The Iron Heel

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

The novel opens with the four-line poem “The Play” (1889) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The poem compares Earth to a gloomy stage, and the speaker advises patience for the fifth act to comprehend the playwright’s full meaning.

The Foreword is narrated by Anthony Meredith, a scholar who lives 700 years in the future in a utopian society called the Brotherhood of Man. Meredith explains that the Everhard Manuscript, a journal found hidden in an oak tree, was written by Avis Everhard, the devoted wife of socialist revolutionary Ernest Everhard. The manuscript is the central narrative of the novel and describes events from 1912 to 1932. Avis’s narrative ends shortly before the start of the Second Revolt, a movement to overthrow the authoritarian regime known as the Oligarchy. Meredith believes that Avis intended to publish the manuscript after the revolt to honor her husband who recently died, but she was likely captured and executed. The rebellion was violently crushed, and multiple and equally bloody revolts followed. Meredith puzzles over how humanity could have allowed capitalism to spawn the Oligarchy, or “the Iron Heel,” a term coined by Ernest.