Jack London, "Love for Life": a brief summary, the main characters

John Griffith Cheney (better known to the world as Jack London) wrote quite a lot for his not very long life. The themes of all his works are very similar: he wrote about life and about the love for her.

In this article we will talk about the famous story of the great writer Jack London - "Love of life." The summary of the work, information about the history of its writing, as well as the topics disclosed in it, you can find in the article.

Biography of the writer

Born John Griffith in the city of San Francisco, in 1876. The surname, now known to the whole world, he received from his mother, who married a farmer John London, when little John was not even a year old.

The life of the young John was not easy: he started working in the school years, spreading the morning papers. And at the age of 14 years I got a job at a canning factory. Having worked a little there, Jack London soon goes into the sea and becomes an oyster catcher. It is known that at this time the writer heavily abused alcohol, and his staff believed that with this way of life he would not last long.

Fateful swimming

In 1893, Cheney's life saw a landmark event, thanks to which the whole world now knows about such a writer as Jack London. The love of life and all sorts of romantic adventures led him to the schooner, which was to go to the Bering Sea to catch fur seals. This voyage greatly impressed London and, in fact, was the impetus to the development of his creativity, which was based on the naval theme. Written by him then the essay "Typhoon off the coast of Japan" not only brought London the first prize, but also became the start of his literary career.

Then came other stories, short stories, novels and novels, which turned an ordinary sailor into a great prose writer. About two dozen novels and novellas, over 200 stories - this is the result of the writings of Jack London.

In the last years of his short life Jack London suffered from kidney disease. One evening, to save himself from a violent attack of pain, John took too much of a sleeping pill. So died the great writer Jack London, whose love of life was boundless. It happened on November 22, 1916.

Jack London: The Story of "Love of Life"

This work was written by London in 1905. The story is quite small, only ten pages, and you can read it very quickly. Thanks to his travels, Jack London was well versed in geography. In all his works, you can meet fascinating and detailed geographical descriptions. In particular, in this story the protagonist makes a long journey from the Great Bear Lake to the place where the Canadian Coppermine River flows into the Arctic Ocean.

The story "Love of life" is positively appreciated by many critics and well-known personalities. Thus, the leader of the world proletariat, Vladimir Lenin, loved this work, calling it "a very powerful thing." It is known that Nadezhda Krupskaya read to Lenin exactly this story two days before his death.

"Love of life": a summary

It should be reminded once again that the story itself is small, therefore, it may be more appropriate to read it directly and do not waste time reading its brief content. Nevertheless, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the retelling of the work "Love of Life."

The brief content of the story is as follows: two comrades set out to search for gold without calculating food supplies and cartridges. They began to starve and lost more and more of their strength. And then one day one of them turns his foot, crossing the stream. He begins to lag behind his partner, and he, having decided not to help his comrade, leaves on his own.

The betrayal of a comrade and the fight against hunger

The main character remains alone and continues on. With every kilometer of the path he traveled, he was increasingly thinking about food. On the way he met deer, but he did not have cartridges to kill at least one of them. One day he almost caught a partridge, but she broke away from his hands at the last moment. It seemed that he had no chance to survive, but something pushed him to move on. This was exactly the same love of life. The brief turbidity of the mind was again replaced by a burning desire to survive, and there were new forces.

The hero of the story eats everything that comes to him along the way: berries, bulbs of plants ... Soon he had only one desire - there is! And it eclipsed all other thoughts in my head.

And one day he met a bear in the way. Gathering his last strength, he rose to his feet, took out his knife and looked directly at the bear. To a great surprise, the animal did not touch the person.

Confrontation with the wolf

The most striking pages of the story begin from the moment when the main character meets the wolf - as weak and exhausted as he is. The opposition between man and wolf lasts long enough. Neither of them had the strength to attack the enemy. And the wolf just crawled alongside, waiting for the traveler to die, and you can eat it. But the protagonist does not give up, besides, he was disgusted to think that his body could eat this vile, almost dead animal.

As a result, the protagonist pretended to be dead and waited until the animal approached him. When this happened, he crushed the wolf with the weight of his body. He did not have the strength to strangle the wolf, and he pressed his teeth to his neck. The most creepy and unimaginable episode of the story is the one when a man kills a wolf with his teeth, drinking his blood to survive.

In the end, the hero goes to the sea, where he is noticed by sailors on a whaling ship. And they were not sure that this person. So much he was patted and exhausted by the struggle for life.

The main characters of the story

The struggle for survival, survival - this is the basis of the story "Love of life," whose heroes fight to the very end for this very life. Yes, it's the heroes. After all, the wolf in exactly the same way fought this fight, like man.

In the work we see two human characters: this is the main character (whose name is not mentioned by the author) and Bill is his partner. The latter decided to leave his friend in trouble, but he did not say goodbye to the bag of his gold. The further fate of Bill is not known to us. But the protagonist, on the contrary, very quickly realizes that gold will not save him and easily part with him.

Apparently, it's not by accident that Jack London leaves his protagonist without a name, because it does not really matter in this context. He remains alone with his hunger and close death, fighting for life.

The main idea of the work

In fact, the main idea of the work lies in its name - this is the love of life. The content of the story helps us to understand this issue in more detail.

More specifically, the main idea of this story is the struggle of man with nature for the right of his existence. And to him, thanks to his courage and perseverance (and, probably, just because he is a man), he manages to emerge victorious from this struggle. Thus, it is the power and superiority of Man over Nature that Jack London is trying to show here.

And if you dig even deeper, you can safely assume that the writer in his next work is looking for an answer to the age-old question: "And what is the meaning of life?" This philosophical problem is a red thread through all of his work.

The protagonist of the story, having overcome fear and hunger, forgetting about injury, confidently entered into battle for his own life with a harsh and uncompromising nature. And he won. This can not but cause respect for the hero of the work and for the person as a whole. Despite everything, he managed to survive. Thus, Jack London tried to show his reader that a person is able to overcome the most terrible tests in order to survive, and that life is worth fighting for it.

One of the most famous works in the world literature of the twentieth century is the story of John Griffith of London "Love of life." The summary, of course, will allow you to make a general idea of it. However, in order to better feel, to realize this story, it is better to read the work in the original.