Happy Birthday to Jack London
For the record, I’m a day late….
Jack London
I have to admit that I often choose author’s birthdays based on my own biases and personal preferences. As any literary enthusiast can relate, we all have our favorite authors. But there are certain names that hearken eras of life, often childhood memories, which have had a lasting impact. This is what happens when I hear the name Jack London. Traveler, gold prospector, partaker of fine alcoholic beverages, father, London wore many hats in life. When I mention The Call of the Wild or White Fang, how do you feel? Cold frosty winds chap my face, the frozen Five Rapids dangerously close to the left side of my dog sled, huskies straining under the weight of prospecting equipment and hardtack, braving the piercing jaws of frozen death for flakes of metal prized above life? Are we dogs or are we wolves? If we are dogs, what would cause us to become wolves? Jack London’s name alone creates this vast landscape of struggle, death and greed that pulsates through my frontal lobe.
On January 12, 1876, John Griffith “Jack” London was born out-of-wedlock in San Francisco. Thus, was born one of America’s most prolific writers. London was known mostly for his tales of the wild Northland of the Yukon, Canada and Alaska. Most of his life, London either moved with his parents of roamed around looking for jobs in California. As news of the Klondike Gold rush reached the lower forty-eight in 1897, 26-year-old Jack packed his bags and headed North, hoping to cash in on the flakes of the elusive yellow metal found in the icy streams of the Yukon. It makes perfect sense why his best-selling novels and short stories are set in this extreme Northern locale.
An interest in nature seemed to be an innate characteristic of London. By the time he was 15, London worked as an agent for the California Fish Patrol in 1892, one of the youngest members of the force. The California Fish Patrol served as a sort of predecessor to the modern-day Fish and Game Warden. Two years later, London would take part in a seven month voyage across the Pacific, stopping in exotic ports of call such as Hawaii, the Bonin Islands, Japan and the frozen expanses of the Bering Sea. Here, London would pen his first short story, “Story of a Typhoon of the Coast of Japan”.
What many do not know about London were his political and philosophical beliefs, contributing factors to how he approached his daily living and his writing styles and themes. London developed his own branch of socialism based on the woes and trepidations of the exploited worker. Fueled by Nietzsche and Marx, London joined the Socialist Labor Party and enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley, believing that education was the route that bypassed exploitation.
London took two works to accompany him on his travels north, Darwin’s On the Origins of Species and Milton’s
Paradise Lost. When taking into account the socialist and Darwinist beliefs harbored within London’s mind accompanied with the extreme barren conditions of the Yukon, it seems easy to understand the influences London utilized in constructing his most popular and acclaimed works, The Call of the Wild and White Fang. I read both of them as a kid and saw them through a child’s eyes. Both stories seemed to be about dogs struggling with the choice of being feral or accepting human civilization. But, as I sat today reading The Call of the Wild on my Nook (thank you, Erin), I realized that the tale was not just about Buck the “Southland” dog becoming keen to his atavistic roots; it is a story of the survival of the fittest, a story of struggle and survival set on the stark canvas of the Canadian tundra. The final battle between Buck and Spitz is a culmination of the passing of a species to a well-adapted successor.
London’s philosophy completely alters my early understanding of what I thought were merely violent wolf stories. London’s Klondike novels represented the root of his philosophy. Knowing that London was an advocate of socialism and Darwinism, I would like to clarify that I don’t believe or have found no research that indicates that London was a Social Darwinist. Social Darwinism is the philosophy of natural selection applied to the human race. For example, Adolf Hitler could certainly be classified as a Social Darwinist because he believed that the Aryan race was superior to all other races. The Aryan race would eventually, by process of elimination, overcome all other races. In the case of the Nazi party platform, some races would be eliminated while others would be simply tolerated or dominated. London adhered to his own form of socialism that read much like that of Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto, focusing on worker exploitation and classical Marxist class struggle. Consequently, if The Call of the Wild is analyzed in a Darwinian fashion, Buck’s individual will, strength and brutality fostered his rise to power as lead sled dog. When this struggle is placed in front of a snowy white blank canvas, the sanguine hues of failing life appear more stark and nauseating.
London expanded his philosophy to every aspect of his life, sometimes in manners that many would thing strange or even taboo. For example, London was married twice, both times because he believed that they would be good breeders. London believed that, genetically, both of his wives would produce superior children. Admittedly, I thought this strange by my own standards, but isn’t that what all parents want? The best and brightest amongst their peers? While London’s ideas of breeding seem taboo to some, in essence they are closer to the truth than I think many would admit.
Jack London is best remembered for his novels of survival, triumph and death in the Klondike. But to truly understand what seem to be stories about wolves, one must delve deeper into the London’s self-realized philosophy. While London was both a socialist and a Darwinist, he was not a Social Darwinist. I truly believe that London did not expand Darwinism to the human race, but abandoned any further connotations in the frozen corpses left in the snows of the Yukon. If we imagine London’s life bundled in furs panning for gold in a partially frozen creek, let us imagine him here on his birthday, sipping a fine Scotch whisky on a sloop in the Pacific, relating tales of his travels to Japan.
