十九世纪末至二十世纪初的美国文坛,先后诞生了两位杰出的现实主义作家。一位是马克·吐温,一位是杰克·伦敦。他们同样都是美国社会阴暗面的揭发者,但揭发的手法却各不相同。马克·吐温擅长幽默和讽刺,他惯于运用令人惊叹的夸张笔调,把生活中某些丑恶事物放大好几倍,让人们看清它的荒谬和可笑之处,从而达到揭露资产阶级民主的虚伪、反对种族歧视、嘲笑金钱罪恶的目的。他对资产阶级社会的愤怒与控诉是寓于强烈的讽刺之中的。杰克·伦敦则不一样。他当过童工、水手、淘金者、流浪汉,艰难酸辛的经历,使他对金元帝国最底层的劳苦大众的生活有着特殊的感受。因此,他能够用一种异乎寻常的冷静语 The American literary circles from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century have successively created two outstanding realist writers. One is Mark Twain, one is Jack London. They are also the same ones who are the dark side of American society, but they are exposed in different ways. Mark Twain is good at humor and irony. He is accustomed to magnifying some of the ugly things in his life exaggeratedly in exaggerated tones to let people see its absurdity and ridiculousness so as to expose the bourgeois democracy Hypocrisy, anti-racial discrimination, ridicule the purpose of evil money. His anger and indictment against bourgeois society are strongly ironic. Jack London is different. He had been a child labor, sailor, gold digger, vagabond, hard-hearted experience, so that he had a special feeling of the life of the working-class people at the bottom of the Jin and Yuan Empire. Therefore, he can use an unusual calm language