Drifting Somewhere On An Ocean of Uncertainty: London's "Sea Wolf"

Carl Bevard Jr.Dr. CassutoENGL 58896/28/11Drifting Somewhere in an Ocean of Uncertainty: Jack London’s

The Sea Wolf

Of the recent scholarly work devoted to Jack London’s

The Sea Wolf, it is fair to say that theoretical

preoccupations of our own time have dominated the

conversation regarding this work’s significance in the

London corpus, as well as its significance to American

Literature in general. Our present investment in questions

of gender and sexuality, for example, have produced a body

of criticism about this novel’s central characters, Wolf

Larsen and Humphrey Van Weyden, that opens the work up to

new and valuable insight regarding London’s own forward-

looking thoughts in this vein. But the proliferation of

such theoretical concerns has also borne in its wake a

tendency toward neglecting certain aspects of London’s

thought, which have slipped quietly into the realm of

unquestioned assumption. Such a feature is London’s

purportedly contradictory commitments to a robust

individualism and a frank socialism, which most critical

accounts today take for granted. It seems that all

scholarly accounts of London worth their salt identify this

incongruity and accept it as a foregone conclusion before

proceeding to other areas of interest. But given the rise

of historicist emphasis on contextualizing literary works in

their social, cultural, and intellectual milieux, it is

worth revisiting these assumptions regarding London’s

thought with reference to some of his other social writings.

With such a goal in mind, the dyadic relationship between

Larsen and Van Weyden can be read as a literary proving

ground in which London develops his version of a practical

synthesis of his individualistic and socialist impulses.

Since Ambrose Bierce claimed that Wolf Larsen would

prove London’s most enduring contribution to literature,

subsequent critics have seldom examined the manner in which

London deliberately constructs his paragon of proto-

Nietzschean egotism as a representative of a profoundly

flawed worldview. This becomes apparent, however, when one

considers that in his flagrantly self-contradictory

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philosophical views Larsen embodies the complete

manifestation of self- and socially destructive power.

Chief among these is Larsen’s nominal rejection of social

morality while simultaneously advocating an ironically

stringent “morality of autonomy.” We discover the latter

soon after Van Weyden is pressganged into service aboard the

Ghost. The depth of this contradiction appears during his

first interaction with Van Weyden, in which Larsen betrays

the inherent flaws in his theory of existence. Demanding of

his new passenger, “What do you do for a living,” Larsen

immediately identifies himself with a principle of virile

self-agency by contrasting this to Van Weyden’s position as

an unskilled, non-laboring member of the upper class.1

Larsen’s disdain for such inactivity reveals itself with his

subsequent assessment of, what is to him, Van Weyden’s

weakness:

His lip curled in a swift sneer….

“Who earned it? Eh? I thought so. Your father.

You stand on dead men’s legs. You’ve never had

1 Jack London, The Sea Wolf (New York: Signet, 2004), 20.

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any of your own. You couldn’t walk between two

sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly for

three meals…. Dead men’s hands have kept it soft.

Good for little else than dishwashing and scullion

work.”2

Yet here we see the nascent form of two important value

paradigms that Larsen represents to ever more explicit

degrees as the novel progresses. First, his tacit

assumption that self-directing agency, not simply

initiative, is a positive good underscores his derision for

Van Weyden’s lack of these traits. The manner of his

derision establishes physical weakness and softness as

morally contemptible. But his assessment of Van Weyden’s

use value suggests an exclusive contradiction in value

paradigms when compared with the second value-assumption:

the contempt for menial labor. Taken together, these

exclusive assertions of valuation contribute to a sense of

fragmentation within Larsen that renders his later claims to

be acting in his own self-interest both philosophically and

2 Ibid., 21-2.

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practically suspect, for on the one hand he advocates a

physical hardiness that derives only from a life of

struggle, while on the other hand we witness him judging Van

Weyden’s actual physical capacity as grounds for criticism.

He notes those features that he believes to possess value,

but their value consists in the capacity to absolve him from

such menial tasks as Van Weyden is shortly to be assigned.

That is, physical power is a good in itself and in its

utility, but here Larsen mocks the latter because Van

Weyden’s use value is restricted to a narrow range of

functions.3 With his accompanying “flirt of disdain,” his

remarks acquire a rather strong suggestion of the proselyte,

for Van Weyden is held morally culpable for his physical

weakness.

This contradiction is illustrated further in Van

Weyden’s offer of money to be put ashore and Larsen’s

counter offer, for it functions on two distinct levels. The

3 Figuratively speaking, this is like Larsen scolding Van Weyden for notcrossing a bridge that Larsen is engaged in demolishing: he ridicules Van Weyden both for not subscribing to his particular ideology of physicality and for not manifesting its strength in a form as developed as his own.

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first is at the level of the narrative; the second at the

level of the critical reading. In the first instance, we

witness a figure who has just treated the first mate’s death

with incredible and furious irreverence: “And they were not

namby-pamby oaths or mere expressions of indecency. Each

word was a blasphemy…They crisped and crackled like electric

sparks.”4 Here, the imagistic association foreshadows his

later identification with the infernal, but it immediately

marks Larsen as the least likely person to be concerned with

the well-being of another’s soul. Coupled as it is with the

offhand reiteration, “And mind you, it’s for your own soul’s

sake,” and following so closely on the heels of his

appraisal of Van Weyden’s labor value, the appeal to the

spiritual good construes Larsen in this instance as a

flippant salesman, one who lacks conviction in the product

he peddles but who recognizes the profit to be gained by the

sale. One suspects that after such a display of impiety,

Larsen is enjoying a none-too-subtle joke at Van Weyden’s

expense. However, on the critical level the irony subsists

4 Ibid., 16.

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in the fact of Larsen’s unwitting adherence to precisely

such a redeeming morality as we later observe him reject.

If, as his disgust for Van Weyden’s weakness has suggested,

independence, self-determination, and physical hardiness are

both practically good and inherently good, then his

facetious appeal to the language of spirituality acquires

some measure of legitimacy inasmuch as he here performs a

virtuous act despite his later claims to disbelieve in such:

a true individualist would not bother attempting to rescue

or convert Humphrey to his own worldview.

But London’s more significant indictment of Larsen’s

problematic individualism derives from his inability to

synthesize various philosophical convictions into a coherent

and productive ethic. The first scene in which Larsen

attempts to articulate his worldview illustrates the

profoundly flawed basis of Larsen’s egotistical materialism.

Instigated by Larsen’s question about immortality, the

conversation with Van Weyden suddenly turns serious for the

captain. In response to his own assertion of the non-

existence of the soul, Larsen exclaims,

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“Then to what end?” he demanded abruptly, turning

back to me. “If I am immortal, why? .... I

believe that life is a mess,” he answered

promptly. “It is like yeast, a ferment, a thing

that moves and may move for a minute, an hour, a

year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will

cease to move. The big eat the little that they

may continue to move, the strong eat the weak that

they may retain their strength. The lucky eat the

most and move the longest, that is all. What do

you make of those things?”5

The verbal and physical frustration with which Larsen

responds to his own claim is indicative of a deep

dissatisfaction with the circularity he identifies in the

materialism of Darwinist thought but from which he is

unwilling to break. In his attempts to make meaning out of

an existence for which his materialism cannot provide a

satisfactory telos, Larsen alights on the Darwinian

descriptive metaphor of the struggle for survival as the

5 Ibid., 40.

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only possible reason for existence. But his zealously

nurtured individualism precludes him from deriving any sense

of validity for his existence in the support or protection

of any but himself. The result of this exorbitant

egocentrism is to conflate the struggle for existence with a

strain of Epicureanism. Larsen’s own memorable term for the

centrality of pleasure in life is “piggishness.”

Yet even in his cynicism, Larsen’s characterization of

this quandary hints at a problem with his dissatisfaction.

His grudging assent to the theory of “piggishness” is dogged

by a sense of morality reacting to a perceived wrong: in

this case, the sin is a form of gluttony. Larsen is

demonstrates a moral sensitivity in his repulsion from this

animalism to which he, seeing no convincing way around it,

nevertheless enters into fully. But it is essential to note

that by constraining himself to a philosophy of the

individual, Larsen effectively rules out any other

teleological explanation for the supposedly gluttonous

behavior he observes in himself and in others. His

pessimistic nihilism is, in an important sense, a product of

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his own rigidly established privileging of the self over

others. The foundational self-interest that Larsen preaches

throughout the novel is an ultimately entropic system of

thought that ultimately fails to guide its adherents to a

meaningful lifestyle. And it is in this respect that we can

see London’s critique of the übermensch as it was widely

understood at that time. Remarking London’s reading of

Nietzsche, Katherine Littel observes that this understanding

of the superman was “in keeping with contemporary

intellectual currents,” but that London nevertheless offers

a critique surprisingly in keeping with Nietzsche’s original

intent to disparage the image of the savage “blond beast.”6

That his individual ethic is revealed as a self-

enclosed and ultimately futile pursuit, however, in Larsen’s

alternation between individual free will and deterministic

fatalism, an Althusserian relative-autonomy and a

Scandinavian sense of destiny. The central metaphor of

Larsen’s instructive vocabulary when mentoring Van Weyden in

6 Katherine Littel, “The ‘Nietzschean’ and the Individualist in Jack London’s Socialist Writings,” Jack London Newsletter 15.2 (May-August 1982),83.

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the school of hard knocks is the image of standing on one’s

own legs. Essential to this conception of self-sufficiency

is the belief in the capacity of autonomy and through it

one’s ability to subdue one’s surroundings, which Larsen

vociferously advocates in his ridicule of Van Weyden’s

passive involvement in his inherited wealth. Indeed, this

is the single thing that qualifies with Larsen as a virtue,

and he engages in precisely this pursuit of self-

determination at moments of high drama throughout the text;

the most compelling example of which is Larsen’s combat with

the personified gale. Van Weyden’s account of Larsen’s mien

during the storm suggests the extent of Larsen’s conviction

in autonomy:

…and Wolf Larsen’s broad shoulders, his hands

gripping the spokes and holding the schooner to

the course of his will, himself an earth god,

dominating the storm, flinging its descending

waters from him and riding it to his own ends.

And oh, the marvel of it! The marvel of it!7

7 Ibid., 132.

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As an expression of the individual’s ability to contest the

environmental circumstances and succeed to his desired

objective, Larsen here exemplifies a qualified form of

agency. For Larsen, the “golden rule” of self-determinacy

stands in sharp contradistinction to his fatalism, to the

restrictive forces to which he ascribes his position as a

sealing boat captain. When Van Weyden, observing that

Larsen’s intellectual powers are commensurate with his

physical powers, demands to know why he has not obtained

prominence in business or politics, Larsen’s reply suggests

his belief that his life is essentially foreordained by the

circumstances surrounding his upbringing:

“Hump, do you know the parable of the sower…? If

you will remember, some of the seed fell upon

stony places, where there was not much earth, and

forthwith they sprung up because they had no

deepness of earth. And when the sun was up they

were scorched, and because they had no root they

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withered away… It was not well. I was one of

those seeds.”8

Following closely on the heels of Van Weyden’s

identification of Larsen to Milton’s Lucifer, the assertion

demands close scrutiny, for it draws upon a romantic

tradition that regards Lucifer as the actual hero of Paradise

Lost.9 In this context, however, Larsen’s striking of the

romantic chord generates dissonance because of its

investment in a tradition steeped in sympathy: the Byronic

hero is a powerful figure precisely because he elicits

sympathy from his society. Indeed, the very source of his

power resides in his appeal to sympathetic commiseration in

estrangement, and Larsen draws from this tradition when he

describes the meager life he had as a child. Similarly, in

Milton’s epic poem Lucifer engages in an internal debate

over the justice of his expulsion from heaven, attempting to8 Ibid., 78.9 William Blake famously inaugurated a tradition of viewing Lucifer as the romantic hero when he wrote that Milton was of the devil's party without knowing it. Larsen’s explicit association with Lucifer here reflects vestiges of romantic thought, particularly of the Byronic hero,who, though larger than life, endures alienation because of his exceptional stature. Writing during the early stages of the tumultuous Age of Revolution, Blake’s commentary reflects his intellectual milieu’sprivileging of the unjustly oppressed.

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foist responsibility for his sin onto God. But it is

important to recall that he ultimately realizes that he

alone is to blame, lamenting,

Hadst thou the same free Will and Power to stand?

Thou hadst: whom hast thou then or what to accuse,

But Heav’ns free Love dealt equally to all?10

Here, Lucifer’s reflections on his own responsibility prove

instructive for evaluating Larsen’s evasion of

accountability. For one thing, this reflection suggests the

individualist’s profound loneliness and its tendency toward

an eventual stasis; acting of his own initiative for his own

benefit, the lonely hero will only persist in his struggle

so long as his motivation remains strong. But both Larsen

and Lucifer’s poignant depression reflects how much their

motivation itself originates socially: Lucifer resolves to

continue his revolt when he considers what his followers

might think, and it is arguable that much of Larsen’s

behavior is similarly performative – that it is a front is

shown when Van Weyden stumbles upon him muttering 10 John Milton, Paradise Lost. The Riverside Milton. ed. Roy Flannagan. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998), Book 4, ll. 66-8.

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despairingly to himself. Like Lucifer, Larsen also

dissembles by claiming an inability to produce favorable

conditions for an ascent such as Van Weyden envisions. To

suggest that by not rising to high social stature, Larsen is

somehow committing sin on the order of Lucifer’s would be a

gross oversimplification of two drastically different

paradigms of thought. However, by introducing such a theme

into the novel, London highlights the practical sin, so to

speak, of Larsen’s philosophical contradictoriness, by which

he fails to synthesize disparate philosophical convictions

into a cogent ethical scheme for himself. He is both

advocate of Lucifer-like charismatic obduracy in his

materialism, urging Van Weyden to a conversion throughout

the narrative, while also avoiding the more robust

implications of such principled agency.11 Unable to enter 11 In his fine essay, “Determinism, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility in American Literary Naturalism,” Ian Roberts has admirably discussed some of the shortcomings with respect to critical treatments of AmericanNaturalism and its negotiation of such themes as free will and determinism. Emphasizing the important distinction that he believes fewscholars point out, Roberts clearly delineates how determinism and fatalism are different philosophical propositions. Keeping this treatment in mind, I believe Larsen represents a dichotomous position with respect to precisely these two systems of thought. By itself, Larsen’s use of the parable of the sower might suggest what Roberts calls a loosely deterministic framework within which individual autonomyremains flexible. However, taken in conjunction with the summary of his

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one or the other of these convictions, and likewise unable

to escape from the binary established between two such

convictions, Larsen is essentially consumed from within.

This internal conflict is one of the strongest

expressions of tacit criticism in the novel, for its effects

illustrate London’s view of the essential problematic of a

thoroughgoing individualism. Van Weyden’s surprise over the

eclectic texts on Larsen’s bookshelf registers the first

significance of what is soon revealed as an inexorable

tendency towards fragmentation in the egocentric individual:

It was patent that this man was no ignorant clod,

such as one would inevitably suppose him to be

from his exhibitions of brutality. At once he

became an enigma. One side or the other of his

nature was perfectly comprehensible, but both

sides together were bewildering.12

rearing (curiously heavy with sentiment for one so hostile to it), I suggest Larsen is, in fact, subscribing to two mutually exclusive philosophical perspectives. I discuss the connections of this to his individualism in subsequent paragraphs.12 Ibid., 38.

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On the one hand representative of great tracts of Western

literary tradition and scientific culture, these texts

figure on the other hand as markers of Larsen’s non-

participation in the important social processes that have

produced that culture. In a yet another contradictory

relationship, the bleak materialism that Larsen embodies

renders these works objects of mere consumption that do not

advance his understanding beyond primal self-interest: while

his reading of Hamlet and “Caliban” likely stimulate his

sense of “piggishness,” the other texts exert little

influence over him, suggesting as Van Weyden states, his

picking and choosing to satisfy his own desires.13 This

becomes apparent when Van Weyden confronts him regarding his

lost cash, which prompts the most explicit invocation of

ethics and social theory to appear in the novel. Discussing

their common reading in Herbert Spencer, the conversation

13 In his reading of Ecclesiastes, for example, Larsen focuses on only those segments that reflect his own sentiments. That this requires him to skip the better part of chapters 2 and 9 is unimportant to him, and the Preacher’s words which might lend consoling insight, such as “Wisdomstrengtheneth the wise more than ten mighty men” (7:19) or “Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy” (9:7), more or less prove that Larsen’s unwillingness to engage philosophic views that would push him outside ofhimself.

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approaches stasis when Larsen rejects out of hand major

elements in First Principles that do not accord with his self-

serving philosophy. Concerning the importance of altruism

in Spencer’s philosophical system, Larsen declares,

“Couldn’t see the necessity for it, nor the common sense. I

cut out the race and the children…It’s just so much slush

and sentiment.”14 Larsen’s attempt to bend Spencer’s

theories to his own purposes are predicated on a misreading

that results from rigid adherence to a quasi-religious

observance of principled individualism. In spite of the

explication provided by Van Weyden, Larsen fails to perceive

at all that Spencer’s is a primarily ethical

conceptualization of individual and social development.15

Larsen declares his reading in Spencer’s Data of Ethics to have

been the most profitable of his encounters with that

14 Ibid., 64.15 In several of Spencer’s works, the ethical imperative of improvement via cooperative or harmonious interactions with the environment and individuals occupies a central position in Spencer’s discourse. For example, in Social Statics, Spencer declares that the individual’s happinessis an inevitable purpose of individual and social evolution, and that “to fulfill the purpose perfectly [one] must derive pleasure from seeingpleasure in others” (Social Statics 18). According to Spencer, then, socialevolution involves both an end and a means by which that end is ultimately attained.

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philosopher for precisely this reason. In Data of Ethics,

Spencer devotes an entire chapter to the question of “Good

and Bad Conduct,” and it is likely from this chapter that

London has Larsen draw his utilitarian convictions. The

extent of Larsen’s egotism becomes apparent when one

examines the segment of Spencer that (Larsen believes)

justifies his views:

We saw that evolution, tending ever toward self-

preservation, reaches its limit when individual

life is the greatest, both in length and breadth;

and now we see that, leaving other ends aside, we

regard as good the conduct furthering self-

preservation and as bad the conduct tending to

self-destruction… Lastly, we inferred that the

establishment of an associated state makes

possible and requires a form of conduct such that

life may be completed in each and in his

offspring, not only without preventing completion

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of it in others, but with furtherance of it in

others.16

Even without Van Weyden’s gloss, the emphasis on the

individual’s cooperation with others is impossible to miss,

and Larsen’s qualifying “deficiency of mind” scarcely holds

up under such scrutiny as a reason for so flagrant a

misreading. The divergence for Larsen arises when the

Spencerian philosophy requires abnegation of luxuries, which

Larsen conflates with the Darwinian struggle for existence.

Regarded in this manner, Larsen’s amorality can be

regarded as the rationalization of the addict. He confesses

as much when he explains his protracted goading of Leach’s

fury: “Why should I deny myself the joy of exciting Leach’s

soul to fever pitch…I do him a kindness. The greatness of

the sensation is mutual. He is living more royally than any

man for’ard…”17 Far from being the rational and calculated

intellectual proposition of the true philosophical

materialist, Larsen’s rejection of the cooperative aspects

16 Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics. Philosophy after Darwin. Ed. Michael Ruse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 105.17 London, 117.

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of Spencer’s thought therefore becomes a crude materialism

in the popular sense: the pursuit of material wealth,

comfort, and leisure. In his essay, “Jack London’s

Socialistic Social Darwinism,” Jonathan Berliner comments on

the thematic association of London’s antagonists with that

social condition which allows unchecked consumerist avarice.

He notes that “[t]hese villains are unrepentant capitalists,

murderers, and abusers of animals, their often melodramatic

treacherousness caused not by their connection to the

primitive but by a degraded environment.”18 While his

analysis focuses primarily on London’s The People of the Abyss,

Berliner goes on to note that Larsen is the most

identifiable of this type. In Larsen’s excessive self-

interest, then, London gestures toward a fixture of American

society that underwent increasingly widespread and sustained

public scrutiny in London’s time: the robber baron. Indeed,

with this eye to the historical context of London’s writing,

one clearly discerns in Larsen’s physical domination of the

Ghost a microcosmic analogy of the hydra-like conditions of

18 Berliner, American Literary Realism. 41.1 (Fall 2008), 67.

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American socioeconomics, in which capitalist business

expansion intermixed with currents of social Darwinism to

justify profit motive.19

Critics have noted this hybrid of Spencerian-Darwinian

feature of Larsen’s ship as a means of London’s critique of

the atavistic individual. Regarding the destructive

environment aboard the Ghost, Anthony Naso reads in The Sea

Wolf and Larsen’s conduct London’s critical assessment of

the limitations of Spencerian individualism. He claims

that,

The values that govern life on the Ghost are shown

to be outmoded and inadequate for dealing with the

complexities of modern life. The ship is an

anachronism of an age and social structure that

has supposedly long since passed away. It is a

microcosm of the world as it once was.20

While Naso is certainly correct in identifying the atavistic

themes of force and ruthlessness as governing principles

19 Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982), 44.20 Anthony Naso, “Jack London and Herbert Spencer.” Jack London Newsletter, 14.1 (Aug-May 1981), 22.

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aboard the Ghost, his assertion that life on the ship

represents a bygone epoch of human society requires

qualification. In fact, the Ghost serves as an analog to

London’s contemporary social economy and further develops

London’s critique of the vestigial elements of brutality and

rule-by-force that remain embedded within it. In this

environment the progress of the whole literally depends upon

the concerted efforts of each constituent, yet through his

ability to compel others to his will construes Larsen as a

robber baron in miniature: he owns the infrastructure by

which the sailors earn their living. And he uses his

physical power to enhance his “capitalist” authority, to the

frequent bodily and sometimes fatal harm of his crew. Life

aboard the Ghost therefore renders the contrast between

destructive individualism and mutual dependency clearly

visible. In scenes where Larsen attempts to drink deeply

“the drunkenness of life,” one witnesses the potential for

violent destruction. The scene in which Larsen tosses

Mugridge overboard in particular exemplifies the deleterious

effects of individual dominance in a social context.

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Close examination of the episode suggests that this is

one of Larsen’s thrill-seeking escapades in which he pits

himself against nature at the expense of another. Maud’s

observation of the event construes it as one of “merriment,”

and in his description of Larsen’s attempt to haul in the

cook, Van Weyden further suggests the gaming attitude that

prevails at that moment. The narrative rhythm into which he

falls acquires the air of present-day sports commentary

during a particularly heated moment of competition: “It was

an even toss whether the shark or we would get him… Almost

as swiftly… He threw his strength into one tremendous

jerk.”21 Unfortunately for Mugridge, Larsen is unable to

beat the shark, and he brushes off the savage amputation the

cook sustains as “man-play.” Despite his claims not to have

foreseen the possibility of this incident, one suspects that

Larsen’s familiarity with his trade and his competence at

sea would forewarn him of such contingencies; yet this sort

of game manifests itself as nothing more significant than a

bout of high-adrenaline deep-sea fishing for Larsen. In

21 London, 159-60.

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this sense, his transformation of the sealing schooner into

an engine of decadent self-indulgence registers as equal to

or greater than that of which he accuses Van Weyden at the

novel’s beginning – the only difference is that he has

established a latent morality whereby his exploitation of

others is justified in its execution through physical, as

opposed to ideological, power. The function of Larsen’s

conduct throughout the novel, then, serves to illustrate the

immanent contradictions of a society that has embraced

advance and development into its national heritage but that

has achieved this ideal by employing a primitivized ethic of

Franklinian self-determination.

By contrast to the profoundly self-serving

philosophical admixture represented in Larsen, Van Weyden’s

development across the narrative illustrates a moderating

corrective to the ultimately fruitless philosophy of

excessive individualism by suggesting a medial ground

between individualistic and cooperative extremes that so

occupied London’s mind. Indeed, at the start of the novel

Van Weyden reveals himself as a subscriber to a similarly

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self-contained egotism, which differs from Larsen’s only in

the absence of immediate violence. The reader first

encounters him musing contentedly on the specialization of

modern society that enables his comfort:

In fact, I remember the placid exaltation with

which I took up my position on the forward upper

deck, directly beneath the pilothouse, and allowed

the mystery of the fog to lay hold of my

imagination… I remember thinking how comfortable

it was, this division of labor which made it

unnecessary for me to study fogs, winds, tides,

and navigation in order to visit my friend who

lived across an arm of the sea. It was good that

me should be specialists, I mused.22

Here, Van Weyden acknowledges pleasure as an influential

principle governing his behavior. While less self-evidently

exploitative than physical compulsion, Van Weyden’s pleasure

nevertheless depends upon a prevailing set of conditions

under which the labor of others provides for his comfort.

22 Ibid., 2.

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Later he declares himself to “have an income,” which casts

his “profession” as a luxury of the wealthy, for it plays no

part in maintaining his station. But though this appears

to express his passivity in the neat division of labor, the

“greedy eyes” with which he observes a fellow passenger to

be reviewing his essay suggest that he is hungry for

pleasure of the intellectually vain – similar in principle

to Larsen’s hedonistic sadism. He also has a similarly

egotistical impulse at the moment of the red-faced man’s

intrusion into his reverie, which prompts him to conceive of

“an essay which [he] had thought of calling ‘The Necessity

for Freedom: A Plea for the Artist.’” This is curiously

similar in tone to Larsen’s later declaration: “‘It is a

whim of mine to keep you aboard this ship”; it has in view

the preservation of his solitude, itself a condition through

which he is able to produce such reflections as the Poe

essay and thence the pleasure of publicity.

The explicit reference to “the division of labor” and

its connection to the socialist discourse in London’s time

would almost certainly have resonated with his popular and

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critical readership. This reference draws particular

attention to Friedrich Engels’s well-known essay, “On the

Division of Labor,” in which he argues that the division of

labor in a capitalist industrial society produces

dehumanizing effects on the individual worker. “In such a

society,” writes Engels,

Each new lever of production is necessarily

transformed into a new means for the subjection of

the producers to the means of production… The

first great division of labor…destroyed the basis

of the intellectual development in the [rural

population] and the physical development in the

[urban].23

In this respect, London initially aligns Van Weyden with the

same capitalist principle as that of Larsen. His

“exaltation” is a distant echo of the atavistic Larsen’s

epic struggle with the sea as he and Van Weyden struggle to

collect the boats, but it is one that manifests itself in

23 Friedrich Engels, “On the Division of Labor in Production.” The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978),718-9.

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the highly developed terrain of human society. Larsen

himself also draws attention to their proximity when he

likens Van Weyden to “a frigate bird swooping down upon the

boobies and robbing them of the fish they have caught.”24 At

least in a certain sense, then, Van Weyden and Larsen are

more closely related than is at first apparent. Observing a

different locus for this alliance between the two principal

characters, James Ellis postulates that Larsen and Van

Weyden function as one another’s doppelgängers.25 Yet it may

be more accurate to reconsider their parallelism as an

inversion of the doppelgänger relationship, for their

resemblance is actually characterized by a reverse

correlation in at least two significant respects.

In the first and most obvious instance of parallelism,

Van Weyden’s physical development corresponds to Larsen’s

physical deterioration. Originally incapable even of

shouting for help, Van Weyden gradually acquires individual

agency that separates him from utter dependence upon the

24 London, 41.25 James Ellis, “A New Reading of The Sea Wolf,” Jack London: Essays in Criticism, ed. Ray W. Ownbey. (Santa Barbara: Peregrine Smith, Inc., 1978), 94.

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division of labor he naively appreciates at the novel’s

beginning. Increasingly throughout the first third of the

novel, Van Weyden comes to occupy a position of prominence

among the crew as a result of his growing competency.

During Mugridge’s recovery after his beating by Leach, Van

Weyden assumes the duties of both cabin boy and ship’s cook.

In this capacity, the contrast between his initial fumbling

efforts even to move about the ship and perform rudimentary

duties is strong. With the extension of his

responsibilities to three areas of skill (cook, cabin boy,

and intermittent captain’s companion), Van Weyden learns to

take a small measure of pride in his work. It is

significant, too, that this pride differs in kind from that

he takes in the recognition of his essay in The Atlantic:

instead of being satisfied with the mere appearance of his

intellectual endeavors (the man reading the essay evinces no

sign of appreciation or disapprobation), Van Weyden has

acquired the working-man’s pride in recognizing the

immediate value of his labor. His competency even outpaces

that of the “professional” Mugridge, for “it won Wolf

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Larsen’s approval, while the sailors beamed with

satisfaction during the brief time that [his] regime

lasted.”26 Moreover, Larsen’s second bout of headache

emerges at this point as a temporarily crippling ailment

that places him under Van Weyden’s care, “obeying [his]

commands like a sick child” – significantly, almost a

complete reversal of the original dependency that Ellis

notes characterizes the start of their relationship.27

In the second instance, an important feature of this

inversion remains undeveloped in Ellis’s analysis of the

Larsen-Van Weyden dyad, and that is the extent to which

London enlists the philosophical discourse in the novel as a

means of refuting Larsen’s proto-Nietzschean individualism.

Throughout his reading, Ellis’s examination of Van Weyden’s

and Larsen’s respective philosophies focuses on its symbolic

significance to the narrative and the awakening of humanity

in Larsen. Ellis reads him as a “man-animal” whose survival

26 London, 96.27 Ibid., 99. Ellis notes two instances of the Lazarus sequence in the novel, drawing a parallel between Larsen’s rescue of Van Weyden and Van Weyden’s “resurrection” of Larsen from suffocation at the novels’ end (98).

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as such depends upon his forceful rejection of the idealism

represented which Van Weyden represents.28 But such a view

can be developed further to assess the implicit endorsement

of Van Weyden’s newfound socialistic idealism.

The competing ideologies represented by each of the

principal characters undergo moments of significant

evaluation throughout the novel in the form of Van Weyden’s

introspection and Larsen’s frustrated exclamations. But on

the whole, Larsen’s individualistic ideology fails to

sustain itself and its assault on idealism, while Van

Weyden’s idealism is modified in important ways by Larsen’s

materialism and ultimately emerges as the valuative

framework endorsed by the text. At each point in Larsen’s

apology for his materialistic self-interest, the reader

observes him butting against the confines which he

recognizes as an inherent feature of that philosophy but

which he fails to perceive as inadequate accounts of his own

unacknowledged humanism. “Filled with a strange uplift,”

Larsen comes nearest to acceding to idealism: “I know truth,

28 Ellis, “A New Reading,” 98.

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divine good from evil, right from wrong. My vision is clear

and far. I could almost believe in God.”29 Similarly, after

Maud Brewster’s appearance and the formation of her

intellectual alliance with Van Weyden, Larsen laments his

inability to function “without facts,” to use his words:

Do you know, I sometimes catch myself wishing that

I too were blind to the facts of life and only

knew its fancies and illusions…but in the face of

them my reason tells me…that to dream and live

illusions gives greater delight. And after all,

delight is the wage for living. Without delight,

living is a worthless act.30

Under the influence of the two idealists, Larsen comes

tantalizingly near articulating one of the central

philosophical problems with materialistic philosophy: its

absence of any basis from which to provide the ethical

instruction he unconsciously craves. Larsen’s failure to

convert, so to speak, reflects the mutual futility of

materialism and profound egotism in its suggestion that both29 London, 58, emphasis added.30 Ibid., 175.

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are fundamentally self-defeating propositions: the first

because in its descriptive quality, materialism only

accounts for what exists, not how one ought to behave within

those conditions of existence; the second in its privileging

of the individual’s ultimate self-cannibalism. His

poignancy in these reflections (coupled with his trenchantly

materialistic attacks on Van Weyden’s idealism, attacks

which show Larsen once more failing to participate in an

abstract as opposed to tangible discourse) suggests that his

philosophical perspective is in fact occupying a defensive

posture for most, if not all, of the novel. Rather than a

romantic hero, then, Larsen is a Faustian tragedian who

fails to prevent his own dissolution even when the source of

preservation is so close at hand.

By contrast, a modified form of Van Weyden’s idealism

is construed throughout the novel as the proper (indeed, the

essential) philosophic orientation of the socially adaptable

individual. Despite his initial physical weakness and

egocentrism, Van Weyden’s humanism ensures his functionality

in the cooperative environment that is life at sea. It is

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primarily through this disposition that he is able to

weather Mugridge’s hostility, Larsen’s physical assaults,

and the regressive pull toward “the animality of man.” But

it is essential to note that Van Weyden overcomes this

atavistic impulse by means of an adaptation that is only

facilitated by the assumption of shared human dignity, a

feature conspicuously absent in Larsen’s perverse version of

the will to power. Moreover, idealistic humanism is the

very catalyst that transforms Larsen’s nihilism into

productive human interaction. “While my hope and faith in

human life had survived Wolf Larsen’s destructive

criticism,” Van Weyden claims,

he had nevertheless been a cause of change in

minor matters. He had opened up for me the world

of the real, of which I had known practically

nothing and from which I had always shrunk. I had

learned to look more closely at life as it was

lived…to emerge from the realm of mind and idea

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and to place certain values on the concrete and

objective phases of existence.31

While he grows to share a respect for the dignity of the

laboring man, Van Weyden acquires a resolute pragmatism and

view for the common good reminiscent of the socialist

militancy London advocated in a number of his social

writings. The strongest mark of this new conviction emerges

in the challenge to Larsen, in which Van Weyden declares

that Larsen’s irresponsible captaincy of the Ghost may

inspire even him to revolt. While it would certainly entail

his death if undertaken alone (he must “forget the love of

[his] own life”), this conviction to fight on behalf of

one’s fellows indicates the greatness of the shift in

thinking that Van Weyden’s time at sea has worked in him,

and it parallels London’s own statements in his essay, the

“Explanation of the Great Socialist Vote of 1914.” In that

writing, London delineates the revolutionary program of the

Socialist movement as a seizure of capitalist wealth and its

redistribution in the interests of the working class. Where

31 Ibid., 122.

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before Van Weyden demonstrated his allegiance to the ruling

class (his essay defending the artist comes to resemble

capitalist solidarity in this light), he now acts in the

interests of the laborers aboard the Ghost, reflecting his

newly acquired belief in “the brotherhood of man.”32

It must be noted, however, that such a reading of this

exchange runs counter to the prevailing critical view of

London’s ostensibly conflicting beliefs. Mainstream

thought regarding London’s socialism and individualism

suggests that these competing systems of thought are

mutually exclusive and therefore were never reconciled in

the author’s mind.33 Mark Pittinger has observed that “Jack

London’s mind hosted a contradictory mixture of ideas drawn

from Darwin, Spencer, Nietzsche, and Marx” while

“harbor[ing] a burning desire for socialism and an equally

powerful attraction to…the accouterments of wealth.”34

32 Jack London, “Explanation of the Great Socialist Vote of 1914,” Jack London: American Rebel, ed. Philip Foner (New York: The Citadel Press, 1964), 405.33 Lee Clark Mitchell, “Naturalism and the Languages of Determinism,” The Columbia Literary History of the United States, ed. Emory Elliot et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 542.34 Mark Pittinger, American Socialists and Evolutionary Thought, 1870-1920, (Madison,WI: Wisconson University Press, 1993), 202.

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However representative this line of thought it may be, it

precludes the possibility of London’s having (like Larsen)

embraced the ennobling aspects of differing but attractive

social theories and (unlike Larsen) blended them into a

coherent individual ethic advocating a cooperative

disposition between individuals that is beneficial for the

individual because it is good for the group. Preoccupied

with the tradition of aesthetic criticism and the well-

attested fact of London’s concern for profitable

publication, London scholars have for the most part not

considered this as a serious philosophical proposition,

reading Van Weyden and Brewster’s sojourn on the island as a

compromise of artistic integrity rather than a comparatively

clear endorsement of the ideal manifestation of a socialist

ethic.

In fact, the island sequence figures as Van Weyden’s

ultimate triumph over Larsen’s materialist individualism in

its blend (sentimentalized though it is) of humanistic

idealism and practical action. Van Weyden and Brewster’s

eventual escape from the island, essentially the successful

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revolt against Larsen’s tyrannical self-interest through a

socialistic seizure of his capital, is only accomplished by

collaborative action. But for all its emphasis on mutual

dependency, the both of the respective roles are given

conspicuous attention as collective and individual acts.

Van Weyden’s awareness of his own strength appears in

contrast to Brewster’s dependence, while Brewster’s

assistance during the erection of the mast reflects her

individual contribution and Van Weyden’s concurrent

dependency upon her. The individual autonomy that Van

Weyden has acquired by increments throughout the novel thus

surpasses Larsen’s insofar as it generates meaning for the

physical hardship by aligning itself with the purpose of

providing for the self and community.35 Thus, the natural

tendency toward strife in the individual, still present even

in the age of Spencerian industrial societies as it is in

35 London revisits this theme with a curious blend of Larsen’s physical power and Van Weyden’s altruistic exertions in his short story, “South of the Slot.” In that work, the protagonist Drummond-Totts ultimately merges with the unionized laborers in the climactic struggle, in which Bill Totts uses his superior physical strength to assist in strike action. Indeed, he is recognized as the champion of the crowd, fusing the individual’s strength to the group’s collective action at precisely the moment needed for the combatants to gain their objective.

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Van Weyden’s knowledge of his power to kill a bull seal, is

satisfied and given direction in a meaningful endeavor

encompassing but also extending beyond the needs and desires

of the individual. The implicit posture of the novel is,

therefore, one that recognizes the need for harmonious

balance between the individual’s contentious nature and his

simultaneous need of assistance if he is to enjoy any mode

of existence over and above that of animalistic “motion,” to

use Larsen’s words.

Earle Labor has noted London’s habit of using his

financial success to help certain of the members of the

“submerged tenth,” the lowest social strata, by offering

food and housing for small numbers of parolees at his

estate.36 And as late as 1912, London held to his anti-

individualist convictions, as attested in a letter to a

critic who noted the individualistic strain running through

his work, in which London asserted emphatically, “I am not

an individualist.”37 Even his eventual break with the

36 Earle Labor, Jack London (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1974), 18.37 Jack London, “To Professor Philo M. Buck, Jr.” 5 November 1912. Letters from Jack London, ed. King Hendricks and Irving Shepard, (London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1966), 367.

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Socialist Party in 1916 was effected, not because London

relapsed into a romanticized vision of individual autonomy,

but rather because of his professed belief in the Party’s

failure to maintain its commitment to the class struggle to

terminate the primarily individualistic ideology of

capitalism.38 In his own life, therefore, as well as in his

literature, London demonstrates his capacity to synthesize

these perspectives into a coherent system of individual and

social behavior.

38 Ibid., “To Members Local,” 466-7.

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