摘 要

《生火》与《热爱生命》是杰克伦敦两篇最著名的短篇小说。两篇小说都描述了一个人独自在广阔的荒原上肚子行走的故事。杰克伦敦在这两部小说中通过象征手法表达了自己的生态观点。这篇论文旨在通过对小说中主人公、动物以及环境的象征意义的研究，分析杰克伦敦关于人与自然的观点。

关键词：象征；主人公；动物；环境; 关系

Contents

1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………….1

2. Demonstration………………………………………………………………………2

2.1 Symbol of the Hero..……………………………………………………….……...2

2.1.1 The symbol of the man in “To Build a Fire”…………………………………….3

2.1.2The symbol of the man in “Love of Life”…………………...…………………...4

2.2 Symbol of the animals……………………………………………..………………5

2.2.1 The symbol of the animal in “To Build a Fire”……………………………….....5

2.2.2 The symbol of the animal in ”Love of Life”………………………………….....6

2.3Symbol of the environment……………………… ……………………….….……7

2.3.1 The symbol of the environment in “To Build a Fire”…………………………...7

2.3.2 The symbol of the environment in “Love of Life”………….……………..…...8

3. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………9

Works cited..................................................................................................................11

Bibliography.................................................................................................................12

A Study of the Symbol in “To Build a Fire” and “Love of Life”

1. Introduction

Jack London was a famous realistic writer. He was born in a very poor family. For living, he engaged in a variety of work, which provided him with a lot of materials for writing. At the end of 19^th century, he began his trip to Alaska to seek gold, and this experience affected him a lot. After he came back, he wrote many works about it, such as “To Build a Fire” and “Love of Life”. Since 1900, he continued to publish many novels, mainly narrating the lives of lower-class people of America and exposing the evils of the capital system, for example, The Call of the Wild (1903), Love of Life (1907), Martin Eden (1909), The Abysmal Brute (1913), etc. Western writer and historian Dale L. Walker writes: “London's true métier was the short story ... London's true genius lay in the short form, 7,500 words and under, where the flood of images in his teeming brain and the innate power of his narrative gift were at once constrained and freed (Walker 210)”.

Researches about his works have been done in various aspects since he was living, and it is still a hot point in the researches of world literal. Someone regards him as a popular writer of writing adventurous stories, and someone regards him as a serious naturalistic or realistic writer. Since 1990s, researches about Jack London have paid attention to the politic problems, such as social class, race and sexuality. Nowadays researches begin to turn to analyze his ecological opinions by studying the symbols in his writings.

Symbol origins from the Greek συμβόλον symbolon. According to Wikipedia, a symbol is an object that represents, stands for, or suggests an idea, visual image, belief, action, or material entity. After World War Ⅱ, many writers began to express their real hope in their works— a virtual world created by them. In many of London’s works, we can also find a lot of symbols and through these symbols we can analyze his attitude towards the relationship between mankind and nature of that time, when people admire someone who can challenge nature.

The Westward Movement, which began at the end of 18^th century and ended at the beginning of 20^th century, and the God Rush, which happened at the end of 19^th century made the pioneer and adventurous spirit the most respectable spirit of American people. That time people held the opinion that the human beings were the only ruler of the universe and they could dominate the nature. However, Jack London didn’t think so. He explored from the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspective on the relationship among human beings, living beings and nature. He insisted that human beings should live harmoniously with the nature. He tried to awaken the human who were indifferent under the drive of utilitarianism.