Jack London: The Call Of Things That Matter

The writer, Jack London, hearkened to the call of the wild, but the wild might have gotten the best of him.

At the age of 13 he worked 12-18 hours a day in a cannery. He left that to become an oyster pirate. At 17, he signed onto a schooner and sailed for Japan. Along with some other incredibly hard jobs, he lived the life of a tramp shortly at the age of 17. After all of this, he returned to High School.

Then in 1897, at the age of 21, he joined the Klondike gold rush, and the experiences there would fuel his literary career. He began writing magazine articles and by 1903 he had published, The Call of The Wild, and was world famous. He was 27.

A lifetime of experience behind him, and what looked like a long successful life ahead of him, Jack London suddenly died at the age of 40. He’d had many sicknesses in his life, and he had become an alcoholic who relied on morphine for his physical pain. The wild had overcome the great American novelist.