Story summary
Samenvatting van De Rode
- 8 min. leestijd
- 8 parts
- Binnenkort te beluisteren
A sick naturalist follows a thunderous sound through the Solomon Islands jungle, and cannibals wait at its source.
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De Rode in het kort
Samenvatting: 8 min leestijd
- Leestijd
- Ongeveer 2 h 35 min2 h fast, 3 h slow
- Lengte
- 36.400 woorden
- Bibliotheekniveau
- Gemiddeld longer sentences, everyday words
- Voor het eerst verschenen
- 1918by Jack London
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). Hoelang het duurt om de klassiekers te lezen · Bijgewerkt
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De Rode in short
Four tales, one pattern. Each begins with a person who wants something large and a place that is harsh on those who want things. Bassett wants the source of a sound, Jones wants a nugget, Tarwater wants the land he lost, and three outcasts want to be believed.
What De Rode is about
A sound rolls out of a mountain gorge in the Solomon Islands and fills earth and sky for a full hour. A sick naturalist named Bassett hears it from a beach and cannot stop chasing it.
The Red One gathers four stories by Jack London, each dated 1916, the year he died. In every tale a person wants something so badly that sense gives way to appetite.
Voor wie is het?. You will enjoy this book if you love adventure yarns, far-off places, tall tales told by lively talkers, and characters who chase gold, glory or a mystery to the edge of the map.
The story in 8 parts
Key idea 1 · free to read
A mysterious sound drags a naturalist inland
The first tale opens with the sound itself. Bassett, a naturalist lying sick in a village on Guadalcanal, times it by his watch and finds that it lasts a full hour.
Then the story goes back to the start. Bassett had landed to hunt a giant jungle butterfly. From the beach he heard the call, and he plunged into the bush with his servant Sagawa, who begged him to turn back and called the noise a devil-devil.
Sagawa was right. Within hours he lies beheaded on a narrow pig path, and Bassett has lost two fingers to a tomahawk. He kills one attacker, the first man he has ever killed. Tiny arrows whisper out of the trees, and mosquito bites plant a fever in him. He staggers onto open grassland and weeps at the smell of grass. There a bushwoman named Balatta finds him. She means to club him, but his blue eyes and white skin stop her hand, and she decides he belongs to her.
A trained mind, driven by one question, can walk through horror and slowly lose its gentleness. A single mystery can lead a person far beyond what is wise.
- 2Begin gratis met lezen
Bassett bargains for a glimpse of the god
Now the tale settles into a village of head-hunters.
- 3Begin gratis met lezen
A fair-ground talker has a story about gold
The second tale starts at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.
- 4Begin gratis met lezen
An Indian girl on the track changes his house
One moonlit April night, Jones is on a locomotive near Amato when his fireman Seth Manners slams on the brakes.
- 5Begin gratis met lezen
Grandfather Tarwater's feet itch for the Klondike
The third tale begins in the summer of 1897 with a family emergency.
- 6Begin gratis met lezen
Cheer and hard work earn him a seat in the boat
On the trail above Dyea, Tarwater pulls a small man named Anson out of an icy eddy where a sack of flour is drowning him.
- 7Begin gratis met lezen
Three one-armed outcasts agree to drink like gentlemen
The last tale begins at a hobo camp between a railroad embankment and a river.
- 8Begin gratis met lezen
Slim's tale, and how London builds these four
Slim, the man with the quoit, tells his story last, and only because the others coax him.
Read all 8 key ideas now
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Characters, plot and themes
Main characters
- Bassett A fastidious English naturalist, sick with fever in a cannibal village, who wants above all to see the source of a mighty sound.
- Ngurn The village's devil-devil doctor, who cures human heads over smoke, keeps the god's secret and wants Bassett's head for his collection.
- Balatta A bushwoman who finds Bassett near death, claims him as her own and risks terrible punishment out of love.
- Julian Jones A giant railroad engineer from Nebraska who tells a stranger about a vast nugget and wants a partner to go back for it.
- Sarah Jones His small, sharp-eyed wife, who interrupts the story with one word and wants him kept away from Ecuador.
- John Tarwater A seventy-year-old Californian who sings an old chant and sets out for the Klondike to win back his family's lost land.
- Liverpool A fierce, foul-mouthed young sailor who steers the party's boat and decides that the old man will go all the way.
- Whiskers One of three one-armed outcasts by a fire, who claims to be Chauncey Delarouse and to have loved a Polynesian princess.
How it ends (spoiler)
Bassett is carried to the pit, sees the Red One sound for the first time, and goes calmly to Ngurn's tomahawk. Jones finishes his tale about the mountain of gold, then he and Sarah leave town before he meets the narrator again. Tarwater finds gold in the moss, sells his claims, comes home rich and thrashes William with a single-tree. Slim ends with a princess who cannot exist, and the other two tramps leave him, saying no gentleman would have done it.
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Vragen over De Rode
What is The Red One by Jack London about?
It is a collection of four adventure tales. A naturalist chases a mysterious sound through a Solomon Islands jungle, a railroad man tells of a mountain of gold, an old man rushes to the Klondike, and three tramps trade love stories.
What is the Red One in the story?
The Red One is the name a jungle tribe gives to the god whose enormous voice rings over the island. Bassett hears the sound on a beach and spends the story trying to find out what makes it.
Is The Red One a true story?
No, these are invented tales. London dated all four in 1916, the year he died, and he drew on settings he knew, including the South Seas, the Klondike gold rush and the tramp life of the American road.
Is The Red One easy to read?
Yes, in the sense that each of the four tales is brisk and clear. Several are told by talkative characters in lively, conversational voices, with plenty of dialogue, short scenes and a strong sense of what happens next.
What do the four stories have in common?
Each follows a person driven by a single strong desire, whether for knowledge, gold, land or love. London tests those desires against danger and uses humor, tall talk and tough settings to show what they cost.
Verwijs naar deze uitgave
London, Jack. The Red One. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-red-one.
London, J. (2026). The red one. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-red-one (Original work published 1918)
London, Jack. The Red One. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-red-one.
@book{london2026red,
author = {London, Jack},
title = {The Red One},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-red-one},
note = {First published 1918}
}
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