If He Were Alive Today

The United States has evolved in many ways and yet in many ways has stayed the same. When Jack London was a young adult, the country had practically hit its first bump in the road economically. People could not earn a living and desperate times looked as if they were settling in. London pulled stakes and went on a protest march to say enough was enough.

Not much has changed. If Jack London were here today, he would find that the America that he believed in is still very much alive. The Occupy Wall Street protests across the nation wield the same torch that he carried in 1894 for the Capitalists’ to take responsibility for their ‘invasive brothers of greed’ and set the comfortable American way of living for all Americans.  London was witness to many of the woes that are going on in the country today: homelessness, hunger, financial strife, the very things that spurred him to action in his own time.

It is difficult to predict whether or not he would be inspired by the efforts of those taking it upon themselves to shout out for the ‘little guy’ in our country as well as the rest of the world. Or he might hang his head in shame feeling that after all of this time the ‘little guy’ can still only be heard but not listened to.  It is the opinion of this writer that Mr. London would pull up stakes once again and march upon Wall Street, the White House and wherever else that those who should take notice hear the outcry of the backbone of America. His vision realized, the spirit of the underdog alive and well.

The Mexican by Jack London: A Literary Analysis

This story has Jack London’s passion, hate, and anger from start to finish. We have a young man ‘Rivera’ a loner by choice, going about in the cut and dry, doing what he feels any man would do to avenge an injustice of the worst degree. The selflessness in which Rivera makes his moves is unrivaled and the fear that the men of the Junta feel around him is not so much the look in his eyes but that their dedication to the revolution lacks substance in comparison. “Their ‘little mystery,’ their ‘big patriot’ p.1067; manages upward in cold, unflinching silence.

As the story progresses we hear the references by the men of the Junta saying how Rivera does not fear God, and that he is power above them. Naturalism takes its hold and we begin to understand that Rivera has no fear for a higher power but understands completely, because of his time on earth, that man has no choice but to deal with what nature gives him. It is not said what his life was like up until Roberts put him in the ring to take a pounding. We only know that he was hungry from the start and came back for more.

When you take the events of London’s life when he was growing up you see the struggles that he endured. He understood he was not given the privilege that others had and learned early on from his experiences that it would be up to no one but him to make his mark in the best way that represented who he was. It is said that Jack London had an uncanny knack for observing the world and we see that Philipe Rivera prefers to sit back and do the same. Being in the middle of the fracas yet the mind maintains a bird’s eye view. “Rivera’s way was different. Indian blood, as well as Spanish, was in his veins, and he sat back in a corner, silent, immobile, only his black eyes passing from face to face and noting everything.”p.1074

Rivera fought for the Mexican Revolution as London had fought for Socialism. At the end of the story the Mexican was brutally beaten but victorious yet was still hated and there was no hate lost on him either. Chance had given him a well-deserved victory but he knew that even a greater effort next time would ultimately be decided by impartial nature.

Sources:

Baym, Nina. Ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2007. Print

Naturalism: The Jack London Contribution

Jack London was a leading member of the American writers to embrace naturalism. During the 1890’s writers such as Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin and Mark Twain were in the process of creating of what some thought was a derivative of realism. The French novelist Emile Zola is credited with creating the diagnostic element of naturalism in which the writer is responsible for interpreting surface reality beyond any imaginative exaggerations of such. Darwinism was a heavy influence in probing the biological features of deterministic thought and Marxism where the social ills of society were dissected.

                London’s writing pertained to the former of the two, as Darwinism was gaining influence in its fourth decade and certainly on Jack London’s psyche. He was fascinated with man’s will to survive but moreover how that will surpassed all logic as its source is found in the animalistic instincts of humans, instincts that are not called upon but drawn out in extreme circumstances.”The Son of the Wolf” (1900) was his first volume of short stories and a clear definition of his idea of naturalism. Most often referred to as Jack’s contribution to naturalism are his Klondike stories “The Call of the Wild,” (1903) where some of the behavior of the humans in the story, are just as animalistic as the animals themselves.

In this context it is the truth. Both men and canines are subject to the laws of survival. Paragraph 6 line 4-8. “Man is merely a high order animal, and his survival, his progress toward a higher state, is dependent upon his adaptability. In the northland, environmental and hereditary traits are more forcefully evident because of the heightened struggle. And under stress, man shows his latent animal traits – his atavism – and reverts to that state.”

                In writing from the perspective of a dog London found a way to stream his experiences growing up on the fence of racism and social injustice where he was witness to people struggling to overcome the extreme circumstances that life had dealt them. He viewed people in terms of their obstacles, difficulties and hunger for independence. “The other dogs each teach Buck lessons about his own survival. They also reflect the Darwinian adaptation buck increasingly exhibits.” (81) Tribulations of his own and his innate ability to rise above his humble beginnings gave London a clear and innate formulation of naturalism.           Naturalism in retrospect might possibly have not been as popular and accepting without the works of Jack London.

Sources:

Reesman, Jeanne C. Jack London’s Racial Lives; A Critical Biography. University of Georgia Press, 2009. Print.

Matterson, Stephen. The American Novel . Educational Broadcasting Corporation, 2007. Web. 26 Nov. 2011.

Wilcox, Earl J. The Kipling of the Klondike: Naturalism in London’s Early Fiction. www.jacklondons.net, 2011. 26 Nov. 2011.

London's Calling

      There is a book written by Malcolm Gladwell titled “Outliers”, where good ole’ American gumption is laid by the wayside. It is a book about how certain events and situations, occurred in people’s lives that catapulted them into incredible wealth and notoriety. How does someone become a Bill Gates? There is no way that one chooses that specific course in life because we do not live in a perfect world. There is a term in statistics called “outlier”. An outlier appears because of changes in its environmental performance, chaotic circumstances, human error, natural divergences and unconventionalities.

                At his death in 1916, Jack London was the bestselling author in America. Being birthed in 1876 in San Francisco shantytown U.S.A. as John Griffith Chaney on January the twelfth, with the odds of survival stacked against him, failure awaited another gift. Before leaving the womb Jack London was sired a bastard as his father deserted his mother with the reason being the child she carried inside of her should be aborted. Often labeled a spiritualist, Florence Wellman Chaney had found the end of her rope and decided that it was time for her exit as well. She overdosed with a slight admixture and attempted to suicide with a bullet to the brain. For all of her effort she lived achieving a severe head wound and furthering her distorted sense of reality. When Jack was born he was turned over to Virginia Prentiss, an African American whom had been freed from slavery. Virginia and her family referred to him as “Jack” and when his mother married John London late in the same year of 1876, John “Jack” Griffith Chaney became Jack London. John London adopted baby Jack.

                Eventually the family wound up in Oakland and when Jack had finished elementary school, he went to work in a cannery for a few years until the age of fifteen when he began sailing the bay as an oyster pirate. As he got older Jack became a member of the California Fishing Patrol opting to jump the fence and go after the pirates he’d been with. Consequently, he was introduced to alcohol in which he drank his share and then some, and then some more. There was a decision made early in his fishing patrol career that there were better jobs to be had. He signed on to a sealing schooner and when he returned in 1893 entered a writing contest, won, and the San Francisco Morning Call published his first prize winning story, “Typhoon off the Coast of Japan.” Give credit here to his insatiable desire to read books, observe his surroundings and worldly experience. Not only those, but know that it is notable that the second and third awards went to students at California and Stanford universities.” Chairman K. London, 1922. In the same year, America fell into a depression and jobs were few and far between. Young London soaked in the consequences of an inept economy and joined Coxey’s Army in what is known as the March of the Unemployed where the jobless traveled across the country to protest in front of the White House. Jack didn’t make it to D.C. but the experience bolted him to strong socialist edge that stuck to him through his lifetime.

                A spell in the Northern Arctic in search of gold was next for London and the time spent there nearly ended his life. The near death experience pushed him to the decision of becoming a writer. The words seemed to pour forth and his production in writing escalated into the prolific. In 1899 Jack London became what is considered a professional writer with the publication of “The Man on the Trail: A Klondike Christmas” in Overland Monthly v. 33 Jan. 1899, 36-40. At the turn of the century and fifteen stories later, Jack London was $156.50 richer. London proclaimed that he continued to write at least a thousand words a day. Jump forward three years and “The Call of the Wild,” London’s most famous work sold 10,000 copies on opening day, he was twenty seven years old

                In the year that followed, London became a war correspondent for the Hearst Syndicate in the Russo-Japanese War and published his second most famous novel, “The Sea Wolf.” He went on to lecture about the country’s need for socialism, maintain his dedication to alcoholism and continue to write up until his death at the age of forty in November of 1916 after resigning from the Socialist Party in the same year. Influencing the likes of Ernest Hemingway and aspiring young writers up to the present, Jack London survived most of the greatest odds, even those self-inflicted, and set the bar for what it takes to be a best-selling writer.

Sources:

Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown and Co., c2008. Print

Hari, Johann. “Jack London’s Dark Side.” Slate. 15 Aug. 2010. Web. 12 Nov. 2011.

Wichlan, Daniel J. The Fiction of Jack London: A Chronological Biography. www.jacklondons.net, 26 Nov. 2011.