--Jack London(傑克.倫敦)
The author
作者簡介
1896年，當約肯（地名）發現黃金後，倫敦也被傳染上了“淘金熱”。他跟隨其他千千萬萬的無業青年奔向阿拉斯加淘金。在那裡他沒有發現黃金，但是這段經歷讓他寫成了“野性的呼喚”，一部奠定他作家聲譽的作品。在閱讀完卡爾馬克思的著作後，倫敦變成了一個社會卡爾馬克思主義者。在《路界以南》中，作者對於工人階級的同情是顯而易見的。
Born in San Francisco in 1876, Jack London grou up in nearby working-class Oakland to become one of American’s most popular writers. His family was so poor that he was forced to begin working when only ten years old. After leaving Oakland, London rode freight trains with hobos across the United States, sailed as a common seaman to Asia, and served time in jail for vagrancy. In 1896, when gold was discovered in the Yukon, London caught gold fever and followed thousands of other umemployed young men to Alaska. He didn’t find any gold, but from the experience he write Call the the Wild, a novel that ensured his success as a writer. After reading the works of Karl Marx, London became a socialist. In “South of the Slot” his sympathies with the workers are obvious.
The Story
“South of the Slot ” is a story of inner confilict within one character—Freddie Drummond, a sociology professor at the University of California at Berkeley. This battle symbolized a much larger struggle: the fight betweent newly formed labor unions and the rich who ruled San Francisco society at the turn of the twentith century. At that time, laborers worked long hours in poor conditions for small wages. The Berkeley professor has a good position in society. But his work take him into a new world of workers and poverty unknown to others of his social class. Surprisingly, Professor Drummond finds life South of the Slot more attractive than the lifestyles of the wealthy and welleducated people he leaves behind him. Even in today’s society and improved working conditions, could anyone argue that ordinary lavorers have better lives than the rich? Do the poor have anything that the wealthy do not have? Would Jack London still prefer to live among the poor if he were alive today?
《路界以南》寫的是一位社會學教授內心衝突的故事。弗雷迪·德拉蒙德教授在伯克利的加利福尼亞大學從事研究工作。他內心的衝突征著一種極大的矛盾，那就是在20世紀初新成立的工會與統治舊金山的富人之間的鬥爭。在當時，工人們在極端惡劣的條件下勞作很長時間，得到的僅是微薄的一點薪水。這位伯克利的教授有非常好的社會地位，但是他的工作使他接觸到另一個與他同階層的人所不能了解的世界：工人們的生活，還有貧困。令人吃驚的是，德拉蒙教授發現貧民窟南部人生活更魅力，遠遠超過了那些所謂的富人以及受過良好教育的人的生活，他因此拋棄了他原來的生活。
即使到現在，在工人的勞動條件得到極大改善的今天，誰會說普通工人的生活要比富人的好？窮人有什麼東西就富人不具有的？如果傑克·倫敦依然健在，他是否仍然願意與窮人生活在一起？
