THE HEATHEN by JACK LONDON
1001 Classic Short Stories & Tales
Jon Hagadorn
4.5 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 October 2022
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this South Seas story, our protagonist befriends an island man named Otoo and they become3 inseparable for years . Otoo becomes a stalwart protector and invaluable business asset and the two experience all kinds of danger as well as success. They become blood brothers, and, as the island custom dictates, they trade names.
In the reviews I answer a listener's concern that Jack London became an avowed socialist in his later writing years. Pardon my voice in this last review section as I needed to wrap up this episode today. The story is clear voice all the way- only the review is scratchy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And the Yeah, Welcome back everyone to one thousand one Classic Short Stories in Tales. |
| 0:33.3 | This is your host, John Hagdorn. |
| 0:35.3 | Today, a great story from Jack London called The Heathen. |
| 0:40.7 | This action-packed short story by Jack London was first published in Everybody's magazine in 1910 |
| 0:46.0 | and tells the story of a Pearl Buyer named Charlie who has a passenger on a scooter named |
| 0:52.0 | The Petit John, |
| 0:53.4 | sitting from Ranjura, New Zealand to Tahiti with the Kanaka crew |
| 0:57.4 | manages to barely survive a hurricane with the help of a crewman named |
| 1:00.8 | O-2-O, and they become fast friends. This story digs deep into the |
| 1:05.7 | cultural issues that divide us and reminds us that when facing adversity our |
| 1:09.8 | differences matter little and we all become brothers. At least that's the hopeful |
| 1:15.2 | outcome. In a 2006 collection of stories by Jack London including The |
| 1:20.7 | Heaton the editors offered this comment. |
| 1:24.6 | In the early 1940s, when this story found its way into fiction anthologies in high school textbooks, |
| 1:30.2 | this story was admired for its fiercely detailed picture of a storm at sea, |
| 1:33.9 | and for its courageous examination of a friendship that transcended cultural and racial differences. |
| 1:40.0 | It is nowadays impossible for us to read the account of the friendship between Charlie and Otoo so simply. |
| 1:46.0 | The article goes on to say, |
| 1:48.0 | By the 1970s, as editors began to see the complexity of the ideas about race embedded in The Heathen. |
| 1:54.8 | It simply became easier to drop the story from collections altogether. |
| 1:59.8 | I'll leave it to you listeners to sort that one out and decide whether or not this story should be left out of story collections. |
| 2:05.6 | As all of you know, I believe great short stories give us a window to the past and the way people thought and acted then. |
... |
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