Jack London
Jack London was born under the name John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco, California. He was deserted by his father and raised by his mother and stepfather in Oakland, California. He took the surname of his stepfather, London, and used it throughout his life. He quit school at the age of 14 to explore the world and live an adventurous life. London became an experienced sailor and traveled all over the world. He later attended the University of California at Berkeley for a year before giving school up to seek a fortune in the Klondike.# After his return from the Klondike, London's financial situation was grim. He wrote to magazines asking if they would accept his stories from the Klondike and was constantly rejected. When the Atlantic Monthly, a premier magazine at the time, finally accepted him he was given great self-confidence. He wrote a thousand words per day, six days per week.# From this point forward London "had set not only the routine but also the style that would remain essentially unchanged throughout the rest of his career."# London went on to become the wealthiest writer of his time and a great American author#. One of his greatest works is The Call of the Wild. Jack London's The Call of the Wild is a
story that uses the main character, Buck a dog, as a parallelism to humans. Through Buck, Jack London reveals things about himself and every human being. At the closing of this novel the reader is found with a great admiration and compassion for Buck and can even relate to him yet he is still an animal. The success of The Call of the Wild is due to the message that is slowly revealed. The novel begins as what seems to be an adventurous dog story but at the end the reader finds himself sympathizing with the dog. Through Buck, London parallels human emotion and the reader can relate and share in the human feelings that are experienced by this not-so-human dog. "His father, Elmo, a huge St. Bernard, had been the Judge's inseparable companion, an Buck bad fair to follow in the way of his father. He was not so large - he weighed only one hundred and forty pounds - for his mother, Shep, had been a Scotch shepherd dog."# This description of Buck is hardly human but by applying situations in which Buck thinks, feels emotion, reasons, or fights to persevere Jack London makes him as human as any other person. Bucks life is a deep is parallelism to that of man's. There are seven stages in which this is shown. At the beginning of the story, Buck is an average pet dog and goes about life quite complacently. This is the first stage, a stage of innocence in Buck's life that can be compared with the birth and infancy of any human. The second stage is when Buck is sold by the gardener to be taken north. It is on his trip that he is savagely beaten and disciplined. He realizes his place in society and learns and respects the rules.# "He had never been struck by a club in his life a
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Approximate Word count = 1142
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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