A Monstrous Landscape

At the start of Chapter XX, we get a detailed description of the landscape that directly contrasts the busy atmosphere described when McTeague looks out onto Polk street in San Francisco. Norris introduces the natural world in a very daunting way. The reader feels out of place and out of touch with the seemingly untouched new setting. Quickly Norris reveals that the so called peaceful natural world is actually being taken over by the humans that establish themselves working as miners throughout the land. Contrasting the distant description of this nature, McTeague offers his perspective of living within the colossal mountains. He feels a definite sense of comfort living in a vast land that seems fitting for a brutish giant such as himself. As he describes the mountains in the distance he finds them similar to "his own nature, huge, strong, brutal in its simplicity" (Norris, 213). The "immensity" and "enormous power" that the mountains possess directly reflects McTeague's own blind strength and uncontrolled anger. The mountains make McTeague feel less out of place than he felt constantly in the presence of Trina and other humans in San Francisco. Norris introduces the landscape as something that ordinary people may find hard to connect with, but intentionally goes on to highlight McTeague's stability and pleasure with living amongst "a company of cowled giants" (Norris, 213). The mountains look much less like beasts to McTeague as he himself is described throughout the narrative as an uncontrollable monster when he enters his fits of rage. Norris juxtaposes these two descriptions of the new landscape to underline McTeague's own brutality and lack of place in normal society.