskervilles, the protagonist is a great detective named Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes is known throughout Europe as being one of the greatest detectives, even being employed by the pope. Holmes is full of himself, often belittling his faithful agent, John Watson. The two were currently employed to uncover the case of the Curse of the Baskervilles and the death of Charles Baskervilles. This case is full of mystery and myth, and the two face many challenges. Nevertheless, the pair are determined to uncover the truth. Throughout the novel, Sherlock Holmes displays the character traits of cleverness, determination, and arrogance.