Comparing Jack London And Mark Twain's The San Francisco Earthquake

San Francisco lives within one of the world’s most overlooked mistakes, a faultline that runs straight along the borders of California, putting all of its great cities within the hands of potential catastrophe. Famous writers Jack London and Mark Twain both recollect the events they witnessed during an earthquake known as the “great earthquake” that took place along this faultline, both narratives titled “The San Francisco Earthquake”. Although both essays possess the same title, each grasp onto different perspectives through syntax, tone, and subject as Jack London tries to churn a personal fear and loss within the hearts of readers as they witness the destruction of a city within seconds, while Twain takes a more objective stance as he aims to describe the …show more content…
Jack London was in love before the “great earthquake”. His lust for a city was destroyed within seconds, broken by a desolation that can only be written in terms of a heartbreak as he writes of the flames that engulfed the city. London adored the streets, the architecture, the “factories and warehouses, the great stores and newspaper buildings, the hotels and palaces of the nabobs” that are now wiped from the world. His love is not explicitly stated, but can be felt through the short, choppy sentences that resemble the feeling of choking sobs of grief after losing something held close to the heart. London’s choice of choppy syntax within his text emit feelings of destruction, of grief as he loses something he viewed as precious. He takes on a subjective viewpoint of the earthquake. “San Francisco is gone”, an exaggeration, yet a truth that London tries to promote through indications that no matter what is remaining of the streets “humped into ridges and depressions, piled with debris of fallen walls,” it will never be the same city. London wants to fill his reader with a sense of loss, an argument further supported