It was about this time that the newspapers were full of the daring escape of a convict from San Quentin prison. He was a ferocious man. He had been ill- made in the making. He had not been born right, and he had not been helped any by the molding he had received at the hands of society. The hands of society are harsh, and this man was a striking sample of its handiwork. He was a beast—a human beast, it is true, but nevertheless so terrible a beast that he can best be characterized as carnivorous. 1 1 What animal- like qualities does the prisoner have? 5 10 15 20 25 30 In San Quentin prison he had proved incorrigible. Punishment failed to break his spirit. He could die dumb-mad and fighting to the last, but he could not live and be beaten. The more fiercely he fought, the more harshly society handled him, and the only effect of harshness was to make him fiercer. Straight-jackets to restrain him, starvation, and beatings and clubbings were the wrong treatment for Jim Hall; but it was the treatment he received. It was the treatment he had received from the time he was a little pulpy, shapeable boy in a San Francisco slum—soft clay in the hands of society and ready to be formed into something. 2 2 What kind of punishment did Jim Hall receive that did not lead to reform? restrain to hold back It was during Jim Hall’s third term in prison that he encountered a guard that was almost as great a beast as he. The guard treated him unfairly, lied about him to the warden, lost his credits, and persecuted him. The difference between them was that the guard carried a bunch of keys and a gun. Jim Hall had only his naked hands and his teeth. But he sprang upon the guard one day and used his teeth on the other’s throat just like any jungle animal. encounter to meet; to come in contact with Lesson 1 | Reading meat eater metaphor Lesson 1 | Reading 6 Unit 7 After this, Jim Hall went to live in the incorrigible cell. He lived there three years. The cell was of iron, the floor, the walls, the roof. He never left this cell. He never saw the sky nor the sunshine. Day was a barely noticeable twilight and night was a black silence. He was in an iron tomb, buried alive. He saw no human face, spoke to no human thing. When his food was shoved in to him, he growled like a wild animal. He hated all things. For days and nights he bellowed his rage loudly at the universe. Then, for weeks and months he never made a sound, in the black silence eating his very soul. He was a man and a monstrosity, as fearful a thing of fear as ever imagined in the visions of a maddened brain. 3 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 3 What was life like for Jim Hall before his attack on the prison guard and after his attack on the prison guard? And then, one night, he escaped. The warders said it was impossible, but nevertheless the cell was empty, and half in half out of it lay the body of a slain guard. Two other dead guards marked his trail through the prison to the outer walls, and he had killed with his hands to avoid noise. He was armed with the weapons of the slain guards—a live arsenal that fled through the hills pursued by the organized might of society. A heavy price of gold was upon his head. Greedy farmers hunted him with shotguns. His blood might pay off a loan or send a son to college. Public-spirited citizens took down their rifles and went out after him. A pack of bloodhounds followed the way of his bleeding feet. And the sleuth-hounds of the law, the paid fighting animals of society, with telephone, and telegraph, and special train, clung to his trail night and day. 4 Where did Jim 4 Hall get his weapons? pursue to chase; to go after Sometimes they came upon him, and men faced him like heroes, or stampeded through barbed- wire fences to the delight of the people reading the account at the breakfast table. It was after such encounters that the dead and wounded were carted back to the towns, and their places filled by men eager for the manhunt. Unit 7 7 Lesson 1 | Reading And then Jim Hall disappeared. The bloodhounds vainly quested for him on the lost trail. Inoffensive, ordinary ranchers in remote valleys were held up by armed men and compelled to identify themselves. While the remains of Jim Hall were discovered on a dozen mountainsides by greedy claimants for blood- money. 5 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 5 Why did so many men want to find Jim Hall? vainly without success; not achieving what one hoped to compel to make someone take a certain action In the meantime the newspapers were read at Sierra Vista, not so much with interest as with anxiety, or worry. The women were afraid. Judge Scott pooh- poohed and laughed, but not with reason, for it was in his last days on the bench that Jim Hall had stood before him and received sentence. And in open courtroom, before all men, Jim Hall had proclaimed that the day would come when he would wreak vengeance on the Judge that sentenced him. vengeance the act of repaying one hurtful deed with another For once, Jim Hall was right. He was innocent of the crime for which he was sentenced. It was a case, in the language of thieves and police, of “railroading.” Jim Hall was being “railroaded” to prison for a crime he had not committed. Because of the two prior convictions against him, Judge Scott imposed upon him a sentence of fifty years. 6 6 What is Jim Hall’s connection to Judge Scott? Judge Scott did not know all things, and he did not know that he was party to a police conspiracy, that the evidence was hatched and falsified, that Jim Hall was guiltless of the crime charged. And Jim Hall, on the other hand, did not know that Judge Scott was merely ignorant. Jim Hall believed that the judge knew all about it and was hand in glove with the police in the promotion of the monstrous injustice. So it was, when the doom of fifty years of living death was uttered by Judge Scott, that Jim Hall, hating all things in the society that misused him, rose up and raged in the courtroom until dragged down by half a dozen of his blue-coated enemies. To him, Judge Scott was the keystone in the arch of injustice, and upon Judge Scott he emptied the vials of his wrath and hurled the angry threats of his revenge yet to come. Then Jim Hall went to his living death . . . and escaped. 7 ignorant not knowing or having important information promotion an attempt to convince others that they should do, believe, or buy something 7 In what ways are Jim Hall and Judge Scott both “falsely accused”? Lesson 1 | Reading 8 Unit 7 115 120 125 130 135 Of all this White Fang knew nothing. But between him and Alice, the master’s wife, there existed a secret. Each night, after Sierra Vista had gone to bed, she rose and let in White Fang to sleep in the big hall. Now White Fang was not a house dog, nor was he permitted to sleep in the house; so each morning, early, she slipped down and let him out before the family was awake. 8 8 Why do you think White Fang is introduced at this time? On one such night, while all the house slept, White Fang awoke and lay very quietly. And very quietly he smelled the air and read the message it bore of a strange god’s presence. And to his ears came sounds of the strange god’s movements. White Fang burst into no furious outcry. It was not his way. The strange god walked softly, but more softly walked White Fang, for he had no clothes to rub against the flesh of his body. He followed silently. In the Wild he had hunted live meat that was infinitely timid, and he knew the advantage of surprise. advantage something that puts you in a better position than others The strange god paused at the foot of the great staircase and listened, and White Fang was as dead, so without movement was he as he watched and waited. Up that staircase the way led to the lovemaster and to the lovemaster’s dearest possessions. White Fang bristled, but waited. The strange god’s foot lifted. He was beginning the ascent. 9 ascent an upward journey 9 Who is the strange god and the lovemaster? Unit 7 9 Lesson 1 | Reading Then it was that White Fang struck. He gave no warning, with no snarl anticipated his own action. Into the air he lifted his body in the spring that landed him on the strange god’s back. White Fang clung with his forepaws to the man’s shoulders, at the same time burying his fangs into the back of the man’s neck. He clung on for a moment, long enough to drag the god over backward. Together they crashed to the floor. White Fang leaped clear, and, as the man struggled to rise, was in again with the slashing fangs. 10 10 How did White Fang complete the mission Alice had given him? 140 145 Jack London, born in 1876, was one of the first famous fiction writers known worldwide for his work. Early in his career, London wrote the groundbreaking novel The Call of the Wild, which featured a domesticated dog forced to revert back to his wild instincts. Because of its success, London felt it was necessary to write a companion novel, White Fang, but he wanted to add a twist. “I’m going to reverse the process. Instead of the devolution or de-civilization of a dog, I’m going to give the evolution, the civilization of a dog—development of domesticity, faithfulness, love, morality, and all of the amenities and virtues.”