Bâtard

"Bâtard"
"Bâtard"
Short story by Jack London
Original title	Diable — A Dog
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Short story
Publication
Published in	The Cosmopolitan
Publication date	1902

"Bâtard" (English: "Bastard" or "Mongrel") is a short story by Jack London, first published in 1902 under the title "Diable — A Dog" in The Cosmopolitan before being renamed "Bâtard"^[1] 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.

Etymology

"Bâtard" means bastard or mongrel and "diable" means devil in French. Both are descriptive of the dog.

References

^ Labor, Earle; Leitz III, Robert C. (1998). "Introduction". In Labor, Earle; Leitz, Robert C. III (eds.). The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories. Oxford University Press. p. xvii. ISBN 978-0-19-283514-7.

External links

Complete text of original publication Archived 2007-01-29 at the Wayback Machine

This article about a short story (or stories) published in the 1900s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[1] Labor, Earle; Leitz III, Robert C. (1998). "Introduction". In Labor, Earle; Leitz, Robert C. III (eds.). The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories. Oxford University Press. p. xvii. ISBN 978-0-19-283514-7.

[1]