Moon Face Book

I downloaded this from Project Gutenberg, and I intend to read the whole collection, since I am a fan of London. For now I will post the review of "Moon-Face," which I read today for the Tales to Chill Your Blood Classic Horror Lovers group read. It was a bracing way of waking me up from the ennui induced by the extremely cold, bad weather and a bad case of cabin fever. As of yet, the four star rating is for "Moon-face". I will post more to this review when I read the other stories.

This was a very effective story about the worst kind of evil to me: human evil. The narrator ruins a man and eventually murders him (and two innocent dogs) out of distaste for the man's features, and his determinedly cheerful mien. Perhaps it is inaccurate to call this an unreliable narrator, but London is so convincing in showing you why this man feels he is completely right in his awful deeds against the man who he calls 'Moon-face.' This is one of those stories that is very short, but manages to seep under your skin. The menace involved in the narrator's actions towards this poor man is very heinous, and unwarranted. I think that it illustrates very salient points about the foolishness of prejudice, and the belief that harming others has a justification. We can always argue that our actions are justified, and perhaps there are many cases where doing 'evil' might be more justifiable than this one. But at the end of the day, one should always question one's actions against another. Are they truly motivated by good intentions? When does the line get drawn in the sand that says it's okay to harm another person? How much better would it have been for this guy to remove himself from contact with this man, or better yet, get over himself?

I have been an admirer of Jack London's adventure tales since high school when I read White Fang, and I had no idea that he was so talented with writing a chilling horror tale. I would like to read more of his work in this genre.