Jack London

**John Griffith "Jack" London** (born **John Griffith Chaney**, January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American writer. He wrote many books. He lived in the U.S. state of California but also spent a lot of time in Hawaii and Alaska.

His most famous book was _The Call of the Wild_.  _The Call of the Wild_ is about a dog named Buck who is taken to Alaska to work with a pack of dogs pulling a sled.  This book took place during the Klondike Gold Rush. Many people bought _The Call of the Wild_ and Jack London became a famous writer. He had wrote other books about dogs and wolves. Another one of his famous books is _White Fang_.

Jack London was also a hobo at one time.  He wrote a book about this called _The Road_.  Jack London had political beliefs.  He was a socialist.  One of his famous books is _The Iron Heel_, which is the story of the government using force against the socialist movement.

He also spent some time at sea and making a living as an "oyster pirate".  He wrote many books about sailing and boats.  One of his best-known books about life at sea was _The Sea Wolf_.

He married Charmian London born Kittredge (second wife). She was an athletic woman and an intellectual companion that broke the mold of Victorian womanhood—though they grew apart when she turned to socialite circles. His feminism was matched by models of sensitive "virility" and he sorted out the master-slave model of government in order to find alternatives. [3]  . He had built "Wolf House" and located his model pig farm in Glen Ellen; with his leanings for the dispossessed and the downtrodden when a hobo he had hired burnt it (with its animals) over losing his job there because he was caught in the act of abusing the animals. Jack London grew depressed, suddenly put on lots of weight eating unhealthy foods such as ducks that were barely cooked. He passed on November 22, 1916 at age 40. The couple had no children.

**Political Views:** Jack London is known for siding with the "underdogs" as can be seen in his short stories of Northern territories involving full-fledged dog characters as important as his human heroes or anti-heroes. His name appeared in many union or socialist-leaning reels for a while, because of his observations such as "the varnished shoes" always step on and elevate over muddy boots. And then he reverted that order and estimated that the varnished shoes invariable lost to the muddy clogs (eventually making it hard for him to get any lasting sympathies with any political parties). _The Iron Heel_ is a journalistic study checking how much a single worker earns against the cost of living in London (UK) during the Industrial Revolution; how much a couple earns if he marries and they have children; how there is no way for such a family to earn a living wage. His _South-Sea Tales_ are difficult to read because of the racist undertone he said was prompted by the war and the detention and treatment of white prisoners, and because of the sadomasochistic undertones.

**Animal Studies:** Jack London's stories involving dogs show divergent cultural attitudes toward the species. He has been accused of being "homocentric" in his depiction of dogs to the point that they were read metaphorically as low-cost labourers whose humanity is barely recognized. Sensible owner of dogs will admire how London made a real effort to approximate dogs' thought process and the self-sacrificial labor they may offer to a loved human leader as a member of their pack, as opposed to a careless abusive and dangerous owner. This second alternative is relatable in "To Build a Fire" where a dog makes no effort to signal danger to his owner once the man threw him on thin ice to test its strength. The story has gained a political aura because, remembering this tale and being surrounded by ennemies, Che Guevara began to build a fire in the desert when he thought all was lost—and it is the last activity of the human hero of the short story who aims to die with decorum and dignity while thinking of the way he foresees he will be eventually discovered after his death. As well it has regularly been published as children literature because of its animal character. Today it is read with renewed interest because of the way humans and animals relate to their native land and to the elements.

## References

1. Reesman 2009, p. 23.
3. Cf. Saiz, Peter Ralph, "Political Tyranny and the Master-Slave Paradigm in Selected Sea-Tales of Herman Melville and Jack London", PhD thesis Purdue University 2003. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/dissertations/AAI3113867/ Cf. also, Huebert, David, "Species Panic: Interspecies Erotics in Post-1900 American literature", PhD thesis University of Western Ontario 2018.

4. Cf. http://santarosahistory.com/wordpress/2016/11/the-case-for-arson-at-wolf-house/. Cf.Fresneau-Woodward, Servanne, "Nature animale et paysages naturels dans l'oeuvre de Jack London" Doctorat, Université de Paris X https://www.theses.fr/1987PA100174

5. Cf. S. Woodward, “Problèmes de traduction à propos de ‘To Build a Fire’ (1908)”, in _Excavatio,_ vol. 32 (2021): [15 pages] http://aizen.zolanaturalismassoc.org/excavatio/articles/v32/8Woodward.pdf: Jack London’s originality lies in his attention to the thought processes and emotions of domestic animals, as well as the company these animals provide for humans trying to survive in the frozen lands of the North American continent. London’s perspective is largely Darwinian, whereas his French translators are influenced by a Cartesian conception of the animal-machine, an approach that affects the translations destined for a Belgian or French reading public. London’s adaptation of “race” and “milieu” has a colonial base, made up of a mosaic of communities concerned that immigrants are not merely poorly adjusted foreigners rejected by the environment they are living in. “To Build a Fire” is an emblematic novella about a man who discovers to what extent he is dependent on nature and his animal condition. Human words are too generic to take into account local variations for the realities from one continent to another. Translations from English to French (earlier ones and more recent versions) underscore the insight that automatic linguistic operations, imbued with stereotypes to describe the relations between animals and nature, and demonstrate to what extent it is difficult to evaluate the human condition through language.

## Infobox (writer)

- **name**: Jack London
- **image**: Jack London young.jpg
- **imagesize**: 250px
- **caption**: London in 1903
- **birth name**: John Griffith Chaney
- **birth place**: San Francisco, California
United States
- **death place**: Glen Ellen, California
United States
- **occupation**: Novelist, journalist, short story writer and essayist
- **movement**: realism (arts), Realism and Naturalism (literature), Naturalism
- **signature**: Jack London Signature.svg