Sanity and Insanity Theme Analysis

The Devil in the White City consists of two main storylines: one about the life of H.H. Holmes, the notorious serial killer, the other about the creation of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. The mere fact that these two stories are being told together encourages us to compare them and compare their characters. When we do so, we notice a few things. First, there is some overlap between the two storylines; for instance, Holmes profits from the World’s Fair, killing tourists who come to Chicago for the event and even naming his building the World’s Fair Hotel. Second, and more disturbingly, the author of the book, Erik Larson, suggests that there are similarities between Holmes, a murderous psychopath, and the men involved in building the World’s Fair, such as Daniel Burnham, Mayor Harrison, and Frederick Law Olmsted. (Larson even notes that Harrison and Holmes both have vivid blue eyes, another sign that we’re meant to compare the “guilty” and the “innocent” characters in his book.) Both Holmes and the builders of the World’s Fair are incredibly organized, efficient, and ambitious. They excel at persuading others, whether with flattery, bribery, or, at times, point-blank frankness.

The similarity that Larson notes between sanity and insanity has many implications. In Holmes’s case, it makes his actions seem especially terrifying. Larson writes, in a darkly humorous tone, that Holmes, like Chicago itself, wastes nothing: Chicago’s slaughterhouses, which are hugely important to the city’s economy, use every part of the animal, while Holmes, who loves the smell of the slaughterhouses, sells the dead bodies of his victims to medical schools for a huge profit. Larson’s observation is disturbing because we recognize that a serial killer’s behavior isn’t altogether different from behavior we see every day.

The connections that Larson makes between sanity and insanity also shows us that the ambitions of the people who design the World’s Fair, such as Burnham and Olmsted, border on insanity. Burnham’s plan to build an entire city in two years is seemingly impossible. At times, only his irrational, or even insane, determination allows him to proceed.

This doesn’t mean that Eric Larson is equating Burnham’s actions and Holmes’s — Burnham, after all, is a loving father and husband, who misses his family throughout his two years working on the World’s Fair. On the contrary, the comparisons Larson draws between Burnham and Holmes are unsettling because we know that these two men are unlike one another, and therefore, any similarities whatsoever come as a shock. Ultimately, Larson may be suggesting that there are no inherently sane or insane behaviors, only sane or insane desires. Burnham and Holmes are ambitious, driven, and intelligent, thus they approach their projects—one incredible, the other appalling—in much the same way.