Jack London: Connecting through Disconnection - Research Paper Example

Jack London: Connecting through Disconnection Literature involves its audience in a variety of profound, sometimes life-changing, ways simply by virtue of the way it communicates. By appealing to the audience’s emotions, morals, thoughts and social understandings through symbolic and occasionally blatant means, literature is able to bring about significant change within a short span of time. “Literature uses the normal means of communication – language images, symbols, codes, stories – but uses them with more complexity and subtlety than is normal in everyday communication” (Lye, 2003). Literature is an art form that uses the normal means of communication to greater complexity than the average conversation. We should study literature because of the understanding it can provide regarding the ways and means people communicate and to identify those aspects of culture and life that are important. At the same time that literature works to expose the inner workings of the human soul, it inadvertently reveals the deeper elements of its author’s understandings. Such is the case with the author Jack London, who lived a life quite similar to that portrayed within his main characters. Although some of his best known works are White Fang and Call of the Wild, each of which convey some of what he learned while exploring the Alaskan frontier, London wrote other stories that reveal a great deal more about his inner character. By investigating what is known of Jack London’s biography, one can begin to trace the deep sense of disconnection London felt in his life and his attempts to use his writing as a means of making the connections he felt were lacking. Jack London: The Man Martin Eden: A Near Auto-Biography Regardless of where in the west one laid his head, the late 1800s and early 1900s were a time of incredible change as the country awoke to find itself a great nation. As the resources of the country were being realized, individual men took advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves in order to bring about greater futures for themselves. These transformations, of both the country and the individual, were brought about by other changes as well, such as the growing technology that enabled steam engines to haul freight on rails from the country’s vast interior to the more inhabited exterior regions and the ability to reliably send post from one end of the country to the other. The large-scale transformations that took place as the result of greater technology and new ways of doing business were among the driving forces for bringing about transformations of the individual character of Martin Eden, which can be seen as a pseudo-biographical sketch of Jack London himself. While America had preserved a sense of the class distinctions that had been present in England for centuries within its greater cities such as New York and San Francisco, the spirit of capitalism began to break down those barriers during this same period of steam engines and city-building, as is seen in the story of Martin Eden. While he recognizes immediately upon entering the Morse household that he does not belong within their cultured world, he also realizes that it is not outside of the realm of possibilities that he might one day make himself acceptable to such a world. Comparing himself to the university boys he sees on the trolley on the way home from his first meeting with Ruth Morse, Eden ”grew conscious of the muscled mechanism of his body and felt confident that he was physically their master. But their heads were filled with knowledge that enabled them to talk her talk, - the thought depressed him. But what was a brain for? he demanded passionately. What they had done, he could do” (London, 1909: 61). Throughout the novel, examples are given of similar men who grew up in wild and untamed, uneducated circles who nevertheless managed to make themselves presentable to the highest classes of society, among them Abraham Lincoln and the oft-mentioned Mr. Butler. In his depiction, Eden consciously undertakes a complete transformation of himself, returning to manual labor as a means of obtaining the finances necessary to live, but realizing in doing so that the long hours and menial tasks have a brutalizing effect upon his newly developed higher faculties. “All that was god-like in him was blotted out. The spur of ambition was blunted; he had no vitality with which to feel the prod of it. He was dead. His soul seemed dead. He was a beast, a work-beast. … Life was intolerably dull and stupid, and its taste was bad in his mouth” (London, 1909: 199). As he gains in knowledge and education, he comes to realize that he is more capable of thought than the well-educated young lady who first inspired him, primarily due to the real-life experiences he has had and the insight such experiences have given him. He becomes a writer as a means of giving himself time and inclination to continue his studies, but finds difficulty in getting his ideas accepted by the more genteel and like-minded academics. This attitude is captured in Ruth’s tendency to value only those things that are acceptable to the establishment rather than judging them for their own merits. At the same time, the mindless machinery of the capitalist age is continually emphasized through Martin’s image of the great publishing houses that he sees as automatons automatically removing his manuscripts from one envelope, placing them in another, affixing the stamps and enclosing a form rejection letter to mail back to him. This tendency of Ruth’s applies to her view of Martin as well, and she eventually drops him when his writings fail to win the acceptance of the established critics, only wanting him back once acceptance has finally been achieved. However, by this point, Martin has realized in his success that while he no longer fits within the class to which he was born, the class he has so long looked up to has even less to offer a living soul and he finally gives up in frustration. In this novel, the transition of the west and the individuals living within it can be seen as a mechanizing process that was undoubtedly felt by the author as well. The wild, free, independent thoughts and actions of the men become constrained within the mechanistic cogs and wheels of the steam engines and the like-minded approaches of the academics who determine the ‘right’ way of thinking. The general population can be seen to have been reduced in their originality and design, forced to think along common lines and exist within common modes and practices. Original thoughts such as those held by Eden and expressed in his writings are typically met with derision or extreme doubt and little room is provided them in which to experiment. This idea comes forward as Martin leaves the philosopher’s den with Brissenden for the first time. “You have given me a glimpse of fairyland … It makes life worthwhile to meet people like that. My mind is all worked up” (Martin Eden: 377). Whereas the Morses were sufficiently refined in their middle class lifestyle to appeal to his untamed senses, his newly refined intellectual sense was only able to be stimulated by even more refined conversation, but which, in the end, isolated him from the rest of society. The transitions seen of the country and of the individual then become a common movement toward a more homogenous society in which each part must conform to a specific set of rules or risk destruction. Throughout his entire progression, Martin remains disconnected from the rest of the world, first as he seeks to gain admittance into social worlds above his reach and then as he discovers himself nearly alone at the top. As this story was written relatively late in London’s career, it can be presumed that his financial success and marriage were unable to meet the intellectual demands of his mind and was, perhaps, the reason behind his great output of work up to the time of his death at age 40. To Build a Fire: A Metaphor for London’s Connectedness This concept of a man unable to find any sense of connection with the rest of the world is presented in the form of a metaphor in London’s much earlier short story “To Build a Fire.” The text tells the simple tale of a man walking through the frozen landscape of an Alaskan winter, introducing the first main symbol as snow and ice. Through the story, London continues to insist that the gentle and pleasant Gaia mother-earth figure is not always in such a pleasant mood. She can also be the cruel and indifferent emptiness of the snow and the wastelands. When one turns one’s back on her and ignores the warnings she’s sending, such as the spit freezing before it hits the ground, she is capable of inflicting harsh penalties. “London does not see nature as deceptive; instead, the dangers, the strength, ‘the intangible pall over the fact of things’ are all too clearly evident, for nature and truth and cruelty are one; and it is only because the ‘tremendous cold and the strangeness and weirdness of it all made no impression on the man’ that he suffers” (Josephs, 1962: 183). The man’s inability to pay close attention to nature’s signals of snow and ice is shown in his confidence that he can take care of himself in this environment even though he hasn’t even been there a full season yet and has already fallen through the ice once. “He remembered the advice of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek, and smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought” (London, 1908). Despite his belief that he had already defeated the forces of nature in escaping the ice once, the snow and ice continues on seemingly indefinitely suggesting it hasn’t even exerted any effort yet. When he falls through the ice a second time, his fear of the vast whiteness and cold around him cause him to forget one of the most basic rules of survival – don’t build your fire under a snow-laden tree. As the tall spruce under which he has created his fire begins to warm up, the snow on its branches begins to melt, finally dumping its load of snow on the fire and instantly snuffing it out. Even “with all his knowledge he is still a helpless victim to natural powers and natural forces … [the man] could not survive in the Arctic weather of 75 degrees below zero while the dog, living only by instinct, without mittens, without earflaps, without a coat, without lunch, and without a fire, saved himself” (Hendricks, 1978: 22). The dog, representing a close living connection with nature, is not overwhelmed by his supposed knowledge of how to survive and manages to survive as a result. From the beginning of the story, the dog can be seen to be a physical manifestation of nature’s mood. It slinks around the man’s ankles as if it were begging the man to return to the safety of the indoors. “The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for traveling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgment” (London, ). At every stage of the journey, the dog attempts to convince the man to hole up somewhere warm until the cold eases. He stays near the fire, the symbol of life and hope, for as long as he can and continues to hang back as if he could prolong its warmth by proximity. When the man sees a suspicious-looking snow bank, the dog hangs back as if attempting to tell him ‘of course it’s a hidden spring’, but the man proves incapable of understanding the dog’s body language. He insists that the dog prove the hidden spring by falling through. The survival instinct of the dog also proves to be much stronger than the man’s in his instant response to touching the water. He realizes the first order of business is to get the ice off of his feet, but the man has none of the necessary equipment to bring this about other than attempting to start a new fire, which ultimately leads to his destruction. The main character of the story is the man who forces the dog through this frozen land and he symbolizes all of mankind in the process of ignoring the signals nature is sending. As the story begins, London reveals how the man is severely disconnected from everything around him, especially the one thing he should be aware of – the natural world around him. As has already been discussed, he does not share a close bond with the dog which represents a more active voice of nature. Instead of being ‘man’s best friend’, the dog only hears a sound in the master’s voice like whips. At no point does the man seem to be a part of the landscape. Through the entire story, this landscape remains completely closed off to him. “But all this – the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all – made no impression on the man” (London, 1908). Through this description, London reveals his deep sense of isolation within his life. His main character’s thoughts are described as existing on a very basic level, taking in facts at face value and making no connections or finding philosophical meaning in them. “The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances” (London, 1908). Even this early in his career, at a time when he was still existing on the labor of his body more than his mind, London was constantly seeking someone with whom to explore these significances on both the physical and intellectual levels. Conclusion Works Cited Hendricks, King. Jack London: Master Craftsman of the Short Story. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1966. Rpt. Jack London: Essays in Criticism. Ray Wilson Ownbey (Ed.). Santa Barbara, CA: Peregrine Books, 1978: 13-30. Josephs, Lois. “Man’s Relationship to Nature: A Sub-Theme in American Literature.” The English Journal. Vol. 51, N. 3, (March 1962): 180-183. London, Jack. Martin Eden. New York: Penguin Books, 1909 (reprinted 1984). London, Jack. “To Build a Fire.” (1908). eFictions. Joseph Trimmer, Wade Jennings & Annette Patterson. New York: Wadsworth Publishing, 2001. Lye, John. “The Uses of Studying Literature.” Literature in English. Ontario, Canada: Brock University, (January 8, 2003). Mitchell, Lee Clark. “Keeping His Head: Repetition and Responsibility in London’s ‘To Build a Fire.’” Journal of Modern Literature. Vol. 13, N. 1, (March 1986): 76-96. Read More