![]() ![]() While the emphasis of this lesson is on history and research rather than literature, selections from Jack London's The Call of the Wild are used to provide focus and structure for students' research in online databases of primary sources, and to serve as models of vivid narrative prose for students' own stories. If time does not permit students to write their own stories, the teacher can select stand-alone sections from this lesson that deal with the history of the Gold Rush era. What he sought in the Yukon was not gold, however, but rather the adventure and "the metaphorical gold for his first stories." London's experiences in the Yukon provided him not only with an appropriate setting for the life and death struggles he wanted to depict, but also with sufficient local color to lend authenticity to his writing.īy "mining" online databases for primary texts and period photographs, your students can explore the Klondike Stampede, and, like London, can glean from their visit sufficient period details to help them create their own narratives based on the Gold Rush. One of those who came to the Klondike was Jack London, soon to be an internationally famous author. ![]() Two days later, the town was deserted, claims were being staked out all around the original site, and the Gold Rush was on! Despite the distance and the difficult conditions, thousands of Americans traveled to the Yukon willing to test their mettle in hopes of striking it rich. The first nuggets of the Klondike Stampede were brought into the town of Forty Mile on August 20, 1898. Clarice Stasz, from The Jack London Collection, a link from the EDSITEment resource The Center for Liberal Arts. "… the Yukon provided the metaphorical gold for his first stories…"
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