Transcript Background Information PowerPoint

“Slice of Life”
By Jack London
Background Information
• “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” (literary
term meaning into the middle of things.
Sensory Detail!
• “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.”
• 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.
True fact constituted the foundation of the
story's plot. Added to them was the
experience of the personal “walk of suffering,”
London’s own impressions from his trip to the
Yukon.
http://www.jacklondons.net/writings/Bykov/ihs_chapter7.html