The Devil in the White City puts together the stories of Daniel Burnham and Henry H. Holmes. I find each character interesting in his own way. Burnham designed buildings with his partner John Root, his firm built the first structure called a skyscraper. Its astonishing that he was able to lead the fair to completion in so short period of time. Then there was Holmes, himself something of an architect, building a hotel ,a building designed for murder. I found it odd that both these men were living at the same time in history with such different motivations. They were both so intelligent and groundbreaking for their time. They helped push the American public into the 20th century. They did this with their outrageous ideas and dreams.It was very bizarre how the author intertwined their lives indirectly.
The author didn’t use the storytelling to his advantage. The issue is that the story of the architect is the far more intriguing and entertaining. With that being said Larson piles the story with such unnecessary details causing the readers to be bored fast.
In contrast, the story of the killer is equally boring.Larson’s use of boring storytelling makes the readers disconnect from the text. Larson should of added more detailers of the murder’s life and less of Burnhams. Readers are attracted to that mysterious dark side of the killer. While they are bored by the endless details Larson writes of the structural details. The details make the novel seem endless. This distracts from the essence of the book.Furthermore, neither the architect nor that of the killer are presented as very interesting characters, though the killer has more potential to be the great story. The parts on the architect fill the pages with endless detail.The strong account of the characters of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago add emphasis slightly to one another however.
These characters in some weird way tie into each other. Both undertake obstacles ,politically entangled delays, labor unrest, an economic panic, and a harsh Chicago winter. Also the architectural challenges, Burnham and his colleagues, including Frederick Law Olmsted, produced their festive idea in just over two years. The fair was a city unto itself, the first to make world scale use of alternating current to light its 200,000 incandescent bulbs. Spectacular engineering feats included Ferris’s gigantic wheel, intended to “out-Eiffel Eiffel,” and, ominously, the latest example of Krupp’s artillery, “breathing of blood and carnage.” Dr. Holmes, a frequent visitor to the fair, was a consummate swindler and lady-killer who secured his victims’ trust through “courteous, audacious rascality.” Most were young women, and estimates of their total ranged from the nine whose bodies were recovered to nearly 200. Holmes represented darkness in the fair city. The evil amongst all the good happening around him. He used a positive situation to his advantage an unexpecting place for a killer.Larson does a great job expressing this “ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black.”
