Analyzing Jack London's Popular Love Story The Sea-Wolf

The structure of a novel enables it to embody, integrate and communicate its content by revealing its role in the creation and perception of it. A complex structure such as that of Robert Drewe’s work The Drowner, published in 1996, refers to the interrelation or arrangement of parts in a complex entity1. Drewe’s novel is a multi-faceted epic love story presenting a fable of European ambitions in an alien landscape, and a magnificently sustained metaphor of water as the life and death force2. The main concerns of the novel include concerns about love, life, death and human frailty. These concerns are explored through the complex structure of the novel. That is, through its symbolic title, prologues, and division into sections. The

Jack London’s The Sea Wolf is in some ways a philosophical text and a product of its time. The strain it puts on the reader between a social Darwinist and utilitarian perspective against that of a more idealistic one is great. Many times the character of Wolf Larsen is a more consistent articulator of the Darwinian position and seems to always be getting the upper hand argumentatively. However, it is due to a phenomenological outlook on the events presented within The Sea Wolf that the alternative becomes intelligible. After all, the endeavor to improve is one thing which identifies us as human. The understanding of what constitutes this improvement varies,

Love between two genders is one of the most common themes in writing. In literature, love is often praised, appreciated and cherished. Another common theme in writing is the looming specter of inequality between men and women, which has been strongly depicted throughout history and is still worryingly present in the world today. It is extremely interesting to realize that though love is treasured and valued, in most cases, it takes both genders to create love, and those genders are often separated by inequality. Both these themes coincide well together; the clash of love and gender inequality is interestingly captivating. In John Updikes A&P and Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants, both stories send a conclusive message to the reader that equality between both sexes in love and attraction is almost impossible; one gender will always be more powerful than the other.

In the short story “Sea Oak,” George Saunders presents a family that is struggling with life in the poor neighborhood of Sea Oak. The narrator works as a male stripper in Joysticks, run by Mr. Frendt. The story also revolves around Auntie Bernie, who dies, resurrects, and dies again after advising the narrator, his sister Min, and their cousin Jade to adopt unorthodox and immoral means of making it in life. Two main themes that emerge in Saunders’ work are grief and loss that people suffer in life, and how the society teaches to deal with them, including the loss of a fruitful life, lack of wealth and success, as well as death.

Notwithstanding their partner’s contempt of reading and writing, both the father in “The Boat,” and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” continue to search for reprieve through their respective books and diary.

In Sea Oak, George Saunders composes a story that examines social classes by applying satire. He uses the narrator's Aunt Bernie to teach a valuable lesson about life. The valuable lesson is that one should appreciate what they have in life my making the most out of it. It is essential for people to acknowledge what they have, on the grounds that one day it might be gone. In Sea Oak, Saunders represents two Aunt Bernie’s, a before life Aunt Bernie and an after-life Aunt Bernie.

The main argument of the book ‘The Sea-Wolf’ is about opposing behaviors of human being depicted by the role of nature in revealing the inner self of a person. In this regard, London uses two of his main characters to demonstrate the distinct opposing sides of human beings. The first part is about Humphrey, who is a young Dutch struggling with his demons and difficulties in the sea as he hope to change his life and those of fellow crews . Humphrey is initially weak, rich and naïve, and with straight morals . Humphrey believes on fairness, compassion, and all through the story despite being close to the evil Larsen he refuses to follow his footsteps .

Rather than exploring lighter tones in her stories, she can only express herself through trauma. Let’s now explore what methods Danticat uses to explore such literary cliché’s within ‘Children of the Sea’.

'What 's that? ' she asked a waiter and pointed to the long backbone of the great fish that was just now garbage waiting to go out with the tide. 'Tiburon, ' the waiter said, 'Shark. ' He was meaning to explain what dare grapple happened. 'I didn 't know sharks had such handsome tails. ' 'I didn 't either, ' her male companion said." (page 109) these two tourists who speak are hardly differentiated from the group to which they belong. They are all metaphors for individuals who are spectators of the human scene rather than participants in its activity. They see, but they see without fully comprehending. They are only faintly curious, only passingly interested, only superficially observing, they have not been initiated into the mysteries that Santiago understands. These tourists live their lives as tourists, skimming the surface of life, without resolution or clarity. Their life reflects that of all people who live their lives ashore, who dare not grapple with the mysteries of the ocean, or of life. This is the type of life that Hemingway always tried to avoid, to the point of his taking his own life. Hemingway uses metaphors to reflect his opinions of life and the people that he has met in life. The metaphor of the sea symbolizes all of life and the roles that people must choose to have in life. The lions are a metaphor for the

The book I selected to read during this semester is the literary classic The Call of the Wild, a 1903 novel by award-winning author Jack London. I chose to read this story because it is a classic novel and the heroic tone of the novel appealed to me. The novel tells of an initially pampered dog, Buck, and the progression of his tendency to revert to the inner instincts of fierce violence and extreme competition instilled in him. In the process, Buck goes through several different masters before finally landing with the right one. The Call of the Wild is made interesting by the literary devices used in the novel, the simple and robust tone used by London, and the process that the protagonist Buck undergoes in reverting back to his

Herman Melville’s novels, with good reason, can be called masculine. Moby-Dick may, also with good reason, be called a man’s book and that Melville’s seafaring episode suggests a patriarchal, anti-feminine approach that adheres to the nineteenth century separation of genders. Value for masculinity in the nineteenth century America may have come from certain expected roles males were expected to fit in; I argue that its value comes from examining it not alone, but in relation to and in concomitance with femininity. As Richard H. Brodhead put it, Moby-Dick is “so outrageously masculine that we scarcely allow ourselves to do justice to the full scope of masculinism” (Brodhead 9). I concur with Brodhead in that remark, and that Melville’s

Jack London’s novel, The Sea-Wolf, has many different interpretations. The story can be read as a combination of the naturalistic novel and the sentimental romance, both very popular around the turn of the century. London also brings into play literary naturalism, in which human beings are characterized as just another species in nature, subject to all of Her cosmic forces. The Sea-Wolf fits almost perfectly the archetypal pattern of an initiation story. Depth and interest are added to The Sea-Wolf by successfully integrating these three elements -- the combination of two popular genres, literary naturalism, and the initiation story.

Authors write for many different motives. Some authors write to tell their story, while others write to provoke thought. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’ The Wide Sargasso Sea are intriguing stories that tell more than just a story. The authors of both these novels are able to explore unimagined social standards, which allows for their characters to rebel against the current standards of society. As the authors seem to make their characters rebel against society, they are able to explore “elsewhere.” This “elsewhere” can be many anything from gender roles, conflicts from not being fully accepted by one culture, or isolationism. Bronte and Rhys explore gender roles in their novels through characterization of main characters like

The idea of complete love is shown through Lady Connie and Mellors relationship. Lawrence shows through these two how love needs to have emotional and physical aspects to be possible. Writing about their evolving relationship and showing how both aspects are started and evolve, he gives us the idea of what he thinks real love is. Lawrence shows how their “true” love and eventual marriage escapes class lines and the industrial world the author despises. In one of the more descriptive sex scenes, Lawrence wants to show that two people who are in real love have no shame.

Love, a word which is found throughout The Old Man and the Sea, symbolizes the many relationships not only in the book but also in Hemingway’s life. The inspiration Hemingway had to write this short novel came from a woman named Adriana Ivancich, on her visit to see the writer in Cuba in the late 1950s (Voss). Hemingway’s love for Ivancich went on for many years, that he also exposed it in one of his previous works, Across the River and into the Trees (Voss). For this connection Hemingway had for Ivancich, there is no doubt