LOVE OF LIFE

“Love of Life” is one of the most famous Northern short stories by Jack London. This popularity is surely justified. The secret to its appeal is in the emotional impact it produces, behind which is the author's skill, the peculiar literary talent of Jack London. Without any prologue and exposition the author brought the reader right into the middle of the events “in media res.” “They limped painfully down the bank, and once the foremost of the two men staggered among the rough-strewn rocks. They were tired and weak, and their faces had the drawn expression of patience which comes of hardship long endured.”

Starting from the very first lines and further into the story, London relied on visual imagery. This helped to draw a clearer picture of events as well as to intensify the illusion of authenticity. Understandably if the writer had limited himself to just the use of this technique, our perception would lack the bright colors of the composite imagery of the literary work. We feel the cold and hear the dull voice of one of the travelers in the story. The use of one traveler's thoughts or consciousness allowed the author to make trips in time, both into the past and future. As soon as he returned to the present, we were again given more visual imagery.

This is how the sense of hunger, experienced by the protagonist, was brought to the reader's awareness: “He had not eaten for two days; for a far longer time he had not had all he wanted to eat. Often he stooped and picked pale muskeg berries, put them into his mouth, and chewed and swallowed them. A muskeg berry is a bit of seed enclosed in a bit of water. In the mouth the water melts away and the seed chews sharp and bitter. The man knew there was no nourishment in the berries, but he chewed them patiently with a hope greater than knowledge and defying experience.” The visual images of the hero's suffering cause and intensify our compassion for him: “His lips trembled a little, so that the rough thatch of brown hair which covered them was visibly agitated. His tongue even strayed out to moisten them.”

Finally, one thought took total control of his consciousness: to eat! The man no longer tried to build a fire or boil water. He slept under the open sky but was restless, hungry. The snow turned into a cold, permeating rain. More and more frequently, the wolves' howling was heard in the deserted distance. Three wolves cautiously crossed the path.

Stillness is the first sign of fatal danger. The man had already thrown away most of his things. He next emptied half of the bag filled with gold; that very same gold for which he came to these distant wild lands. In the evening, he emptied the rest of the bag. From time to time, he began losing consciousness. The thought repeatedly came to him: “There was no hurt in death. To die was to sleep. It meant cessation, rest. Then why was he not content to die?” Some time passed, and he did not reason anymore. The man ate, as London described him, “a bone in his mouth, sucking at the shreds of life that still dyed it faintly pink.” The picture becomes terrifying. Ragged lost in the wilderness, exhausted man finished up the bones that even wolves did not eat. He crushed them with a stone and greedily swallowed them. He did not even feel the pain when he hit his fingers instead of the bones. “He did not know when he made camp, when he broke camp. He traveled in the night as much as in the day. He rested wherever he fell, crawled on whenever the dying life in him flickered up and burned less dimly. He, as a man, no longer strove. It was the life in him, unwilling to die, that drove him on.” Here it is, the flame, the thirst of life! But no, the cup of his suffering had not been emptied yet. The wolf was following the traveler. Here is a hidden irony: it's humiliating for a man to struggle with the sick wolf, but the traveler has been shown that even this competition is acceptable for him. The weakened animal did not dare to attack the man. The two exhausted creatures dragged along the valley. The unfortunate traveler stumbled upon the remains of his buddy Bill, who had deserted him earlier. Next to Bill lies a little bag with gold. The cruel irony of life: Bill had the day of his reckoning. “Ha! ha! He would have the laugh on Bill. He would survive and carry it to the ship in the shining sea. His mirth was hoarse and ghastly, like a raven's croak, and the sick wolf joined him, howling lugubriously. The man ceased suddenly. How could he have the laugh on Bill if that were Bill; if those bones, so pinky-white and clean, were Bill? He turned away. Well, Bill had deserted him; but he would not take the gold, nor would he suck Bill's bones. Bill would have, though, had it been the other way around, he mused as he staggered on.” A scary, even gross thought, but a natural one in for a man in such condition as this starving traveler.

At this point, the poor thing could only crawl. His knees and feet were stripped to the bone. The wolf licked his bloody trace. The sense of coming danger forced the man to take a decision. “And, dying, he declined to die. It was stark madness, perhaps, but in the very grip of Death he defied Death and refused to die.” He pretended to be asleep, putting all his will power into trying to keep his consciousness. Patiently he waited for the wolf to come closer to him. The fatal fight began between the two dying, enervated creatures. Nevertheless, at the end, the man comes out a winner. And not having the strength even to crawl, but only to wriggle, like some unknown monster, in a half unconscious state the man moved along the last dozens of meters, so that he was seen from the ship. After terrible suffering comes the happy end. The will to live has won. The struggle has been carried to the very last moment, a struggle in which everything has been put at stake. The reason for making the victory so rewarding was the very fact that everything was given up for it.

This was not an artificial exaggeration of human qualities. Rather it was London's discovery in fiction, which resulted from the life experience of a courageous, energetic man, who loved to compete with danger until the end of his life. No other American author before London had shown with such creative power the abilities of a human being — the abundance of one person's strength and persistence in struggle. Maxim Gorky perceptively noticed that “Jack London is a writer who could see and deeply feel the creative will power and was able to portray strong-willed people.”

The basis for the plot in “Love of Life” was found in the real-life events in Alaska encountered by London in a newspaper. One of them happened on the Cooperman River, where one of the gold hunters with a badly sprained ankle barely made it to a populated area. Another event took place at Nome. There in the land of tundra, a gold miner got lost and almost died. The facts about food hoarding and mania about food that haunted a person who experienced extreme hunger London also found in a book by Lieutenant Greeley about his polar expedition. As we can see, true fact constituted the foundation of the story's plot. Added to them was the experience of the personal “walk of suffering,” his own impressions from his trip to the Yukon. All these things may seem little, but were significant enough to provide the realistic backdrop for the story.

The leitmotif of the entire cycle of London's stories was the theme of comradeship. Support given by friends was the decisive condition for attaining victory over nature. The Code of the North was based on trust and mutual honesty. Harsh conditions brushed off the “husk of insincerity” and ostentatious bravery, revealing a person's true value. London's writing spoke against egoism, promoting friendship and mutual aid. In his works, he advocated strong-spirited people. According to the author, a coward, a worthless human being, will die sooner than a courageous person. This was how two of his characters died — the gold seekers who lost their self-control in the short story “In a Far Country,” and the man in the story “Love of Life” who abandoned his companion.

London did not belong to the category of romantic writers, who portrayed the difficulties of struggle in rose colors, thus deceiving and disarming a reader in the face of serious trials of life. “Love of Life,” “To Build A Fire,” “The Scorn of Women,” “The Law of Life,” and dozens of other stories, novels and narratives of this outstanding American writer are the immortal witnesses of Jack London's peculiar, unique talent and of his courageous depictions of reality.