Jack London’s talent for creating adventure stories made him one of the most popular writers of his time. His familiarity with adventure came from his own experience. He began making his own living at the age of fourteen. By the time he was able to live as a writer (with the publication of his collection of stories, The Son of the Wolf, 1900), London had worked a variety of menial jobs. He had been a seaman, a waterfront fighter, a coal shoveler, an oyster pirate, a wage slave in a laundry, and a gold prospector in the Klondike, to name a few. He also spent thirty days in prison for vagrancy. London lived the seafaring life, and The Sea-Wolf portrays a vivid picture of the life on a sealing ship—from the technical details of steering a vessel in a blinding storm to violent encounters between seamen.

The Sea-Wolf is more than a simple adventure tale. It reflects philosophical ideas prevalent in London’s time. In order to educate himself and improve his prospects, London read voraciously in all subjects. From Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), London learned that in nature, living is a constant struggle, and organisms that have the ability to adapt to their environment survive. The works of nineteenth century philosopher Herbert Spencer taught him that human life is a matter of the survival of the fittest. The individual most likely to survive and dominate others would be much like the “superman,” the man of superior intellectual and physical abilities who follows an amoral code as described by nineteenth century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, another favorite of London. The Sea-Wolf portrays a struggle between civilization and raw nature. In the untamed, natural arena of the sea these two competing philosophies, embodied in Humphrey Van Weydon and Wolf Larsen, come into conflict.

The violently competitive environment on the Ghost, in which men struggle to establish their place in a pecking order based on physical strength, intimidation, courage, and aggression, seems to validate the worldview described by Spencer and Nietzsche. Larsen is close to the Nietzschean superman. Larsen is extraordinarily strong, with a body that strikes Humphrey with awe: “God made you well,” he tells Larsen. Larsen may not be as learned as the formally educated Humphrey, but he impresses Humphrey by his breadth of knowledge, his thirst for reading in all subjects, and his keen understanding of human nature. He is an ardent individualist who follows the amoral code that suits him and the life he has led. To him human life has no individual value; for every one who dies many more are born. It is the nature of life to replenish itself. It is also the nature of life to kill so it can survive, to subdue the weak so it can remain strong. Larsen’s uncompromisingly naturalistic code is realized in his cruel treatment of his men—dragging Mugridge the cook overboard, brutally beating two seal hunters, and allowing Johnson and Leach to drown.

London, however, cannot adhere completely to the philosophy of might makes right. In his wolf stories (The Call of the Wild, 1903, and White Fang, 1906), the law of nature, of survival of the fittest, dominates. In the social world in which humans interact, however, London was convinced that brutality could not be the only norm. During his time on the Ghost , Humphrey fights to live by his civilized moral beliefs—the dignity of the individual, the need for compassion, and the value of human life. In frequent philosophical arguments with Larsen,...