The Call of the Wild and White Fang - Jack London [143]
White Fang
Part Four, Chapter II
1 . (p. 212) Sour-doughs: This was a nickname for miners who had spent at least one year “inside” and had experienced the perils of a winter in a Yukon or Klondike mining camp. So-called because they used a sourdough mixture to make bread instead of the hard-to-obtain yeast favored by newcomers (chechaquos) to the region. London humorously describes the process of making sourdough bread in his short narrative “Housekeeping in the Klondike.”
Part Four, Chapter IV
1 . (p. 230) skin-fold: The description in the preceding pages of the battle between a wolf-dog and a bulldog caused London a good deal of trouble with President Theodore Roosevelt, a hunter and amateur naturalist. In an interview with Everybody’s Magazine in June 1907, Roosevelt called this passage the “very sublimity of absurdity.” In doing so, he initiated London into the great “nature-faking” controversy. Participants in this debate battled over how one could determine the “real” cause (instinct or reason) of nonhuman animal behavior and, by extension, how the actions, emotions, and thoughts of those animals could be expressed in literary texts. London responded to Roosevelt’s attack in a biting essay entitled “The Other Animals.” He resolves the charge against him simply: “It is merely,” he writes, “a difference of opinion.”
Part Five, Chapter I
1 . (p. 256) Sardanapalus: London uses this term as an oath. Sardanapalus was the mythical last King of Assyria (880 B.C.) who set himself, his wife, and his kingdom’s treasures on fire rather than face defeat by a rebel army.
Inspired by The Call of the Wild
and White Fang
Film Adaptations of the Novels
The spectacle of the snow-blanketed Yukon and the fervor of the Gold Rush of 1897 translate powerfully into film. Even so, no film—and there have been many, from as far afield as Russia, Italy, and Estonia—has succeeded in capturing the majesty and simplicity of London’s two greatest novels.
D. W. Griffith, the director best known for his 1915 film Birth of a Nation, first brought The Call of the Wild to the screen, in 1908, and Fred Jackman directed another film adaptation, also a silent, in 1923. The first Call of the Wild “talkie” hit the screen in 1935; director William Wellman, famous for his war epic Wings, gives this film the flavor of a Western and turns it into a romance story, with sparks flying across the frozen North between Clark Gable, playing the much-expanded Jack Thornton role, and Loretta Young. The screen-play relegates Buck the German shepherd to a secondary role, and the dog’s decision to follow the “call” at the end seems incidental to the plot.
Ken Annakin’s 1972 adaptation of The Call of the Wild, filmed in the rugged wilderness of Finland, opens with the wolf pack mauling and devouring caribou and never lets up in its attempt to convey a harsh struggle for survival, as well as the vitality of nature. Humans are portrayed as cruel, insignificant, diseased with greed, and ridiculous ; only Thornton, who is played by Charlton Heston, is the exception. Buck finally gets the starring role in a 1976 shot-for-television film, directed by Jerry Jameson and written by James Dickey, author of Deliverance.
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