The Sea-Wolf

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The story is told by Humphrey Van Weyden, a dilettantish and comically over-civilized literary critic. When his ferry boat sinks in San Francisco Bay, Van Weyden is picked up by the Ghost, a sealing schooner, and carried off into the Pacific against his will. He is appalled by the cruelty of the schooner’s captain, Wolf Larsen, but also fascinated by Larsen’s physical power and spiritual magnetism. A self-taught philosopher who echoes much of London’s own reading in Herbert Spencer and Friedrich Nietzsche, Larsen is amused by trials of wit with this gentleman, whom he renames “Hump” and sets to work as cabin boy.

Hump’s attempts to escape and the crew’s attempts to revolt are ruthlessly thwarted by the seemingly omnipotent Larsen. Nevertheless, Hump, promoted to mate, is learning to adapt to the struggle for survival that he had ignored in his protected life on shore.

Then another shipwreck victim is rescued, the beautiful poet Maud Brewster. One night Hump finds Maud struggling in Larsen’s arms. Before he can act, Larsen is struck by a sudden, mysterious headache. Hump and Maud escape in an open boat and finally manage to go ashore on an island off the Alaskan coast. There they learn to fend for themselves. Months after their escape, Larsen is washed up in the Ghost. Though blind and dying, he still almost succeeds in frustrating their efforts to repair the schooner. After his death they sail off, united by their shared return to self-reliance.

Yet this is less the story of their romance than of Larsen himself and of the self-destructive isolation, symbolized by his fatal sickness, behind his ruthless climb to success. Like THE CALL OF THE WILD, this novel takes its power from London’s mixed feelings about his own metamorphosis.

Bibliography:

Labor, Earle. Jack London. Boston: Twayne, 1974. Praises London’s convincing portrayal of Wolf Larsen and of Humphrey’s transformation from a weak, rich socialite to a dynamic he-man.

London, Jack. Novels and Stories. Notes and chronology by Donald Pizer. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1982. Uses text from the first editions. Includes notes on the texts, historical and geographical notes, maps, and notes on the stories.

Lundquist, James. Jack London: Adventures, Ideas, and Fiction. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1987. Suggests that the quality of London’s stories arises from the risks he took and from his colorful personal experience. Traces London’s intellectual leanings.

Pattee, Fred Lewis. The New American Literature, 1890-1930. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1968. Chapter 9 discusses the influence that London’s life had on his writing.

Sinclair, Andrew. Jack: A Biography of Jack London. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Discusses the biographical detail in The Sea-Wolf. Describes London’s marriages and affairs.

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