The Call of the Wild and White Fang - Jack London [152]
White Fang has its share of film renderings, too. Lawrence Trimble, director and well-known animal trainer, cast Silver the wolf and legendary canine actor Strongheart in his 1925 silent tribute to the Northern wilderness. Probably the most popular screen version of White Fang to date is the 1991 film Randal Kleiser directed for Disney. Ethan Hawke is the young Jack, who enjoys a perfect union with White Fang. Though the film is closer thematically to The Call of the Wild than it is to the novel on which it is based, the sentimental depiction of young man and dog manages to warm the heart—all the more so because the film is set in a harsh, beautifully photographed world of ice.
Into the Wild
Jack London’s sensibilities pervade Into the Wild (1996), by Jon Krakauer. The author weaves together letters, journals, and photographs to chronicle the real-life story of Chris McCandless, a recent college graduate from a comfortable East Coast home who finds himself disenchanted with material security and disdainful of capitalism. McCandless gives his $24,000 inheritance to charity and heads West, adopting a vigorous life of travel, random work, and steady adventure, reminiscent of a young Jack London. Finding his way to Fairbanks, Alaska, McCandless lives off the land and a ten-pound bag of rice until he succumbs to starvation. McCandless answers the “Call,” the force that impels the tamed to give up comfort in exchange for freedom. In fact, as Krakauer tells us, McCandless often spoke of his admiration for Jack London’s writings, and his death mirrors London’s story “To Build a Fire,” in that man, with his myriad follies, is no match for the might of nature. The fate of the fiercely idealistic McCandless also somewhat parallels the early death of London, a writer of Socialist convictions who never came to terms with his own financial success.
Comments & Questions
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on these texts, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the books’ history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Jack London’s The Call of the Wild and White Fang through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of these enduring works.
Comments on The Call of the Wild
SATURDAY REVIEW OF BOOKS, NEW FORK TIMES
Mr. Jack London, having made us acquainted in his previous stories with the people of the Far Northwest, proceeds in his latest and best book, “The Call of the Wild,” to introduce us to a little lower stratum of the same society—a most fascinating company of dogs, good, bad, and indifferent, of which a huge fellow, St. Bernard and collie crossed, named Buck is the bright particular star.
Unlike most stories of the kind, men and women occupy a very unimportant place in this one, and not much time or trouble is taken by the author in individualizing the few humans who are necessary to carry on the action. Better still, Mr. London’s dogs are not merely people masquerading in canine skins. At least this is true to a far greater extent than has usually been the case even with the best dogs of fiction; and during the delightful hour it takes to read this story one feels that he is really in a world in which dog standards, dog motives, and dog feelings are the subject of analysis, and that Mr. London himself has somehow penetrated a step or two behind the barrier which often seems so slight and transparent between man and “man’s best friend.”
This has perhaps resulted in the depiction by him of less lofty and edifying scenes than have been