My favourite american writer

Jack London is my favourite American writer. His life was one of unending toil. He began working at the age of eight. In the years that followed, he did a moan's work, though he was only a boy. By the time he was twenty-two, he had lived more than most people did in fifty years. He had worked on ships and in factories; he had travelled across the ocean on ships as a sailor, he had tramped from San Francisco to New York with an army of unemployed and back through Canada to Vancouver...

Jack London was born in San Francisco in the family of impoverished farmer. In childhood he got to know misery and oppression. But he was interested in reading and had studied the great masters of literature — Flaubert, Tolstoy and Kipling.

In 1896 gold was discovered in Alaska, and together with thousands of other men, London rushed to the new territory. He brought no gold back with him, but he found something better than the yellow metal. The wonderful stories which he wrote on his return are based on the life he lived and on what he saw and heard in the frozen North. The collection of stories, "Children of the Frost", "The Son of the Wolf ", and "Love of Life" are gripping narra­tives of Man's heroic struggle with Nature. In the story "The Law of Life", he says, "To life she (Nature) set one task, gave one law. To perpetuate was the task of life, its law was death". This task and law are clearly seen in the story "The White Silence", in which, although Mason is crushed by Nature, his son, soon to be born, will live.

Jack London is not pessimistic in this story, nor in any of his works. A man may lose his own life in the straggle with nature, but his life goes on, and Man, by the strength of his body and will is, in the end, the conqueror of Nature.

His own experience in life had given him an understanding of the injustice and cruelty, and his works of this period of life reflect his deep interest in social problems.

In his great works, "The Iron Heel" and "Martin Eden", London treats problems of the individual and society. For though he was a real fighter, he never succeeded in freeing himself completely from the influence of bourgeois culture.

Jack London's realism is combined with sympathy and love for Man in his struggle for life. It is this realism and humanism that made his writings as living and fresh today as they were at the beginning of the century.

Word List:

toil - тяжелый труд

at the age of - в возрасте

ocean - океан

ship - корабль

sailor - моряк, матрос

San Francisco - Сан Франциско

unemployed - безработный

Canada - Канада

Vancouver - Ванкувер

impoverished farmer - доведенный до бедности фермер

childhood - детство

to get to know - узнавать

misery - страдания, невзгода, несчастье, нищета

oppression - угнетение, гнет, притеснение

to be interested in something - интересоваться чем-либо

master - мастер, великий художник или списатель

to discover - открывать, делать открытие, обнаруживать

Alaska -Аляска

to rush" - бросаться, мчаться, нестись

to be based on - быть основанным на, основываться на

struggle - борьба

nature - природа

to perpetuate - увековечить, сохранить навсегда

death - смерть

to be clearly seen in the story - ясно видно в рассказе

silence - молчание, безмолвие

to be crushed by Nature - быть раздавленным (уничтоженным)

природой

to be born - родиться

pessimistic - пессимистический

the conqueror of nature - завоеватель (победитель) природы

experience - (жизненный) опит

injustice - несправедливость

cruelty - жестокость, бессердечие, безжалостность

to reflect - отражать

to succeed in doing something - преуспевать в чем-либо

to combine - сочетаться

sympathy - сочувствие, симпатія

humanism - гуманизм

fresh - свежий, новый