Résumé
Résumé de La Camisole (Le Vagabond des étoiles)
Go deeper: the whole of La Camisole (Le Vagabond des étoiles)
About 7 h 10 min to read.À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
This book suits readers who love a fierce narrator, adventure stories set in many ages, and bold questions about mind and body. It also rewards anyone curious about prisons and American writing from the early 1900s.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
What if a man laced into a canvas straitjacket could walk out of his cell and live other lives? Darrell Standing, a former professor of agronomy, says he does exactly that. He tells you so from the condemned row at Folsom Prison, in 1913, while he waits for a rope.
The Jacket, also called The Star-Rover, is a novel by Jack London. It is the memoir of a convict who spends years in the solitary cells of San Quentin. There a cruel punishment and a secret from a fellow prisoner carry him far from his body. You get a prison story and a string of adventures, from old France to a frozen rock in the sea, all in one fierce voice.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A condemned professor opens his memoirFree
- 2A poet's lie sends Standing into the dark
- 3Solitary confinement makes three minds into a company
- 4The jacket is a cruelty that teaches endurance
- 5Morrell's trick lets the mind leave the body
- 6Two lives show what the past is made of
- 7Adam Strang rises and falls in Korea
- 8Ragnar Lodbrog and Daniel Foss test the spirit
- 9The book argues that spirit outlasts matter
- 10A frame of voices holds memoir and tales together
Point clé 1 sur 10
A condemned professor opens his memoir
Darrell Standing writes from a cell at Folsom Prison. He says he is neither a fool nor a lunatic, and he asks you to believe him. He will be hanged within weeks, and he means to set down what he has lived.
His first claim is that every child remembers other times and places. He points to the dreams of falling and flying that haunt small children. Dreams are built from experience, he says, so the experience must come from somewhere.
Then he gives his own record. He was born on a Minnesota farm and became a professor of agronomy, proud of his skill. His flaw is what he calls the red wrath, an anger so fast and total that he killed a fellow professor in a laboratory. He treats this rage as an inheritance, a clue that one self carries many.
Standing offers memory, anger and a scientist's pride as his first evidence that one person holds many lives.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
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Questions about La Camisole (Le Vagabond des étoiles)
What is The Jacket by Jack London about?
It follows Darrell Standing, a professor condemned to die, who tells how torture in a San Quentin straitjacket frees his mind to relive earlier lives. The tales range from old France to Korea, Jerusalem and a lonely island.
What does the jacket mean in The Jacket?
The jacket is a canvas straitjacket laced tightly around a prisoner as punishment. In the novel it is both a cruel instrument and the doorway through which Standing escapes into trances.
Why is it also called The Star-Rover?
The title names the narrator, who says he roams among the stars and across time while his body lies in the jacket. A star-rover is a wanderer through many lives and ages.
Is The Jacket based on a true story?
It is a novel, but it draws on real prison practices and real persons such as Ed Morrell and Jake Oppenheimer. The tales of past lives are imagined, though London set them in real periods and places.
Is The Jacket worth reading?
Readers find it rewarding for its strong voice, its quick shifts between adventure tales, and its questions about mind, body and punishment. Each past life is a short story, so the book moves with variety.
Cite this edition
London, Jack. The Jacket (The Star-Rover). Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-jacket-the-star-rover.
London, J. (2026). The jacket (The star-rover). Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-jacket-the-star-rover (Original work published 1915)
London, Jack. The Jacket (The Star-Rover). Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-jacket-the-star-rover.
@book{london2026jacket,
author = {London, Jack},
title = {The Jacket (The Star-Rover)},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-jacket-the-star-rover},
note = {First published 1915}
}
