The Life of Jack London
Jack London was an American writer and journalist and a huge supporter and activist for socialism. London had several widely popular novels including The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea Wolf. London’s writing career was not just given to him, he faced many hardships, but worked hard to become a successful writer.
On January 12, 1876 Flora Wellman gave birth to John Griffith Chaney, Better know as Jack London, in San Francisco California, she was not married at the time (“Jack London Biography” 1). London’s mother suffered a life of illness and was left unable to take care of him, instead Virginia Prentiss, a former slave, took care of him for the first eight months of his life. London’s father, William Chaney, was an attorney, journalist, and an astrologist. His father never was a significant part of his career or life (Stasz 1).
London’s mother married John London, who had fought in the Civil War. John London moved his family, Including Jack London, throughout San Francisco before finally moving them to Oakland (1). In Oakland, at age 5, London started helping his step father with the laborious job of farming.
At age fourteen London graduated from grammar school. His family could not afford to send him to high school so he started working at a canning factory in Oakland. London spent countless hours working at very demanding job (1). In London’s free time he would be at the library reading novels and books about travel, his reading was inspired by the local librarian (“Jack London Biography” 1).
His love for reading made him realize that there was an entire world outside of his hometown in Oakland, he wanted to escape, which he did through drinking. This began his lifelong battl...
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...w a number of different crops (4).
London’s life was plagued with illness and alcoholism, at the time of his death in 1916 London had dysentery and kidney failure caused by his extreme alcoholism (“Jack London: Novels and Stories” 1). London was in extreme pain and was taking morphine, he died from an overdose and it is rumored that his death was suicide (1). London was cremated and his ashes were buried on his ranch next to his wife who died later in 1955 (1).
London’s writing career was not just given to him, he faced many hardships, but he worked hard to become a successful writer. His life was full of illness and addiction that he struggled with. London was a very successful and hard working writer and overcame obstacles that could have held him back, but he was determined to get out of poverty and support his family which he more than succeeded in doing.
John L. Lewis was born on the 2nd of February in 1880 in Lucas, Iowa and he’s was born in to a family of immigrant welch parents which worked in coal mining and trade unionism. By the age of 15 John began working in coal mining and 2 years later he married his wife Myrta Bell, she influenced him to read many things which would later come in to his aid in his public speeches as flowery phrases, Shakespearean quotations, and mixed metaphors. He soon move to souther...
Ever since John’s (Jr.) birth, he was perceived to go to Harvard. At the age of six, his parents sent him to a local dame school. Later he was sent to another school, in which he might have met John Adams, with whom he struck up a casual acquaintance. Like all the other children in town, he learned the basics of reading, writing, and figuring.All things seemed to go well, until the spring of 1774. His father came down with an illness, that later would be the cause of his death. His sadness grew more because of the reason that they would have to move. Mary’s parents were both dead and a very difficult decision would have to be made by Mary.
The setting is London in 1854, which is very different to anything we know today. Johnson’s description of this time and place makes it seem like a whole other world from the here and now....
When he was fifteen years old his mother died from appendicitis. From fifteen years of age to his college years he lived in an all-white neighborhood. From 1914-1917, he shifted from many colleges and academic courses of study as well as he changed his cultural identity growing up. He studied physical education, agriculture, and literature at a total of six colleges and universities from Wisconsin to New York. Although he never completed a degree, his educational pursuits laid the foundation for his writing career. He had the knowledge of philosophy and psychology. He attempted to write when he was a youth, but he made a choice to pursue a literary career in 1919. After he published Cane he became part of New York literary circles. He objected both rivalries that prevailed in the fraternity of writers and to attempts to promote him as a black writer (Clay...
Jack London has written a classic short story in the 1908 version of "To Build a Fire." This is the classic story of man fighting nature. In most genres (e.g. movies, novels, short stories) the main character comes out on top, however unlikely that is. Jack London takes literary naturalism and shows the reader how unmerciful nature is. Much like Stephen Crane in "The Open Boat," in which the one of the characters dies, London doesn't buy into that "has to have a good ending" contrivance. Through analysis of two London's letters (to R.W. Gilder and Cloudesly Johns) these two versions of "To Build a Fire" come alive with new meaning. Although there are many differences on the surface, both stories use his philosophy as expressed to Johns and both teach a moral lesson, one which will not soon be forgotten: "Never travel alone."
In conclusion, two important literary nonfiction forms that Frederick Douglass identifies in “How I Learned to Read and Write” are a sense of place, and personal experience. Douglass’s essay executed examples of these two forms separately as well as together, numerous times throughout his piece. Douglass centralized his writing around his personal experiences, studying and accomplishing the ability to read and write despite the many difficulties he faced. The portrayal of a sense of place ingrained throughout his writing sheds a light on the locations and stages in his life he experienced these events. He was able to successful correlate these two forms together to create an unforgettable and inspirational story. A story of overcoming adversity, and achieving the impossible in a time whenever all odds were against him.
Jack London was one of America’s greatest authors. His works were of tales from the unexplored savage lands of the Klondike to the cannibal infested Philippine Island chain of the vast Pacific, and even the far reaches of space and time. Jack London himself was a pioneer of the unexplored savage frontier. London wrote about this unknown frontier with a cunning sense of adventure and enthrallment. “He keeps the reader on tenterenters books by withholding facts in a way that makes him participate in the action'; (Charles Child Walcutt 16). He taunts the reader with unfulfilled information that subliminally encourages the reader to continue reading their selection. “The tortuously baroque style, it’s telling often proves an annoyance';(Gorman Beauchamp 297-303). London’s writing attributes are so deep in description and narration, the reader sometimes perceives the story-taking place with them included in the action. His ability to exclude just the very miniscule amount of information transforms his books into a semi-formal mystery. Mr. London’s tales deal with nature, the men and women who either neglected the fact that they are mere mortals, or they humbled themselves as being only a solitary one being on the earth. His stories satisfied the civilized American readers yearn for knowledge of what awaited them over the horizon, with either promise of prosperity or demise with a manifestation of dismay.
Fang the main character is a gray cub wolf. Wolves in this novels were used
Doc Holliday’s father, Henry B. Holliday was a pharmacist who served in several wars. One of the wars his father served in was the Mexican War, where he found an orphan boy named Francisco Hidalgo and decided to make him apart of his family. On January 8, 1849, Henry B. Holliday married Alice Jane McKay who then had a daughter, Martha Eleanora, who unfortunately died in infancy. Two years later on August 14th, John Henry (Doc) Holliday was born.
Edgar Allan Poe is and was an amazing American poet and writer. He wrote many famous poems. Poe has been marked as the origin of both horror and detective fiction categories and many anthologies credit him as "The Architect" of the modern short story(Academy of American Poets). Poe was also part of the genre American Romantic movement which involved many other writers(Poemhunter).
John Wilkes Booth lived a very privileged childhood even though he was the second youngest of ten children. John's mother was a hopeless romantic that later told him that on the night he was born she had asked God to give her a hint about his future and she said that in the flames of the open hearth there were letters that spelled the word "country". She believed that it meant that he was to endure the fires of persecution, but emerge as a patriot in the final act. John's father was a well known actor and was eccentric with a drinking problem. John and his siblings were raised on a farm in Baltimore that was worked by the family's slaves. John would go with his family on occasional carriage trips to the nearest villages of Bel Air and Hickory, where he would listen to the fascinating stories the old men would tell about their experience of the American Reolution. His parents promoted this inspiration because it taught him about the Ame...
Paine’s life in England gave little indication of his later successes. Born in 1737 in Thetford, England as the son of a lower-middle class Quaker, he was not expected to become an important, extraordinary, or outstanding person. After a variety of unsuccessful jobs, he eventually became an excise officer, a person whose job it is to collect certain kinds of taxes and prevent smuggling. This job was also not prosperous. He was fired from this position twice, once for leading a strike for higher wages in 1772. While living in England, Paine married twice. The first of these wives was Mary Lambert, who, one year after they were married, died in childbirth along with their child. Eleven years later, in 1771, he remarried. Elizabeth Olive, his second wife, and he separated legally in 1774, and Paine moved to London. While living in London that year, Paine met Benjamin Franklin, who helped him secure a job as a journalist in Philadelphia.
London as a young man, he died at the age of fifty two. In his
Jack London brings man versus nature discussion into his story. The environment, however doesn't play against him for say, but does warn him from the very beginning. The audience can conclude that just like “the man” everyone is alone in the world - fighting for ourselves and the things we wish to acquire. The character created by London is isolated from the universe and fooli...
famous for everything he wrote. “I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I’ll be famous...