718 London, Jack
creatures. Along with becoming sleeker and stron-
ger—with feet that had grown “hard to the trail”—
Buck’s digestion improves immensely: “He could
eat anything, . . . and [after a meal], . . . the juices of
his stomach extracted the last least particle of nutri-
ment; and his blood carried it to the farthest reaches
of his body, building it into the toughest and stoutest
of tissues.” Other physical processes improve: “sight
and scent became remarkably keen, while his hear-
ing developed . . . acuteness,” such that he could hear
“the faintest sound and knew whether it heralded
peace or peril”; and he developed “an ability to scent
the wind and forecast it a night in advance”—“no
matter how breathless the air.”
Indeed, living things waste nothing in the wild.
Buck realizes this one evening when he notices
that other dogs bury themselves in snow at night
to keep warm. They carefully plan and carry out
work and action, an economical approach inbred
by nature that demands the development of a cun-
ning “patience that was nothing less than primitive,”
the kind that enables an animal to wait out a prey’s
actions in order to find a moment of weakness. An
ancient way of being, patience does not waste effort,
because wasted energy is deadly. Patience also pairs
with a “blood lust, the joy to kill,” a prime ingredient
of primordial nature, which drives Buck to kill a bear
and then later a moose.
As described by London, nature is a nonhuman
place, and Buck enters it fully only after Indians
kill his beloved master, John Thornton. It is a stern,
eternal urge or way of being, whose “call” is inevi-
table and “irresistible”—the ultimate master, patient,
stealthy, and “cat-footed”—its apotheosis the form
of “a long, lean, timber wolf ” whose howls ultimately
secure Buck’s return.
Lori Vermaas
LonDon, jaCk White Fang (1906)
White Fang is the companion to The Call oF the
Wild, in that its plot reverses the protagonist’s
journey—this time humans capture a wolf and
transform him into a domesticated animal. Such a
setup enables Jack London to again examine behav-
ioral adaptation via principles of Darwinian evolu-
tion. He shows how chance, nature, and external
influences function as forces that shape all animals’
evolution in the struggle for existence.
Born in the Alaskan wilderness to a wild she-
dog and a pure-bred wolf, White Fang soon loses his
freedom when Indians capture his mother and him.
Having just begun to recognize his natural instincts
as a wolf, he starts a new training—that of obedi-
ence to humans, not nature. Using three different
owners, Gray Beaver, Beauty Smith, and Weedon
Scott, London details White Fang’s evolution from
wolf to domesticated wolf, making White Fang an
explication of behavioral development.
The novel explores themes of oppression,
identity, and nature and their effect on behav-
ior. Although nature is a force that controls one’s
destiny and sense of life purpose and identity, other
oppressors, particularly humans, exert equal influ-
ence. With each new owner, White Fang learns to
distrust many of his instincts, ultimately becoming
an example of how nurture trumps nature. With
such an approach, the novel also tracks White
Fang’s search for himself and how he fits in the
world. Civilization wins out, not triumphantly,
but reassuringly, for White Fang ultimately settles
rather comfortably well into his new identity as a
California estate watchdog.
Lori Vermaasidentity in White Fang
With White Fang as a case study, London posits
that identity is contingent on outside influences. He
argues that with heredity as one’s “clay,” “environ-
ment serve[s] to model the clay, to give it a particular
form.” Thus external forces, particularly situations
and relationships, alter identity. White Fang’s sense
of himself shifts constantly as he encounters all
manner of stimuli, particularly obedience training by
humans. The first event that initiates White Fang’s
identity struggle as either a wolf or domesticated
dog is his and his mother’s capture by Indians. By
impressing him with their “mastery and power,” the
Indians eventually mold White Fang “into a dog
that was rather wolfish, but that [also] was a dog
and not a wolf.”
The collision of wolf and dog in him soon trans-
forms him from an inquisitive and loyal wolf cub
into a conflicted and vengeful wolf-dog. “The clay