杰克•伦敦个人主义和社会主义的信仰矛盾(2)
To introduce London’s dilemma, his famous work, The Call of the Wild would be a great example. The protagonist of the story is a dog named Buck who originally lived at a big house in Santa Clara Valley, but one day, a gardener’s helper secretly sells Buck to the cold North, and from then on, Buck’s life greatly changes. He starts to experience the cruelty from nature and human who were once the best protectors of him. The first remarkable lesson he learns when he starts his journey is the “law of club”: the man with the club is unbeatable; they are the law-makers. Then, he learned the “law of teeth.” A dog must have the strength to fight in a group, otherwise his food would be stolen and he would hardly live very long. Therefore, if Buck wants to survive, he needs to know laws like this. In addition, the image of humans with clubs actually implies the “exploiters” who oppresses Buck, and through the relationship of Buck and human beings around him, as well as the final scene where Buck kills human, we can easily notice London’s reference to the socialist theory that oppressed people will definitely revolt at the end (Zhao Yongqin, 2012). Furthermore, London’s implication of socialism also shows up when he depicts the scene where Buck works with other dogs as a team, since the cooperation of the oppressed group is an essential basis of socialism, which was one of the important intentions of this work. Yet, besides socialism, London also presented his interests in Nietzsche’s theory in this story. Buck is depicted as a “superman”, who is able to survive in every situation based on his own strength and luck. For example, as London describes, Buck can always survive when dogs have big fights, and because of Buck’s luck, in the last chapter, he was lucky to be away from a horrible massacre happening to his master’s camp because he leaves the camp at night for the “call of the wild.” So, Buck is a superman who can always succeed, and London also believed himself a superman to some extent. Therefore, although London’s works are really easy to read, the inner meaning behind them could be really hard to understand, because all these works show London’s dilemma of being fond of both socialism and inpidualism. Thus, Figuring out why London could be attracted by both of the theories, and how he formed his own theory of thinking would help readers to have a better understanding his dilemma.
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