Chapter 2 - Birth, Fire, and Rebirth: Edward Payson Roe’s Barriers Burned Away and the Invention of Chicago Literature

Summary

This chapter considers how Edward Payson Roe’s Barriers Burned Away – the first novel set in Chicago that dealt with the city as an urban environment rather than as a frontier settlement – examined topics that would become part of the Chicago literary tradition. These include the moral implications of a market economy that enriched some but left others in poverty, the role of conspicuous consumption in defining the city’s social hierarchy, and the question of whether those who arrived in the city in search of success could make a place for themselves without sacrificing their principles.