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Out of body

Background

The Star Rover is a novel by American writer Jack London published in 1915. It is fiction but based on a series of interviews that Jack London had with a prisoner in San Quentin – so fact.

The story is told in the first person by Darrell Standing, a university professor serving life imprisonment in San Quentin State Prison for murder. Prison officials try to break his spirit by means of a torture device called "the jacket," a canvas jacket which can be tightly laced so as to compress the whole body. Standing is sensorily deprived as well as befuddled by the pain he experiences and as a result of the torture experiences an out of body state, in which he walks among the stars and experiences portions of past lives.

Each chapter describes a different experience and although the book is supposedly fiction, the wording and power of the language make one feel that behind the fiction is quite a substantial quantity of fact – as was common with London’s writing.

The jacket itself was actually used at San Quentin at the time and Jack London's descriptions of it were based on interviews with a former convict named Ed Morrell. Innocent Ed Morrel spent five years in solitary. Thanks to Jack London, Morrel's case got re-opened and he was subsequently released.

The source of the experience

Concepts

Symbols

Science Items

Activities

Overloads

Suppressions

Commonsteps

References