- The Literary Work of nature faker, socialist, and literary naturalist, Jack London
By Lechi Eke
Jack London, whose style of literary realism and naturalism includes a depiction of the survival of the fittest, was born on January 12, 1876, and died November 22, 1916. Born in San Francisco in California by unmarried parents, his real name was John Griffith Chaney. His mother’s name was Flora Wellman, and his father’s name was Henry Chaney. After her son was born, Flora married a widower named John London who had two daughters from his previous marriage; he turned out to be a great father to Jack.
Like Charles Dickens, London suffered child labour as he started working from the age of ten, working and going to school. Like Charles Dickens too, he was one of the first pioneers of commercial magazine fiction, this time, in North America. He was also one of the first writers to become a worldwide celebrity in writing, made fortunes in writing, and one of the first in the genre later known as science fiction.
Jack London didn’t start off in life as a writer. He worked odd jobs from age ten while still going to school, including paper delivery, being an ice-wagon hand, etc. He eventually left school at 13, going into working odd jobs fulltime. It was around this time that London bought a little flat-bottomed boat with which he sailed out regularly to the Oakland California bay bringing library books on his return. At 15, his stepfather got seriously injured in an accident forcing London to get a full-time job in a cannery where they paid him ten cents an hour and he worked 18 to 20 hours a day bent on his back all through in order to support his family.
The job was strenuous and dangerous causing London to escape to another job. From here, his life became a kind of a roller coaster. He became an oyster bed pirate in the San Francisco Bay oyster beds, and from there he joined the California Fish Patrol. At 18, he joined the Sophia Sutherland engaged in seal-hunting expeditions, as an able-bodied seaman. On his return from that voyage, London found work in a jute mill where they make ropes with fiber from tropical plants; from there to a power plant job. He completed his secondary school education (high school), and went to University of California for a semester.
After quitting university, London travelled to Alaskan Klondike with some gold prospectors. It was when he returned from this trip that he declared that he had stories to write, and he began his writing career. He said of his Klondike Alaska experiences, “It was in the Klondike I found myself.”
London’s first book was titled The Son of the Wolf: Tales of the Far North (1900). He also had a collection of short stories he had previously published in magazines, and this attracted a wide readership. On the whole, London in his brief 40 years lifetime, wrote 50 books (20 of them novels), in 17 years!
Nature faker is (writer) one who attributes to animals traits and habits which they are not known to possess, and this Jack London employed in some of his stories about dogs in Call of the Wild and White Fang.
He was a passionate activist writing many pamphlets on unionization, the rights of workers and socialism. His dystopian (anti-utopian) novel, The Iron Heel and his non-fictions, The People of the Abyss, and The War of the Classes, are exposé on these passion of his. He also belonged to a literary radical group in San Francisco called, The Crowd.
Known for his vicious and vigorous short stories about the wild, entangled in the struggle for survival which leads eventually to the survival of the fittest, London won a national acclaim with these works. He believes in the theories of evolution propounded by Charles Darwin (1809-1892). Some of his best-known books explore the animalistic survival of the fittest, which is so primitive in nature.
London’s major works are patterned after Darwin’s Evolution theories which propound that organisms evolve or change over a long period of time to become something else. So London began to explore this idea in his works such as The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea-Wolf (1904), White Fang (1906), The Strength of the Strong (1911), The Abysmal Brute (1913).
In The Call of the Wild, London explores the evolution (in behaviour) of an Alaskan dog, a domestic dog that was sold from San Franciscan civilization, to the wild lifestyle of a wolf pack living in the harsh weathers of Alaska. And in The Sea-Wolf, he tells the story of the transformation of a civilized man who through the processes of change becomes a simple man. His works tilt towards determinism in his portrayal of Darwin’s theory of nature, of the environment being a major influence or factor of how beings turn out – animal or man.
On the other hand, London contradicted himself in his stance for socialism as well as “the survival of the fittest”, which Darwin propounded. If the world has shaped man in a way he is powerless to resist (determinism), does it make sense to struggle against it? And how come mortal man by the theory of the survival of the fittest, which is a theory that carries hope in itself – meaning that man’s efforts can help him survive –, is also doomed by circumstances he cannot control or change?
When Jack London visited Alaska, he spent almost a year in a place they called the Yukon. His observations in Alaska of the goings on there, gave London the materials to write his bestselling animal books. In Alaska London had observed that to reach Klondike, miners had to plot a route through a place called White Pass (also known as Dead Horse Pass because of the carcasses of horses that littered the route, because horses could not bear the harsh and steep ascent of the route), so strong dogs with thick furs were chosen to replace the horses as pack animals to transport material across the pass. So London conceived the idea of a domestic dog with thick fur living in luxury in San Francisco that is stolen and sold off to Alaska to join the pack animals that help transport materials across the harsh and dangerous Alaskan White Pass.
Plot overview of The Call of the Wild
The tale opens in 1897 when tragedy strikes on a powerful 140-pound St. Bernard-Scotch Collie mix named Buck that lives in the lap of luxury in Santa Clara Valley, California with his owners, Judge Miller and his family. One night, one of Judge Miller’s domestic staff, assistant gardener named Manuel, being in need of money to pay off gambling debt, steals Buck and sells the pampered dog to a stranger.
Buck finds himself being shipped to Seattle in a terrible condition, confined in a crate. Hungry and ill-treated Buck attacks his handler, when he’s released. The man teaches Buck the “law of club and fang”, clubbing some sense into the pampered domestic dog, enough to cower him, although he later shows some kindness to the pampered dog after he displays some obedience.
Buck is sold again, this time to two French-Canadian dispatchers to the Canadian government. They take Buck to Alaska and train him to become a sled dog for the Klondike region of Canada.
Francois and Perrault, Buck’s new owners, acquire in addition to Buck, ten more dogs for their dog-sledding team. These new dogs are: Spitz (a white husky that is the lead dog), Dave, Dolly, Pike, Dub, Billie, Joe, Sol-leks, Teek, and Koona. From this time on, Buck enters jungle life. His team dogs teach him some tricks about pack life and how to survive cold winter nights.
However, the lead dog, Spitz, doesn’t like Buck, and a bitter rivalry develops between them. The lead dog is vicious and very quarrelsome. Buck kills him in a fierce fight and becomes the new lead dog.
The Buck-led pack go on a round trip to the Yukon Trail returning to Skagway in a record time with their dispatches; their French Canadian owners are given new orders by their government. So they sell Buck and his team to a “Scotch-half breed” man. The dogs’ new owner works in a mail service. This means that the dogs have to take long tiring trips carrying heavy loads to mining areas.
The new job is hard labour for the overworked animals that are weary from cold, hunger and lack of rest. While on the mining trail, Buck often has visions of a canine ancestor who has a short legged “hairy man” companion. Soon, Dave, the wheel dog, a morose husky, becomes terminally ill and is shot.
Weary and foot-sore, the dogs become useless to the mail man who sells them to three “stampeders” from American Southland (a place in the present day contiguous United States). The new owners are even worse than all the former owners. Mercedes, a vain woman who’s interested in fashion only, her proud brother, Hal, and her husband Charles who is sheepish and awkward. These three ignorant people with no skill how to navigate the Northern wilderness, lack understanding of how to control the sled and reject helpful advice from those who know, especially about the dangerous spring melt. Mercedes and her brother overload the sled, dumps crucial supplies when warned, Mercedes leaving her fashion objects. The foolhardy trio creates a team of fourteen dogs believing they will travel faster.
It is the hardest job Buck has ever been in as his team is overfed, overworked and starved when food is low. Many of the dogs in his team die before reaching the White River in spring time, with the snow melting. Five of them (Buck and four others) are in poor condition when they pull into the river.
The party meets John Thornton who is an experienced outdoorsman, who noticing the poor condition of the dogs advises the party not to cross the ice-glazed river. Of course they refuse and press on. Buck tired, and sensing danger refuses to move, and Hal beats him. Thornton disgusted with their stupidity, hits Hal and cuts Buck free. Undaunted, the party presses on across the White River, and their weight breaks the ice causing dogs, humans, sled and goods to go down into the river, and the living beings drown.
So Buck gets a new owner, John Thornton, who nurses him back to good health, and the beleaguered dog grows to love him. Buck shows loyalty to Thornton when the kind man falls into a river and Buck saves him from drowning. Thornton travels on gold-panning trips taking Buck with him. During one of their trips a Mr Mathewson, a ‘bonanza king’ meaning one who’s struck it rich in gold-mining fields, takes a bet with Thornton on Buck’s strength and devotion. Buck wins Thornton $1, 600 in gold dust dragging a sled with a half-ton (450kg) load of flour, pulling it free from frozen ground to about 91metres distance!
At this feat, some important personality offers to buy Buck from Thornton, but he refuses. Thornton pays off old debts with his winning, but continues on his gold-search with his friends: Pete and Hans. Adding six dogs to Buck, they build a sledding team to search for gold, searching for a fabled Lost Cabin. Eventually, the party finds considerable gold and spends time panning it, leaving Buck and the other sled dogs nothing to do.
Buck spends idle time dreaming about his canine ancestor with the primitive ‘hairy man’. As Buck idles about, he hears the wild calling, and decides to explore the white Northern wilderness; he meets and socializes with a northwestern wolf from a wolf pack of the locality. Unsure of what to do: whether to join the wild wolves or stay with his kind master, Buck shuttles between Thornton and the wilderness, until one day, he returns and finds the party all killed.
Native American Yeehats have killed Thornton and friends. Buck goes on rampage killing many Yeehats to revenge Thornton’s death.
Eventually, Buck realizes that Thornton’s death has set him free, he goes into the wild to reunite with his ‘kins-dog’, the wolf he once socializes with, but he encounters a hostile wolf-pack. He fights them and wins. When he finds out that his wolf friend is a member of the pack, he follows them into their den and answers the call of the wild.
Native Americans tell the story of Buck as his legend spreads as the “Ghost Dog” of the Northland (Alaska and northwest Canada), who returns every year at a particular time to wreak havoc on the Yeehats. Buck returns to the campsite where his kind master, Thornton and friends are killed, to mourn them with his new family, a pack of wolves, singing a song “of the younger world” which is a song of the pack.
Editor’s Note: The Call of the Wild was banned in Yugoslavia and Italy for being too radical; it was burned by the Nazis because of London’s socialism activism.
