Together the three novels were to follow the journey of a crop of wheat from its planting in California to its ultimate consumption as bread in Western Europe.

[2] As Joseph McElrath observes in his analysis of the novel, this passage captures the attitude that Laura will maintain through the final chapter of the book: "She will have 'the only kind of love' described here.

Laura, left all alone in her huge house through the day and night, feels lonely and neglected and begins to discover that she needs more from her husband than his money.

Greedy and crazed with power, Jadwin tries to control the forces of natures and drives the price of wheat up so high that people around the world, including his best friend Mr. Cressler, are financially destroyed.

The couple decides to leave Chicago and head west, and the reader is left with the feeling that the Jadwins, despite the horrors they’ve just been through, have found happiness at last.

Biographer Joseph R. McElrath writes in Frank Norris Revisited that The Pit was widely hailed by its generation’s readers to be “the Great American Novel".

Having appeared just months after Norris' death, critics took the opportunity in reviews of The Pit to mourn the tragic loss of the great "American Zola,"[14] so the novel received much more attention than any of the work that came before it.

The New York Herald went so far as to say that "in The Pit [sic] he is more the prophet of a new dispensation" and "becomes distinctly the founder of a new school, which may preclude a French Norris".

[15] Though the majority of reviewers praised the novel, there were still an unsatisfied few who criticized Norris' hurried writing and his storyline’s lack of insight and originality.

Often identified as The Pit’s main flaw is the love plot that centers on Laura and Curtis Jadwin’s marital troubles.

Proponents of this view argue that the tumultuous Laura-Jadwin relationship does not synthesize well with the other business plot of the story and that it ultimately detracts from the novel’s structural and thematic cohesion.

Laura’s artistic tastes, her dramatic roles, and her huge prison of a house constitute a rich symbolic key to her character and to her conflicts.

[17] The Publishers' Weekly consistently cited the novel as the "best-selling book in the United States" throughout that year, and advertised it as one of a select few "[b]ooks with blood in their veins".

On February 10, 1904, The Pit, an original play adapted from the book by Channing Pollock and produced by William A. Brady, opened in the Lyric Theater on Broadway.

The New York Times expressed mixed opinions of the four-act drama in an article titled “'The Pit' – 'Tis Pitty; And Pity 'Tis, 'Tis True That Wilton Lackaye Scores".

An anti-monopoly social commentary, the movie tells the story of a greedy commodities gambler who corners the wheat market and consequently forces poverty onto all those who can no longer afford to buy bread.

Norris' compelling portrayal of the Chicago Board of Trade also inspired the creation of Pit: Exciting Fun for Everyone, a card game by Parker Brothers, in 1904.

The game includes 65 playing cards on which either a bull, a bear, or one of seven different commodities available for exchange (corn, barley, wheat, rye, flax, hay, or oats) is pictured.

It simulates the nonstop action of an actual trading pit by challenging players to corner the market by collecting all nine cards of one commodity.

[22] The plot-line that follows Curtis Jadwin’s exploits in wheat speculation and attempt to corner the market was inspired by the true story of Bull trader Joseph Leiter.

[24] The story that was released serially in the Saturday Evening Post was titled The Pit: A Romance of Chicago and was significantly shorter than that of the published book.