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Jack London’s literature defines the American dream perfectly by representing the idea of never giving up and that hardships lead to success. His own adventures and hardships carve this idea into his readers.

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Jack London experienced countless things that could have killed anyone, all for him to reach his goal of succeeding. The Biography reclaims the experience of when he was in the Klondike gold rush where he experienced frigid temperatures and nearly died. Throughout this, he continued his education by reading during the night, “There he experienced all the hardships of uncivilized life" along with suffering from, "severe frostbite, scurvy, malaria and dysentery”(IMDb Jack London Biography). Even while Jack London was going through a life-or-death dilemma, he still aimed to succeed in life trying to reach as top as he could, by continuing his education allowed him to succeed. In his book, “The Call of the Wild” Jack London talks about how his fight against these harsh temperatures strengthened who he was, and in return found success.  This is the American dream, no matter what blockage there is, to always aim for success and not back down is the American Dream.

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Jack London was the best-selling, highest paid and most popular American author of his time.

He was born John Griffith Chaney, on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco. He was raised by his mother Flora Wellman and his stepfather John London (he didn't know who his father was until his adulthood). After graduation from a grammar school he worked 12 to 18 hours a day at a cannery. Jack had a special relationship with his black foster mother, Virginia (Jenny) Prentiss. She loaned him some money and in 1891 he bought a sloop and became an oyster pirate. A few months later he joined the California Fish Patrol. In 1893 he joined the crew of a sealing schooner, bound for Japan. His first story, "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan", based on his sailing experiences, was published in November of 1893. Still unemployed, he became a tramp and hoboed around the country. In 1894 he was arrested for vagrancy and spent a month in jail, where he was a witness to "awful abysses of human degradation." His entire life, after these events, became a race to erase the traumatizing memories of his childhood and youth.

He continued his self-education at the Oakland Public Library. Among his readings were works by Gustave Flaubert and Lev Tolstoy. In 1896 he was admitted to the University of California, but after a year was forced to leave due to financial reasons. In 1897 he went to the Canadian Yukon and joined the Klondike Gold Rush. There he experienced all the hardships of uncivilized life and suffered from--among other things--severe frostbite, scurvy, malaria and dysentery. This left his health seriously impaired. London's struggles for survival inspired "To Build a Fire" (1902), which is considered his best short story. Writing became his ticket out of poverty; a way, in his words, to "sell his brains". His first marriage to Bess Maddern began as a friendship, not love, and ended 3 years later, leaving her with two daughters. His second marriage to Charmian Kittrdge, an editor, lasted until his death.

"The Call of the Wild" (1903) was his biggest success. "The Sea-Wolf" (1904) was turned into the first full-length American movie. Later came "The Iron Heel" (1908), a premonition of the Orwellian world, and the autobiographical "Martin Eden" (1909). The highest-paid writer of his time, he earned over $2 million yet he was always broke. In 1905 he bought a ranch in California, where he designed the first concrete silo in the state. His books provided operating income. He once said, "I would write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate." His ecological approach and effort to adapt the ideas of Asian sustainable agriculture was ahead of his time. In 1913 his Big House was ruined by a devastating fire and Jack was financially and mentally hurt. He built a small cottage and made big plans, but he lived only 3 more years. His 1400-acre ranch is now a National Historic Landmark, named Jack London State Historic Park. The writer's cottage was preserved by his wife Charmian, who lived there until her death in 1955.

His changing views and philosophy were often misunderstood as he grew out of his own mistakes. At one time he wrote, "I have been more stimulated by [ Friedrich Nietzsche] than by any other writer in the world." Later London disregarded the "superman" theory of Nietzsche, calling himself Nietschze's "intellectual enemy." His readings of Carl Jung contributed to his complex philosophy. His other influences ranged from Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson to Charles Darwin, Aldous Huxley and Karl Marx. While sympathizing with the Mexican revolution in "The Mexican", he wrote differently about it when he was sent to Mexico as a reporter in 1914. By age 40, somewhat disillusioned, he resigned from the Socialist party and from various clubs. During his last years London was in extreme pain, caused by complications from kidney failure (uremia is recorded on his death certificate). He was laid to rest at his ranch according to his will: "And roll over me a red boulder from the ruins of the Big House."

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Steve Shelokhonov
Pictured on a 25¢ US definitive postage stamp in the Great Americans series, issued 11 January 1986.

London became the best-selling, highest paid and most popular American author of his time.

Jack London wanted a son. His first wife, Bessie, gave him two daughters, Joan and Bess (Becky) London, and it is said that their marriage was "Victorian," that is, that they married because it was the "proper" thing to do. The real love of his life was Charmian, whom he met around the time of his marriage, and the day after Bessie finalized their divorce he married Charmian. They lived in happiness, sharing the same adventures, until his death.

His first story received 600 rejections before being accepted.

London acquired a taste for raw meat during his gold prospecting days. Even after he became a rich and famous author his dinner of choice consisted of 2 wild ducks, boiled for no more than 8 minutes. His wife Charmian would gag at the sight.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them, I shall use my time.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

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Jack London was the best-selling, highest paid and most popular American author of his time. He was born John Griffith Chaney, on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco. He was raised by his mother Flora Wellman and his stepfather John London (he didn't know who his father was until his adulthood).

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Source #2 Jack London Believe ‘Function of Man is to Live, Not to Exist

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Source #2 Jack London Believe ‘Function of Man is to Live, Not to Exist

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Jack London was a profound adventurer and had experienced a great amount of trauma which drove him to be successful. While he was in his teenage years he was sent to the Erie county penitentiary where he witnessed and experienced traumatic punishments and abusive guards. From this traumatizing experience, "London joined the Socialist Party. He read voraciously and began to write stories and essays”(NPR Radio Show Oct 13th, 2013). This event was the sole reason Jack began to educate himself, joining the Socialist party to share his experiences with the world and to be able to drive past this event and become successful in life, or to reach the American Dream.

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To listen to this broadcast, click here:

SIEGEL: A literary critic once remarked: The greatest story that Jack London ever wrote was the story he lived.

During his short life, London sought adventure in the far corners of the world. He traveled from the frozen Yukon to the South Pacific, and he wrote gripping tales of survival based on his experiences. He wrote the "The Call of the Wild," "White Fang," "The Sea Wolf." A new biography tells the story of London's life adventures. Tom Vitale reports.

VITALE: "Jack London: An American Life" is the product of 60 years of research. Biographer Earle Labor is curator of the Jack London Museum in Shreveport, La. Labor wrote his first book about London in 1974, but the 85-year-old scholar says with Jack London, there's always more to write.

LABOR: Well, he was a fighter. He was a terrific competitor. He was also a genius. He had terrific personal charm or charisma. Everybody talks about that. At the same time, while he was physically tough, he was emotionally sensitive. He could cry over the death of his favorite animal, or over the tragic episode in a novel.

VITALE: London's character was shaped by extraordinary circumstances. He was born in San Francisco in 1876, to a poor family. When he was 14, he quit school to work in a cannery; 15 hours a day, for 10 cents an hour. By the time he was 18, he had sailed to the Bering Sea on the crew of a sealing schooner and hoboed across the country, hopping freight trains to Niagara Falls, where he was arrested for vagrancy and spent a month in the Erie County Penitentiary.

It was a traumatic experience. The only known recording of Jack London's voice is a 1915 letter he spoke into an early dictation machine. Dr. Carl Haber, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, restored the scratchy sound from a wax cylinder. On the recording, London says he can scarcely think about the abuse he experienced as a teenager in prison, much less write about it.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

LONDON: What I found there was unprintable and almost unthinkable.

VITALE: Radicalized by his experience, London joined the Socialist Party. He read voraciously, and began to write stories and essays. He spent one semester at Berkeley, then quit to join the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897. After a winter in the Yukon, London returned with only $5 worth of gold, but a priceless load of stories.

DANIELS: (Reading) Buck did not read the newspapers or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.

VITALE: London's 1903 novel, "The Call of the Wild" - read here by actor Jeff Daniels - tells the story of Buck, a kidnapped ranch dog sold to Gold Rush prospectors, who brutally train him to adapt to his new life.

DANIELS: (Reading) A dozen times he charged and as often, the club broke the charge and smashed him down. After a particularly fierce blow, he crawled to his feet, too dazed to rush. He staggered limply about, the blood flowing from nose and mouth and ears; his beautiful coat sprayed and flecked with bloody slather.

VITALE: "The Call of the Wild" was a sensation. It sold a million copies, and made Jack London the most popular American writer of his generation. He used this fame and money to embark on new adventures. He went to the Far East as a war correspondent. He sailed the Pacific in his own ship for two years, including a visit with headhunters and cannibals. And he wrote about it all, says Jeanne Reesman, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and director of the Jack London Society.

REESMAN: He encountered a lot of people of different ethnicities, and he was able - often - to see the world from their point of view; you know, to take the point of view of a young slave rebelling against his colonial masters in the South Seas, for example. Most people in America really didn't know anything about those people.

VITALE: Jack London wrote a thousand words a day, and he almost never revised what he wrote. Biographer Earle Labor says London needed to publish because he was always broke.

LABOR: He was a dreamer and a visionary, and his dreams and visions almost always outran his finances. But he was - he wanted the best of everything. He wanted the best barn. He wanted the best home. He wanted the best boat. I think in some ways, he was trying to make up for what he had been deprived of when he was a kid.

VITALE: Jack London drank heavily on and off throughout his adventures, and his lifestyle caught up with him. On Nov. 22nd, 1916, he died suddenly from kidney disease. He was only 40 years old. He left behind 52 books and 200 short stories, work that has influenced writers from George Orwell to Jack Kerouac. But Earle Labor says London's artistry is only now being recognized by the literary establishment.

LABOR: I think one reason is that he writes so clearly that anybody with a good basic education can understand what he's saying. That puts the critics out of business.

VITALE: A journalist who visited Jack London weeks before he died reported that London said: I would rather be ashes than dust. The function of a man is to live, not to exist.

For NPR News, I'm Tom Vitale in New York.

CORNISH: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.

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To listen to this broadcast, click here: SIEGEL: A literary critic once remarked: The greatest story that Jack London ever wrote was the story he lived. During his short life, London sought adventure in the far corners of the world.

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Source #3 Jack the Lad; American Literature 

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Source #3 Jack the Lad; American Literature 

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Jack London would not give up no matter what blockade was thrown his way, he would find a way to overcome this challenge. When Jack London was only 17 years old he joined a Sealer Ship where he was attacked by an enemy ship and was thrown overboard, he then “swam a mile from the Yokohama shore back to his ship while drunk”(Gale High School, Jack the Lad). Just showing the amount of effort he does to not give up short of succeeding, he reached his boat and continued his adventures to find success through any means possible, within his writing he writes about how he fought for his life to reach his figuratively future. Not giving up and always being determined to fight for success is the American Dream.

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Heeding the call of the wild

CHILD LABOURER, deckhand, gold prospector, hobo, and then forever a writer. And what a writer. Jack London was a hack who knocked out 1,000 words a day. His unceasing output fell into several categories: potboilers, high-calibre adventure novels, journalism (he served as a foreign correspondent for William Randolph Hearst during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05), and political screeds. He was America's first great West Coast writer and his love for the Pacific Ocean marked him out from the East Coast authors of his day.

But as James Haley recounts, London tempered the uber-Western spirit of his work with a commitment to socialism. "London was a lifelong capitalist," Mr Haley contends, but disapproved of "unrestrained capitalism". He interspersed his commercial work with political writing. His shrill tone with the general public did not help the cause, nor did the fact that, as America's most famous socialist, he travelled with an "obsequious Oriental valet" and bought yachts while claiming to speak for the working man. One of his books was an examination of poverty in the East End of London. "I never conceived such a mass of misery in the world before." Yet he was also a "racialist" who believed in the superiority of the white race. It comes as no surprise that almost immediately after his death at the age of just 40 from a morphine overdose in 1916, the politics fell away and what remained were the best of the adventure novels. "The Call of the Wild", "White Fang" and "The Sea-Wolf" are all still widely read today.

London was the illegitimate child of an "unbalanced free-loving spiritualist mother" who devastated him, man and boy, with her broadsides. His more kindly stepfather was a disabled civil-war veteran. His early years were a series of moves between tenements in San Francisco and Oakland, child labour, but also schooling, public libraries, and self-improvement. One formative experience, when London was 17, was serving on the sealer Sophia Sutherland. He fended off the ship's bully and swam a mile from the Yokohama shore back to his ship while drunk. The typhoons and the butchering of seals on the Sophia Sutherland resembled Herman Melville's Pequod. London memorialised the decks in "The Sea-Wolf", which was published in 1904, as "slippery with fat and blood, the scuppers running red, masts, ropes, and rails spattered".

London's other great youthful adventure, the Yukon gold rush, gave him the material for his first famous novel, "The Call of the Wild", which came out in 1903, and the later "White Fang". He was better prepared than most of the prospectors who made the appalling journey up from the sea to the gold fields, but after trudging up the steep passes and building a boat to carry their supplies into the wild, he grew sick from scurvy. He scrawled next to his bunk some prophetic graffiti: "Jack London Miner Author Jan 27, 1898." His labouring days done, London returned to San Francisco and began submitting adventure stories to magazines and newspapers that were beginning to flourish. Commercially, he was anything but minor.

Mr Haley's account winds down like a clock tidily enough. What is missing, perhaps, is a greater feeling for the vertiginous first years of the 20th century, the advances in flight and electricity, the bare knuckles, the calls for the overturning of order, and Jack London the adventurer careening through the middle of it all.

Wolf: The Lives of Jack London.

By James L. Haley.

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Heeding the call of the wild CHILD LABOURER, deckhand, gold prospector, hobo, and then forever a writer. And what a writer. Jack London was a hack who knocked out 1,000 words a day. His unceasing output fell into several categories: potboilers, high-calibre adventure novels, journalism (he served as a foreign correspondent for William Randolph Hearst during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05), and political screeds.

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No matter if he found success, Jack London would still go to his limits to reach a higher level. Even when he has a huge ranch and a wife he still aims for the top. After Jack London gained fame and money from his books “The Call of the Wild” and the “Sea wolf” he bought a ranch in California, where every chance he got he would buy more land to add to his ranch. When he was 40 the total acreage was around 1000 acres. Unfortunately, his lodge was burned down, which foul play is thought to be the cause; he aimed to surpass this and to achieve a more successful life. Even when he had a large amount of land, and a small cottage to live in, Jack London was destined to surpass this and to become even more successful, which is the same as the American Dream, being able to go beyond difficulties.

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Nestled among the oak trees of California's renowned Napa/Sonoma wine country, the Jack London State Park provides a welcome respite from wine-tasting rooms and bus-tour crowds. The rolling hills, forest paths, and open pastures give visitors an appreciation for the land that one of America's greatest writers found so appealing.

Jack London was born in 1876 in San Francisco, and he gained international fame with the publication of The Call of the Wild in 1903 and Sea Wolf a year later. London was a prolific writer, and between 1900 and 1916 he completed 50 books as well as numerous articles and short stories. During that time he also explored the South Pacific aboard his custom-built sailing ship the Snark, served two tours of duty as a war correspondent, and traveled the lecture circuit as a much-sought-after orator. But when London needed a break from the "big moments of living," he returned to Beauty Ranch outside the town of Glen Ellen. Here he and his second wife, Charmian, enjoyed a rural life that was a far cry from the mean years of his youth on the Oakland waterfront.

The first stop for any visitor to the Jack London State Park should be the House of Happy Walls. Charmian built it three years after her husband's death, and it served as her residence until her own death at age 84 in 1955, when it became the literary shrine that she always intended it to be. In her will Charmian wrote, "This building and its arrangements are peculiarly an expression of myself, and its ultimate purpose is that of a museum to Jack London and myself."

The house is a marvel of rustic comfort, with wide window seats, log-beam ceilings, and tall windows that fill the rooms with leaf-filtered light. The dining room is one of several rooms kept as it was during Charmian's lifetime. Her bedroom features samples of the feathered and beaded elegance that kept her at the height of fashion through the 1920s and beyond. Other displays include Jack London's massive roll-top desk, his Dictaphone, first editions of his works, and samples of the 600 rejection letters he received as an aspiring writer. In addition to an array of photographs displaying the author's rugged good looks, a video monitor plays excerpts from a home movie filmed six days before London's death. It shows the writer playing with piglets, grooming his favorite horse, and waving goodbye from the porch of his ranch house.

A short hike or drive from the museum is the ranch's cottage that served as the Londons' home from 1911. It is a much humbler abode than Charmian's opulent later residence. Peer through the windows of the study and you can glimpse a sunken room lined with shelves, where only the large, paned windows disturb the endless rows of books. The porch, where London liked to sleep, is a tiny, glass cell that opens directly into the study. The garden behind the house features a small paradise of wild flowers and formal beds, where butterflies and hummingbirds hover and a water fountain bubbles.

The dramatic stone ruins of Wolf House, half a mile from the House of Happy Walls, stand as mute testimony to what might have been. With the assistance of architect Albert Farr, the Londons designed a mansion of rough-cut boulders and unstripped redwood, a perfect melding of the rustic and the palatial. With a touch of imagination and help from well-designed placards, visitors can still get a sense of the building's lost grandeur. Its many attributes would have included a two-story living area, an open courtyard and reflecting pool, a dining area that could accommodate 50 guests, and a men-only gaming room. The writer had planned his own room to be the most isolated and most magnificent spot in the house. Standing high above the sloping Spanish-style roofs, his sleeping tower would have looked out on the quiet magnificence of the Sonoma Valley. London wrote, "My house will be standing, act of God permitting, for a thousand years."

The act of God was not long in coming. The three-year project was nearly finished, and the Londons were planning to install their custom-made furniture when a fire raged through Wolf House in the wee hours of August 22, 1913, leaving nothing but stone ruins. All that remains of London's sleeping tower is an open fireplace in the tallest of several towering chimneys that gapes onto an awe-inspiring view. In 1995 a forensic team concluded that the day's heat caused some oil-soaked rags to spontaneously combust, although in 1913 the Londons suspected arson.

Like Wolf House, Jack London was cut down before his time. In one of his most famous quotes, London wrote, "I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dryrot. ....I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." After years of adventuring, Jack London died at age 40 on November 22, 1916, of gastrointestinal uremic poisoning, brought on by hard drinking and hard living. According to a contemporary newspaper, "No writer, unless it was Mark Twain, ever had a more romantic life than Jack London." The author's simple gravesite is a short walk from the House of Happy Walls.

Jack London State Park is located 20 minutes north of Sonoma, in the picturesque town of Glen Ellen, off Route 12. Turn left onto Madrone Road, then right onto Arnold Drive (look for the Jack London Bookstore, it's a bibliophile's dream), and left onto London Ranch Road, Park hours are from 10:00 to 5:00, except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day.

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The Jack London State Park. (Museum Spotlight)

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Nestled among the oak trees of California's renowned Napa/Sonoma wine country, the Jack London State Park provides a welcome respite from wine-tasting rooms and bus-tour crowds. The rolling hills, forest paths, and open pastures give visitors an appreciation for the land that one of America's greatest writers found so appealing.