How Did Jack London Begin His Work

The isolation that comes with crashing on a deserted island affects all the characters, seen most dramatically through Jack. Being brought into this setting transforms the civilized choir leader into a savage hunter and murderer who’s given into his inner demons. When the boys first crash land onto the island, they were proper English schoolboys. Due to the separation from society, however, the boys start to regress, giving in to their more animalistic instincts. Jack starts off as the ‘‘chapter chorister and head boy’” who tries to take leadership of the tribe the boys form; he fails to do so, turning him away from order and reason (Golding 22). He neglects his duties and turns his attention to hunting the native pigs, prompting him to let the fire, their gateway back to society, go out; this pits Ralph against Jack, who represent civilization and savagery

There are no adults on the island. No one to make them feel safe when there is an unknown creature that feeds off fear. Jack takes that fear and causes a decline in the society of the boys on the island. First of all, he is stubborn. Jack is also immature and reckless. Thirdly, he is power-hungry. Lastly, Jack is driven by fear.

Jack wasn't the kind of writer that thought things would just come to him if he decided to sit and wait. He knew the best stories came from the worst situations. Some might say that he made bad decisions and ended up in the wrong places or that he could do so much better. What they did not realize is that he is the one that chose to do those things and live in those kinds of places, he loves it. That is the kind of lifestyle that he wanted to live. Often he spent the night at run down hotels or apartments where most people would not even think of spending the night at. In his mind they were cheap, everyone watched your back, and looked the other

In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a group of young British boys are left stranded on an island after a fatal plane crash in the midst of a World War. With no communication to the outer world and no presence or influence of adults on the island, Ralph, Jack Merridew, and Piggy are forced to take initiative if the group of hopeless boys want to survive. The group of boys experience a drastic change throughout their time on the island, a change that no one would ever expect to occur to a young group of primed British boys. The leader of the stranded choirists on the island, Jack Merridew, shows such a change that he soon persuades other boys to follow his savage actions as the novel progresses. Though the changes to Jack’s mental and physical characteristics advance slowly at first, the final personality of Jack is instantly taken over at the climax of the novel to a dehumanized savage. Jack’s innocence is corrupted by his inability to withstand a society without rules proving man's good essential nature is altered by the evil within society.

The significance of the character Jack, was thought provoking to the reader, due to his influential change throughout Lord of the Flies. In the beginning of the novel, Jack turned out to be a civilised, organised and authoritative school boy. However, as time went on and many things changed, Jack slowly succumbed to his true, primitive nature. Once Jack was given the role of Chief Hunter, and was able to kill his first pig, he hesitated and realised “the enormity of the downward strike would be”. As a result of this, Jack didn’t attempt to kill the pig, which shows us his underlying innocence. The longer Jack was stuck on the island, the more his inner savagery began to reveal itself to the audience. This in turn caused him to start trying to “convey the compulsion to track down and kill what was swallowing him up”. This drastic change in character reveals to the audience how influential the expectations of society can impact on human nature. Human nature at its purest form is the primitive, savage part of everyone, which is hidden by the rules of society we must follow to survive in a modern civilisation. Society is a person’s biggest influence. Once a young child like Jack is removed

By the end of the novel, Jack has become a full blown barbarian. He is so caught up in killing pigs that he no longer listens to Ralph. He tries to become chief again and fails. Because of that, he starts his own tribe on the other side of the island where all they do is hunt pigs. The boys that follow him are transformed into the savage that he is. “Here, struck down by the heat, the sow fell and the hunters hurled themselves at her…Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Roger found a lodgment for his point and began to push till he was leaning with his whole weight. The spear moved forward inch by inch… [t]hen Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands.” Jack and his followers were demoralized and tainted

Jack a bright young man with a future at this point in the reading knew that he was off to no goood, by coming to New York City and thinking that it would be a big opportunity for him. Although he didn’t realize the consequences he would face, he had set high goals but since he was surrounded by negative influences, his goals soon were vanishing and his life going downhill. Jack spoke of his writing and his passion for writing showed quite a lot throughout his book, he wrote wherever he went. Jack said “The remaining pages were wrinkled and stained from water damage. It smelled salty, and bit like diesel fuel. I loved it, and immediately thought it was up to me to record my boat’s history, like so many other sea writers had done. I turned the page, smoothed it out with my hands and got started” page 81. Jack had positives intentions but since he was money hungry he accepted to help negative people that would put him into trouble and his life goals down the drain. It’s interesting to read about Jack Gantos life mistakes because through the mistakes and consequences you learn to redeem yourself, while on the other hand, there is no redemption without

       Jack does indeed begin as an immature, spoiled child. In Scudder's version, which is a moral version containing a fairy who justifies Jack's decision to steal the Giant's treasures, Jack's mother blames him for making her "a beggar" (23). In Jacobs' version, which is a traditional version without the fairy, Jack's inability to get a job shows his immaturity. As Martha Wolfenstein states, Jack "is spoiled or lazy or cannot hold a job or . . . has carelessly exhausted the family substance" (243). When the cow, Milky-white, stops giving milk, Jack's mother sends him to the marketplace to sell the cow for money (Jacobs 59). This venture is a very important first step in Jack's road to maturity, though it may not seem so at the time. This is the first time that we know of Jack's mother ever sending him to the market. According to Bruno Bettelheim, this first encounter with the world represents the end of infancy for Jack. As Bettelheim reminds us, Jack's mother demands that he "learn to make do with what the outside world can offer" (188). Now that Jack can no longer expect his mother to do everything for him, he realizes that he must take steps toward maturity. As Bettelheim says, "The child then has to begin the long and difficult

Even though this is the most logical thing to do in their situation, instead all the boys’ are just playing around like little kids. This is a common trait in kids because they don’t like dealing with activities that involve hard work; they are more interested in living their lives freely without any concerns. Due to all of Ralph’s methods of surviving on the island involve working, while Jack’s involve having “fun,” it is clear that the kids would be interested in Jack. This approach of using fun against kids reveals how individual’s attentiveness is an effective way for leveraging them into getting their attention towards yourself; this is exactly what Jack succeeds in.

Jack does not shape his own life. Many times in the novel Jack imagines who he wants to be, and gives other people the impression that he's someone else, but he never tries to achieve anything to become what he imagines. Early on, he had a pen pal he wrote to, “We were supposed to write once a month but I wrote at least once a week, ten, twelve, fifteen pages at a time. I represented myself to her as the owner of a palomino horse named Smiley who shared my encounters with mountain lions, rattlesnakes, and packs of coyotes on my father’s ranch, the Lazy B”(13). This is a good example, its shows how he imagines things and tries to make other people believe that’s who he is, which happens numerous times in the memoir. When he arrived at the Welch’s farm, he saw himself being in the same situation that the Welchs were in. This shows that he has no ambition to become anything, and just assumes he will have a bad life. All this is mostly due to the fact that no one inspires him to do anything. Another example of this is his attitude about school. He wants to be good and educated like his brother, yet he does horribly in school and gets worse every year.

I enjoyed the book, This Boy’s Life and I found the lack of stability in Jack’s life interesting. Jack and his mother, Rosemary, move around a lot in the book, causing Jack to never really have a place to call home. In the beginning of the book, Jack and Rosemary are moving from Florida to Utah to escape Rosemary’s ex-husband, Roy. However, Roy follows them to Utah, so Jack and Rosemary move to Seattle. Then, Rosemary meets Dwight and eventually decides to marry him. This leads to her and Jack moving to Chinook with Dwight and his children. At the end of the book, Jack moves to California for the summer to live with his father and brother. After the summer, he starts prep school at Hill in Washington D.C. Here he gets kicked out his senior year and then decides to join the army. Each time Jack moves, he wants to start a better life for himself, but is never able to accomplish this task. I think that the lack of stability in his life, from moving all the time, is the main reason he cannot change his life around.

Jack London and Stephen Crane were both well-known literary naturalists who died at relatively early ages. Despite having lived such a short life, Jack London lived a full life. He has achieved wide popularity abroad, with his work being translated into more than fifty languages, as well as having written fifty literary works in eighteen years. His stories in the naturalistic mode still continue to influence writers today. Stephen Crane was also an accomplished writer as well as a poet. He was among the first to express in writing a new way of looking at the world. Although Crane is also seen as one of the first American naturalistic writers, a Symbolist, and Imagist, the achievements which

Jack London and Stephen Crane obsessively fixated on the theme of death in their writing. The two writers were both similar and dissimilar. Both died young: it is unsure whether or not Crane committed suicide. Both wrote about contemporary and realistic topics and both dwelt heavily on existentialist themes. Both too were very realist. In 'Buck', London has the character live in the real world not escape it, whilst Crane has his character thoroughly absorbed in the vicissitudes and realities of war. Both also use mediums to convey their message: with London it seems to be the dog (for instance in To Build a Fire who connotes superior friendship and loyalty to that of the man) and in Crane it is the extent of human fear in the human when faced by war.

Stephan Crane and Jack London incorporate naturalism, title significance and representation effectively through the relationship between God, man and nature, and life and death. Naturalism represents our individual control over our destiny and our actions as determined and limited through the natural world, specifically humanity. Stephan Crane and Jack London depict descriptive images of human despair illustrated by distressing environments and environmental forces within in their stories.

Jack London, an American author known for his thrilling adventure stories, showed the world that even an exciting story that takes place in exotic settings can include all the intricacies of great literature. This is seen in many of his stories with the implementation of symbolism, many times a recurring theme in his work. Also, London used many ideas of the day such as Darwinism and Spencerism in his writings in order to better portray his views. However, perhaps one of the most telling signs that London wrote good literature was through London's mastery of a rising literary movement known as naturalism.