American Rust: A Novel

When Isaac ventures into the wild on his own, he packs the stolen cash and a knife, imagining it will come in handy at some point. Isaac, however, is not a hunter like Poe, and his relationship with the knife is theoretical rather than practical. Poe could likely use the knife to kill and skin prey, but Isaac doesn’t have those skills, so the knife is more of a prop than a useful tool. On the one occasion that the knife would come in handy—defending himself against the Baron—he chooses not to use it, and he loses his entire nest egg.

The knife as a preindustrial implement represents a stark divide between regional economies, between, for example, the Rust Belt and Silicon Valley. While Isaac’s intellectual talents may flourish in California’s Bay Area, those skills are about as useful as conflict management when confronting a wild bear. A knife in the hands of Isaac English is utterly useless, and it embodies the similar uselessness of an entire workforce whose skills have become antiquated and unwanted.

A motif of extremism—specifically, white supremacy—plays into the novel’s focus on economic deprivation. As Isaac begins his westward trek, he encounters an acquaintance from school and another young man tagging a retaining wall with spray paint. The unknown youth sports a shaved a head and a white supremacist tattoo. Isaac notes a correlation between the rise in white supremacy and the closing of the steel mills. In prison, Poe meets a gang of white supremacists. The sharp racial divides inside Fayetteville suggest a connection between economic distress and racial extremism, and while other factors certainly come into play—ideology, the appeal of a charismatic leader, the emotional benefits of belonging to a like-minded community—poverty and lack of purpose can make individuals vulnerable for recruitment by extremist groups. While the young man Isaac encounters may be more of a dilletante, claiming membership in a group he doesn’t really understand, the recurring motif—the white supremacist group in prison, Isaac’s observation that extremism is “not unusual” these days—suggest the author sees a larger trend.