Dragon’s Teeth by Upton Sinclair, 1942, Won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943 

Dragon’s Teeth is the third book in a series of Lanny Budd novels by Upton Sinclair which chronicles world history from around 1914 until the beginning of the Cold War Era.  The Lanny Budd series includes the following novels: 

World's End, 1940

Between Two Worlds, 1941

Dragon's Teeth, 1942

Wide Is the Gate, 1943

Presidential Agent, 1944

Dragon Harvest, 1945

A World to Win, 1946

Presidential Mission, 1947

One Clear Call, 1948

O Shepherd, Speak!, 1949

The Return of Lanny Budd, 1953 

Sinclair used the Lanny Budd character to be an eye-witness to history and tell the story of what happened in Europe prior to World War I and on to World II.  Lanny was the illegitimate son of a Connecticut arms manufacturer, Robbie Budd, and his mother who was called “Beauty.”  She was an American beauty who had posed nude in France for some paintings before she and Robbie got together.  Robbie’s father would not let him marry Beauty because of her sketchy past, so she lived outside Cannes, France in a villa and that was where Lanny grew up.  Lanny had opportunities to travel through Europe and pick up all the languages so that he could move between the countries and cultures much like an insider.  This all sounds a bit like an old-fashioned “soap opera” but it makes a good vehicle for Sinclair to give his account of what transpired in Europe during the era. 

Dragon’s Teeth gives an account of the rise to power of Socialism, Communism and Fascism in Europe as a result of the bad way the reparations for WW I were imposed on Germany and Italy.  It begins with the 1929 stock market crash and ends in 1934 after the Nazi’s have solidified their power in Germany and Adolph Hitler has been elected Chancellor. Lanny has encounters with Mussolini and Hitler as well as many other important figures of the time. He also has Jewish friends who are beginning to see what is in store for them in Nazi Germany.  But the reader of Dragon's Teeth needs to start at the beginning of the Lanny Budd series in order to understand the characters and events that are described in the third novel. That means reading the  600- page World’s End and the equally long Between Two Worlds before launching into Dragon’s Teeth (630 pages).  For me, this meant about a year’s worth of reading.  You need to be interested in world history, Europe, World War I and II, and fighting Fascism to get through these three novels.   

Upton Sinclair does not tell this story from a neutral point of view.   He was, in fact, a devoted Socialist and social activist (some called him “muckraker”) known to many readers as the author of The Jungle in 1906.  In The Jungle he exposed the horrible conditions which surrounded the meatpacking industry in Chicago in the early 1900's and his novel actually led to improvements.  In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act were made laws in the U.S.  Sinclair ran unsuccessfully for election to the U.S. Congress in 1920 and 1922 as a Socialist.  He also ran as a Democrat for governor of California in 1934 but was not elected.  He gained close to 900,000 votes which suggests that he was a viable candidate. 

With some of Sinclair’s political point-of-view in mind, it is not hard to imagine that in the Lanny Budd series, he is a strong proponent of the working class both in Europe and the U.S. Lanny comes from a wealthy, WASPISH background but also becomes very sympathetic to the poor working people around him.  In the novels, Lanny has an uncle, brother to his mother, who is an avowed Communist and he teaches Lanny a great deal about the party and its crusade to help the worker.  Lanny never joins the Communist Party but he contributes to it and to his uncle’s campaign to be elected as a Communist to the French national assembly.  It seems evident that Sinclair tried to use his influence as a writer of historical fiction to promote the social causes that he had been committed to for decades.  One interesting point from Dragon’s Teeth is that Fascism was developed as a means of opposing and stopping Communism.  The wealthy industrialists of several European nations were threatened by the workers' movement happening in the 1920’s and 1930’s so they supported the Fascist movement.  Many believed that Hitler and Mussolini could put down the Communist movement and then be controlled and used by the industrialists.  Anti-Semitism became a useful tool for the Fascists in rallying middle class workers and in eliminating many of the wealthy Jewish bankers who were blamed for much of the hardship that had befallen Europe after WW I.   

Lanny is caught between the worlds of wealth, fashion and capitalism on the one hand and the plight of the working class and also the Fascist movement that he sees clearly as a threat to world.  By 1934 Lanny has married a woman who has inherited $24 million from her father.  She is not as sympathetic toward the plight of the working class or the Jews in Europe as is Lanny.  She clearly represents the wealthy class that does not become alarmed by the rise of Fascism.  Lanny, with his “Red” leanings, is now convinced of the great evil that will come from Fascism but he wrestles with the problem of what he can do about it.  He ends up trying to rescue his Jewish friend from the Dachau concentration in Germany as Dragon’s Teeth ends.  To do this he poses as a sympathizer of the Nazi’s, makes a deal with Herman Goering, and tries to use his wealth and status as a means of bringing about the liberation of his friend.  This makes for an engaging story. 

A point to keep in mind is that Sinclair was writing the Lanny Budd series as history was unfolding.  The series was begun in 1940 and Dragon’s Teeth came out in 1942.  Sinclair seems to be trying to warn the world, as he did in The Jungle that a great evil was being perpetrated on the world and that something needed to be done about it.  The title “Dragon’s Teeth” is explained at the end of the novel.  In Greek mythology, the teeth of a dragon, planted in soil, will grow into fully armed warriors.  Sinclair was giving a warning that the events surrounding World War I and the poor way reparations were inflicted on the losers of the war in Europe was the sowing of dragon’s teeth that would lead to horrible armed conflicts for the world.  At the time of the writing of Dragon’s Teeth, Sinclair did not know that Fascism would be defeated in Europe but he was making a good effort to warn readers of what was at stake.

 I am now faced with needing to read the next Lanny Budd novel, Wide is the Gate and the seven other novels, to find out what Lanny does as he tries to save the world from the dragon’s teeth.  Though Sinclair’s Lanny Budd series of historical novels has become “old history” and rather unknown in our present time, I believe the books are worth reading for enjoyment and for education about a past time that has greatly changed the world we live in.  Are dragon’s teeth still being sown that we will have to deal with in our future?