McTeague: A Story of San Francisco

McTeague’s “ambition” and “dream” is to own “a huge gilded tooth, a molar with enormous prongs, something gorgeous and attractive” (4). It is his “one unsatisfied longing” (131). He is stunned one evening to find that Trina has bought it for him. When he puts it in his room, it looks “immense,” “tremendous,” and “overpowering,” and “everything seemed dwarfed” beside it (147). As opposed to the “cheap German gilt impostures,” this French gilt shines “bright as a mirror […] as if with a light of its own” (148). McTeague wonders what his rival—“that other dentist, that poser, that rider of bicycles, that courser of greyhounds” (148)—would say if he were to see it; he is pleased to imagine that he “would suffer veritable convulsions of envy” (148). After losing his practice, he takes it with him to his and Trina’s smaller apartment, where the tooth sits in the corner of the room. It follows him still to Zerkow’s house where, “enormous and ungainly,” Trina uses it to hold “greasy dishes” when she needs them “out of the way” (337).

The golden tooth, which shines as if with its own light, represents the draw of gold and riches. Its monstrosity and ungainliness illustrates the overwhelming effect it has on characters’ lives. That it looks absurdly large in the McTeagues’ room—it is “the tooth of a Brobdingnag” (288)—shows how unbefitting it is in their lives and the futility of their attempt to rise in the hierarchy. Thus, McTeague is offended when the Other Dentist, upon hearing of their misfortune, asks if McTeague will sell it; McTeague tells the Other Dentist that he can’t “make small” of him or take from him the symbol of his status. Later, however, when McTeague approaches the Other Dentist to sell it, the rival is tempted to refuse, calling it vulgar. The Other Dentist’s purchasing the tooth as a favor despite its vulgarity once again illustrates the distinction between those with socioeconomic power and those who strive to achieve it.

One of McTeague’s most cherished items is his concertina, on which he knows how to play only “six lugubrious airs” that “always carried him back to the time when he was a car-boy at the Big Dipper Mine in Placer County” (2). Playing his concertina is one of his favorite Sunday afternoon activities, and he plays throughout the novel, including on his excursions with Trina. When his marriage begins to deteriorate, he “find[s] solace” in playing those six airs over and again. After he is forced to stop practicing dentistry and Trina arranges to auction off their belongings, she cannot convince him to sell his concertina. However, she sells it after McTeague disappears with her savings. McTeague comes across it again by accident when he is working for a music store; he offers a payment on it and swears he will obtain the rest of the money from Trina. That night he performs his most brutal act when he beats her to death in the cloakroom of the kindergarten.

The complexity and sentimentality of music make McTeague’s concertina one of the few items that solidifies the line between McTeague’s humanity and his animalism. Though “stupid” and knowing only six songs, McTeague loves his concertina for the memories it represents and uses it to calm himself when upset. This ability to control his animal instincts disappears with the concertina; it is Trina’s decision to sell it that leads him to kill her. It is significant that McTeague returns to Placer County shortly after being reunited with the concertina, which reminds him of his time there. However, when fleeing to Placer County, the landscape of which represents the center of humanity’s basest and most dangerous forces, McTeague leaves the concertina, a symbol of his humanity, behind. This suggests the loss of the final shreds of his humanity.

Characters in McTeague are often described as being like children. The effect is that characters appear small and vulnerable, their pursuits silly and futile. Old Grannis and Miss Baker cannot speak to each other because they are “seized with a great embarrassment, the timidity of a second childhood” (15); at the party in McTeague’s “Dental Parlors” the night Trina wins the lottery, they speak “[l]ike two children” who are “awkward, constrained, tongue-tied with embarrassment” (116-17). Trina, who has “the half-open eyes of a little baby” (23), visits McTeague so he can fix the tooth she broke when she fell out of a swing. At first McTeague has “that intuitive suspicion of all things feminine—the perverse dislike of an overgrown boy” (23). When he proposes, he speaks “with the unreasoned simplicity and directness of a child” (33), and he continues to be taken by “the charm of the little girl” (55). Trina is ashamed for kissing McTeague because she “acted like a bad girl” (90). Trina’s excitement over winning the lottery is like “the gaiety of a child with a new and wonderful toy” (111); later, McTeague opens the box containing the golden tooth Trina gives him with “the joyful curiosity of an overgrown boy” (147).

These descriptions mirror characters’ childlike behavior. As they walk to the picnic, Trina and McTeague engage in childlike conversation, making statements like, “Bathing’s good for you” (68). After their marriage, Trina begs her mother not to leave, crying, “Oh, mamma, I—I’m ’fraid” (177). McTeague pinching Trina when he is angry with her is distinctly childlike. Even Trina’s embarrassment with public displays of affection suggests childlike innocence.

Nowhere is the likening of adults to children clearer than in the “companion pieces” in the McTeagues’ married apartment: one, “I’m Grandpa,” depicts a little boy dressed as an old man, and the other, “I’m Grandma,” depicts the same of a little girl. These pictures represent what the McTeagues themselves are—vulnerable, unknowing children who, despite their attempts to be grown up, are woefully unprepared for the seriousness and danger of the world.

Interestingly, when actual children appear in McTeague, they are almost grotesque, from the children at the McTeagues’ wedding who stare “ox-like” and “expressionless” at Miss Baker to Trina’s younger brother August, who petulantly argues with his father over an exploded tugboat and wets himself in the theater. The unnerving quality of the children in McTeague makes the adults’ insufficiency more evident.

Trina’s $5,000 lottery win is the catalyst that interrupts the characters’ ordinary lives, causing them to make hasty, desperate decisions that ultimately bring their downfall. Trina wins $5,000 by chance after Maria Macapa coerces her into buying a ticket while visiting McTeague’s “Dental Parlors.” At first incredulous that such an extraordinary thing should happen to her, she suddenly wonders why she should not win $5,000. She is overtaken by “a great thrill of gladness” (111). Trina herself acknowledges that her winning the lottery triggers her hoarding; feeling guilty for refusing McTeague money, she states, “Since I won in the lottery I’ve become a regular little miser” (210). Her winning the lottery is also what inspires Marcus’s hate for McTeague. Marcus chastises himself for “throw[ing] five thousand dollars out of the window” (129) by giving up Trina for McTeague and complains about being “soldiered out of” the money (141). His anger and jealousy inspire him to report McTeague for practicing without a license, which triggers the McTeagues’ financial ruin and fires the feud that leads to both his and McTeague’s deaths. In Naturalist novels, characters’ mundane lives are disrupted by an event that brings out their animal instincts and sets them on the path toward their destinies. In McTeague the repercussions of Trina’s lottery win touch all characters, revealing their darkest innermost drives.