From what Life Means to Me

Jacqueline Procter
Journal # 27
March 21, 2008
Jack London

Quote:
My environment was crude and rough and raw. I had no outlook, but an uplook rather. My place in society was at the bottom. Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness, both of the flesh and the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were alike starved and tormented.

Summary:
Jack London knew first hand the hardships people endure living in the ghetto -- he lived the life of a person on the lowest rung of the social and economic ladder.

Response:
London used his experience of living in the trenches of the ghetto, with other disenfranchised people, as a means of effecting social change. He turned his life around and for that he can be greatly admired. It’s not easy to do when you are forced to reside in those conditions of extreme poverty. There is desperation and degradation all around and by all appearances there is no way out -- can’t get any lower unless you were dead and buried – the way up is long and arduous.

He also describes the ghetto as a charnel house (had to look up) where so many people resided – hell on earth -- and society’s refusal to acknowledge their reality. Like Maggie, in Girl of Streets, the wretchedness and sordidness he speaks, is the unfortunate fact that women were forced to sell themselves in order to survive. I really like this story as it gets to the heart of the matter of what life was like for him prior to his epiphany that he should set a new course for his life. I would classify his essay as Naturalistic commentary on the plight of the poor? It is very powerful and should be recommended reading for middle school children, at the very least high school, for its inspirational message.

It took a tremendous amount of moxy to even submit this story to Cosmopolitan magazine as the owner, William Randolph Hearst, held the monopoly on newspapers across the country. I guess it was even more amazing that Hearst actually published the story, as he is one of the “fat cats,” who use and abuse the working class -- Anything for a buck!