Workbook for students

HOMEWORK: Retelling the life of Jack London

Jack London

London’s family was very poor, so he began to work at the age of eight. He sold newspapers, worked on ships and in factories. Jack travelled across the ocean as a sailor, tramped from San Francisco to New York with an army of unemployed and back through Canada to Vancouver. London studied the great masters of literature and read the works of great scientists and philosophers.

The turning point of Jack’s life was a thirty-day imprisonment, which made him decide to turn to education and pursue a career in writing.

In 1897 Jack London joined the gold rush to the Klondike. He didn’t bring any gold back with him but those years left their mark in his best short stories; among them The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Son of the Wolf, and The white silence. They are gripping narratives of a man’s struggle with nature. His novel The Sea Wolf was based on his experiences at sea.

The problems of the individual and society as well as some of the difficulties London himself met during the first years of his literary work are described in The Iron Heel and Martin Eden.

During the sixteen years of his literary career Jack London published about fifty books: short stories, novels and essays. In 1910 London settled near Glen Ellen in California, where he intended to build his dream home. After the house burned down before completion in 1913, London was a broken and sick man. Jack London died from various diseases and drug treatments at the age of forty in 1916

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Jack London became my favorite writer from his first books I'd read. First of all I got interested in Jack London as a personality. His life story struck me not less than his works. What a man! He was strong and talented. He lived a life of adventures and hardships, so he knew what he was writing about. In his novel Martin Eden he describes his biography. What a hard life he lived!

Jack London was born in San Francisco in 1876. From his childhood he suffered greatly. He changed a lot of jobs: selling out newspapers, working at the factory. He hated that kind of job, which exhausted people and made them suffer physically and morally.

Young Jack had no opportunity to go to school, so he studied privately reading much at night.

When gold was found in Alaska, Jack London joined the gold rush. He returned home without gold but with rich impressions about people with whom he met and made friends. They became the prototypes of his heroes.

The American novelist and short-story writer knew life in Alaska very well because he experienced it himself. That is why it is so interesting to read his novels "The Call of the Wild" and "White Fang" His heroes are bright personalities. They are physically strong and enduring people. They try to find a way out from the most difficult situations. They fight and survive.

The very first story The Love of Life caught my fancy. I was struck by the will of a sick man who found himself alone, side by side with a wolf. Both the man and the wolf were sick and weak. And each of them was waiting for the other to grow still weaker and faint in order to feed on him. The man won. While reading the story I admired the courage and human spirit of the hero.

The story "Brown Wolf" is not less interesting. Its about a dog and his devotion to people.

Later I read more novels and stories by Jack London. My fondness of Jack London, the greatest American writer, will stay with me all my life.

Famous journalist and author of adventure novels, Jack London (real name John Griffith Chaney) is now considered to be one of the most preeminent American writers. The creator of ‘White Fang’, ‘The Call of the Wild’ and ‘Martin Eden’, Jack London was also known for his outspoken socialist position.