The Apostate Page #2

"The Apostate" is a novella by Jack London that explores themes of faith, doubt, and the struggle for personal authenticity. The story revolves around the protagonist, a man grappling with his beliefs as he confronts the doctrines of religion and society. Through a journey of introspection and conflict, London delves into the complexities of the human spirit, the search for truth, and the implications of rejecting accepted norms. The narrative highlights the tension between individual conviction and collective belief, making it a poignant exploration of existential themes.

• Novel

								

ragged sky-line of housetops a pale light was beginning to creep. This
much he saw of the day as he turned his back upon it and joined his work
gang.

He took his place in one of many long rows of machines. Before him,
above a bin filled with small bobbins, were large bobbins revolving
rapidly. Upon these he wound the jute-twine of the small bobbins. The
work was simple. All that was required was celerity. The small bobbins
were emptied so rapidly, and there were so many large bobbins that did
the emptying, that there were no idle moments.

He worked mechanically. When a small bobbin ran out, he used his left
hand for a brake, stopping the large bobbin and at the same time, with
thumb and forefinger, catching the flying end of twine. Also, at the
same time, with his right hand, he caught up the loose twine-end of
a small bobbin. These various acts with both hands were performed
simultaneously and swiftly. Then there would come a flash of his hands
as he looped the weaver's knot and released the bobbin. There was
nothing difficult about weaver's knots. He once boasted he could tie
them in his sleep. And for that matter, he sometimes did, toiling
centuries long in a single night at tying an endless succession of
weaver's knots.

Some of the boys shirked, wasting time and machinery by not replacing
the small bobbins when they ran out. And there was an overseer to
prevent this. He caught Johnny's neighbour at the trick, and boxed his
ears.

"Look at Johnny there--why ain't you like him?" the overseer wrathfully
demanded.

Johnny's bobbins were running full blast, but he did not thrill at the
indirect praise. There had been a time... but that was long ago, very
long ago. His apathetic face was expressionless as he listened to
himself being held up as a shining example. He was the perfect worker.
He knew that. He had been told so, often. It was a commonplace, and
besides it didn't seem to mean anything to him any more. From the
perfect worker he had evolved into the perfect machine. When his work
went wrong, it was with him as with the machine, due to faulty material.
It would have been as possible for a perfect nail-die to cut imperfect
nails as for him to make a mistake.

And small wonder. There had never been a time when he had not been in
intimate relationship with machines. Machinery had almost been bred into
him, and at any rate he had been brought up on it. Twelve years before,
there had been a small flutter of excitement in the loom room of this
very mill. Johnny's mother had fainted. They stretched her out on the
floor in the midst of the shrieking machines. A couple of elderly women
were called from their looms. The foreman assisted. And in a few minutes
there was one more soul in the loom room than had entered by the doors.
It was Johnny, born with the pounding, crashing roar of the looms in his
ears, drawing with his first breath the warm, moist air that was thick
with flying lint. He had coughed that first day in order to rid his
lungs of the lint; and for the same reason he had coughed ever since.

The boy alongside of Johnny whimpered and sniffed. The boy's face was
convulsed with hatred for the overseer who kept a threatening eye on
him from a distance; but every bobbin was running full. The boy yelled
terrible oaths into the whirling bobbins before him; but the sound did
not carry half a dozen feet, the roaring of the room holding it in and
containing it like a wall.

Of all this Johnny took no notice. He had a way of accepting things.
Besides, things grow monotonous by repetition, and this particular
happening he had witnessed many times. It seemed to him as useless to
oppose the overseer as to defy the will of a machine. Machines were made
to go in certain ways and to perform certain tasks. It was the same with
the overseer.

But at eleven o'clock there was excitement in the room. In an apparently
occult way the excitement instantly permeated everywhere. The one-legged
boy who worked on the other side of Johnny bobbed swiftly across the
floor to a bin truck that stood empty. Into this he dived out of
sight, crutch and all. The superintendent of the mill was coming along,
accompanied by a young man. He was well dressed and wore a starched
shirt--a gentleman, in Johnny's classification of men, and also, "the
Inspector."

He looked sharply at the boys as he passed along. Sometimes he stopped
and asked questions. When he did so, he was compelled to shout at the
top of his lungs, at which moments his face was ludicrously contorted
with the strain of making himself heard. His quick eye noted the empty
machine alongside of Johnny's, but he said nothing. Johnny also caught
his eye, and he stopped abruptly. He caught Johnny by the arm to draw
him back a step from the machine; but with an exclamation of surprise he
released the arm.

"Pretty skinny," the superintendent laughed anxiously.

"Pipe stems," was the answer. "Look at those legs. The boy's got the
rickets--incipient, but he's got them. If epilepsy doesn't get him in
the end, it will be because tuberculosis gets him first."

Johnny listened, but did not understand. Furthermore he was not
interested in future ills. There was an immediate and more serious ill
that threatened him in the form of the inspector.

"Now, my boy, I want you to tell me the truth," the inspector said, or
shouted, bending close to the boy's ear to make him hear. "How old are
you?"

"Fourteen," Johnny lied, and he lied with the full force of his lungs.
So loudly did he lie that it started him off in a dry, hacking cough
that lifted the lint which had been settling in his lungs all morning.

"Looks sixteen at least," said the superintendent.

"Or sixty," snapped the inspector.

"He's always looked that way."

"How long?" asked the inspector, quickly.

"For years. Never gets a bit older."

"Or younger, I dare say. I suppose he's worked here all those years?"

"Off and on--but that was before the new law was passed," the
superintendent hastened to add.

"Machine idle?" the inspector asked, pointing at the unoccupied machine
beside Johnny's, in which the part-filled bobbins were flying like mad.

"Looks that way." The superintendent motioned the overseer to him and
shouted in his ear and pointed at the machine. "Machine's idle," he
reported back to the inspector.

They passed on, and Johnny returned to his work, relieved in that the
ill had been averted. But the one-legged boy was not so fortunate. The
sharp-eyed inspector haled him out at arms length from the bin truck.
His lips were quivering, and his face had all the expression of one upon
whom was fallen profound and irremediable disaster. The overseer looked
astounded, as though for the first time he had laid eyes on the boy,
while the superintendent's face expressed shock and displeasure.
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