22 pages • 44 minutes read
Jack LondonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
A rhetorical question is one that isn’t asked with the expectation of a response. This may be because the speaker intends to provide an answer, or—as in “The Law of Life”—because the answer is implied or otherwise obvious. Here, for instance, are two rhetorical questions Koskoosh poses while musing about his granddaughter’s failure to provide him with more firewood: “[S]he was ever a careless child, and honored not her ancestors from the time the Beaver, son of the son of Zing-ha, first cast eyes upon her. Well, what mattered it? Had he not done likewise in his own quick youth?” (Paragraph 20). The effect is not simply to suggest that Koskoosh was similarly “careless” as a young man, but rather to suggest that such carelessness is all but inevitable; according to Koskoosh, the young are simply not disposed to pay attention to the elderly, or mortality more generally. Other rhetorical questions in the story serve a similar purpose, underscoring the immutability of the life cycle and Koskoosh’s resignation to his own impending death by framing these things as questions with preordained answers.
By Jack London
A Piece of Steak
A Piece of Steak
Jack London
Martin Eden
Martin Eden
Jack London
South of the Slot
South of the Slot
Jack London
The Call of the Wild
The Call of the Wild
Jack London
The Iron Heel
The Iron Heel
Jack London
The Sea-Wolf
The Sea-Wolf
Jack London
To Build a Fire
To Build a Fire
Jack London
White Fang
White Fang
Jack London