The background of American writer Jack's life in London

Jack London (1876 65438+1October12 ~1916 65438+1October 22nd) was born as John Griffith London. He is a famous American realistic writer. Known as "the father of American proletarian literature". His works are not only widely circulated in America, but also welcomed by people all over the world. He is the author of more than 50 books, such as Martin Eden and The Call of the Wild.

Jack London started writing at the age of 24 and died at the age of 40. In sixteen years, he wrote 19 novels, 150 short stories, three plays and quite a few essays and papers. These works show us a strange and extremely vast world: the desolate and empty Alaska full of treasures, the Pacific Ocean dotted with rugged islands, the railway line across the American continent, all kinds of vivid characters, the harsh struggle between man and nature, and the complicated social relations between people. ...

Jack London's writing style is vigorous, his language is concise and his plot is dramatic. He often puts his characters in extremely harsh and life-and-death environments to show the deepest and truest side of human nature. Jack London praised the noble qualities of mankind, such as courage, perseverance and love. The "harsh facts" in his works often shock readers.

On his deathbed, Lenin, the great revolutionary mentor, specially invited people to read novels, including Jack London's short story Love Life. Lenin spoke highly of this novel.

[Edit this paragraph] Writing style

His works are unique, full of strong life and masculinity, and are most popular with men. Some people say that most of his previous American novels were written for girls, and his works belong to all readers. Not only are ordinary readers welcome, but ladies also like to put down the curtains and close the door to secretly taste his energetic and magnificent works.

[Edit this paragraph] Hot personality

Jack London is such a character. He has fire in his veins, full of vitality, a husband's spirit, likes a bumpy and strong life, likes to be omnipotent, and often struggles to the limit when he participates in the struggle. He regards the difficulties in adventure as enjoyment and the experiences in starting a business as happiness. We saw many thrilling experiences in The Sea-Wolf, although they were all refracted by art.

Even when he was rich, his life was full of adventures. He bought real estate, ran pastures, planted trees, built luxurious new houses, entertained guests and lived a boiling life.

[Edit this paragraph] The life of Jack London

Jack London is a famous American novelist. He wrote about 50 books in his life, the most famous of which are The Call of the Wilderness, The White Teeth of the Sea Wolf, Martin Eden and a series of excellent short stories, such as The League of the Elderly, The Odyssey in the North, The House of Mapuche and so on.

Jack London worked as a child laborer, drifted at sea and trudged on the snowfield, and finally achieved great success through work-study programs. His life is full of legends, and his rich life experiences are rare among world writers. The realistic style and diversified themes in his works, as well as the writer's unique personality, have been deeply attracting readers of different times and experiences for many years.

When I was young

Poverty and unhappy childhood made Jack London precocious. Jack London has to work and study since he was 10, and he will spend all his time reading whenever possible. When Jack London was less than 9 years old, he was already familiar with washington irving's Spanish travel book "Alhan Bora". He also reads some dime novels borrowed from employees, and reads whatever he catches. Jack London left the ranch at the age of 1 1 and came to Auckland. He eagerly read the first book he could borrow from the free public library. Until 16 years old, he has been working-reading, reading-working. Because poor Jack London went to work after graduating from primary school, he started to work as a newsboy and a canner at the age of ten, and he developed the skill of street fighting and became a hooligan. His favorite activity is sailing. /kloc-When he was 0/3 years old, he sailed alone through the stormy San Francisco Bay. It is almost unbelievable, but it is true. Later, he saved a little money and bought a boat, originally for fun. Soon after, he met the people who stole oysters and started a free business like them. He gathered a group of companions, sailed to San Francisco Bay to steal farmers' oysters and even burned other people's boats. He fights and drinks, laughs and revels, and wanders freely on hundreds of miles of sea roads. Before long, he got to know the Gulf Patrol, and in turn, he became a patrol chasing oyster thieves.

At the age of seventeen, he boarded a hunting ship as a sailor, passed through Korea and Japan, and went to the Bering Sea to hunt seals. On the way, I experienced severe cold, storms and the heaviest hard labor, and participated in various activities of hunting seals. He is very good at sailing because he has been playing with boats in the bay since he was a child. Although he was young on board, he won unanimous praise from the shipowner and colleagues. And because I was beaten since I was a child, I was able to participate in the most barbaric activities of sailors, so I made many friends and listened to many interesting and terrible stories. All these have become valuable materials for his marine novels. The sea wolf's description of the rich life of seal hunting boats is an excellent example. Life in the stormy waves was hard, but he didn't forget to study. When he returned to San Francisco Bay, he had finished reading Madame Bovary by Flaubert and Anna karenin by Tolstoy.

Won the first prize in writing.

After returning from a long voyage, he wrote his own experience as an essay "Typhoon in Haikou, Japan", participated in the writing competition of Voice magazine, and won the first prize, 20 yuan (the second and third place were college students). Jack London, who only received primary education, showed his creative talent for the first time, which was attributed to his diligent study-he carefully read the excellent works of literary masters and developed the habit of taking notes. Perhaps he was inspired by this and embarked on the road of literature.

Lessons and awakening

By this time, Jack London had woken up from his early ignorance. Determined to master the most advanced technology at that time: electricity, he went to Oakland Tram Company to apply for a job. He told the manager that he would do whatever it takes to master the technology. The manager made him work thirteen hours a day, and there was no Sunday, which made him tired to death. Later, he learned that it was actually two workers who were forced to work by him. Each of them is forty yuan, while * * * is eighty yuan, while he only has thirty yuan a month. Moreover, a man he pushed to work committed suicide because he had a wife and three children to support, but he could not make a living. This is an extremely profound lesson for Jack London, who threw down the coal shovel angrily.

This kind of hard labor taught him a terrible truth: no matter how strong he is, after ten or twenty years, there will always be younger and stronger people to replace him and throw him into the garbage.

It was the Great Depression of 1884. He joined the unemployed who went to Washington from San Francisco to petition and headed straight for the East Coast. On the way, he left the team for some reason, so he sneaked around the North American continent by train, played hide-and-seek with the car police and flight attendants, and traveled around the country for fun. He was arrested and tortured for 30 days and witnessed the appalling reality in American prisons. After he got out of prison, he stole a train to the west coast of Canada, then went south as a sailor and returned to San Francisco. This special form of travel has given him rich life experiences, especially those of the poor and homeless. He understood a truth: it is often the poor who can take care of the poor best.

Step into the door of productism.

He has always been interested in reading, even when he was a thief stealing oysters, he read many books on his boat. Returning from wandering, he began to read a lot. He has read the works of Saint-Simon, Fourier and proudhon, and understands the evils of private property. He even read Marx's * * * manifesto and got a general understanding of what * * * was about.

In order to study, he 19 entered Auckland Middle School, prepared for the college entrance examination and joined the Socialist Party. He attended a workers' rally, delivered a fierce speech, advocated destroying the existing social order, and was once arrested for it.

When he was studying in Auckland middle school, he published the novel Ogasawara Islands in the school newspaper for two months, which made his interest in literature even stronger.

Gold rush trip

He had hoped to make a living through work and continue his studies, but found it almost an illusion. He works in the laundry workshop, and he is half tired and has no time to study. When his dream of studying was on the verge of disillusionment, the news of the discovery of gold mines in Alaska brought him new hope. 1897 In March, Jack London started the gold rush.

With a little support, he and three companions prepared 8,000 pounds of materials for the winter in cronk. They overcame many difficulties before the arrival of the cold winter and went through hardships to yukon river near the North Pole, where they spent the winter.

On the way to the yukon river Valley, London's unique navigation technology got a wonderful performance opportunity. They cut their own timber, built two boats and sailed downstream along the yukon river. On the way, they met a fast and dangerous river. Many people tried to cross it, but failed, saying that the river was an insurmountable natural barrier, but Jack London said he would definitely cross it. Sure enough, he sailed with two companions, escaped the rapids with the cheers of onlookers, and then came back to sail the second boat. This incident attracted the attention of many gold miners in trouble, and they kept asking Jack to help them sail through the rapids. Jack London demanded 25 yuan's reward for each boat. At the helm, he and his friends drove one scattered wooden boat after another through the danger zone. They earned as much as three thousand yuan for it. They could have earned another 5 thousand, but there was no time. They must go downstream before winter comes.

He read many books in the winter camp in yukon river, such as Darwin's Origin of Species, Spencer's First Principle, Marx's Das Kapital, Milton's Paradise Lost and Browning's poems. We met Larsson, a sea wolf, in The Sea-Wolf, read these and discussed them with Van Weiden and Brewster.

Unfortunately, they don't have any fresh fruits and vegetables. Jack London got scurvy and had to go home. He and his friends sailed a small boat, completed the voyage of 1900 miles in19 days, came to the Bering Strait, and returned to California from there. During this time, he has outlined the outlines of some novels, and later wrote them, which won him endless fame and made some stories about people and dogs in Klondike widely circulated, including The Call of the Wild and Rebak's Dog.

After he came back from yukon river, he had a little money, so he read a lot of books. He studies hard and works 19 hours a day. He read economics, history and historical works, biology, anthropology and philosophy, and also read a lot of literary works. In Martin Eden, the hero of his novel Martin Eden, we see a detailed description of this extremely difficult reading life.

After Jack London's father died, he began to do odd jobs to support his family. When looking for a job, Jack London wrote this river, but the manuscript was returned. While waiting for the rejection, he wrote another serial novel with more than 20,000 words, and the result was returned. Although the manuscript was returned every time, Jack London still found time to write and continue to write new themes. Finally, Continental Monthly published his first novel, A toast to the people on the road, and the manuscript fee was only 5 yuan. Soon, Black Cat magazine asked 40 yuan to write a novel. Finally, there was a turn for the better.

Very famous.

1900, Jack London's first collection of novels, Wolf's Son, was published, which immediately won him a great reputation and considerable income. Among American writers, Jack London is prolific. During his creative career of 16 years, he published more than 50 works, including 2/kloc-0 novels, 20 short stories, 3 plays, and many political essays and features, leaving a rich literary legacy. Jack London has won a reputation in American literature with his creative strength. It is worth mentioning that Jack London only received some formal education indirectly. As a world-famous writer, he achieved success through self-study.

Journalist career

He could have continued to write in a successful and stable environment, but he was not a quiet man. His blood vessels are burning with flames, and he is always eager for a new boiling life, so he started his career as a journalist.

Entrusted by the American News Agency, he went to Africa to cover the Boer War. When he arrived in London, the news agency changed its plan halfway and told him not to go. At this time, he lived in the slums of London for more than three months as an American sailor, went deep into the life there, made a detailed investigation, obtained first-hand information, and published the reportage "People in the Abyss" after returning home. This book made him famous among American socialists.

1904, he accepted the employment of Hearst newspaper department and went to the Far East to cover the news of the Russo-Japanese War. When he came to Japan, he saw the intention of the Japanese government to deliberately detain journalists from all over the world, so he got up and quietly went to Nagasaki, trying to board a ship bound for North Korea and go to the front, but was arrested by the Japanese police as a Russian spy. After his release, he took a small motorboat to Busan, North Korea. There is no food for 100 people on the motorboat, and there is no shelter from the wind and rain, so we can only sleep on the cold outdoor deck. When he arrived in Busan, he got a ship without a canopy, hired three Koreans who couldn't speak English to help him, sailed into the Yellow Sea by his own sailing skills, sailed along the coast, sailed in the cold wind and waves at MINUS 40 degrees for six days and six nights, and finally arrived in Incheon. At this time, he was black and blue, his feet, fingers and ears were frozen, but after a short rest, he set off again. This time he traveled by horse, and several weeks of riding March took him to Pyongyang, which was the northernmost point that all war reporters could reach at that time. There, he was thrown into prison by the Japanese for the second time. After he was released from prison, he came to a place only forty miles away from the front line, from which he sent out one report after another and many photos, completing the tasks that other journalists had not completed. For some reason, he was threatened with arrest again, and he was not able to escape until the President of the United States intervened. During the performance of this interview, Jack drove a convertible boat in the cold many times, and he had a very personal experience of such a harsh life. Sea wolves have a fascinating and vivid description of this life.

Unfulfilled romantic plans

At this time, Jack London has been famous all over the country and has a rich economic income, but he is still not satisfied with a quiet life. 1906, he decided to build a boat and travel around the world alone. He is expected to travel around the world in seven years, but he is not a good financier, and shipbuilding activities have almost become a joke. The ship originally planned 7,000 yuan, but it actually cost him tens of thousands of dollars, and there were many problems. He couldn't wait any longer, so he set out with his sailing skills, but he managed to sail the boat to Hawaii, so he had to start repairing it. After repairing it, he made great efforts to sail to Australia. Unable to move forward, the ship had to be sold at a low price of 3,000 yuan, ending this romantic but failed voyage.

However, he still made amazing achievements in that voyage. He once sailed that broken boat from Hawaii to Max. At that time, the Pacific Shipping Guide pointed out that due to the influence of equatorial current and trade winds, the current in that area was extremely complicated, and no one had ever successfully sailed through it, but Jack London drove a barely repaired ship and ran past it. He contracted a strange disease on the way. In The Sea-Wolf, we read the poetic descriptions of tropical oceans and trade winds, from which we got the materials of our daily life.

Jack London's Belief-Socialism!

Jack London made several lecture tours after he became famous. In the United States at that time, socialist thought was taboo, but socialist Jack London always put forward his views bluntly. He talked about his socialist revolution at the University of California, which met with strong opposition, but was protected by the president who advocated freedom of speech. He went to the merchants' club to vigorously promote his socialist revolution, and called the revolutionaries who killed several czar officials in the Russian revolution in 1905 his brothers, which caused an uproar. The newspaper attacked him and said that he regarded the murderer as his brother. When he delivered a speech entitled "Revolution" at Yale University, he dissected capitalism for an hour with an economic scalpel, and finally declared: "Seven million people of the working class said: They just want all workers to unite and seize power." His report was warmly welcomed, although few people in the audience really believed his theory.

Because of his socialist beliefs, he was once nominated as the mayor candidate of Oakland, a socialist party, and even as the presidential candidate of the United States.

The death of Jack London

Jack London's death remains a mystery. 19 161February 2 1 Sunday, Jack London planned to go to new york the next day. He planned to make a detour to watch the Chicago game and buy some excellent cattle, but that night he took an overdose of morphine and died. There is a notebook on his desk with some figures for calculating the dose written on it. At that time, he was suffering from uremia, but the doctor thought it was unconvincing to regard uremia as his cause of death. Then there are only two explanations: suicide or miscalculation. Judging from his arrangement during the day, it doesn't look like suicide; However, it is unacceptable that such an important dose calculation has problems.

However, it is not unreasonable to say that he committed suicide. Life in those years became more and more troublesome for him. He divorced his wife, only to find that the new wife and the old wife had the same problems, while his beloved daughter loved her mother and alienated him. His friend betrayed him because of his wealth. His newly-built villa "Wolf House" was suddenly burned down, which brought him a lot of debts. All the 400,000 saplings he planted died; The thoroughbred horses, pigs, cows and sheep in his pasture also died one after another. He was exhausted and caused diseases, among which uremia was the most troublesome. Extreme psychological isolation and great physical pain made him drown his sorrows by drinking and become more and more addicted to alcohol. Maybe he felt too tired that night and needed relief, so he drank too much morphine and quietly walked out of his misery, who knows!

Reflections on the Death of Jack London

1916165438+1On October 22nd, Jack London committed suicide by taking too much morphine in his luxury ranch. His death provides an important example for the writer's suicide. We can list a long list of writers who committed suicide: Mo Bosang, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, Yasunari Kawabata, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Yukio Mishima, Ye Saining, Mayakovski, Zvetayeva, Haizi, Gu Cheng and Lao She. When people talk about the writer's suicide, they always try to understand some philosophical implications from the writer's pain, loneliness and despair. This over-interpretation may just poeticize the complicated phenomenon of writer's suicide.

Of course, after all, human beings are in a state of birth and death, and the finiteness of life makes it impossible for human beings to give up thinking about death. Writers pay more attention to people's inner world, pursue their own ideals, ask more about the meaning of life, and are more sensitive and harsh on the real world. Therefore, the writer's suicide is indeed a spiritual event to a great extent, a spiritual event.

In his short story Love Life, the hero is a hungry and cold gold digger. He met a sick wolf in the wasteland. The gold digger finally won the struggle with his strong will to life and radiated the light of life. Jack London didn't give the gold digger a specific name. He is a fragile and tenacious fighter. Jack London's intention in describing this miracle of life is not to create a "strongman", but to show people's life energy from generate in despair. At the beginning of the novel, Jack London wrote such a poem: "This is the only wealth in life \ to live and experience pain \ and it is not bad to do it \ even if you lose the final bet." "I must achieve my goal. There is hope for everything. I want to succeed. I plucked up my courage with a feeling of strength, left the noisy hell and stepped onto the deck. The fog on the deck floats like a ghost in the night, and the air is sweet, pure and quiet. " This is a passage written by Jack London in The Waves. In Jack London's view, the purpose of life is to smash obstacles and overcome setbacks.

Jack London wrote: "When life becomes painful and boring, death will make you fall asleep and stay awake." Jack London reveals such a tragedy with his works and his own life experience, that is, when a person is in trouble, he can stick to it by dreams. Once he gets out of trouble and succeeds, the meaning of life becomes a problem. Suffering can make a person's heart strong, but success can destroy everything.

After becoming famous, Jack London fell into the quagmire of money, wrote poorly and copied some inferior works in batches. His life is also full of depravity, killing his inner boredom by buying cruise ships and building luxury villas. And when this boredom reaches its limit, death becomes the only choice. Jack London committed suicide at the age of 40. Such an ending is not only the end of life, but also the denial of empty life, and an eternal unresolved question about the meaning of life. Jack London's death revealed his success. He can endure pain and suffering, but he can't face happiness and comfort.

How to finish your life is really a question worth pondering!

[Edit this paragraph] Jack London's learning methods

Anyone who has been to the home of Jack London, an American writer, feels very strange: there are all kinds of small notes everywhere on curtains, clothes hangers, cabinets, bedside, mirrors and walls. Everyone who came to his room for the first time thought it was a special decoration. Actually, these little notes are not blank. It is full of all kinds of materials he collected: wonderful words, vivid metaphors and all kinds of materials. Jack London has no chance to study systematically. In order to master cultural knowledge and practice writing, he worked hard against time. He wrote the new words on a piece of paper and inserted them in the mirror seam of the dresser so that he could recite them when shaving and dressing in the morning. He hung a string of words on the clothesline with a pin so that he could see them when he looked up or walked across the room. He has a piece of paper with lines written on it in every pocket. When he goes to the library or visits abroad, he will read aloud and even meditate while eating or sleeping. He took a notebook with him and wrote down what he saw and heard during his work: descriptions of scenery, sketches of characters, wonderful language, fragments of dialogues, touching stories ... He also made a card index of everything he had read. Over time, he not only learned culture, but also accumulated a large number of vocabulary, and established a "reference reading room" for storing writing materials. these

These materials were not used up until his death.

[Edit this paragraph] Famous sayings about Jack London

1 Young people are always young, and only the old grow old.

The only way to get wisdom is to buy it with youth.

Throwing bones to dogs is not charity. Hungry as a dog, sharing a bone with a dog is charity.

Love stays at the top of the mountain, above the valley of reason. Love is the sublimation of life and rarely appears.

There is love first in the world, and then there is the language of expression. In the youth when love just came to this world, it learned a set of methods that it will never forget.

Everything that enlarges life and makes the mind sound is good; Everything that shortens, hurts and squeezes life is bad.