The 1918 influenza pandemic enters the narrative through its toll on Chicago and the survival of Andrew Harkiss. The brief reference sets personal and urban loss beside a new international contest for raw materials, linking the pandemic’s aftermath to the ambitions of the timber business without suggesting that the disease caused those ambitions.

Chicago and the Pandemic

Andrew Harkiss says that he has recovered from the Spanish flu, which had killed Chicagoans in large numbers. The image of people dying “like chickens” conveys the scale of the city’s losses; Harkiss’s recovery distinguishes him from those who did not survive. The novel gives no further account of his illness or of the pandemic’s course in Chicago.

A World After Mass Death

The reference appears amid an account of national and global change. Newly independent but impoverished countries, formerly colonial holdings of European powers, are struggling to enter the competition for resources. Harkiss argues that forests, minerals, and oil make those countries valuable targets, and calls this opening a chance for his business. The juxtaposition places the pandemic’s human toll within a wider landscape of upheaval and opportunity, rather than presenting the epidemic as an isolated episode.

Recovery and Corporate Ambition

Harkiss’s return after illness is immediately followed by his confidence that the company can exploit changing global conditions. James Bardawulf then examines the forest notebooks Charley sent to Conrad and shares their information about tropical trees with Harkiss. The sequence connects recovery and renewed business activity to the company’s interest in resource extraction, while leaving the pandemic’s consequences beyond its mortality largely unelaborated.