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features of the English novels of the 19th century
critical response jack london
features of 19th century novels in england
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During the turn of the 19th century, a grandiose shift occurred in literature from realism to naturalism form of writing. One of the many authors involved in this movement included Jack London. London developed his short stories collection, Son of the Wolf, around this theme. In a Far Country is a short story in Son of the Wolf collection in which London talks about two lethargy men, Cater Weatherbee and Percy Cuthfert, who come from different realms of life. They are on a journey to the North near the Yukon River in Alaska searching for gold. On their way, they decide to abandon their team and live in a cabin during the Arctic winter. In the beginning, the two men cooperate by staying hygienic and conserving food. But over time they start experiencing a sense of insecurity with each other. They discontinue staying clean, saving food, and keeping order. Overtime they face physical and more importantly emotional breakdown. The disintegration between the two men eventually leads each of them into killing the other over sugar (par. 1-76). By elaborating on the physical and psychological struggle alongside nature’s indifference in the wilderness, London illustrates the superficial cooperation and contention between human beings in a civilization. By using literary tools like vivid imagery, London enhances the perception of the characters’ physical conditions to explain the cause of physical sickness. For example, London describes the situation by saying, “The cabin became a pigpen, and never once were the beds made or fresh pine boughs laid underneath” (par. 47). Weatherbee and Cuthfert have been careless ands have made the cabin into a dumpster. The two men fail to recognize the need to stay clean which results in them getting sic... ... middle of paper ... ...Short Stories. N.p.: Wolf, 1975. 206. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas Votteler. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale Research, 1990. 282-90. Print. 0 New Edit Copy Delete Parenthetical Reference Have a Question? Short Work in an Anthology "'To Build a Fire.'" Short Stories for Students. Ed. Ira Mark Milne. Vol. 7. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. 335-41. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 26 Mar. 2011. 0 New Edit Copy Delete Parenthetical Reference Have a Question? Book, Reprinted Material Watson, Charles N., Jr. "Jack London Up from Spiritualism." The Haunted Dusk: American Supernatural Fiction. Ed. Howard Kerr, John W. Crowley, and Charles L. Crow. N.p.: University og Georgia, 1983. 191-207. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas Votteler. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale Research, 1990. 293-96. Print.
As the sweltering, hot sun signified the start of a scorching afternoon, a young boy lay in the fields harvesting vegetables for another family. He had been enslaved to perform chores around the house for the family, and was only given very few privileges. While his stomach throbbed with pangs of hunger, he continued cooking meals for them. After the family indulged in the cozy heat from the fireplace, he was the one to clean the ashes. Despite his whole body feeling sore from all the rigorous work he completed, the young boy had been left alone to suffer. As months passed by, he desired independence. He wanted to cook his own food, make his own fire, harvest his own plants and earn money. The lad soon discovered that he needed faith and courage to break away from his restricted environment. When put in a suppressive situation, every person has the aspiration to escape the injustice. This is what Harrison Bergeron and Sanger Rainsford do to liberate themselves from the external forces that govern their lives. Harrison, the main character of “Harrison Bergeron” written by Kurt Vonnegut, is a strong, fourteen year old boy whose talents have been concealed by the government. Growing up in an environment where equality has restricted people’s thinking, Harrison endeavors to change society’s views. Rainsford, the main character of “The Most Dangerous Game” written by Richard Connell, is a skilled hunter who believes that animals were made to be hunted; he has no sympathy for them. Stranded on island with a killer chasing him, he learns to make rational choices. While both Harrison and Ranisford are courageous characters, Rainsford’s prudence enables him to overpower his enemy, whereas Harrison’s impulsive nature results in him being ...
“To Build a Fire”, a short story written by Jack London, is viewed as a masterpiece of naturalist fiction. “To Build a Fire” features a miner and his wolf-dog companion who are traveling in the Yukon Territory to meet fellow miners. The miner is the protagonist and the wolf-dog companion is the foil because the wolf-dog plays off of the traits of the protagonist. The central theme of “To Build a Fire” concerns the struggle of man versus nature. “To Build a Fire” tells of a man traveling in the extreme cold through the Yukon Territory. Before heading out on his journey, the man is warned not to travel alone in the extreme cold, but he travels any way. The man faces many hardships while on his journey. Despite his effort to stay warm and survive, the man freezes to death before he reaches his destination. The wolf-dog in the story studies the situation and knows that traveling is not a good idea. The wolf-dog stays with the miner until his death. Once the miner dies, the wolf-dog finishes his journey by heading off to the miners’ camp on his own. The most argued point of this short story is the reason for the protagonist’s death. Even though the miner in “To Build a Fire” eventually panics after being unable to start a fire, he struggles in the wilderness of the Yukon Territory and ultimately finds his death due to ignorance caused by a lack intuition and imagination.
As can be seen, the critic Philo M. Blake, Jr.’s opinion of Jack London’s protagonists in the novel The Call of the Wild is not justified. Time and time again, from the incident at the bar, to winning the impossible bet, to risking his own life in the rushing rapids, Buck displayed noble qualities such as loyalty, bravery, and selflessness. In spite of rejecting the culture of civilization and being labeled a “beast” by many, Buck ideally reflects the spirit of true heroism through his courage, noble qualities, and exceptional
Throughout the novel The Call of the Wild Buck is thrown into a vast amount of obstacles. Buck is a half Saint Bernard and Half Sheepdog who is stolen from a home in California. He was then sold as a sled dog in the arctic where he would begin his adventure. Buck undergoes many challenges that can be related to human beings. The two experiences that everyone goes through are love and death. According to Jack London in The Call of the Wild, love and death are portrayed as bitter, sweet, and deadly.
Fang the main character is a gray cub wolf. Wolves in this novels were used
The Call Of Jack London During a time when man had gold fever, and philosophical views plagued the minds of many, one man took these views and turned them into great outdoor adventures. John “Jack” Griffith London, a twentieth century author, wrote The Call of the Wild, other novels, and short stories that depict the philosophical views of the time and added adventure to them by using his own life experiences that carried thousands of men including himself to the Klondike in search of gold. In Winter 1876 San Francisco John and Flora London shared the joy of childbirth in the celebration of their only child together. They named the baby boy John Griffith London, or Jack for short.
The short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London is a comprehensive story that tackles the struggles of a newcomer trying to survive a day in the Yukon with very harsh and cold weather. The man travels with a big native husky and tries many times to build a fire but fails due to his inadequate personality. The man repeatedly lets his ignorance and arrogance dictate his decisions which soon leads to his demise. The theme of the short story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London is that being ignorant, arrogant and foolish can lead to bad decisions.
Physical surroundings (such as a home in the countryside) in works of literary merit such as “Good Country People”, “Everyday Use”, and “Young Goodman Brown” shape psychological and moral traits of the characters, similarly and differently throughout the stories.
In John Krakauer’s novel Into The Wild, the reader follows the life of a young man who, upon learning of his father’s infidelity and bigamy, seems to go off the deep end, isolating himself by traveling into the wild country of Alaska, unprepared for survival, where he died of starvation at 67 pounds.
Jack London is the name you can hear everywhere, his writing appealed to millions of people all around the world. London was an American novelist and short-story writer, who wrote passionately about questions of life and death, surviving. The writer had a lot of adventures, experienced the life at sea, or in Alaska, or in the fields and factories of California, all of these influenced his writing style. Jack London descended from the family of his mother Flora and astrologer and journalist William Chaney. The writer has got his education by himself and with help of a librarian Ina Coolbrith - he has a passion to read books at public libraries. Later in life, Jack finally graduated from high school in Oakland. Jack London's work carrier was so variable, he has been a laborer, factory worker, and oyster pirate on the San Francisco Bay, member of the California Fish Patrol, sailor, railroad hob, and gold prospector. Yes, gold prospecting was the big part of his life, when the young writer with his brother-in-law sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush where he would set his first successful stories. Jack London was a hard-worker, he tried never miss his early morning 1,000-word writing stint, what helped him to write over fifty books between 1900 and 1916. In addition to it, he corresponded with his readers, and made huge researches for improving his writing style, what is, obviously, genius. The consequences of such a hard work became the fact that Jack London had become the best selling, highest paid and most popular American author of his time. Many authors and social advocates have been inspired by Jack London’s heartfelt prose, and readers travel and experience so much through his books.
“Into The Wild” by John Krakauer is a non-fiction biographical novel which is based on the life of a young man, Christopher McCandless. Many readers view Christopher’s journey as an escape from his family and his old life. The setting of a book often has a significant impact on the story itself. The various settings in the book contribute to the main characters’ actions and to the theme as a whole. This can be proven by examining the impact the setting has on the theme of young manhood, the theme of survival and the theme of independent happiness.
Jack London was an American man of many talents, which included being an author, journalist and a social activist, despite being minimally educated. Nonetheless, he was undoubtedly most recognized for his short stories and novels that fixated on the harsh, cold climates that Mother Nature crafted. London focused on a deeper level of the wild and the literary devices in his work are littered throughout every one of his novels and short stories, including The Call of the Wild, White Fang, as well as “To Build a Fire.”
In Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”, an unknown man is traveling alone in the extremely dangerous weather of seventy-five degrees below zero along Yukon Trail. Despite being warned about the dangers; he was bent on reaching his destination at the boy’s camp on Henderson Creek. Nevertheless, he tried many things to help keep his body warm but everything he tried failed. Close to death, he finally realized that it was impossible to survive this journey without a partner. The theme illustrates that sometimes it’s best to listen to others advice because everyone isn’t able to defeat nature.
He creates a suffocating atmosphere mirroring the characters feeling: “crowding in on her thick and fast”, “The passage of an old woman with ophthalmia and a disease of the skin distracted her from her
Jack London creates a setting that is hostile and “cold”. The story is set in the wilderness of the frozen Yukon, during the harsh winter months, when “there was no sun nor hint of sun” in the sky. The character that London introduces is isolated from the world. “The man” doesn't have a companion; only the dog that follows him.