Many critics of American literature have admired the breadth and vitality of Frank Norris's The Octopus. Most of these same critics have also pointed out what they consider grave philosophical inconsistencies in the novel. Walter F. Taylor finds that Norris varies between the values of free will and determinism. Ernest Marchand notes that he “wavers between the idea of impersonal force for which good and evil have no meaning and the idea of a triumphant good for which the universe itself stands sponsor.” The close of the novel has been particularly attacked. V. L. Parrington considers that in it Norris abandons an amoral attitude and takes refuge in a moral order. Charles C. Walcutt regards it as an appeasement of the emotions in which “the thoughtful reader is bound after a time to feel that he “has been swindled of a solution.”

I wish to show that much of this criticism of The Octopus results from a lack of understanding of Norris's handling of Presley, one of the chief characters in the novel. It is important to note that most critics identify Presley's pronouncements with Norris. Robert E. Spiller, who makes many of the above objections, states that Norris had no consistent position, for he “shifts with his poet Presley from […] mechanistic determinism to mystical theism and back.” Marchand regards him as a “vehicle of the author's emotions and ideas.” Taylor clearly presents this conception of the misleading quality of Presley: that “the reader, who has received so much of the story through the medium of Presley's earlier, moral point of view, is nowhere prepared for this sudden change of front, so that the large optimism of the concluding pages […] has […] the disconcerting effect of a verdict given against the evidence.”

The heart of the novel lies in Norris's similar development of three major characters: the poet Presley, the rancher Annixter and the ascetic shepherd Vanamee. In all three the process is one of achieving a “larger view,” that is, a casting aside of personal values and the attainment of a philosophical perspective. By this means Presley learns the truth of good and evil, Annixter of love and Vanamee of life and death.