Tuesday/Wednesday
Spirals & Glue Stick
1. Intro to Jack London
C-Notes on lecture (guided)
3. Metaphor (review) Notes in Section 1
4. Extended Metaphor
Worksheet (do together-glue into section 2)
5. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Chapter 1
Guided Reading Worksheet (due end of class)
Take notes in Section 1
Glue guided C-Notes paper on the page across
from narration Sled Dogs of the Arctic Circle
== you will take notes on the PowerPoint lecture
about Jack London.
Jack London
“…first millionaire writer in history…”
Born John Griffith Chaney
January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916.
American author, journalist, and
social activist.
Family
Born in San Francisco, January 12, 1876
Birth name—John Griffith Chaney
Biological father-William Chaney “left”; never met
Jack
Mother: Flora Wellman “cold and depressed”
Step Father: John London (married his mother
before he turned 1 years old)
Raised by ex-slave “Aunt Jenny”
Education
• Quit school at 13 (after 8th grade graduation) to help
support his mother
• Loved to read & write as a child– to escape his life
• Returned to high school at age 18 and graduated at
age 19
• Did homework in a bar (Last Change Saloon); owner
loaned him money for college
• Studied all summer to pass college entrance exams
• Attended UC-Berkeley for only 1 semester
• Dropped out due to finances
Work -- Jobs
• Started working part-time at age of 10
• Began working full-time at age 13 in a fish canning
factory (cannery); worked 12-18 hours a day
• worked at various hard labor jobs before he
turned 19 -•pirated for oysters
•served on a fish patrol to
capture poachers,
•sailed to Japan on a sealing
ship
•Railway power plant
• joined Kelly's Army to
protest working conditions
•Tramped / hoboed around
the country
Klondike Gold Rush
•In 1897, he joined the Klondike
Gold Rush with his brother-in-law
He had just turned 21 years old.
•Found no gold
•Returned home because of
illnesses- almost died
•While recovering stayed at wealthy
doctor’s home; his sons attended
East Coast Colleges which left a
lasting impression on Jack London.
He concluded that his only hope
of escaping the work "trap" was to
get an education and "sell his
brains". He saw his writing as a
business, his ticket out of poverty,
and, he hoped, a means of beating
the wealthy at their own game.
Metaphorical Gold
• His time in the Yukon provided the
metaphorical gold for his first stories, which
he began publishing in the Overland Monthly in
1899.
• He wrote about all his adventures – all his jobs,
travels, the harsh realities of nature,
hardships of the ordinary man
Making Money as a Writer
• He was paid $5 for his first published novel, To
the Man On Fire
• $40 for his first magazine short story
Printing technology enabled lower-cost production of
magazines so there was a huge market for short stories.
• In 1900 he made $2500 writing short stories
for magazines ($70,000 in today’s market)
The Call of the Wild
• Jan. 26, 1903, the Saturday
Evening Post agreed to publish,
The Call of the Wild – IF he would
shorten it!
• They paid him 3 cents a word -$750. He was 27 years old.
• The short story was so popular,
Macmillan Publishing Company
bought the book rights for $2000
• His stories were raw. They were harsh,
in a time the literary establishment was
used to much more restrained, refined
kinds of works of fiction.
• His stories took the literary world by
storm.
• They printed 10,000 copies initially of
The Call of the Wild. It was sold out in
hours.
Realism
• Characters appear in real complexity in
relation to nature, to each other, to their
social class, to their own past
• Class is important, usually middle class
• Events will usually be plausible, or highly
possible– reality based.
• Diction is natural everyday speech (words)
Naturalism
Focused on the lives of ordinary people in realistic
situations:
• Contrasted with the romantic view of nature as a
maternal and healing force
• View of nature and the universe as cold
indifferent forces
• Individuals are victims of forces they cannot
control
Evidence of naturalism in
The Call of the Wild
Literary naturalism is the belief that
when humans return to their natural,
primitive state in nature, they will
regains their natural instincts and
become wild.
How does this relate to Buck?
As we listen to/read The
Call of the Wild notice -• Jack London’s use of vivid language (imagery)
• Also, -– Adverbs
– Adjectives
– Unusual word order
– Repetition
– Long sentences
The Call of the Wild -- Allegory
• An allegory tells two stories at once – one set in
the reality of the story and one with more
symbolic significance
• On one level the story is simply about a dog
answering the “call of the wild”
• On a deeper level, however, the novel may be
voicing London’s opinion that man is inherently
savage and, like Buck, must learn to survive by
any means necessary
Publishing History
• Published fifty books from 1900-1916
• Only twenty-one are still in print.
1903
• London is much like the dog Buck in that he was a
scrapper. He fought for what he knew was his
right. He fought for what he felt was due him, he
never settled for less and Buck is very much that
way. Buck starting out in a sheltered environment
and then being thrown suddenly, rudely, brutally
into this environment where he has to fight for
his very life. Fight for food, fight to survive every
single day and he has to learn those laws. If he
doesn't learn the laws, he's not going to survive.
Section 2
Take notes on Metaphor on the left side because
you will glue Extended Metaphors onto the right
page. --later
Title left page: Metaphor Review
Title right page: Extended Metaphor
Metaphor
Metaphor is a term for a figure of speech. It does
not use a word in its basic literal sense. Instead, it
uses a word in a kind of comparison.
We use metaphors to make indirect comparisons,
but without using 'like' or 'as' – because that would
be a simile.
“All the world is a stage.”
a metaphor uses words to make a picture in
our mind.
It takes a word from its original literal
context, and uses it in another.
• "I beat him with a stick" = literal meaning of
'beat'.
• "I beat him in an argument" = metaphorical
meaning of 'beat'
Which is the metaphor?
1. Love is war.
2. Love is like war.
Extended Metaphor
An extended metaphor, also called conceit, is
a metaphor that continues into the
sentence(s) that follow.
It is often developed at great length, occurring
frequently in or throughout a work of literature.