LITR 221 American Literature rom the Civili War to Present - Essay Example

To Emile Zola, a French novelist, critic, and political activist, the setting or the environment depicted is in a literary piece is “of over-riding importance, because he believed it determined character” (Kuiper, p.8). Jack London was born into the American Literature in an era wherein most of the great authors such as Mark Twain and William Dean Howells were not as prolific because of old age, where Stephen Crane and Frank Norrris are already deceased, and where most of the other authors fail to compare to these geniuses’ greatness.

He ushered in a revolution in American Literature that created love for adventure and naturalism (Labor, Leitz, and Shepard, .xiii). The settings that Jack London created for his novels and short stories were widely influenced by his many travels all around the world. In a letter he wrote to the editor of the San Francisco Bulletin he emphasized that his literary pieces should be recognized because of the depth of experience invested on each and every word of what he writes. “I have sailed and traveled quite extensively in other parts of the world and I have learned to seize upon which is interesting, to grasp the true romance of things, and to understand the people I may be thrown amongst” (xxxvi).

Anyone can inarguably sense the influence of these myriad adventures in the contrasting scenery painted to us through words by Jack London himself in his short stories’ “To Build a Fire” and “The Heathen”. In examining how he presents the contrasting environments found in these two short stories, the literary prowess of Jack London can fully be appreciated and it can provide a better glimpse on how he influenced the course of our great American Literature. Using the fullness of a reader’s senses.

Literary geniuses build levels of sensory perception to create the experience of being n the scenery where the prose is set. Descriptions that Jack London used made his readers feel as if they too were immersed in the environment where the characters breathe and move about. Jack London used a lot of the 5 senses and even some extra sensory perception to communicate the setting in the last paragraph of “To build a fire”: “… long, slow twilight” [sense of sight and sense of time], “…whined softly” [sense of hearing], “…scent of death” [olfactory sense], “…most comfortable and satisfying sleep” [sense of touch and sense of physical awareness] (125).

Each paragraph of the arctic-based story was graciously sprinkled with these. The same mastery of the senses was shown in “The Heathen”. Jack London again engaged the reader’s senses when Charlie was describing the events leading to Otoo’s final heroic moment, “There were four wooly-heads and myself in it…” [Sense of sight and touch], “… and away he went, the poor devil, head, shoulders, and arms out of the water all the time, screeching in a heart-rending way.” [Sense of hearing and sight] (105).

He cleverly used the sense of taste also on the scene where Charlie and Otoo shared a hatch after the ship wreck, “…sea water and the sunshine gave us the prettiest imaginable combination of salt pickle and sunburn” (92) Using the setting to give life to the characters. Charlie, Otoo, and the Chechaquo1 would not have been the characters that they