Research On Jack London’s Creation Themes In Late Period

While the flood of new migrants and urbanization continuously eroded America, a young country, the civilization anxiety and wasteland worship were silently spread in people’s heart; at this time, a writer full of wildness entered the public’s vision, and he was Jack London. Jack London is the last self-made famous writer in the end of 19th century and also the most remarkable literary representative in the beginning of 20th century. In his short lifetime, he continuously accepts various kinds of thoughts and wanders through different social stratum, and he also pours his various hopes and despairs into his works. He is so successful that later generations are jealous of him; meanwhile, he is so desperate that people sigh so much. London’s works are always full of his own shadow. In early period, London sedulously absorbed various kinds of thoughts and mixed with his own life experience. He processed the inspirations obtained from his adventure in the frontier into frontier novels to publicize the natural rule of "survival of the fittest". He condensed his deep emotion to socialism into The Iron Heel and placed his dream of "social revolution" on this novel. His peak work Martin Eden not only clearly made up a process that he became famous via great efforts and suffered disillusion, but also showed that he attempted to seek for a road in various conflicts. Since liddle age, Jack London started to enter into spiritual plight, and the selection in art and dissidents and increasingly complicated interpersonal relationship urged London to seek for a new lifestyle. In this way, London entered into the late period of his creation; he attempted to establish agriculture kingdom in America and placed his emotion to agriculture on "village trilogy" and he yearned for a love affair with a woman on a free land. Finally, while everything gradually went away, London started to describe the loneliness and absurd of realistic world in his works for the hope of obtaining spiritual perpetuation in the process of seeking for "primitiveness".Jack London’s creation clearly shows a life course from positive and optimistic to pessimistic and desperate. Compared to early-period works widely popular among people, London’s late-period creation is extremely lonely. The reason may be that the theme lacks of attention or there exists of loss of artistic skills. The increasingly decreasing creation level, complicated and contradictory thoughts, living environment, and personality jointly urge London to become pessimistic and desperate in his late life.