The Call of the Wild and White Fang - Jack London [6]
The chilling opening of White Fang demonstrates both the absolute compunction to reproduce despite the threat of destruction and the “solidarity of effort” among laborers necessary to mitigate the effects of a hostile environment. Two communities are pitted against each other in this opening scene: one formed by Henry, Bill, and their sled dogs; the other composed of the ever-present Arctic wolf pack. Henry and Bill attempt to keep their group together—lit—erally to maintain a critical mass sufficient to ward off predation by the pack. The wolf pack possesses a logic and a system of its own: Divide and conquer. The she-wolf, the “decoy for the pack” as London calls her, plays her part well in this drama. She lures each sled dog, one by one, away from the safety of the camp and fire by the promise of the chance to mate with her. Since the propagation of the species is a drive that inexorably compels animals to act, each dog responds to this primal urge and answers the she-wolf’s call, only to meet death at the teeth of the ravening wolf pack (p. 101). The wolf pack kills Bill and is about to turn on Henry before chance, in the form of another party, steps in and saves him.
Unlike the human community, reliant upon its nonnative dogs and burdened by the accoutrements of culture, the wolf pack has successfully adapted to its environment. Its social structure is defined yet malleable. In times of famine, the pack travels together to give it the advantage over any other animals it may find. In times of plenty, the pack splits up: Male and female pair up and bear a new generation. All work performed by the wolves ensures the survival of the pack. In contrast, the work performed by Bill and Henry, who labor to bring the body of a rich man back for a “long-distance” funeral, satisfy no such essential function. These characters are weighed down and very nearly destroyed by a class structure that demands the fruit of labor not for the self, but for another. The system is absurd, unnatural, and ultimately deadly; the body in the coffin, which should, perhaps, be the first to go to the dogs, is preserved from harm while the bodies of the laborers—both human and canine—who support that body are destroyed.
At the same time, however, something more is at stake than just a “pitiless” battle for brute survival. In Origin, Darwin imagines these struggles in a “large and metaphorical sense including dependence of one being on another” (Darwin, Origin, p. 116). In his other major investigations into the coevolution of humans and animals, The Descent of Man (1871) and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), Darwin continues his reorganization of the map of the natural world. In the process, he gives nonhumans standing—specifically, moral standing—as equal participants in the communities of nature. In Descent, Darwin argues that a moral scheme rooted in evolutionary terms levels the playing field not only by giving all organisms equal status, but also by emphasizing that each is a part of and a participant in distinct yet interrelated communities.
Evolutionary principles replace a traditional conception of morality based on “selfishness” and the instinct for self-preservation with one that derives from social instincts. Darwin explains this concept in his definitions of “moral sense” and “social instincts,” which he argues have developed for the “general good of the community.” “As the social instincts both of man and the lower animals have no doubt been developed by the same steps,” he writes, “it would be advisable... to use the same definition in both cases” (Darwin, Descent, pp. 97-98). Humans are not the only ones with a moral sense, according to Darwin, who notes that “any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become developed...