“It’s the incomprehensible and masterful wisdom of eternity laughing at life’s futility and the effort it takes to live. It was the Wild. The savage, frozenhearted, Northland Wild. This is Jack London’s key theme in White Fang. London portrays his vision of nature as dark, powerful, and ominous throughout this book. London uses unique personifications and symbolisms, wild settings, and a particular vocabulary to communicate this belief. London also expresses his belief in the infinite value of human life compared to nature’s all-encompassing power.
White Fang’s opening paragraph has a lot of imagery. This speaks volumes about its importance for conveying the theme. The opening paragraph is dominated by images of desolation and silence. The land was surrounded by silence. The land was itself a desolation. It was lifeless. There was no movement. The spirit of the land was not even one of sadness. Modernist poet Katherine Mansfield, for example, presents a completely different view of nature in A Very Early Spring. She writes: “So many blue skies-and there are no white clouds. The sun now walks through the forest. He touches the stems and bows with his golden hands… A wind dances across the fields. Her waking laughter sounds so clear and shrill.” Mansfield portrays nature alive and full of life. London’s depiction of nature uses imagery of stillness to create the impression of it being bleak and unrelenting. “On every side of they was silence. It was pressing upon them in a tangible way.” London’s representation of silence evokes an eerie, threatening sense of stillness.
It is important to understand the story by looking beyond the imagery and symbolism in the “narrow oval box”. The box is first used as a seat and table for Bill and Henry. This box contains Lord Alfred’s body, which is what the reader later discovers. This coffin symbolises the inexorable struggle between nature & man, and the eventual result. “On the coffin, there is a third-man whose work was done–a man that the Wild had defeated until he could not move nor struggle anymore.” The narrow, rectangular box serves two purposes. One, it exposes Lord Alfred and two, it acts as a device for premonition. Bill also suffers the exact same fate later on in the novel.
London gives the novel symbols of death and control over nature by using Lord Alfred’s death and the narrow, oblong boxes. He says, “It doesn’t make sense for the Wild to love movement.” London emphasizes the importance of stillness in nature, as well the positive effect it has over any challenge to the status.
Although symbolism and imagery are important in White Fang’s themes, London’s setting is just as important. The setting is a tool that allows the reader full access to the themes and imagery of the story.
London uses setting as a way to portray Henry and Bill’s miserable situation. London picked Alaskan wild to be his location. White Fang was published three years before the successful North Pole discovery. London’s readers would view the Arctic as mysteriously and untamed. This allowed his imagery more impact and reinforced his central theme. London could not have achieved the same effect had he chosen another setting than Northland Wild, which is “savage, frozenhearted, and wild”.
London is careful about choosing the right words to convey the themes in the novel. London’s favorite word is “toil”. This word appears five times in White Fang’s first chapter. Toil can be used by London to convey tone and meaning. Toil could be used to describe the physical pain that Henry and Bill have endured from their misery in the Alaskan wilderness. Bill and Henry are exhausted, hungry, and frozen to the point of breaking. More likely, toil is a reference to the constant struggle between man-nature that illustrates the story. London believed that life was futile and that man exists only for toil. This toil would end only after death. This is evident in London’s line “Only upon death would this toil end.”
White Fang, meanwhile, reveals Jack London’s views on nature and purpose. London repeatedly uses themes of futility, stillness and the power of nature to overman throughout his novel. London uses literary techniques to communicate his message. The author’s perspective is so obvious that it’s almost impossible to ignore, no matter what your opinion.