Hovering At The Original And The Civilization

Jack London was a famous writer of a force known as wild in the early20th century and the end of the19th century in the history of American literature. He had always been the pursuit of a kind of wild primitive force and concerned about the impact of modern industrial civilization on human instinct. In Jack London’s novels, he was good at creating a series of figures of primitive men to explore the theme of the human and the natural, original and civilization. He tried to use the original wild power to rectify the excessive civilization, so as to stimulate the hidden passion and vitality of the human being. In the exploration of these topics, his novels revealed a kind of tendency to escape from the civilization and return to the primitive society. However, in trade-off between the primitive emotional and civilization emotional, London was wavering. He tried to return to the original while also infatuated with the civilization. He had been hovering at the fringe of the primitive and the civilized all the time.This thesis starts with the origins and development of the primitivism. Then the thesis analyses the primitive factors implied in six of London’s novels:The Call of the Wild, Law of Life, To Build a Fire, White Fang, The Sea-Wolf Before Adam by adopting psychology, stream of consciousness, mythological thinking with a focus on the themes as well as writing techniques. The consciousness of transcendence of death, worship of the wolf, atavistic superman and the return of the mythical thinking constitute the major primitive thoughts that returning to the primitive society of Jack London. Finally, the article lists some performances of London’s hovering between the original and the civilization in these novels such as The Call of the Wild, White Fangand The Sea-Wolf.And it combines with London’s upbringing, ideological influence and historical background to analyze the underlying causes of this phenomenon.For London who had special experiences and complex thoughts, he was compromised in the exploration of human’s survival state between the original and the civilization. However, it’s his hesitating that leads us to deal with the issue in a new perspective. That is, human can break the binary opposition of the primitive and the civilized and choose their own way of life in the development of civilization.