Jack London

At school my English teacher would occasionally hand out a list of a zillion book titles that literate boys were meant to have read. Generally I could find two, maybe three, titles that I recognised. But two books that immediately appealed to me back then were Jack London's Call of the Wild and White Fang.  (Another was Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie). It is the power of description in the books that I loved.

And so it was with expectation that I recently picked up Martin Eden. In a lone battle struggling to become a writer whilst standing against convention Martin eventually finds financial success but the novel ends with him loosing purpose and committing suicide. I found the ending unexpected and utterly bleak.

As an atheist Jack London is quoted as saying:

"I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed".

Like Thomas, I have plenty of doubts and loose ends. But I find this statement untenable, just as I found the novel bleak. As I have mentioned in my page on faith I go along with Puddleglum's sentiments:

"We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a playworld which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it."

It has been said that man was made with a God shaped hole which only He can fill. It would seem that most people do not agree with this, but then most people believe that a diamond is a girl's best friend.