A summary of Jack London’s "The Starry Wanderer"

Jack London wrote the science fiction novel "The Star Wanderer" in 1915. The plot is based on the true story of former convict Ed Morrell, who endured years of solitary confinement and torture in a California prison. The work is not part of a series. In 1920, the book was adapted into a silent film, and its plot elements later inspired the film "The Jacket."

Crime and prison torture

Darrell Standing is awaiting execution at Folsom State Prison. Eight years ago, as an agronomy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, he murdered a colleague. In a fit of rage — the "crimson rage" that haunted him throughout his past lives — Standing killed Professor Gaskell in the university lab.

The court sentenced the thirty-six-year-old scientist to life imprisonment in San Quentin Prison. Arriving at the prison factory, Darrell objected to the inefficient organization of jute production. His desire to eliminate unnecessary movements led to conflicts with the prison guards. Warden Atherton declared Standing "incorrigible" and sent him to solitary confinement.

Darrell’s situation is worsened by the betrayal of fellow convict-poet Cecil Winwood. To cover up a staged escape attempt, Winwood reports to authorities that Standing hid thirty-five pounds of dynamite in the prison. The explosives never existed, but the prison administration believes the report.

Forty lifers are subjected to brutal interrogations. Prison guards break wooden chairs under Standing, douse the convicts with ice water from fire hoses, and keep them in the cold. Darrell knows nothing about dynamite, but he is placed in solitary confinement cell number one, turning his life into five years of isolation in the dark.

Standing was retried in solitary confinement for assaulting Warden Serston. Exhausted by five years of darkness, the scientist, upon leaving his cell, developed a fear of open spaces, staggered, and in the resulting scuffle, cut the warden’s nose. Under a law passed after the initial verdict, the man sentenced to life imprisonment for striking a prison officer was liable to death.

The Method of the Little Death and Travel Through the Ages

In isolation, Darrell learns to while away the time. He does mental math, plays with flies on the wall, and masters a secret code for tapping with his neighbors, Ed Morrell and Jack Oppenheimer. Warden Atherton tries to extract a confession about the dynamite by tying Standing into a canvas straitjacket.

Morrel shares with Standing the technique of the "little death." Through sheer force of will, Darrel lulls his own body to sleep, starting with his toes. As his flesh sinks into a deep numbness, his spirit is freed from pain. Standing’s consciousness leaves the walls of San Quentin, wanders among the stars, and returns to previous incarnations.

The warden increases the torture from twenty-four to two hundred and forty hours straight. Darrell makes a bet with the warden: if he smiles after ten days in a straitjacket, Morrell and Oppenheimer will get tobacco. Standing endures the ten days, maintains his smile, and wins the bet.

A duel in France and the destruction of a caravan in the Mountain Meadows

In one of his past incarnations, Standing sees himself as Count Guillaume de Saint-Maur in medieval France. Having met the woman he loves, Duchess Philippa, in Paris, he encounters the machinations of the papal envoy Martinelli.

Pater sends the experienced Italian swordsman Fortini. In a nighttime duel behind a fishpond, Guillaume kills Fortini, then defeats Pasquini and de Goncourt. However, the young and inexperienced Guy de Villehardouin fatally wounds Guillaume with a clumsy lunge, and he returns to his prisoner’s physical body.

In another memory, Standing becomes nine-year-old Jess Fancher. In 1857, a wagon train of forty led by his father is heading from Arkansas to California. The settlers move through parched lands, and Mormon settlements refuse to sell them food and water.

The caravan stops at Mountain Meadows. At dawn, they are attacked by Mormons disguised as Indians. The besieged build fortifications from their wagons and dig a pit for the women and children. Jess and her friend Jed, dressed as girls, carry water from a spring under fire.

Mormon leader John Lee offers the settlers protection on the condition that they surrender their weapons. Trusting his promise, the people lay down their rifles. As they leave the camp, militiamen and Indians treacherously destroy the entire caravan. Jess dies trying to escape.

The Ascetic Life and Journeys of Adam Strang in Cho-Sen

Standing recalls the life of an ancient Egyptian ascetic on the banks of the Nile, mortifying his flesh on hot stones and debating theological heresies. He then travels back to the sixteenth century, becoming the English sailor Adam Strang.

After living on a coral island with the Polynesian king Raa Kook, Adam sets sail on the Dutch ship "Sparwehr." The vessel is wrecked off the coast of Cho-Sen, Korea. The local ruler, Kwang-Yung-Jin, chains the survivors in wooden stocks. Standing is given the name Yi-Yong-Ik for his devastating strength in fistfighting.

Adam reaches the capital of Keijō, wins the emperor’s favor, and falls in love with Princess Om of the House of Ming. He becomes a military leader, defeats Manchu bandits on the Yalu River, and gains control of the seven northern provinces.

Success is thwarted by the greed of Captain Maartens, who attempts to plunder the royal tombs. A rival, Chong Mong-ju, launches a coup. The conspirators kill Adam’s supporters, and Strang himself and Princess Om are stripped of their rights and condemned to forty years of poverty. Only in his old age does Adam seize the opportunity to strangle Chong Mong-ju right in his litter.

Roman commander Ragnar Lodbrog

During the heyday of the Roman Empire, Standing is reborn by the Norseman Ragnar Lodbrog. Having risen from galley slave to free citizen, he becomes a legion commander and heads to Jerusalem.

In Jerusalem, Ragnar meets a noble Jewish woman, Miriam. A deep connection blossoms between them. Ragnar witnesses Jesus’s trial before Pontius Pilate and witnesses the healing of lepers in Samaria.

When the preacher is sentenced to crucifixion, Miriam begs Ragnar to enlist the legionnaires and save Jesus, promising to travel with him to the ends of the earth. Ragnar refuses to betray his military duty to Rome. Having lost the woman he loves, he leaves Jerusalem.

Daniel Foss Island and the Eternal Nature of Love

In the early nineteenth century, Standing became an American sailor, Daniel Foss. In 1809, his ship, the Negociator, struck an iceberg. Daniel donned several layers of warm clothing beforehand, enabling him to survive in an open longboat amidst the freezing moons.

Foss finds himself stranded on a barren rocky island in the Southern Ocean. For eight years, he lives in a stone hut, subsisting on raw seal meat, collecting rainwater in hand-hewn stone vessels, and building a fifty-foot pyramid. He carves the story of his suffering with an oar until he is rescued by a passing ship.

Analyzing his past lives — from the primitive hunter Wushu to the medieval nobleman — Darrell Standing comes to the conclusion that the main force of human existence in all centuries has been love for a woman.

The death chamber and the immortality of the spirit

By rejecting the warden’s ultimatum and enduring a double straitjacket, Standing inflicts a final moral defeat on the administration. Atherton admits his inability to break the prisoner.

For eleven months, Darrell uses four sewing needles to saw through the iron bars of his cell. Upon his release, the half-blind and exhausted scientist collapses in the prison yard, where he is caught by Warden Thurston. The brawl leads to a trial and a death sentence.

On Death Row at Folsom State Prison, Darrell Standing remains unperturbed. He refuses alcohol and sedatives. The prospect of tomorrow’s gallows holds no terrors for him, having proven from personal experience that the flesh is temporary and destructible, while the human spirit is immortal and infinite.