A Moveable Feast

During the college days, reading some extracurricular books for a student is not only a way to broad horizons but also to past time. Therefore the reason why lots of students read one book is becoming evident because of the teachers’ requirement and so forth. Maybe now it is time for them to read a book for writing a book-comment. As to me, the reason I read “A Moveable Feast” is because of the book’s name which I search for the list from the teacher gives one by one for a long time rather than the reasons as above. To begin with, although I have already chosen one book to read, unfortunately, the theme of the book is very complex, what’s more, I have no interest in the book details; as a girl, there exists a common thing among us, called emotion and feeling, which attracts people most, let people think most and understand the substance most, these points will throw curious upon the theme, especially for girls. Eventually, this book is hunted and read by me now.

Title

Abstract：

A Moveable Feast is a serious of memoirs by American author Ernest Hemingway, which states his years in Paris as part of the American expatriate circle of writers in the 1920s. The period of Hemingway's apprenticeship is as a young writer in Europe (especially in Paris) during the 1920s with his first wife, Hadley. Besides, there are some of the later prominent people featured in his memoirs, such as Aleister Crowley, Ezra Pound and so forth. Although this book was not published during Hemingway's life, it was also one of his masterpieces in his lifetime, which edited from his manuscripts and notes by his widow and fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, one respected journalist. This book was published in 1964, three years after Hemingway's death, which was an edition revised by his grandson Seán Hemingway. Besides, the memoir includes Hemingway’s personal accounts, observations and his experience stories in Paris in 1920s, which he also mentions some specific addresses of cafes, bars, hotels, and apartments, what’s more, some of which can still be found in modern-day Paris. The title was suggested by Hemingway's friend A.E. Hotchner, the author of the biography, Papa Hemingway, who had a conversation with Hemingway about the city during Hotchner's first visits: “If you are lucky enough to live in Paris as a young man, then no matter where you go for the rest of your life, it will be always stay with you, because Paris is a moveable feast.” Therefore this novel is one autobiography, which is based on the facts messy narrative, and blended in unimaginable enhanced hyperbole, blur the boundaries of fact and fiction. It also joined the old nostalgic sweet and pain. He used his familiar habits to rethink their own life to suit their own personal mythology, thus to create his memory of the past, recall the dreams, trained hard and the disaster had happened. And the dream is to his wife Hudson’s pure love and beautiful place friend friendship in Paris and Switzerland. In addition, through this novel, we can further appreciate the charm of Wiener River again.

Key word:

Memory in Paris, culture breath

Title

1. Brief Introduction of Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in suburban Oak Park, IL, to Dr. Clarence and Grace Hemingway. Ernest was the second of six children in the family, yet he was raised in the quiet suburban town. His father was a physician, and both parents were loyal to Christians. In this instance, Hemingway's fostered some pursuits and interests in his childhood which would make him have the great achievements in literary.

Each parents hold high hopes for their children, the same as Hemingway’s. His mother hoped that her son would be affected by her musical interests, yet young Hemingway preferred to together with his father on hunting and fishing trips. The hobby of going outdoor adventure had been reflected later in Hemingway's stories, particularly those featuring protagonists, such as Nick Adams.

In addition, Hemingway also had intelligence for physical challenge which made him substantial in his high school, where he also played football and boxed. It’s a pity that Hemingway was repeatedly rejected from service in World War I because of his permanent eye damage contracted from lots boxing matches, and which provided much more material for Hemingway's stories and novels, just like having formed a habit to likening his literary feats in his boxing victories.

Of course, what’s more, Hemingway edited his high school newspapers and reported one program, Kansas City Star, which added one more year to his age after graduating from high school in 1917.

After the short limitation, Hemingway eventually enabled to take part in World War I as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross. Unfortunately, he was wounded on July 8, 1918, on the Italian front. During the period of his recovery in Milan, he had another affair as well. As these, Hemingway was given two decorations by the Italian government not only because his bravery but also he was one member of the Italian infantry. Fighting on the Italian front inspired the plot of A Farewell to Arms in 1929. Yet indeed, war itself is a major theme in Hemingway's works. Therefore, the experience he had would become the centre material of his novels. Besides, Hemingway had witnessed firsthand the cruelty and stoicism required of the soldiers he would describe in his writing when covering the Greco-Turkish War in 1920 for the Toronto Star. After that, he was a war correspondent in Spain in 1937, the true situation he saw and the current condition inspired him more thoughts and comment on the society due to the events of the Spanish Civil War. After the First World War, Hemingway returned briefly to the United States and worked for the Toronto Star, meanwhile, he also lived for a short time in Chicago. There, he met Sherwood Anderson and married Hadley Richardson in 1921. On Anderson's advice, they moved to Paris, where he served as a foreign journalist for the Star. As Hemingway gained the events on all of Europe, he obtained much more opportunities to interview the important leaders such as Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Mussolini.

The family of Hemingway lived in Paris from 1921-1926. As the development of stylistic at that time, Hemingway reached its peak in 1923 with the publication of Three Stories and Ten Poems by Robert McAlmon in Paris and the birth of his son John. And the novel “A Moveable Feast” was created and published after 3 years his death in 1964. Here are other details about Hemingway as following: first, Hemingway began to write sketches in January 1923 which had the chance to appear in In Our Time, published in 1924; second, he and Hadley returned to Toronto in August of 1923, where he worked once again for the Star. At this point, his job not only kept him from starting anything new in the coming months, but also made him had no writing which was not committed to publication. Yet this period of time off from writing had given him renewed energy on his return to Paris in January of 1924. And that during his time in Toronto, he read Joyce's Dubliners, which thoroughly changed his writing career. He had the majority of In Our Time written by August of 1924. Though there still existed a period while his publisher Horace Liverwright wanted to change some collections, Hemingway’s attitude was firm and refused to change even one word in the book.

In Paris, Hemingway once used the letter of introduction of Sherwood Anderson's to meet Gertrude Stein and entered the world of foreign authors and artists. Nevertheless, the famous description of the "lost generation" was born of an employee's comment to Hemingway, and it became everlasting just as the foreword for The Sun Also Rises, his first major novel. Actually, this “lost generation” included the postwar generation and the literary movement it produced. As in the 1920s, writers such as Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein rebuked the different and false ideals of patriotism which once led young people contribute to the war, rather than the only benefit of materialistic elders, which those writers considered that the reality was the only truth, and thus life could be always hard. The most importance is that Hemingway was strongly influenced by the tenet.

Later 1920s, it was a time for Hemingway to publish, for example, The Torrents of Spring and The Sun Also Rises were published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1926. And in 1927, Hemingway published a short story. Yet what a pity, in the same year, he divorced Hadley Richardson and married another moman, Pauline Pfieffer, a writer for Vogue. They moved to Key West in 1928, where his two sons Patrick and Gregory were born in 1929 and 1932. In a word, 1928 was a year of both success and sorrow for Hemingway. Worth being happy was A Farewell to Arms published in this year,yet his father committed suicide. Clarence Hemingway had been suffering from over-seriousness and diabetes. These painful experiences were reflected in the considering of Robert Jordan in his one more novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

As his personal experiences with war and death, Hemingway's travel in pursuit of hunting and other sports also provided a great deal of material for his novels, Death in the Afternoon, published in 1932. And Hemingway went on safari in Africa, which gave him new themes and scenes on which to base The Snows of Kilamanjaro and The Green Hills of Africa in 1934,, published in 1935.

To Have and Have Not, published in 1937 was his travel to Spain as a war correspondent. And in 1940, Hemingway had one new marriage again, which made him publish For Whom the Bell Tolls in the same year. The following years, his experience provided enough material to the novels and published one every few years.

Hemingway's own life and character are as charming as the stories in his novels. At beginning, Papa to Hemingway was a legendary adventurer who always enjoyed his nice lifestyle and personal celebrity status, because he realized that there was another person deep inside lived disciplined who willingly worked tirelessly in pursuit of literary perfect ion. From these, His living and writing has reflected his success, and in the fact that Hemingway is a hero to intellectuals and rebels alike; the passions of the man are equaled only by those in his writing.

3. comment:

1. Commentary on editing

Ernest Hemingway devoted himself on the manuscript of A Moveable Feast during his later years, which he rewrote it painstakingly after several main essays. Finally, although he had completed the final draft before he died, he had no chance to publish in the rest of his life by himself. Only after his death, his fourth wife, Mary, did editing in consultation with the publisher. Later, the contemporary literary scholar Gerry Brenner from the University of Montana documented about her editions and even questioned her validity in his 1982 paper. Thereof, he had summed up that some details were misleading. He even gave his own suggestions to contradict Mary's stated policy by the changes appear. Whether the opinions of the specialists gave were true or not, obviously, different people had different thoughts, besides, the mind of people was changing every minute. But later, Brenner and other researchers have found that the collection of Ernest Hemingway's personal papers, opened to the public with the completion of the John F. Kennedy Library in 1979, they hold them in Boston, including Hemingway's notes and initial drafts of A Moveable Feast. Then Brenner states that Mary had changed the Hemingway's final draft chapters order, apparently to "preserve chronology". What’s more, he also has a note about his thought of this change, which interrupted the series of character sketches of such individuals as Sylvia Beach (owner of the bookstore "Shakespeare and Company") and Gertrude Stein. Eventually, Brenner points out one chapter, titled "Birth of a New School", which Hemingway had dropped in his draft, was rewritten into the novel by Mary. He considered that she might have not enough reasons for its contents or execution.

Yet Brenner claims that deleting Hemingway's long apology to his wife, Hadley, was the most important edit. Additionally, his apology appeared in every draft of the book in various forms. Brenner advises that Mary should delete it because it embodied her own role as wife.

Compared, A.E. Hotchner has said that Mary Hemingway published the initial draft which he had read in 1957. He believed that they had represented Ernest's intentions.

2. New Edition

The new edition in 2009, called the "Restored Edition," was published by Seán Hemingway (a grandson of Hemingway and his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer), who was the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s assistant curator, but before he published it, he made numerous changes as following:

1). He removed the Hemingway’s previous introductory letter, which put various fragments together by Mary Hemingway.

2). He re-added some chapters that had been written or unwritten into the novel, such as "Birth of a New School" and large sections of "Ezra Pound and the Measuring Worm," "There is Never Any End to Paris," and "Winter in Schruns", even the unpublished "The Pilot Fish and the Rich".

3). In addition, he also changed the order of some chapters, for example, Chapter 7 ("Shakespeare and Company") has been moved to be chapter 3, and chapter 16 ("Nada y Pues Nada") has been moved to the end of the book.

4). As Hemingway liked using the second person in the book, so his grandson also has been restored them in many places, and gives a change which Seán asserts "brings the reader into the story."

Beyond those, there also adds to the new foreword into the novel by Patrick Hemingway: before that is the last bit of professional writing by my father, the true foreword to A Moveable Feast: "This book contains material from the experience of my life that I had memory from my heart. Even if the one has been changed and the other has not existed."

3. Criticism

A.E. Hotchner, one of Hemingway’s friends and biographers, indicated that the new edition had been edited by Seán Hemingway, yet some parts of the novel, he delete his grandmother’s references, Hemingway's second wife Pauline Pfeiffer, which he had found that the details about her was less than flattering, they had destroyed the image of her more or less dora games. Additionally, there also finds some other mistakes with some of the editorial changes from other critics. Irene Gammel says in his written new edition: "Ethically and pragmatically, when the published text has stood the test of time and when edits have been approved by authors or their legal representatives, then restoring an author's original motivation is a slippery slope." One more, after pointing to the complexity of the author-function, she concludes: “While the ‘restored’ version provides access to important unpublished contextual sources, which has illuminated the evolution of the 1964 edition, at that time, Mary's version should be considered the definitive one,.”

4. Implications of sexual identity and androgyny

With the discussion of other issues, which have related to the memoir, J. Gerald Kennedy of Louisiana State University, the literary critic pointed out that the artificially heroic nature of Hemingway's self-portrait in A Moveable Feast is pretty obviously. After he contrasted it with the sexual ambiguity and fascination with androgyny, he found that in Hemingway's unfinished novel, The Garden of Eden. Kennedy has examined how textual evidence from both published material and unpublished papers from the collection at the JFK Library, which seems to project a contrasting picture of Hemingway's sexuality. What’s more, there notes that the stupid "created" nature of the young Hemingway is well-established as cheated(e.g., Hemingway had access to large sums of money during the time he was in Paris, yet played himself as role of "starving") in A Moveable Feast , and Kennedy further points out that Hemingway writes the roles as if he were the only sexually stable and healthy person in his literary circle in Paris, therefore, contrasting to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. This confident image, however, is in obviously compared with the confused and trying to be the main character of The Garden of Eden.

In other aspects, Kennedy also notes some significant textual clues Juegos Dora, which refer to the period when Hemingway was having an affair with his second wife Pauline while still married to Hadley, such as a fascination with androgynous haircuts and the made up some different sections of A Moveable Feast. So Kennedy concluded that Hemingway's "obsession" was central to his character with indistinct gendering, and a conclusion also claimed by the critic Mark Spilka and biographer Kenneth Lynn .

From above all, we have a further realization that although “ A Moveable Feast” is not famous as Hemingway’s other novels, it is the greatest work after the war. In some sense, Hemingway had blended one person into the family of arts in Paris in that time. What’s the most importance, he not only let us realize the former stories, but also taste the splendid of the culture Jeux Dora.

The Call in The Call of the Wild

The Call in the Call of the Wild

1.     Brief Introduction of Jack London

 Jack London is called an American myth, a combination of personal myths he

created about himself and a national myth he represented in his life and work.

                                                 -------Abraham Rothberg

Jack London was born in the slums of San Francisco in 1876, illegitimate son of Flora Wellman(later London) and W.H.Chaney, who was an itinerant astrologer. He spent his adolescence as an oyster pirate, a seaman, a Yukon prospector and a tramp. These experiences give him a lifelong sympathy with the working class. In the cellar of society, London embraced two opposing methods of escape: individualism and socialism---the first an assertion of his strength and cunning for personal and material success, the second avowing mass strength and political revolution for social justice and the transformation of society. For a long time, he maintained the conflicting ideas side by side, but individualism gradually dominated the socialism and became his primary mode of belief and expression.

In 1899 the Atlantic Monthly published his first story, An Odyssey of the North. The Son of the Wolf, a volume of stories was published in 1900. The Call of the Wild made the bestseller list in 1903. A score of novels followed—The Sea Wolf, White Fang（1906）， Martin Eden(1909). In 1907, he published The Iron Heel, a remarkable anticipation of fascism, and considered to be his most important work.

Despite his enormous fortune, London’s last years, marked by excessive drinking, were full of despair. In 1916, at the age of forty, like his autobiographical hero, Martin Eden, Jack London committed suicide.

2.     Plot

Buck, a Saint Bernard-Shepherd dog, lived a cozy life at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller’s place. One day, one of thegardener’s helpers named Manuel stole Buck and sold him in order to pay a Chinese lottery debt. Buck was then shipped to the man in the red sweater, from whom he knew he stood no chance against a man with a club. Then Buck was shipped to Alaska and sold to a pair of French Canadians named François and Perrault for $300. They trained him as a sled dog and Buck quickly learnt to survive the tough conditions. During the trial life, he and Spitz, a vicious and pracised lead dog developed a rivalry. Eventually, he defeated Spitz and became the leader of the sled-dog team. At last, Buck was sold to ta man named Charles, his wife, Mercedes, and her brother, Hal, who knew nothing about sledding nor surviving in the Alaskan wilderness. As they journeyed on, they ran into John Thornton, an experienced outdoorsman who recognized Buck as a remarkable dog and was disgusted by the driver's beating of the dog. He cut him free from his traces and told the trio he was keeping him, much to Hal's displeasure. After some argument, the trio left and tried to cross the river, but as Thornton had warned, the ice gave way and the three fell into the river along with the neglected dogs and sled. As Thornton nursed Buck back to health, Buck came to love him and grew devoted to him and avenged him after knowing he was killed by a group of Yeehat indians. After realizing his old life is a thing of the past, Buck followed the wolf into the forest and answered the call of the wild.

3. The Call in the Call of the Wild

As far as I am concerned, there exist several calls in the call of the wild in the story that wake up the primordial instints in Buck’s body and I reduce all these to five aspects----the tough conditons of Northland, human’s greed, Buck’s love for Thornton, the competition of dominance and the most important the seed of primordial instincts in Buck. And I will analyse them one by one.

a)    the tough conditions of Northland

Buck has ever lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller’s place and before he became a sled-dog. There all the things he needed to do is to plunge into the swimming tank or go hunting with the Judge’s sons, escort Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles,on wintry nights lie at the Judge’s feet before the roaring library fire, carry the Judge’s grandsons on his back, or roll them in the grass, and guard their footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard, and even beyond, where the paddocks were and the berry patches. He was the king—king over all creeping, crawling , flying things of Judge’s place, humans included.(Page22 para.2) From author’s depiction about Buck’s life in the warm Southland, we can easily see his cozy life. All the pictures he face are full of beauty and kindness, so there is no room for him to think about his inner natural instincts which never work in daily life. While when he is stolen and sold to the frozen lands of Yukon, Alaska, he has to learn to adjust to the fierce onditions of the trail life. Day after day, for days unending, Buck toiled in the traces. Always, they broke camp in the dark, and the first gray of dawn found them hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled off hehind them. And always they picthed camp after dark, eating their bit of fish, and crawling to sleep into the snow.(Page 36 para.4)  To die or not to die, he must make a choice, and definitely, he chooses the latter and decides to not only survive in the hostile Northland environment, but dominate the team. He has even lost the fastidiousness which had characterized his old life and he is not above taking what does not belong to him when hunger does compel him. These changes are the hints of his inner primordial instincts, even though not so strongly show, at least mark his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. Facing the tough climate, the fierce companies, there should not be mercy. He must master or be mastered, while to show mercy is a weakness. It is misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. The fierce outsider environment works as catalyst on his way to the fight, to dominate and eventually to walk into the forest.

b)    human’s greed

Who deprives Buck of his happy life in Judge’s Miller’s place? My answer will be the gardener’s helper Manuel, or rather human’s greed. It is Manuel who steals Buck from the house and sells it and makes the subsequent story happen. Mamuel has one besetting sin of playing Chinese lottery and in his gambling he has one besetting weakness, the faith in a system. (Also a mostly distinct mentality of human’s greed.) Playing a system requires money, while the wages of a gardener’s helper do not lap over the needs of a wife and numerous progeny. Then why will he comes up with the idear to steal and sell the dog to get the money to pay the gambling debt? Because people at that time need these heavy dogs with strong muscles by which to toil and furry coats to protect them from the frost to look for the yellow metal. In the beginning of the story we have been told that men ,groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland(Page21 para.1) In this Gilded Age, the stirring of old instincts drives men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things. This so-called human’s grees is nothing less than the prerequisite condition for the call of the wild in Buck.

c)     Buck’s love for Thornton

In the book, as I approach the appearance of Thornton, I feel a warm feeling from the context. It was beautiful spring weather…The sap wa rising in the pines. The willows and aspens were bursting out in young buds. Shrubs and vines were putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in the nights, and in the days all manner of creeping, crawling things rustled forth into the sun.(Page70 para.2 )It seems that something romantic will happen and the harsh life of trail will make an end. In some degree, Thornton is the man who safe Buck’s life from Charles, his wife, Mercedes, and her brother, Hal. And after that, he nurses Buck to health，which makes him come to love him and devote to him. Thornton has saved his life, which is something, but, further, he is an ideal master. Other men see to the welfare of their dogs from a sense of duty and business expediency, while Thrnton sees to the welfare of his as if they are his own children, because he can not help it. With Thornton, Buck for the first time fells a gennine passionate love which he has never experienced at Judge’s Miller’s place. For a long time, he does not like Thornton to get out of his sight. While in spite of this great love he bears Thornton, which seems to bespeak the soft civilization influence, the strain of the primitive, which the tough conditions of Northland has aroused in him, remianed alive and active, and this is why I think after Thornton’s death, Buck will avenge him and answer the call of the wild in the end. Besides Thornton, no one can hold him. It is just the deep love for Thornton as well as the deep despair of losing him make him climb up to the peak of expansion of primordial instincts. Therefore, Thornton plays a very important role in shaping Buck’s characteristics.

d)    the competition of dominance

Before Buck wins the mastership of the sled-dog team, he always has a rival named Spitz. At the very beginning, Spitz’s hehaviors has shocked Buck a lot and his laugh makes Buck hate him with a bitter and deathless hatred. Considering Buck as a dangerous rival, Spitz always seize every chance to show his teeth to Buck and even goes out of his way to bully him, striving constantly to start a fight that can end only in the death of one or the other. These certainly burn the dominant primordial beast in Buck and it has been strengthened by the fierce conditions, but it is a secret growth. Even though there exist bitter hatred between him and Spitz, he betrayed no impatience and shunned all offensive acts to wait for an appropriate time. When he is determined to fight with Spitz, he makes himself fully prepared. On the one hand, he destroys the solidarity of the team, making the other rebels into all kinds of petty misdemeanors. Then the old awe departs, all of them grow equal to challenging Spitz’s authority. On the other hand, he breaks down the discipline. Then he welcomes the death time, he fights with Spitz, the practised fighter, with his strength as well as his brain. At last, Buck defeats Spitz and becomes the successful champion to be the lead dog. This competion of dominance with Spitz shows the primordial instincts in Buck vivid and the last fight in death makes the story its climax, full of passion and excitement. The abstract concept is converted into something that we can see and we can touch, it is so real before our face that make ourselves feel the sense that we are participating in this fight.

e)     the seed of primordial instincts in Buck

       No matter what I have said above, they still belong to the external factors, quite important but not essential. The ultimate reason that leads Buck walk into the forest eventually is the internal factor, that the seed of primordial instincts in himself. Throughout the story, we can see many description of the sound in the night, it is a sound of the wild call. Deep in the forest, as often as he hears this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he feels compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it to plunge into the forest. Here and there Buck met Southland dogs, but in the main they were the wild wolf husky breed. Every night, regularly, at nine, at twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant, in which it was Buck’s delight to join.(Page 46 para.3) There are many sentences like this in the context, it is to some degree the reflection of Buck’s heart, the desire to revert. Even when he is with his beloved one, Thornton, he can not help thinking about the wild wolves listening with him and telling him the sounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing his actions, lying down to sleelp with him when he lay down. Buck has a quality that making for greatness, that is imagination, and this kind of imagination originates from his inner primordial instincts. It beckons him and each day mankind and the claims of mankind slip farther from him. When Thornton is still alive, his influence more or less presses the primordial instincts in Buck, while when he is killed, the instincts just flood out. He has nothing to care and can fully conform to his inner instincts.

4. Comment

At the end, as the story says, When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a bellow as he sings a song of the younger world,which is the song of the pack. To be frank, I was extremely attracted by the scene, when the last sentence vanished from my eyes, I can still perceive an echo of a song, a wild song which knocks up my dizzy mind that always cheerfully sink into the civilised world without questioning. A strong and handsome wolf presenting in my eyes, with infinite pride and power . I adore him from the bottom of my heart. From a very spoilt pet dog to a leading wolf, he transcends himself and the mighty nature. Just like the author, Jack London, in order to get rid of poverty, he made a great deal of efforts, as an oyster pirate, a seaman, a Yukon prospector and a tramp. Eventually he made himself famous and millionaire by writing, became a leading one in the field of literature. When I read the story, I feel Buck is a man instead of a dog, struggling with his fortune and conforming to the law of the nature. The Call of the Wild has three levels , the first and narrative one the story of a dog, Buck, who reverts to type, learns to survive in a wolf-like life, and eventually becames a wolf. The second, or biographical level, reveals what London himself lived and felt in climbing out of the abyss of poverty and deprivation to prestige as a writer and wealth. Buck was symbolically Jack London struggling for success and domination, learning the law of club and fang, and finally becomig the shaggy wolf rampant. The third level is political and philosophical, exemplifying the doctrines of social Darwinism in fictional form. From Buck, I see two kinds of personalities. On the one hand, in the story, Buck just represents all the human beings, which means that all of us have the nature to be a wolf when the environment is mature. On the other hand, we choose the civilization, we choose to keep away from the wild because our love for others, the love of others as well as fear hold most mankind from the war of all against all. Buck is the symbol of both living and death, both civilization and savage. Buck had no choice but to fight, to answer the call of the wild at that age. While now, in this sociey, I think we have adequate facts to convince ourselves that we should hold our instincts in heart, let them peacefully lie there.

5. Conclusion

       It is a real shame that this is the first time I read English edition of the Call of the Wild. And perhaps my point of view is limited to some degree. If possible, I think I will read it again this summer vocation to grasp a more profound understanding，about the story, the main character as well as the author Jack London.

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survial and love

Main characters

I made up Tara, just as I made up every character in the book. But nobody will believe me.

—Margaret Mitchell

• Katie Scarlett (O'Hara) Hamilton, Kennedy, Butler – The protagonist of the novel, Scarlett's forthright Irish blood is always at variance with the French teachings of style from her mother, Ellen O'Hara. Scarlett marries Charles Hamilton, Frank Kennedy, and Rhett Butler, all the time wishing she is married to Ashley Wilkes instead. She has three children, one from each husband: Wade Hampton Hamilton (son to Charles Hamilton), Ella Lorena Kennedy (daughter to Frank Kennedy) and Eugenie Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler (daughter to Rhett Butler). She miscarries a fourth child, the only one she wanted, during a quarrel with Rhett when she accidentally falls down the stairs. Scarlett is secretly scornful of Melanie Wilkes, wife to Ashley, who shows nothing but love and devotion towards Scarlett, and considers her a sister throughout her life because Scarlett married Melanie's brother Charles. Scarlett is unaware of the extent of Rhett's love for her or that she might love him.

• Captain Rhett K. Butler – Scarlett's admirer and third husband, Rhett is often publicly shunned for his scandalous behavior and sometimes accepted for his charm. Rhett declares he is not a marrying man and propositions Scarlett to be his mistress, but marries her after the death of Frank Kennedy, explaining that he won't take a chance on losing her to someone else, since it is unlikely she will ever need money again after Frank's death. Rhett only tells Scarlett he loves her after they are married, during an argument with her when he is drunk. Later, at the end of the novel, Rhett confesses to Scarlett, "I loved you but I couldn't let you know it. You're so brutal to those who love you, Scarlett."

• Major George Ashley Wilkes – The gallant Ashley married his cousin, Melanie, because "Like must marry like or there'll be no happiness." A man of honor, Ashley became a soldier in grey in the Confederate States Army though he says he would have freed his slaves after his father's death, if the war hadn't done it first. Although many of his friends and relations were killed in the Civil War, Ashley survived to see its brutal aftermath. Ashley was "the Perfect Knight" in the mind of Scarlett, even throughout her three marriages. "She loved him and wanted him and did not understand him."

• Melanie (Hamilton) Wilkes – Ashley's wife and cousin, Melanie is a genuinely humble, serene and gracious Southern woman. As the story unfolds, Melanie becomes progressively physically weaker, first by childbirth, then "the hard work she had done at Tara," and she ultimately dies after a miscarriage. As Rhett Butler said, "She never had any strength. She's never had anything but heart.

Themes

Survival

Scarlett and Rhett are survivors because they adapt to the changes brought about by the war and Reconstruction.

Love

Scarlett fails to understand what love is until the novel's end.

War and its scars

Gone with the Wind expresses the true horrors of war.

Southern belle

The southern belle is an archetype for a young woman of the American old South upper class. The southern belle's attractiveness is not physical beauty, but rather lies in her charm. She is subject to the correct code of female behavior.^==-- Scarlett O'Hara, the protaganist of the novel, charming though not beautiful, is a southern belle.

For young Scarlett, the ideal southern belle is represented by her mother, Ellen O'Hara. In "A Study in Scarlett," published in The New Yorker, Claudia Roth Pierpont wrote:

The Southern belle was bred to conform to a subspecies of the nineteenth-century "lady"... For Scarlett, the ideal is embodied in her adored mother, the saintly Ellen, whose back is never seen to rest against the back of any chair on which she sits, whose broken spirit everywhere is mistaken for righteous calm...

However, Scarlett is not always willing to conform. Kathryn Lee Seidel, in her book, The Southern Belle in the American Novel, wrote:

...part of her does try to rebel against the restraints of a code of behavior that relentlessly attempts to mold her into a form to which she is not naturally suited. 

Scarlett, the figure of a pampered southern belle, lives through an extreme reversal of fortune and wealth, and survives to rebuild Tara and her self-esteem. Scarlett's bad belle traits, her deceitfulness, shrewdness, manipulativeness, and superficiality, in contrast to Melanie's good belle traits, trust, self-sacrifice, and loyalty, enable Scarlett to survive in the post-war South, and pursue her main interest, making money.^-

Marriage was the goal of all southern belles, and all social and educational pursuits were directed towards it. Regardless of war and the loss of eligible men, young ladies were still subjected to the pressure to marry. By law and Southern social convention, household heads were adult, white propertied males, and all white women and all African Americans were thought to require protection and guidance because they lacked the capacity for reason and self-control.^------

Plot summary

Gone with the Wind takes place in the southern United States of America in the state of Georgia during the American Civil War (1861–1865) and the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877) that followed the war. The novel unfolds against the backdrop of rebellion wherein seven southern states, Georgia among them, have declared their secession from the United States (the "Union") and formed the Confederate States of America (the "Confederacy"), after Abraham Lincoln was elected president with no ballots from ten Southern states where slavery was legal. A dispute over states' rights has arisen^[33] involving African slaves that were the source of manual labor on cotton plantations throughout the South. The story opens in April 1861 at the "Tara" plantation, which is owned by a wealthy Irish immigrant family, the O'Haras. The reader is told Scarlett O'Hara, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Gerald and Ellen O'Hara, "was not beautiful, but..." had an effect on men, especially when she took notice of them. It is the day before the men are called to war, Fort Sumter having been fired on two days earlier.
There are brief but vivid descriptions of the South as it began and grew, with backgrounds of the main characters: the stylish and highbrow French, the gentlemanly English, the forced-to-flee and looked-down-upon Irish. Miss Scarlett learns that one of her many beaux, Ashley Wilkes, is soon to be engaged to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. She is stricken at heart. The following day at the Wilkes's barbecue at "Twelve Oaks", Scarlett informs Ashley she loves him and Ashley admits he cares for her. However, he knows he would not be happily married to Scarlett because of their personality differences. Scarlett loses her temper at Ashley and he silently takes it.
Then Scarlett meets Rhett Butler, a man who has a reputation as a rogue. Rhett had been alone in the library where the dialogue between Scarlett and Ashley took place, unseen by the couple. Rhett applauds Scarlett for the unladylike spirit she displayed with Ashley. Infuriated and humiliated, Scarlett tells Rhett "You aren't fit to wipe Ashley's boots!"^-
Immediately after, she finds out that war has been declared and the men are going to enlist. Seeking revenge for being jilted by Ashley, Scarlett accepts a proposal of marriage from Melanie's brother, Charles Hamilton. They marry two weeks later. Charles dies from measles two months after the war begins. Scarlett is pregnant with her first child. A widow at merely sixteen, she gives birth to a boy, Wade Hampton Hamilton, named after his father's general.^--- As a widow, she is bound by tradition, having to wear black and not allowed to speak to young men. Scarlett goes into a depression over all the restrictions placed upon her.
Melanie, who is living in Atlanta with Aunt Pittypat, invites Scarlett to live with them. In Atlanta, Scarlett's spirits revive and she is busy with hospital work and sewing circles for the Confederate army. Scarlett encounters Rhett Butler again at a dance for the Confederacy. Although Rhett believes the war is a lost cause, he is blockade running for the profit in it. The men must bid for a dance with a lady and Rhett bids "one hundred fifty dollars-in gold"^- for a dance with Scarlett. Everyone at the dance is shocked that Rhett would bid for Scarlett, the widow still dressed in black. Melanie smooths things over by coming to Rhett's defense because he is generously supporting the Confederate cause that her husband, Ashley, is fighting for.
At Christmas (1863), Ashley has been granted a furlough from the army and returns to Atlanta to be with Melanie. The war is going badly for the Confederacy. Atlanta is under siege (Sept. 1864), "hemmed in on three sides," it descends into a desperate state while hundreds of wounded Confederate soldiers lie dying or dead in the city. Melanie is pregnant and in labor with no doctor available, only inexperienced Scarlett to assist. Prissy, a young Negro servant girl, cries out in despair and fear, "De Yankees is comin!"^-- In the chaos, Scarlett, left to fend for herself, cries for the comfort and safety of her mother and Tara. The tattered Confederate States Army sets flame to Atlanta as they abandon it to the Union army.
Melanie gives birth to a boy named Beauregard, and now they must hurry for refuge. Scarlett tells Prissy to go find Rhett, but she is afraid to "go runnin' roun' in de dahk." Scarlett replies to Prissy, "Haven't you any gumption?"^-- Prissy then finds Rhett, and Scarlett begs him to take herself, Wade, Melanie, Beau, and Prissy to Tara. Rhett laughs at the idea, but steals an emaciated horse and a small wagon, and they follow the retreating army out of Atlanta.
Part way to Tara, Rhett has a change of heart and he abandons Scarlett to enlist in the army. Scarlett makes her way to Tara without him where she is welcomed on the steps by her father, Gerald. It is clear things have drastically changed: Gerald has lost his mind, Scarlett's mother is dead, her sisters are sick with typhoid fever, the field slaves are gone, the Yankees have burned all the cotton and there is no food in the house.
The long tiring struggle for post-war survival begins that has Scarlett working in the fields. There are so many hungry people to feed and so little food. There is the ever present threat of the Yankees who steal and burn, and at one point, Scarlett kills a Yankee maurader with a single shot from Charles's pistol, leaving "a bloody pit where the nose had been."^---
A long succession of Confederate soldiers returning home stop at Tara to find food and rest. Two men stay on, an invalid Cracker, Will Benteen, and Ashley Wilkes, whose spirit is broken. Life at Tara slowly begins to recover when a new threat appears, hiked up taxes on Tara.
Scarlett knows only one man who has enough money to help her pay the taxes, Rhett Butler. She goes to Atlanta to find him only to learn Rhett is in jail. As she is leaving the jailhouse, Scarlett runs into Frank Kennedy, who is betrothed to Scarlett's sister, Suellen, and running a store in Atlanta. Soon realizing Frank also has money, Scarlett hatches a plot and tells Frank that Suellen has changed her mind about marrying him. Thereafter Frank succumbs to Scarlett's feminine charms and he marries her two weeks later knowing he has done "something romantic and exciting for the first time in his life."^-- Always wanting Scarlett to be happy and radiant, Frank gives her the money to pay the taxes on Tara.
While Frank has a cold and is being pampered by Aunt Pittypat, Scarlett goes over the accounts at Frank's store and finds many of his friends owe him money. Scarlett is now terrified about the taxes and decides money, a lot of it, is needed. She takes control of his business while he is away and makes many Atlantians resent her. Then with a loan from Rhett she buys a sawmill and runs the lumber business herself, all very unladylike conduct. Much to Frank's relief, Scarlett learns she is pregnant, which curtails her activities for awhile. She twists Ashley's arm to come to Atlanta and manage the mill, all the while still in love with him. At Melanie's urging, Ashley takes the job at the mill. Melanie soon becomes the center of Atlanta society, and Scarlett gives birth to a girl named Ella Lorena. "Ella for her grandmother Ellen, and Lorena because it was the most fashionable name of the day for girls."^--
The state of Georgia is under martial law and life there has taken on a new and more frightening tone. For protection, Scarlett keeps Frank's pistol tucked in the upholstery of the buggy. Her trips alone to and from the mill take her past a shanty town where criminal elements live. On one evening when she is coming home from the mill, Scarlett is accosted by two men who attempt to rob her, but she escapes with the help of Big Sam, the former negro foreman from Tara. Attempting to avenge the assault on his wife, Frank and the Ku Klux Klan raid the shanty town whereupon Frank is shot dead. Scarlett is a widow for a second time.
Rhett puts on a charade to keep the men who participated in the shanty town raid from being arrested. He walks into the Wilkeses' home with Hugh Elsing and Ashley, singing and pretending to be drunk. Yankee officers outside the home question Rhett and he tells them he and the other men had been at Belle Watling's brothel that evening, a story Belle later confirms to the officers. The men are indebted to Rhett for saving them, and his Scallawag reputation among them improves a notch, but the men's wives, with the exception of Melanie, are livid at owing their husband's lives to Belle Watling.
Frank Kennedy lies cold in a coffin in the quiet stillness of the parlor in Aunt Pittypat's home. Scarlett is in a remorseful state dora games. She is swigging brandy from Aunt Pitty's swoon bottle when Rhett comes to call. She tells Rhett tearfully, "I'm afraid I'll die and go to hell," to which Rhett replies, "Maybe there isn't a hell." Before she can cry any further, Rhett asks Scarlett to marry him saying, "I always intended having you, one way or another."^-- Scarlett declares she doesn't love him and doesn't want to be married again. However, Rhett kisses her passionately, and in the heat of the moment she agrees to marry him. One year later, Scarlett and Rhett announce their engagement.
News of the impending marriage is the talk of the town. Mr. and Mrs. Butler honeymoon in New Orleans, spending lavishly. Upon their return to Atlanta, the couple take up residence in the bridal suite at the National Hotel while their new home on Peachtree Street is being constructed. Scarlett chooses a modern Swiss chalet style home like the one she saw in Harper's Weekly, and red wallpaper, thick red carpet and black walnut furniture for the interior. Rhett describes the house as an "architectural horror." Shortly after the Butler's move into their new home, the sardonic jabs between them turn into full-blown quarrels. Scarlett wonders why Rhett married her dora games. Then "with real hate in her eyes" she tells Rhett she is going to have a baby, a baby she does not want.

Book reviews

The sales of Margaret Mitchell's novel in the summer of 1936, at the virtually unprecedented price of three dollars, reached about one million by the end of December. The book was a best-seller by the time reviews began to appear in national magazines.

Herschel Brickell, a critic for the New York Evening Post, lauded Mitchell for the way she, "tosses out the window all the thousands of technical tricks our novelists have been playing with for the past twenty years."

Ralph Thompson, a book reviewer for the New York Times, was critical of the length of the novel, and wrote in June 1936:

I happen to feel that the book would have been infinitely better had it been edited down to say, 500 pages, but there speaks the harassed daily reviewer as well as the would-be judicious critic. Very nearly every reader will agree, no doubt, that a more disciplined and less prodigal piece of work would have more nearly done justice to the subject-matter cooking games online.

[edit] Criticisms for racial issues

One criticism leveled at Gone with the Wind is for its portrayal of African Americans in the 19th century South. For example, former field hands (during the early days of Reconstruction) are described behaving "as creatures of small intelligence might naturally be expected to do. Like monkeys or small children turned loose among treasured objects whose value is beyond their comprehension, they ran wild—either from perverse pleasure in destruction or simply because of their ignorance."

It has also been argued that Mitchell downplayed the violent role of the Ku Klux Klan. Bestselling author Pat Conroy, in his preface to the novel, describes Mitchell's portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan as having "the same romanticized role it had in The Birth of a Nation and appears to be a benign combination of the Elks Club and a men's equestrian society."^--

Criticisms such as these have led historian James Loewen to describe Gone with the Wind as, "A profoundly racist novel

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