John Griffith Chaney: Tragic Hero Or Whisper?

John Griffith Chaney, or Jack London, was born on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco, California to Flora Wellman. His suspected father, William Chaney, deserted his mother and, consequently, she later married Civil War veteran John London; hereafter, John Griffith Chaney would be referred to as Jack London to differentiate from his stepfather. Wellman never showed much affection for her son and referred to him as her “badge of shame” as she was unsure whom his biological father was. At the age of eleven (1887), Jack began to work as a paperboy to help support his working-class family; at the age of twelve (1888), he bought a small skiff and taught himself to sail; and at the age of fourteen (1890), he graduated Cole Grammar School. However,

his family could not afford to send him to high school; as a result, Jack began to work in a canning factory, often working overtime to help support his family. Eventually, at the age of nineteen (1895), Jack returned to Oakland High School in an attempt to receive a high school education. However, during his studies, he began to become appalled at the idea of spending two more years in high school and was asked to leave the school due to his involvement in the Socialist Labour Party; as a result, at the age of twenty (1896), Jack enrolled in the University Academy of Alameda, a “cramming” academy, and completed the full two years of education within one semester. Next, Jack began to study, with the help of tutors Bessie Madden and Fred Jacobs, for the University of California’s entrance exams, often spending up to nineteen hours a day studying. After writing the exams, he was accepted to the university but dropped out after completing only one semester because he lacked the proper funds, he became disenchanted with the idea of schooling, and he believed that neither the students nor the professors were politically sincere.
During his adolescent and early adult years, Jack participated in a wide-array of activities such as, when he was fifteen (1981), becoming an oyster pirate (known as “The Prince of the Oyster Pirates” for his success) in the San Francisco Bay for three months and buying a sloop, which he named “The Razzle Dazzle”.

Next, Jack, at the age of sixteen (1892), worked as a watchman, joined a rough gang (in which he assumed the moniker “Sailor Kid”) and worked with the California Fish Patrol to help capture oyster pirates. When he was seventeen (1893), Jack worked in a jute mill, in which he earned ten cents an hour, and signed on to be a sailor on the “Sophia Sutherland”, a three-masted schooner, for a seven-month voyage along the Behring Sea and the Coast of Japan. In addition, that same year, under the persuasion of his mother, Jack entered a writing contest, competing against students from Stanford and University of California, and won first place, for which the prize was being published in the San Francisco Call and being rewarded with twenty-five dollars, with his essay “Story of a Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan”. Later, at the age of eighteen (1894), Jack worked to shovel coal, joined Kelley’s army (a group of unemployed men who marched on the capital, Washington D.C., from Massillon, Ohio as the Western contingent of Coxey’s Industrial Army of the Unemployed), decided to strike on his own, visited the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, roamed around the United States

as a vagabond, was arrested for being a vagrant in Buffalo, spent thirty days in the Erie County jail, and began to consider going back to school. The following year, at the age of nineteen (1895), Jack enrolled in and attended Oakland High School. When he was twenty (1896), Jack enrolled in the University Academy of Alameda, finished his studies in one semester, began to study for the University of California’s entrance exams, was accepted to the university, dropped out after six months, and began to write his first essays on sociology. At the age of twenty-one (1897), Jack was arrested, for speaking without the permission of the mayor (after volunteering on a test case to challenge infringements on free speech), followed the gold rush, travelled to Alaska, found no gold, and developed scurvy in Klondike. At the age of twenty-two (1898), he travelled down the Yukon River, worked as a coal stoker, returned home, and attempted to prospect in the California mountains. Jack was a brilliant autodidact who excelled in nearly every field he entered: throughout his teenage and young-adult years, Jack developed a wide array of knowledge and skills that would later provide a rich source of information from which to draw on while writing novels. Jack’s experiences taught him that he had a unique perspective to write about.
Throughout his life, Jack wrote over fifty books and one thousand articles with the majority of his works being set in places he had once lived, about experiences he had once had, or about events he had once observed.

In 1893, his essay, titled “Story of a Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan”, was published in the San Francisco Call for twenty-five dollars; in 1899, his story, “To the Man on Trail”, was published in Overland Monthly for five dollars; in 1900, A Son of The Wolf, a collection of short stories, was published by Houghton Mifflin (and is often quoted as being the “beginning of the modern American short-story”) and “An Odyssey of the North” (based on Jack’s experiences during gold rush in Klondike) was published by Atlantic Monthly for forty dollars; in 1901, Jack ran in, and lost, the mayoral race and The God of his Fathers and Other Stories, his second collection of short-stories, was published by McLure, Phillips; in 1902, his third collection of short-stories, Children of the Frost, was published by Macmillan, The Cruise of the Dazzler (based on Jack’s experience of living in San Francisco) was published by Century, and Daughter of the Snows (based on Jack’s experience living in Klondike) was published by Lippincott. In the same year, Jack moved his family to Piedmont Hills, travelled to London, and was hired as a war-correspondent writer for the South African Boer War. Unfortunately for Jack, the war ended before he had a chance to reach London; however, despite

this setback, Jack decided to remain in London and write an inflammatory novel, The People of the Abyss, critiquing capitalism. In 1903, Macmillan published The Kempton-Wace Letters (which Jack co-authored with Anna Strunsky), The People of the Abyss, and The Call of the Wild (based on Jack’s experiences living through the gold rush in Klondike). In this same year, Jack separated from his first wife, Bessie Madden, and returned to Oakland, California. In 1904, Jack was hired to be a journalist for the Russo-Japanese war by Hearst; Jack was the only Western reporter to reach the front lines of the war. In addition, Macmillan published The Sea Wolf, for which he was paid two thousand dollars, and Faith of Men and Other Stories. In 1905, Jack unsuccessfully ran for mayor; Macmillan published War of the Classes (a socialist work), The Game (based on Jack’s personal observations from his time as a reporter for the Oakland Herald), and Tales of the Fish Patrol (based on Jack’s experience working with the California Fish Patrols); bought a ranch in Glen Ellen, Sonoma County after spending the summer at Wake Robin Lodge; married his second wife Charmian Kittredge; and began a four-month long tour lecturing about socialism by using his essay Revolution (which called for a coup d’état). In 1906, Jack wrote “The Story of An Eye-Witness” as a journalistic article about the earthquake in San Francisco for Collier’s Weekly; Macmillan published Moon-Face and Other Stories, White Fang (based on Jack’s experience living during the gold rush in Klondike), and Scorn of Women; and he begins to write a socialist novel titled The Iron Heel. In 1907, London departed on his, self-built, vessel the Snark in an attempt to travel around the world for seven-years; however, after learning his navigator was incompetent, he learned to navigate himself and safely docked the Snark in Hawaii. In that same year, he visited leper colonies and had The Road and Love of Life and Other Stories published by Macmillan. In 1909, Martin Eden and Revolution and Other Essays were published by Macmillan and Jack returned to California due to his failing health. Between 1911 and 1916, The Abysmal Brute, South Sea Tales, When God Laughs and Other Stories, The Scarlet Plague, A Son of the Sun, “The Mexican”, Smoke Bellew, The House of Pride and Other Tales of Hawaii, John Barleycorn, The Valley of the Moon, The Mutiny of Elsinore, The Night Born, The Cruise of the Snark, The Valley of the Moon, The Strength of the Strong, “Daughters of the Rich”, The Star Rover, The Little Lady of the Big House, and The Turtles of Tasman were published. Moreover, in 1914, Jack travelled around Cape Horn on a four-masted vessel (from which the basics for The Mutiny of the Elsinore came). In addition, in 1915, Jack travelled to Mexico and as acted as a war correspondent. On November 22, 1916, Jack London, at the age of forty years old, died of uremic and morphine poisoning at his Glen Ellen ranch in Sonoma County, California. Jack was a prolific writer, a brave journalist, and an active socialist who lived a truly astonishing life.