The White Fang - Review
If ever there is a story of wild living spirit set in a cold wilderness, then this is it.
“ A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness - a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild - the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.”
With this, Jack London immediately plunges the reader into essence of the cold wilderness of the north. But the effect is not one of being dazed or numbed by it’s cold or remoteness, but rather the opposite, one’s senses are excited to a sense of a thrill. He then proceeds straight into the deadly pursuit of humans, by the famished wolves.
“ He awoke once and saw in front of him, not a dozen feet away, a big grey wolf, one of the largest of the pack. And even as he looked, the brute deliberately stretched himself after the manner of a lazy dog, yawning full in his face and looking upon him with a possessive eye, as if, in truth, he were merely a delayed meal that was soon to be eaten.”
A cold sweat broke over me. I saw the grey-wolf right in front of me.
“He came out of a doze that was half nightmare to see the red-haired she-wolf before him. She was not more than half a dozen feet away, sitting in the snow and wistfully regarding him. The two dogs were whimperimg and snarling at his feet, but she took no notice of them. She was looking at the man, and for sometime he returned her look. There was nothing threatening about her. She looked at him merely with a great wisfullness, but he knew it to be the wistfullness of equally great hunger. He was food, and the sight of him exited in her the gustatory senstations. Her mouth opened, the saliva drooled forth, and she licked her chops with the pleasure of anticipation.
A spasm of fear went through him. He reached hastily for a brand to throw at her. But even as he reached, before his fingers had closed on the missile, she sprang back into safety; and he knew that she was used to having things thrown at her. She had snarled as she sprang away, baring her white fangs to their roots, all her wistfullness vanishing, being replaced by a carnivorous malignity that made him shudder.”
I shuddered too.
This man Jack London writes from his guts. I felt his words affect my imagination completely. It felt as if he could be saying only what he had encountered in real flesh and blood, and not just from his imagination. The words with which he portrays the images are so close and the feelings so true that I felt myself in those cold lands with those wolves behind me.
White Fang is the story of a wild artic wolf.
Born in wilderness, and of wilderness, White Fang learns its ways within the artic wilderness - savage and unsympathetic and against human extremes of violence and compassion. But in a larger perspective, through the flesh and body of the artic wolf , Jack London actually provides an insight into the potential of life-energy, as it manifests itself in flesh and body, and its nature, as is moulded by the harsh environment. The living spirit of the wild comes full-alive through the empathy that Jack London has with the wild and the insight that he has into nature.
The influence that environment has on moulding the nature of an animal, in consonance with its flesh and blood, is very convincingly elucidated in ways by which, White-Fang as a cub, encounters his environment for the first time, and learns his place in it. He realises his instincts, he experiences fear. He is driven by curiosity and hunger to overcome the fear of unknown as life surges through him towards his growth and survival in the wilderness.
White-Fang realises his essence in his first encounter with a grown ptarmigan.
“He held on to the wing and growled between his tight-clenched teeth. The ptarmigan dragged him out of the bush. When she turned and tried to drag him back into the bush’s shelter, he pulled her away from it and on into the open. And all the time she was making outcry and striking with her free wing, while feathers were flying like snow-fall. The pitch to which he was aroused was tremendous. All the fighting blood of his breed was up in him and surging through him. This was living, though he did not know it. He was realizing his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made- killing meat and battling to kill it. He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.”
White-Fang, as a wild animal, epitomises the five-sense perfection of animal nature. He observes and he classifies, without any questioning or moralising.
And thus he learns the law.
“The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was; EAT, OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralise about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.”
With such definitive and evocative passages Jack London goes through the ways of a wild life, while he very convincingly propounds on the determining influence that the environment has on all life forms. This is as close as any story can get to this theory. But towards the end, the wild and savage spirit of White-Fang finally yields to human-compassion and realises his dog nature, thus completely transforming into an ideal companion to man. This, though, would be stretching the wild spirit beyond the limits of its flesh and body. This, though, is streching the theory for want of a perfect ending to a story.
But this is a story is’nt it ?!
And what a story !
Though I have been under a warm yellow lamp all the time, my face had weathered from the frost of the cold, and I felt a sense of wisdom from having experienced the ways of the wild, in the raw.
Jack London IS King.
“ A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness - a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild - the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.”
With this, Jack London immediately plunges the reader into essence of the cold wilderness of the north. But the effect is not one of being dazed or numbed by it’s cold or remoteness, but rather the opposite, one’s senses are excited to a sense of a thrill. He then proceeds straight into the deadly pursuit of humans, by the famished wolves.
“ He awoke once and saw in front of him, not a dozen feet away, a big grey wolf, one of the largest of the pack. And even as he looked, the brute deliberately stretched himself after the manner of a lazy dog, yawning full in his face and looking upon him with a possessive eye, as if, in truth, he were merely a delayed meal that was soon to be eaten.”
A cold sweat broke over me. I saw the grey-wolf right in front of me.
“He came out of a doze that was half nightmare to see the red-haired she-wolf before him. She was not more than half a dozen feet away, sitting in the snow and wistfully regarding him. The two dogs were whimperimg and snarling at his feet, but she took no notice of them. She was looking at the man, and for sometime he returned her look. There was nothing threatening about her. She looked at him merely with a great wisfullness, but he knew it to be the wistfullness of equally great hunger. He was food, and the sight of him exited in her the gustatory senstations. Her mouth opened, the saliva drooled forth, and she licked her chops with the pleasure of anticipation.
A spasm of fear went through him. He reached hastily for a brand to throw at her. But even as he reached, before his fingers had closed on the missile, she sprang back into safety; and he knew that she was used to having things thrown at her. She had snarled as she sprang away, baring her white fangs to their roots, all her wistfullness vanishing, being replaced by a carnivorous malignity that made him shudder.”
I shuddered too.
This man Jack London writes from his guts. I felt his words affect my imagination completely. It felt as if he could be saying only what he had encountered in real flesh and blood, and not just from his imagination. The words with which he portrays the images are so close and the feelings so true that I felt myself in those cold lands with those wolves behind me.
White Fang is the story of a wild artic wolf.
Born in wilderness, and of wilderness, White Fang learns its ways within the artic wilderness - savage and unsympathetic and against human extremes of violence and compassion. But in a larger perspective, through the flesh and body of the artic wolf , Jack London actually provides an insight into the potential of life-energy, as it manifests itself in flesh and body, and its nature, as is moulded by the harsh environment. The living spirit of the wild comes full-alive through the empathy that Jack London has with the wild and the insight that he has into nature.
The influence that environment has on moulding the nature of an animal, in consonance with its flesh and blood, is very convincingly elucidated in ways by which, White-Fang as a cub, encounters his environment for the first time, and learns his place in it. He realises his instincts, he experiences fear. He is driven by curiosity and hunger to overcome the fear of unknown as life surges through him towards his growth and survival in the wilderness.
White-Fang realises his essence in his first encounter with a grown ptarmigan.
“He held on to the wing and growled between his tight-clenched teeth. The ptarmigan dragged him out of the bush. When she turned and tried to drag him back into the bush’s shelter, he pulled her away from it and on into the open. And all the time she was making outcry and striking with her free wing, while feathers were flying like snow-fall. The pitch to which he was aroused was tremendous. All the fighting blood of his breed was up in him and surging through him. This was living, though he did not know it. He was realizing his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made- killing meat and battling to kill it. He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.”
White-Fang, as a wild animal, epitomises the five-sense perfection of animal nature. He observes and he classifies, without any questioning or moralising.
And thus he learns the law.
“The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was; EAT, OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralise about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all.”
With such definitive and evocative passages Jack London goes through the ways of a wild life, while he very convincingly propounds on the determining influence that the environment has on all life forms. This is as close as any story can get to this theory. But towards the end, the wild and savage spirit of White-Fang finally yields to human-compassion and realises his dog nature, thus completely transforming into an ideal companion to man. This, though, would be stretching the wild spirit beyond the limits of its flesh and body. This, though, is streching the theory for want of a perfect ending to a story.
But this is a story is’nt it ?!
And what a story !
Though I have been under a warm yellow lamp all the time, my face had weathered from the frost of the cold, and I felt a sense of wisdom from having experienced the ways of the wild, in the raw.
Jack London IS King.
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