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London’s writing style shows his negative connotations towards the idea of pursuing and achieving the American Dream. He often displayed the struggle of people trying to achieve their goals in life, as well as portraying nature as a supreme force of reckoning that rendered the efforts of humans to be futile.

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In Jack London’s short story “The Chinago”, a tale about the trial and judgment of an innocent Chinese indentured servant, London draws the idea that despite the effort that a person could put towards achieving the American Dream, it will inevitably all be for nothing one way or another. This can be shown through the sentencing of Ah Cho to the guillotine, despite being originally sentenced to 20 years in prison, for crimes he did not commit. Ah Cho was 3 years into his 5 year contract of servitude, and was sentenced to die on a technical mistake of an incorrect name being written down for the death sentence. Despite his efforts of gaining wealth from servitude, he was ultimately undermined by an unfortunate error. This overwhelming input of effort without a tangible resulting goal portrays London’s disbelief in the American Dream and is his way of saying that an unfortunate circumstance can easily undermine effort and struggle.

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Jack London’s Symbolic Wilderness: Four Versions

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Jack London’s Symbolic Wilderness: Four Versions

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London’s writing often incorporates the aspect of the struggles of man against the forces of nature. As stated by Earle Labor in his literary analysis of London’s works, “Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity, -the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heaven’ artillery, -but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases the sky clears,  the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice.” (Labor 149) The idea of man being powerless is the essence of disbelief in the American Dream. London exemplifies this trait a lot in his works and tries to carry across the message that a person might put in a lot of work towards a goal, but in the end it might all be for nought.

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Disbelief in the American Dream can be represented in the failure of maintaining it, which is what London crafts into Tom King’s character, the protagonist of the short story “A Piece of Steak”. Tom is a character who achieves his American Dream, however, does not succeed in “maintaining” it. In his life, he experiences both fame and poverty and is eventually left with nothing but regret in his life. London uses Tom’s failure of achieving and cultivating the success of his American Dream in order to convey the idea that the American Dream is not as attainable as many would make it out to be. Though one might experience a brief instance of success, it is the process of maintaining continuity in the process that matters in the end.

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Competition between men for the purpose of innovation has occurred since the dawn of existence. Those who excel in innovation would generally succeed, while those who do not tend to fail. The idea of innovation is directly tied to the prospect of the American Dream, and London tries to display this phenomenon in his short poem “The Way of War”. This can be seen by his statement, “And when the skies begin to fall. The Foeman still will new invent. -Into a star-proof world he'll crawl, Heaven insured from accident.”(London 1) Here London is saying that since the Foeman had innovated faster than the narrator, the Foeman would inevitably succeed, and the narrator would consequently fail. This draws a parallel between effort and success. Though the narrator puts a lot of effort into overcoming the Foeman, he will never be able to achieve his goal.

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Jack London Online at Sonoma State University

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Daybreak The blushing dawn the easy illumes, The birds their merry matins sing, The buds breath forth their sweet perfumes, And butterflies are on the wing. I pause beneath the window high, The door is locked, the house is quiet; 'Tis there, abed, she sure must lie, - To Wake her, - ah!

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"Jack London: Biography, Books, and Facts." Famousauthors.org, www.famousauthors.org/jack-london. Accessed 22 Feb. 2022.

Labor, Earle. “Jack London’s Symbolic Wilderness: Four Versions.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 17, no. 2, University of California Press, 1962, pp. 149–61, https://doi.org/10.2307/2932517.

London,  Jack. "The Way of War." Sonoma.edu, london.sonoma.edu/writings/poetry/poems. Accessed 18 Feb. 2022.

London, Jack. “The Whit Silence”. Folsom Cordova Unified School District, www.fcusd.org/cms/lib/CA01001934/Centricity/Domain/3762/The%20White%20Silence%20London.pdf. Accessed 22 Feb. 2022.

London, Jack. “To Build A Fire and Other Stories”. Bantam Classic, 1986.