Jack london
Jack London was a prominent exponent of American critical realist literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden, and Son of the Wolf (a collection of short stories).
For Jack London, who has struggled from the bottom of society all the way to the realization of his dreams, he not only has a deep understanding of the hardships of the people at the bottom, but also knows the importance of personal struggle, and he firmly believes that through personal struggle, he can change himself. These are reflected in his work.
Frontier novels are an important theme in Jack London's short stories, and reflect this theme is mainly reflected in his collection of novels, Children of wolves.
"The Dawn"
"Dawn" is a masterpiece of Jack London frontier literature, frontier literature mainly depicts the gilded age, Americans went to the northern frontier to pan for gold.
The protagonist of the novel Islaam Hanish, a wealthy businessman. He once ventured to the Klondike region of Alaska in search of gold, and dug out his first pot of gold. With these lucrative rewards, Elam Hanish returned to the city and began his career as a businessman.
The pressures of his career and life made this vibrant young man almost destroyed, money did not allow him to find the happiness he wanted, and his spirit was trapped in extreme emptiness. In order to get rid of this pressure of life, he began to drink and enjoy himself, and almost collapsed.
But it was at this time that the stenographer Ted Mason appeared in his life, and the young, energetic and rational Ted Mason made him involuntarily feel good. The beauty of life unfolds before the eyes of Elam Hanish again.
Elam Hanish proposed to Ted Mason, but his excessive commercial flair prevented Ted Mason from agreeing immediately. She thinks she can't accept a man who is obsessed with money and material things. Later, Elam Hanish accepted Ted Mason's advice and came to a place in California called Moon Valley to recuperate.
The beautiful and quiet environment made Elam Hanish deeply intoxicated, and the love affair with Ted Mason also awakened the beautiful side buried in his heart. In the end, he decided to give up his money, quit drinking, and return to nature. The wealth accumulated in his early years of hard work enabled him to settle down on the ranch, enjoy a quiet life, and restore his original appearance. In the end, he was able to marry Ted Mason.
The gold digger was a typical symbol of American society at the end of the 19th century, and Elam Hanish was a typical gold digger. In order to realize the golden dream, they left their homeland, faced the cold, risked their lives to come to the northern Frontier, and the fanatical pursuit of the gold sands by many gold prospectors truly reflected the general desire for wealth of the American people at the turn of the century.
A society that universally pursues wealth
This is an era of wealth and poverty, an era of progress and regression, but also an era of flashiness; it is an era of golden light, an era of robber tycoons who are crazy to collect wealth, an era of wealth piled up, an era when everyone wants to get rich.
At the end of the 19th century, after 30 or 40 years of industrialization, urbanization and modernization, the total industrial output value ranked first in the world, and the urbanization rate reached about 70%. The United States has completed the evolution of agricultural civilization to industrial civilization, agricultural society to industrial society, rural pastoral lifestyle to urban lifestyle transformation. Material civilization has made unprecedented progress, new breakthroughs have been made in science and technology, the country has accumulated a great deal of wealth, a large number of newly affluent bourgeoisie has been born, and society as a whole has shown a prosperous scene.
At that time, the consciousness that everyone could get rich was pervasive throughout society. The enormous material wealth created by industrialization provides every hard-working and self-motivated person with unlimited opportunities to make a fortune, and provides hope and motivation for those who are at the bottom of society and try to change their destiny.
The life of gold and freedom has always been attractive to people, and people always want their lives to be less constrained. Without considering the factors of birth, rank, background, etc. that human individuals cannot get rid of, they usually affect a person's fate, but only through their own unremitting efforts and struggles, people can harvest their wealth and gain an independent status.
When millionaires were the dream of almost every American at the time, a universal dream of wealth pervaded society. Among the people who seek wealth in society are government officials, business tycoons, and poor people, who together reveal the universal phenomenon of wealth pursuit.
Everyone competes to enter politics, and the purpose of doing politics is to get rich. Countless people took advantage of the various business opportunities in the society at that time to make a fortune and become corporate tycoons. The poor people at the bottom are forced to earn money because of their daily necessities.
In the United States at that time, tens of millions of workers were struggling on the brink of starvation, they had no jobs, no fixed source of income, not even a fixed shelter, and in order to survive, they first had to pursue money.
Behind the phenomenon of the universal pursuit of wealth, some people have obtained legitimate and just wealth through their hard work. Some people choose to do whatever it takes to pursue wealth. For example, government officials steal public funds and collude with businessmen to accept bribes to open the door for businessmen to do business illegally. In order to accumulate wealth, some large enterprises monopolize the market, products and raw materials by monopolizing the way, forcing small and medium-sized enterprises to go into difficulties and eventually go bankrupt or be merged, thereby obtaining high profits.
At the same time, they exploit and oppress the workers by any means, forcing them to work endlessly without giving them extremely cheap remuneration. Poor workers are willing to sell all their possessions of the flesh for survival, for money, and for them money is more than anything else.
In the Gilded Age of America, the entire society was wrapped up in a naked desire for money, from government officials to ordinary people. People's desire for money prompted them to pursue wealth in various ways, social competition became increasingly fierce, with the emergence of monopoly capitalism, wealth slowly concentrated in the hands of a small number of people, the gap between rich and poor is getting wider and wider. The increase in the total wealth of society and the increase in poverty and suffering of ordinary people constitute a sharp contradiction.
When ordinary people are unable to meet even the most basic survival needs, such as clothing, shelter and food. Tens of millions of people are hungry and unsatisfactory, and their lives are fading away little by little, even cavemen are inferior. When the most basic conditions of food and clothing are not met, out of the need for life support, people will inevitably embark on a path of disregard for morality.
Urbanization makes cities larger and larger, but more and more crowded, people's living space becomes depressed, and excessive concentration of population will lead to mutual tilting between people. Industrialization has accelerated marketization and competition, so there has been a mercenary approach, and the distance between people is getting farther and farther.
At the same time, with the concentration of capital, it is increasingly difficult for self-made people to change their fate by moving to the upper echelons with their own labor. Many people can only become part of the machine in large-scale industrial production.