Jack London

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by J. Allen Barksdale

Despite the enormous popularity of such tales, London's sagas of the Yukon are only one component of a multifaceted career. Shortly after establishing himself as a major American novelist, he embarked on a journalistic mission for the American Press Association. Although originally retained to report on the Boer War in South Africa, the assignment was canceled, and London opted to examine the urban slums of England. During the fall of 1902, he donned a suitable disguise and lived in the squalor of London's East End. The eventual product was his non-fiction study The People of the Abyss (1903), a pioneering work in undercover journalism. Such writing provided an outlet for his narrative skills and a vehicle to espouse his political views, and the author later ranked this work as his greatest accomplishment. Journalistic pursuits continued in 1904 when he traveled to Japan to report on the Russo-Japanese War for the Hearst papers. Although he lived in proximity to the fighting for nearly six months, the Japanese government closely monitored his activities and dispatches. Frustrated by this interference, London returned to California.

In the period between these adventures, London completed one of his most successful novels, The Sea Wolf, in many ways the quintessential Jack London story: a sheltered, inexperienced individual is thrown into a hostile alien world and, through his struggle for survival, emerges a hero. However, at the same time, this contact with the unfamiliar forces the protagonist to confront the possibility of an inherent evil within the human soul. In this case, the hero is Humphrey Van Weyden, a sheltered San Francisco literary critic who, following an accident at sea, is rescued by a sealing vessel bound for Japan. The ship is commanded by the tyrannical Wolf Larsen, who takes delight in forcing Van Weyden to adapt to the rough life of a seaman. Although Van Weyden is repelled by the savage barbarity of the captain, he is also intrigued by Larsen's primitive but pronounced intellect. As the story progresses, Van Weyden must balance the redemptive qualities of a physical life with the moral debaucheries represented by Larsen.

The Sea Wolf is very much a reflection of the literary and cultural atmosphere of the time. The novel's emphasis on random happenings and the weakness of the individual invites a comparison with naturalist writers such as Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser. One should also consider that Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, and the President's views on the virtues inherent in physical struggle and the regenerative possibilities of anti-modernism were well known to the American public. Furthermore, London was shrewd enough to include a romantic subplot (Larsen rescues another ill-fated traveler who happens to be female) in order to engage a wider audience. The resulting novel rivaled The Call of the Wild in popularity, has been translated into numerous languages, and been filmed several times, most successfully in 1941 with John Garfield and Edward G. Robinson.