The Call of the Wild外国文学导读指南系列丛书.pdfVIP

A T E A C H E R ’ S G U I D E T O T H E S I G N E T C L A S S I C E D I T I O N O F JACK LONDON’S THE CALL OF THE WILD BY JIM COPE and WENDY COPE S E R I E S E D I T O R S : W. GEIGER ELLIS, ED.D., UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA, EMERITUS and ARTHEA J. S. REED, PH.D., UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, RETIRED A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classic Edition of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild 2 I N T R O D U C T I O N Before there was Hemingway, Steinbeck, Kerouac, and Mailer, there was Jack London. Perhaps no other American writer led a life as exciting as that described in his fiction. Born in San Francisco to an unwed mother from a wealthy back- ground, London grew up with his mother and stepfather in a working class neighborhood in Oakland. After leaving school in the eighth grade, he held a series of hard scrabble jobs including oyster pirate, fish patrol member, sailor on a sealing ship, and cross-country hobo before he returned to attend high school at age 19. The combination of his travels, many low paying jobs, and vast reading turned the young London into a fiery socialist who built his world view from the writings of Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Herbert Spencer. These experiences, self-education, and great per- sonal discipline turned London into a fine writer. But no other experience influenced his writing more than his partici- pation in the Klondike gold rush from 1897 to 1899. A great journal writer, London recorded his adventures in the “Northland” including the countless stories he heard from fellow travelers while stranded in an abandoned trappers’ cabin for his first long winter in the Yukon. The