Lit Crit draft

Nam-Bok The Unveracious by Jack London
A young man named Nam-Bok grew up on the banks of the Yukon Delta in Alaska among the native Indians who are a fishing people who live along the coast. As a young boy Nam-Bok is out in the sea on his Bidarka (a form of canoe used for fishing) when a strong off shore wind carries Nam-Bok out to sea. A series of calamities then take place Nam –Bok huddles in his canoe for four days and is at the point of death when a schooner filled with a handful of men out hunting for seal skins finds him. They take him on board and nurse him back to health. The schooner meets an unfortunate fate being tossed by the wind into the rocks off the coast of a strange new land. Nam-Bok is skilled as a swimmer and is the soul survivor from the schooner crew. He is curious and bold and sets out to see who the people who inhabit this new land are. He sees many people and modern things, years later as an adult Nam- Bok feels an inner yearning to find his people. A people and a home which Nam-Bok’s has been endeared to and glorified in his mind for many years. He comes home expecting a warm welcome and boasts proudly of the things he has seen and brings gifts to his kin’s people.
From the other side you see his mother stands on the coasts daily always watching and hoping that her son will come hope. Her tribe’s people gently mock her about this as it is there belief that people lost at sea never return alive. One day she sees a figure in the distance paddling clumsily towards the coast. She says it’s Nam-Bok but no one takes notice until he draws nearer. As his similitude becomes undeniable, the people begin to crowd the canoe for a look, but instead of a warm welcome Nam-Bok is viewed with suspicion. The tribe’s leader pronounces him a shadow and treats him as an evil spirit from the other side. After much haranguing Nam-Bok is received ashore, albeit with much apprehension from the tribes’ people, with the exception of his mother. They decide to throw a feast for Nam-Bok’s return and become tentatively eager to hear the stories that he brings with him from the foreign world he has been sojourning in. As Nam-Bok sits around eating with people he becomes disillusioned realizing that that the reality of his people is far removed from the fantasy he has built up around his childhood memories. Nam-Bok begins to tell his people of schooners, steam boats, trains and the many many white people he has seen. The Yukon Delta people have no reference point to even believe that such things could even exist.
Nam-Bok goes to bed that night in his mother’s tent but is very shortly awakened by the village leaders they tell Nam-Bok that he must leave and now. Hey tell him that either he is a shadow or he is a liar. Either way he is not welcomed. The story ends as Nam-Bok is on his Bidarka calling out to his mother to come with him. She will not she says because she is to old. Even the colorful shawl that he has given her is slipped from her shoulders and thrown in the boat because the people believe it will bring evil upon them to hold onto anything belonging to Nam-Bok
Nam-Bok waited a long time in anticipation of seeing the mother and people that he had been estranged from. He looked forward to being reunited with his people and proudly telling them stories of the wonders of this new world he had seen. As he wandered the new world heprobably felt a little anchor in his heart to his home land that gave him some security even in a strange place. He fondly remembered a place called home where he imagined he would always be welcomed back again, he probably envisioned his return and news from afar would be celebrated. Instead he was viewed with suspicion, ultimately viewed as a deceiver, someone from the land of shadows then rejected and cast back out to sea. Only now Nam-Bok was bereft of the delusion of having a home or a people.