Into the Wild | Jack London
“But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called -- called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.”
- Jack London, The Call of the Wild
Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing him and waiting. The brief day drew to a close in a long, slow twilight. There were no signs of a fire to be made, and, besides, never in the dog's experience had it known a man to sit like that in the snow and make no fire. As the twilight drew on, it’s eager yearning for the fire mastered it, and with a great lifting and shifting of forefeet, it whined softly, then flattened its ears down in anticipation of being chidden by the man. But the man remained silent. Later the dog whined loudly. And still, later it crept close to the man and caught the scent of death. This made the animal bristle and back away. A little longer it delayed, howling under the stars that leaped and danced and shone brightly in the cold sky. Then it turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the other food providers and fire providers.
Early Life
Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney to a working-class family on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco, California. His mother was a spiritualist and teacher of music, and his stepfather was a disabled Civil War vet who worked occasional jobs in farming, grocery clerking, and night security. His family was very poor, and as a result, Jack started working at the age of eight on a farm, and then selling newspapers, and then setting up pins at a bowling alley. He continued working and dropped out of school in the eighth grade, seeing no further use for structured education. Instead, he took advantage of the books at the Oakland Free Library, immersing himself in Melville, Stevenson, and Irving through the encouragement of a librarian named Ina Coolbrith. The authors she suggested fueled the boy’s imagination and kept him going as he worked 12-18 hour days in a cannery and eventually on the Oakland Waterfront at the age of 15. During his time off, he studied and read his books at Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon. He would later confess to the owner that he would give anything to attend college, something that the owner would remember and honor once Jack was old enough to do so.
At the waterfront, he purchased his first boat, the Razzle-Dazzle, and began to poach oysters and sell them to local restaurants. His legend at the docks continued to grow, and he fell in with a crowd of sailors who dubbed him, “The Prince of the Oyster Pirates”. The illegal oyster trade proved profitable, with the young Jack seeing more income than ever in his life. His new friends were hard-drinking, prodigals who put the young man on a life-long path of alcohol abuse and in his words, “crudeness”. Though he found his new friends exciting, the drinking and hard living began to weigh against his desire to see the wider world.
Adventure
He scratched the itch of adventure by signing with a sealing boat called the Sophie Sutherland, which was bound for the coast of Japan. His time on the boat would serve him in later stories which detailed the lives of sailors and the hierarchy of command on the ship, and how that hierarchy can be abused. When he returned to San Francisco in 1893 the United States was in a terrible recession. Jack worked many grueling jobs to make ends meet, including shoveling coal and working in a power plant until taking up vagrancy and riding the railroad. He served time in jail for this crime, citing unspeakable horrors he witnessed there and vowing that though he was, “no spring chicken in the ways of the world and the awful abysses of human degradation. It would take a deep plummet to reach the bottom in prison, and I do but skim lightly and facetiously the surface of things as I there saw them.”
After leaving prison he returned to high school and contributed articles about his many adventures to the school paper. He did not stay long at the school, instead of taking entrance exams to attend the University of California, all of which he passed. He entered the school in 1897 but had to leave after one semester due to running out of money. During his time there he continued to frequent the saloon that he had studied at when he was a boy and continued his conversations with sailors, travelers, and others whose lives fascinated him.
Soon after leaving college at the age of 21, London sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush. Like most who ventured to the frozen north, Jack experienced severe health issues as a result. He developed scurvy, a Vitamin C deficiency that can malform the skin and cause swelling throughout the body. He lost teeth, had a string of fevers and lung infections, and faced frostbite on countless occasions. Despite these maladies, he loved his experiences there and attributed much of his writing success later in life to what he saw during his time in the Klondike. “It was in the Klondike,” London said, “that I found myself. There nobody talks. Everybody thinks. There you get your perspective. I got mine.” And he did. London began writing furiously over the next few months and returned to California in 1898 after spending a year in the Yukon.
His first story to sell was, “A Thousand Deaths”, which sold for $40. As his popularity grew, more stories were sold earning him a steady income until 1903 when he wrote Call of the Wild, which he sold to the Saturday Evening Post and to Macmillan Publishing for the book. The story of a domesticated dog named Buck being kidnapped and sold into pulling a dog sled in the Yukon until finally reaching the wild he didn’t know he always longed for, captivated audiences and made London a widespread success. He continued with this theme through his book, White Fang, The Sea Wolf, and many other short stories detailing the effects of a rugged life, discomfort, and the role of suffering in personal growth and finding one’s purpose.
From the success of these stories London was able to design and build his own boat called the Snark, and sail to Hawaii and beyond before finally stopping in Australia due to a severe illness. The celebrity status he earned from these novels propelled him into the public spotlight, making him an icon of masculinity, and earning him compliments like one published in the New York Times which called him, “a great gobbler-up of the world, physically and intellectually, the kind of writer who went to a place and wrote his dreams into it, the kind of writer who found an idea and spun his psyche around it.”
Though he was an avid traveler he was also a dedicated naturalist and real estate developer. He picked out a plot of land in Glen Ellen, California and started using organic farming techniques to reinvigorate the farmland that surrounded him, all while building a home on the property. Though he was settling down domestically, he still found time to travel. In 1912, he and his wife took a 1,500 sailing trip from Oregon around Cape Horn to Seattle. Though he was only a passenger, he used the time to hone his navigation skills, and map-making and continued his writing as he experienced more adventures.
The bad habits he learned early in this life stayed with him in his success. He was a heavy drinker and only increased this habit as he grew older. In 1913 London had an appendectomy and doctors discovered his diseased kidneys, which were the result of his alcohol abuse. This prompted what seemed to be a memoir in the story John Barleycorn, which details the impact and internal need for alcohol throughout his life. In the book, the protagonist refers to drink as the cure of for life’s monotony, the catalyst for camaraderie, and the means by which adventure is conceptualized. In contrast, he also directly speaks to the sin of dependency, the loss of self, and the challenges of strength when dealing with addiction.
Though he was in failing health, he continued writing, publishing The Valley of the Moon in 1913 and The Star Rover in 1915. He died on November 22, 1916, from uremia, dysentery, and probably a stroke. At the time of his death, he had written 50 books and hundreds of short stories.
The Man and His Style
Jack London came from a very difficult, improvised upbringing. At an early age, he was subjected to manual labor for up to 18 hours a day, just to eat. This proved impossible to maintain, so he turned to smuggle to compensate, finding the hours much more reasonable and the pay four times as much. This upbringing and subsequent travel around the world convinced him that socialism was the best economic system, saying, “If, just by wishing I could change America and Americans in one way, I would change the economic organization of America so that true equality of opportunity would obtain; and service, instead of profits, would be the idea, the ideal and the ambition animating every citizen.” He was also an atheist, saying that, “believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed." Like his many adventures, these beliefs were woven into his writing, and as he traveled and gained more experiences, the more stories he had to offer.
His writing style has been both widely praised and criticized. Many critics have complimented his descriptions and topics, while others have said “his writing stumbles over itself” and causes the reader confusion as they try to care about what the characters have to say. Short-form was his sweet spot and preference, as he loved to dig into a singular person or “thing” and say what only needed to be said, forgetting the rest and leaving it on the heap. He wove social Darwinism into stories like The Sea Wolf but would then revert to his preferred egalitarianism in other tales or within the same story. He used opposing perspectives of his characters and settings to drive home singular ideas through a tapestry of description and depending on the story, limited dialogue. In this way, the setting became its own character, adding its own weight to the story through stress, discomfort, and elemental sensations. Have you ever wanted to know what real cold feels like? Read, To Build a Fire. What to experience the type of warmth, solitude, and peace that can only be broken by man? Read, All Gold Canyon. Want to know the cold, wet of the sea and its effect on the human psyche, or vice versa? Read, The Sea Wolf. You will feel the cold, the sea, the wet, and the discomfort, and in doing so, experience the story in a way that has rarely been seen since.
Legacy
“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
When you hear the name, Jack London, there’s a good chance that in your mind’s eye you see a wolf howling at the moon. You may feel the cold or see the endless stair at Chilkoot Pass during the Yukon Gold Rush. Whatever you see, a singular word usually rises to the top, adventure.
For me, Jack London evokes a memory of listening to my first bedtime story. It was about a man who had a thousand dozen eggs to sell while prospecting in the Yukon. I won’t tell you how the story ends, but the cold and isolation are mirrored in the horror realized by the protagonist towards the end. At that moment, hearing that story, I remember looking out the window and seeing the trees move against the starlight. I could hear the wind, and though we were inside, I could feel the cold. I could smell the dank wood of the cabins he walked into and how the perpetual frost outside contrasted with the warm inside. As the story went on, the light of the room seemed to shrink as the words made the world of the man real, and I could see him. I saw him at the beginning, work his way through the challenges he faced, and I could see him at the end. And when it did end, I was left with his memory. It is a fetch to call this type of writing genius, so I will not. London would never have classified it as such. I will say instead that his writing was honest, and as a result, has the ability to resonate with the reader in a unique way.
Jack London was a self-described flawed man who led a life that included adventure, exhilaration, hardship, chaos, and poor health. These different aspects of his life were reflected in his written works, and with the dualities seen in his themes and characters, his readers were shown worlds and made to feel the reality of each one, each time. In this way, reading Jack London is an adventure. Each story shows how quality is measured against hardship, shows the breaking down of the person from what they were into what they could be, and details how such a journey doesn’t always have a happy ending. It is because of this honesty that his life, short stories, books, and quotes still speak to us today.
