TOW #8: Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (IRB Post)

While I am still not very far in The Devil in the White City, by author Erik Larson, a credible author due to his renowned reputation in the literary world, I have come to realize something.  Although nothing has changed, for example, the context is still about how a serial killer used Chicago’s World Fair to cover up his tracks and how his life coincided with Daniel Burnham’s and the book is still about how that collision of lives happened, I have come to see that Larson’s purpose is more than just entertaining his audience of young adults and adults and telling the story.  In addition to those two purposes, Larson also wanted to inform his audience of what happened.  He proves that by going into detail about the minute of aspects while at the same time using those same aspects to further articulate bigger pictures, such as the childhood of Herman Webster Mudgett, the boy who grow up to become a mass murderer.  Larson is able to accomplish his purpose of informing his audience about the events that took place in 1893, as well as events before and after, by basically telling a story in past tense.  An example of this is from pages 37 to 44, although the past tense is present throughout the book.  It is in these seven pages that the readers learn who Mudgett was before he changed his name to Holmes.  In these pages, Larson does more than just say where he was from but includes little mini stories  of events that strongly impacted how Mudgett would turn from a somewhat innocent little boy into a killer.  Along with these stories, many of which Homes mentioned himself in his memoirs, had Larson’s own personal interpretations of what could have possibly happened at the portrayed events.  By including so much background information about not only Mudgett’s past but of Burnham’s life and other little details, Larson accomplishes his purpose to inform his audience of what happened while also entertaining them and telling the story.  

H. H. Holmes Formerly Herman Webster Mudgett

 

 

http://www.examiner.com/article/haunting-castle-of-h-h-holmes-at-screams-the-park-rosemont-attraction