The Iron Heel Study Guide & Notes

The Iron Heel Plot Summary

Preview of The Iron Heel Summary:

Written in the early years of the twentieth century, The Iron Heel takes certain circumstances of the time, anchored in the tension between socialism and capitalism, and posits a two tiered future - a more immediate future of socialist revolution, and a centuries-distant, near-Utopian future in which that revolution has finally succeeded. In addition to exploring themes relating to the aforementioned tension, the book also explores the universality of human existence and one of that universality's manifestations - the belief in, and clinging to, self-righteousness as a form of self-preservation.

The novel begins with a forward from a twenty-seventh century academic named Anthony Meredith. He writes that the document about to be read (which he calls The Everhard Manuscript) is, while an accurate representation of the socio-political-economic situation of the time, something less than fully accurate when it comes to its portrayal of its central character, socialist revolutionary Ernest...
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