The Jacket

Description

The Jacket by Jack London (published under this title in the U.K., but bearing the title Star-Rover in the U.S. in 1915) is a strange story and one that is utterly unusual from the pen of the author who became famous for his novels set the Klondike Gold Rush such as White Fang or The Call of the Wild and his short stories set in the South Pacific, but not less enjoyable than London’s more famous work.

The story of The Jacket revolves around human existence over time, reincarnation and the power of the mind that makes it possible for man to endure torture and pain. The events are narrated in first person singular by the protagonist, Darrell Standing, a former university professor who serves lifetime imprisonment in San Quentin. His prison wards try to break his free and indomitable spirit by putting him into solitary confinement and by forcing him into a strait jacket that is so tight that it causes angina (a torturing device that was actually used in San Quentin at the time that Jack London wrote the story), but the professor seems to be able to free himself from his sufferings by inducing a state of trance for himself. In this peculiar state of mind, he becomes able to leave his body to walk among the stars, he inhabits numerous different personalities and he also experiences events from past lives. He travels to different cultures and different ages, making the book a loose, collage-like collection of unfinished experience fragments.

A refreshing and thought-provoking writing by Jack London, The Jacket makes an excellent read for those interested in the powers of the mind over the body. However, the book comes with a warning, too: the tortures the professor is forced to endure are depicted so vividly and in such a naturalistic way that they might be challenging to read through at times.
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