"Bâtard" (English: "Bastard" or "Mongrel") is a
short story
A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...
by
Jack London
John Griffith London (; January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors t ...
, first
published
Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...
in 1902 under the title "Diable — A Dog" in ''
The Cosmopolitan'' before being renamed "Bâtard"
in 1904.
Story
The story follows Black Leclère and Bâtard, two "devils", one in a man and the other in a wolfdog. Their intense hatred of each other forms the plot as each wants to kill the other, despite their master-pet relationship. At the end, Bâtard ends up killing his owner but is later killed himself.
The story is a study of an animal's reaction to its treatment by man. There were complaints about the way the dog's behavior was described, and London followed up on the same theme with ''
The Call of the Wild
''The Call of the Wild'' is an adventure novel by Jack London, published in 1903 and set in Yukon, Canada, during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush, when strong sled dogs were in high demand. The central character of the novel is a dog named Buck. ...
''.
Etymology
"Bâtard" means
bastard
Bastard or The Bastard may refer to:
Parentage
* Illegitimate child, a child born to unmarried parents, in traditional Western family law
** Bastard, an archaic term used in English and Welsh bastardy laws, reformed in 1926
People
* "The Bastard" ...
or mongrel and "
diable" means
devil
A devil is the mythical personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conce ...
in French. Both are descriptive of the dog.
References
External links
Complete text of original publication
1902 short stories
Short stories by Jack London
Works originally published in Cosmopolitan (magazine)
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