Imagine finding a stranger in your home in the middle of the night with a gun pointed at you. Well, that’s exactly what happened to Mrs. Setliffe in Jack London’s, “To Kill A Man.” This is one of London’s lesser known stories; his more popular, or famous, works include The Call of The Wild, The Sea-Wolf, To Build A Fire, and White Fang. The majority of his stories reflect his realistic point of view and they use the character’s surroundings to shape them. Jack London was born in 1876 and passed away in 1916. His natural born name was John Griffith Cheney, and his name change came partly from his mother remarrying. When he was about 17, London signed onto the sealing schooner, Sophie Sutherland, to travel the seas from California to Japan in
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Setliffe in this story is very calm and courageous, but she is also manipulative. She overestimates her abilities and is overly confident. She knows how to pretend to be or look, but she is unsure of herself when it comes to taking action. The stranger on the other hand is honest, despite his law-breaking, and cautious. He doesn’t seem to seem overly passionate on his outside appearance, only taking life as it comes to him and dealing with it as he sees fit.
The theme of the story seems to be that everything isn’t always how it seems. Both characters learn this from Mrs. Setliffe in that she overestimates her abilities, and realizing that she doesn’t have the strength to take action when she is challenged to, to the stranger who learns that Mrs. Setliffe, although pleasant to him in the beginning, seemed to be just a young woman who found him and offered her hospitality, but was actually very untrustworthy and suspicious.
London’s writing style is often extremely descriptive and is described as being naturalistic. This is because he takes man-made conflicts and brings them to being primal, internal conflicts, mostly that of survival, and also because he uses the characters environment to help shape them throughout the story. This is reflected in the story by taking the conflict of finding and armed stranger in your home down to survival and internal
Setliffe in this story is very calm and courageous, but she is also manipulative. She overestimates her abilities and is overly confident. She knows how to pretend to be or look, but she is unsure of herself when it comes to taking action. The stranger on the other hand is honest, despite his law-breaking, and cautious. He doesn’t seem to seem overly passionate on his outside appearance, only taking life as it comes to him and dealing with it as he sees fit.
The theme of the story seems to be that everything isn’t always how it seems. Both characters learn this from Mrs. Setliffe in that she overestimates her abilities, and realizing that she doesn’t have the strength to take action when she is challenged to, to the stranger who learns that Mrs. Setliffe, although pleasant to him in the beginning, seemed to be just a young woman who found him and offered her hospitality, but was actually very untrustworthy and suspicious.
London’s writing style is often extremely descriptive and is described as being naturalistic. This is because he takes man-made conflicts and brings them to being primal, internal conflicts, mostly that of survival, and also because he uses the characters environment to help shape them throughout the story. This is reflected in the story by taking the conflict of finding and armed stranger in your home down to survival and internal