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For all of Heinlein's pride and faith in America, his stories often take more stock in the heroism of individual characters than the triumph of the collective whole. Heinlein's pre-war stories sometimes read like a 21st century retelling of David and Goliath - the little man battles to slay the giants of bureaucracy, incorporation and those devious forces that seek to rob individuals of their freedom. Heinlein remains skeptical, however, that the little man can be any average Joe. On the contrary, his heroes are lone geniuses, members of a mental if not social elite that manage to save the world for the masses. With the transition to juvenile fiction after World War II, Heinlein explores and masters a different kind of character: a cross between a Horatio Alger success story and a lonesome American cowboy that his young American readers can embrace.
Freedom and Free Enterprise
The Power of the Collective Mind and the Individual Elite
Real American Heroes Almost from the start, Heinlein's juvenile novels written in the late 40's and 50's are an ode to the common man. The heroes are boys and girls about the age of the intended reader, from all walks of life, who inevitably hit it big, save the world or revolutionize human life. The juvenile novels encourage cleverness, patience and grit as the traits of a space hero. The novel Starman Jones (1953) follows Maximilian Jones, a country orphan, who runs away from his stepparents and by his own intrigue ends up many years later as captain of a spaceship lost in outer space, drifting and discovering new planets and societies. There is a parallel between Jones and another classic American individual: Huck Finn. Like Huck, Jones is an orphan from an invisible class of society, who at least temporarily rises in status before choosing a more rugged way of life. Huck decides to head west, to the frontier, while Jones turns down even a chance at love to live the lonely but heroic life of the spaceman.
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| All book cover images courtesy of Michael Main's Illustrated List of Heinlein Fiction |
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The stain of monopolies on the American economy and democracy remains a thorn in Heinlein's side, and as totalitarianism grows abroad, Heinlein's writings reflect an anxiety that the American ideal of free enterprise will be threatened. In "Let There Be Light," published in Super Science Stories in May of 1940, two brilliant young scientists, Archie Douglas and Mary Lou Martin find a way to minimize the loss of power as electricity is turned into light. This "free power" causes a stir with the utility monopolies, who Mary Lou explains as profit-driven industrial monsters. She and Archie eventually decide to release the secret to the world, undercutting the monopolies. Heinlein's message here is certainly somewhat anti-capitalist, but his faith in the free enterprise of ideas is firmly rooted. In his next story, "The Devil Makes the Law" (Unknown, Sept. 1940), Heinlein pits a small-magic-business owner in a world where the big magic monopoly is threatening to take over. When the other small business owners join his struggle and take it to the statehouse, Heinlein writes that the statehouse "seemed to represent something tough in the character of the American people, the determination of free men to manage their own affairs." The small business owners eventually triumph, revealing the head of the monopoly to be one of the devil's accomplices. Heinlein's disgust with monopolies is evident, but he also reveals a great fear about a system that would have the power to break them.
An important facet of the American idea of the individual is the solution to a specific crisis of democracy: if the people rule, how can a mobocracy be avoided? Heinlein seems cynical that the individual can preserve himself in the face of a psychologically and technologically advanced society. The story of the revolutionary John Lyle in If This Goes On (Mar. 1940) examines the ease with which humans can be made to conform to a common thought or principle. Doubtless the propaganda movement in the western world during the 1940s influenced Heinlein to write about the brainwashed totalitarian society that John is fighting against. The revolutionary group, the Cabal proposes to recondition members of society with a propaganda film, but the plan is not without its difficulties. "We had to teach them to think for themselves," John says of the public. "We had to teach them to...reject dognma, be suspicious of authority, tolerate differences of opinion and make their own decisions -- types of mental processes almost unknown in the United States for many generations." When Heinlein revised the story and published it as Revolt in 2100, he included a debunker in the Cabal, an old man who accusses the Cabal as using the same "mind tinkering" techniques that the ruling class does. Heinlein describes the man as "an angry Mark Twain," and suddenly the rugged American individual is defined: "Free men aren't 'conditioned!" he says. "Free men are free because they are ornery and cussed and prefer to arrive at their own prejudices in their own way...We haven't fought, our brethren haven't bled and died, just to change bosses, no matter how sweet their motives." Heinlein took American individualism seriously, even if he did not think highly of the intelligence of most Americans.
The individual heroes in Heinlein's stories before World War II were largely members of an elite; if not economically elite, then of an abnormal intelligence. It seems that Heinlein thought social change would happen under the design and direction of an elite for the good of the masses, who would soon catch on. The Progressives of previous decades had championed this same idea, believing that trained experts were the best way to govern for the people. In fact, the hero of Methuselah's Children (Astounding Science Fiction, Jul-Sept. 1941) is Lazarus Long, born Woodrow Wilson Smith, who leads a society of superhumans bred for longevity who have incurred the wrath of the "normal" public. Working with Slayton Ford (an easy connection to Henry Ford, who shared a knack for organization), the leader of the regular people, Long devises a plan that will send the superhuman Families away from earth in self-sustaining spaceship communities. This plan proves successful, but little has been done to prove that the American individual can be any American. That proof will come later, when Heinlein's stories react to World War II
Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky (1955) is a perfect example of Social Darwinism at work, resulting in the triumph of the rugged individual. Earth's overpopulation has become desperate, so humans are sent through time-space gates en masse to new planets. On these new planets, the test is simply one of survival, and those who can get by on their wits in a totally new environment eventually rise to lead the new societies. Ingenuity never fails to be rewarded by Heinlein, especially when it comes from a single proud individual.
Still, the individual is rarely the only beneficiary of his actions. Heinlein's stories also exhibit a belief in individual contributions toward the advancement of the whole, most notably in conflicts. The soldiers of the Mobile Infantry in Starship Troopers (1959) certainly give up much of their individuality in order to serve, but by serving they have earned themselves indivdual rights, such as the right to vote. This idea -- sacrificing for the community -- went down much easier in 1959 than it might have in preceeding decades. As Franklin points out, John F. Kennedy would ask Americans what they could do for their country only a year later. The idea of the rugged individual as a loner was slowly petering out, but the idea of the individual as a hero to the masses was still very much alive, in and out of Heinlein's works.