< ~-n~n~q JACK LGNDON’S SHORT STORIES - __ Thesis for the Degree of P h.iD. MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY JAMES L MC CLINTOCK 1968 {Hi-I“ L I B R a y y L“, I ( Michigan Sta-2c: Uni» e:- slty r’ 1 This is to certify that the thesis entitled JACK LONDON'S SHORT STORIES presented by James I. McClintock has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph. Dudeqree in FHP’liSh 5m . Mm?“ Major professor DatejxlflvUXd 37; Mia? 0-169 ..—“4—..—. ‘5‘- _ -~ JACK LONDON'S SHORT STORIES By James IL McClintock A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English 1968 / l]. 1‘ (A L U .77 C) I; / ' ‘r‘ / ( ABSTRACT JACK LONDON'S SHORT STORIES by James I. McClintock Jack London's almost two hundred short stories have received little critical attention, a neglect which is one obstacle to a definitive appraisal of London's place in American letters since it is widely recognized that the author's best work is found in his short fiction. The recent publications of a Jack London bibliography, his letters and an account of the impact of his Klondike experiences upon his fiction have made a study of London's short stories feasible. Nevertheless, Jack London's complex life, the exasperatingly uneven artistry of his fiction and the poverty of analysis of both his stories and the genre in general from 1900 to 1920 create problems for the critic. The first third of this study focuses upon the first three years of London's literary life, from 1898-1902, when he learned the craft of short fiction and crystalized his literary theory. He studied magazine fiction and short story handbooks to learn form and technique at a time when critics were asking for more dramatic fiction and prais- ing Rudyard Kipling. The first three volumes of London's short stories reveal his gradual acquisition of form and technique and his debt to Kipling's example. Literary critics were, at the same time, reacting hf James I. McClintock against both Zolaesque "realism" and sentimental romance. They approved of fiction which combined harsh honesty with idealism. Responding to these critics, London committed himself to stories which combined the "strong truths" of "actuality" with "ideals" and found in Herbert Spencer's Philosophy_g§_Style a "scientific" literary method for under- taking this didactic mission. The second third of this study examines London's Northland fiction, written from 1898-1908, in whiCh London pitted "spirit-groPing," ideal- ized protagonists against the "actuality" of the Arctic wasteland. The explicit theme of the Malemute Kid series is that a code practicing, rational man can achieve mastery over, or accommodation with, a hostile environment. The implicit theme, however, is that when men venture into ' rationality fails to sustain humanly satisfying values. the "unknown,' The stories which follow these explore more ironic and tragic themes; and, literarily, London's exploration of the non-rational by invoking the violent, the death-dealing and the grotesque, demands limited protagonists and a mythOpoeic prose. The last third of this work falls into two sections. The first, emphasizing the years from 1906-1912, discusses London's artistic decline. During these years, London produced some South Seas stories that portray mechanical misery in a diseased environment but which are meant to return to a theme of mastery-~this time collective, racial mastery. At the same time, he wrote a few socialist or social comment stories which also were meant to affirm positive values. Artistic weaknesses flaw them. Gradually incapacitated by his phiIOSOphical pessimism and other James I. McClintock personal problems, London turned to pot-boilers characterized by inconsequential themes, slapstick humor, sentimentality and bitterness. From 1912 through 1915, London wrote no stories. The second part of this last section examines a group of Hawaiian stories that London wrote in 1916, which are consciously based upon Jungian and Freudian themes and symbolism. London's reading of Carl Jung's ngchologyugf the Unconscious, in particular, rekindled his interest in the genre. These last stories repeat a recurring pattern that emerges from all London's fiction: He experienced an initial enthusiasm at having discovered a scientifically justifiable rationale for believing in humanly sustaining values; then a sober realization of human limitations coming from an awareness that death can be understood but not conquered; and, finally, a bitter sense of futility to which he submitted. Preface The publication within the past three years of a complete Jack London bibliography, an edition of London's letters, a new biography and an account of London's experiences in the Klondike and their impact upon his fiction, are testimony to a renewed academic interest in a writer who is often dismissed by critics as a pseudo-intellectual, pOpular writer who sacrificed his artistic integrity for commercial rewards. Although there is no aspect of London's life and work that does not need more extensive biographical, textual and analytical study, the new publications promise that there will be a time when a balanced portrait of Jack London's complex life and exasperatingly uneven artistry can be drawn. At present, there is no full-length, comprehensive treatment of London's fiction available. One substantial Obstacle to a definitive appraisal of London's place in American letters has been the critical neglect of his almost two hundred short stories which were the commercial and artistic staple of his writing career. Other than "To Build a Fire," they remain relatively untouched and unknown. London scholarship has focused upon London's biography and the turn of the century American intellectual background tolls thought which have been employed primarily to illuminate the writer's longer fiction. Since it is a critical cliche (justified or not) that London's best work lies in the short stories collected into nineteen volumes, the inattention is surprising. The general objective of this study, then, is to draw critical attention to London's short stories by describing the most important iii characteristics of the entire canon and by evaluating individual, but representative, stories. Because the publication dates of the collections of stories are misleading, I have felt an obligation to give a sense of chronological sequence. And because the canon is a mixture of serious and lightdweight fiction (a mixture which can occur in a single story as well), I have attempted to distinguish the commercial elements of London's themes, motifs, techniques and forms from the more artistic. This latter task has been more unuble- some than one would expect since not only have London's stories been neglected but also the short story genre, in general, during the first two decades of this century. Both the papular and the "literary" story have received but little scholarly attention. An additional major objective of this paper is to argue the thesis that, rather than commercial considerations, the diverse quality of London's fiction is the product of the author's psychological responses to philosophical problems. The objectives of this dissertation, however, do not admit to simple generalizations, so perhaps it is best to characterize the contents of the individual chapters. In a study that attempts to describe and evaluate so many stories of so protean a nature, no controlling thesis is adequate. Rather, it is best to break down the easy generalizations that have been made about his fiction and to suggest a more complex understanding of London's art. "Chapter I" describes London's literary apprenticeship which was undertaken principally from 1898 to 1903. During this time, he iv accomplished several things: First, he studied the magazines to learn what subject matter was finding a market and what techniques and forms would be suitable for his purposes. He learned the "tricks" involved in writing marketable fiction, but discovered that he was interested in serious fiction which artistically brought "strong truths" to his audience. Since Rudyard Kipling was the most popular and respected contributor to American magazines at this time and since London felt an affinity for his themes as well as an admiration for his skill, London took him as a model. The direction in Kipling's fiction and that of the magazine stories in general was towards "dramatic" short stories. London's first serious fiction, found in his early volumes of Alaskan stories, reflects his growing awareness and use of the skills which Kipling and other practitioners employed to write the dramatic short story. Satisfied with what he learned and prediSposed to be more interested in theme than in technique, London never signi— ficantly altered his form or techniques. The virtues and limitations in what he learned are the formal virtues and limitations found in his entire canon. "Chapter II" discusses the same period of time as the first chapter but analyzes London's understanding of literary theory-~primarily, in the terminology of the times, the relationship of "realism" and "romance." Magazine critics of the time often argued that the best fiction would somehow combine both realism and romance, and London reaponded to their arguments. He concluded that quality fiction depicts a harsh external reality but combines an honest materialism with subjectivity. Powerful emotions were no less real than material objects. While he equated materialism with the anti-human, he equated the subjective reSponse with idealism. In addition to this magazine criticism, London's imagination was captured by Herbert Spencer's Philosophy 2f Stylg_which emphasized that literary techni- que facilitates the communication of forceful ideas and emotions. Together, magazine criticism and the PhilosoPhy 2f_Style served as the basis for London's theory of composition. "Chapter III" analyzes the Malemute Kid series of Alaskan stories (which drew the initial critical attention to London's fiction) in which London attempted to combine realism and romance, or, in magazine terminology, "actuality" and "ideals." London associates the brutal Alaskan landscape with "actuality" and the Kid's re3ponse to it with "ideals." London's explicit theme for these stories is an optimistic affirmation of man's power to conquer actuality. However, the implicit theme, rooted in London's personality and philosophical prOpensities, contradicts his optimism. The stories that argue that man is powerful and can control his fate through the exercise of thought wedded with action are, finally, morally confused and artistically feeble. The idealized Malemute Kid, with whom London identified, deteriorates as a convincing character and appears in only two stories of exceptional merit: "The White Silence" and "An Odyssey of the North." In both these stories he is initiated into a consciousness of personal ineffectuality and a knowledge of an uncontrollable, incompre- vi hensible universe. In the series as a whole, the ideal and the actual are never bonded and remain an emulsion. The drift of these stories, however, is towards a dominance of naturalistic truth. The explicit theme of mastery metamorphosizes into a more compelling implicit theme of failure. "Chapter IV" examines Alaskan stories written primarily between 1903 and 1908 which emphasize the tragedy of the human condition. These, the best of Jack London's short stories, continue in the tradi- tion of "An Odyssey of the North," but instead of portraying a neutral universe perceived with shock by an ideal man, the universe becomes more unfathomable, actively hostile and irrational. Unlike the Malemute Kid who dominated through intelligence and rational action, the characters in these stories, who are often Indians or imperfect whites, are deficient intellectually, morally, physically or socially and become victims to their illusions. Only a partial victory is awarded to racial heroes obeying "natural law" or to those who perceive futility and either rebel or accept their insignificance. In this world of pain, violence and death, subjectivity is no longer sustaining but instead joins the individual with destructive, malign, non-rational cosmic forces. London's interest has turned from an Optimistic belief in rationality to a fascination with individual and cosmic horror. "Chapter V" discusses three general categories of London's short stories which were written predominantly from 1906 to 1912: South Seas tales, socialist fiction and pot-boilers. The South Seas stories pursue, inartistically, the extreme pessimism of the last of London's Alaskan stories. In these, sadists struggle for mastery in a diseased vii environment. A flippant tone and carelessness with plot, theme and characterizations suggest that London could no longer manage his pessimism. The socialist stories attempt to resurrect an affirmation of life, but they are few and often flawed. Finally, unable to sustain a satisfying view of life, London reacted cynically and retreated into the trivial and wrote for money alone. The Smoke Bellew and A_Son g: Eggh§gg stories, written in 1911 and 1912, mark the end of London's declining interest in the short story genre. Until the last year of his life, he demonstrated no ability to write good fiction again and no interest in pursuing the short story genre that had served him so well. "Chapter VI" analyzes a series of Hawaiian short stories which London wrote in the last year of his life. Although he had not found new techniques and forms, the technical competence the stories exhibit reveals that London's motive in writing them.was not purely commercial. It is surprising that these stories have been ignored by the critics because they show a renewed interest not only in the short story and writing well but in ideas. London had been reading Jung and Freud; and, in particular, Jung's Psychology gf_the Unconscious rekindled his willingness to pursue the themes that had produced his best fiction. As a group, the stories show what had been the recurrent pattern in London's thought: an initial enthusiasm based upon his intuition that he had found a scientifically justifiable rationale for sustaining humanly satisfying values; a sober realization of human limitations coming from an awareness that death can be understood but not conquered; and a final, bitter sense of futility. viii It is pleasurable to acknowledge the debts of gratitude incurred while preparing this thesis. A.Michigan State University Graduate College of Arts and Letters Fellowship, awarded for the 1965-1966 academic year, afforded me the time and resources to undertake the basic research, and a fellowship awarded by the Michigan State University English Department, for the winter of 1968, permitted me to complete the manuscript. The Department of American Thought and Language, at the same institution, approved a leave of absence so that I could finish this thesis without the pressures of a demanding teach- ing schedule. It is towards individuals, however, that I feel most grateful. Professors Sam S. Baskett, Clyde R. Henson, Lawrence Babb and Elwood P. Lawrence, all of the Michigan State University English Department, in particular, have been most patient and helpful. Professor Lawrence for many years has encouraged me with a kind understanding. Professor Babb provided me with a model of classroom integrity and eloquence as well as serving on the committee for this thesis. Professor Henson guided me through the thickets of a year-long independent study of late nineteenth and early twentieth century American prose, in addition to serving on my thesis committee. Professor Baskett, whose intelligent and insightful analyses of Jack London's prose provoked my early interest in London's fiction, sustained that interest while I was his apprentice by sharing his knowledge and wisdom and by indulging me with more time and patience than I had a right to expect from a thesis director. Others associated with the Michigan State University English Department, particularly Messers. Theodore Harakas, Robert Keesey and Richard Sandow, ix have aided me by discussing the ambiguities that invariably confront anyone trying both to capture the ineffable in prose and to meet the reaponsibilities of logic. In certain significant ways, this thesis is a product of col- laboration; and to my family, especially my wife, Sally, I owe the largest debt. q e-‘I Mel Table of Contents Chapter Page I Apprenticeship in Short Story Form: 1898-1902.. ..... ... 1 II Apprenticeship in Literary Theory: 1898-1902........... 49 III The Malemute Kid: Ideals and Actuality..... ............ 81 IV The Best Stories: 1898-1908.. ..... ..... ............... . 111 V The Decline: 1906-1911................................. 165 VI Rebirth: l916.................. ......... ............... 209 Selected Bibliography...................... ....... ........... 255 Chapter I Apprenticeship in the Short Story Form: 1898-1902 In the summer of 1898, Jack London, just returned from a sixteen month trip to the Klondike and beset by family and financial reSponsi— bilities, committed himself to an energetic apprenticeship in the art of the short story. The apprenticeship was short and successful: a little more than six months later in January, 1899, he published his first Northland story, "To the Man on Trail."l Actually, however, this six month period was just a furiously eclectic initial stage in his apprenticeship, and he continued his study of the short story form and technique for several years. This continuing and more directed and controlled quest for an adequate form is evidenced in the changes seen in his first three collections of Alaskan stories: .Ih§_§g§_gf_ t_h_e_ Half (1901), The §_9_c_1_o_f His Fathers (1901) and Children g t_he_ Frost (1902).2 10verland Monthll, N. s., xxxm, 36-40. 2The dates of publication of London's stories are sometimes mis— leading. During this period from 1899-1902, he also wrote other stories: those collected in Tales g£_the Fish Patrol (1905) were nearly completed before London went to England in the summer of 1902 [see Letters from Jack London, ed. King Hendricks and Irving Shepard (New York, 1965), 140]. In this case, since these children's stories exhibit no important technical differences from the more serious stories in the early Alaskan tale volumes, they have been omitted from this discussion. And since the techniques employed in his fourth collection of Alaskan stories, Thg_Faith gfhygg_(l904), show no changes from the earlier volumes, Children 2f_thg_Frost is the logical choice as the volume which illustrates the conclusion of London's search for short story form and technique. 2. Between the apprenticeship years 1898 and 1902, London accomplished several things: He studied the magazines to learn what subject matter was finding a market and what techniques and forms would be suitable for his purposes. Kipling was at that time the most widely heralded short fiction writer, and London studied that writer's methods and apprOpriated them as his own. The direction in Kipling's fiction, and that of the magazine stories in general, was towards dramatic short stories, a direction found in London's own stories during the first four years of his career. Satisfied with what he learned, he never significantly altered his form or technique. Late in his life, London wrote to an aSpiring writer advising that "success as a writer" depends upon "a study and knowledge of literature as it is commercially produced today."1 Probably because it had been his own method for crashing the gates of fame, he was fond of advising young hapefuls to study magazine fiction before submitting manuscripts. His daughter, Joan, writes that during his apprenticeship in the fall of 1898 he "pored over the magazines whose acceptances he coveted."2 London has left no record of the specific publications he studied, but it seems fair to assume there were many and that they were diverse in what they published. Certainly he studied, if we accept the accuracy 1Letters (to Esther Anderson; Dec. 11, 1914), 437. _ 2Joan London, Jack London and His Times: An unconventional Biography (New York, 1939), p. 195. 3. of Joan London's observation, the stories in at least the thirteen periodicals in which he found berths for his own stories during 1899 and 1900.1 In addition he submitted articles to magazines that would have brought him in contact with discussions of literary technique and theory: for example, The Bookman, The Review 2f Reviews, The Editor and The Writer. Nor were these the only magazines that he scrutinized during his first two years of successful publi- cation. He placed articles in other periodicals: Cosmopolitan Magazine, Home Magazine, The Wave and Junior Munsey, among others. It does not seem improbable, then, that Jack London took his own advice for attaining successful authorship and acquired a "knowledge of literature as it is commercially produced today." During the fig ge_siecle decade, a young literary hopeful did not have to come from a home that had a private library or from a college education to feel that literary energy that was being generated. The nineties was experiencing an information explosion that we think characteristic of our time and place. Weekly and monthly magazines achieved record circulations and flooded America with serialized novels and short fiction of all literary persuasions. Even the news- papers and their Sunday supplements brought fiction and literary commentary into the lives of the most casual readers. The short story 1Overland Monthly, Black Cat Magazine, The Owl, Conkey's Magazine, zggth's Companion, Christmas Wave, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Weekly, §;_§;_Sunday Examiner, McClure's Magazine, Outing Magazine, Ainslie's Magazine and The News. had become big business: By the later 'nineties the short story had become so established an article of mer- chandise that the production of it became a recognized industry with numberless workers. The coming of the fifteen-cent magazine and the Sunday supplement stimulated greatly the quantity of the output. By 1900 the short- story stream had become a flood and syndicates had been established to handle it.1 In the proliferation of magazine prose the short story found its most viable medium; indeed, short stories and magazines joined in a mutual dependency that became profitable for writer and publisher alike. No wonder that the young Jack London believed that "the short story is growing in importance in modern literature...It almost seems that the novel is destined to become extinct" and decided to link his fortune to the popularity of the genre.2 "Success as a writer" not only depended upon an awareness of the trends in commercial fiction, London maintained, but also "a knowledge of life."3 Fortunately for him, the materials of his life coincided with the magazine taste for adventurous experiences. Before trekking to the Klondike, he had adventured with the Oyster Pirates on San Francisco Bay, ridden the rails, hiked with Coxey's Army and sailed aboard the sealer Sophia Sutherland as an able-bodied seaman. This 1Fred Lewis Pattee, The Development 2§_the American Short Story (New York, 1923), p. 337. 2Letters (to Cloudesley Johns; April 22, 1899), 33. 3Letters, 437. 5. last experience sponsored his first literary success, "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan,’ which won first prize in a San Francisco Call contest in 1893 when Jack was only seventeen. Like the content of much of his following fiction, the story is autobiographical and capitalizes upon Special information embodied in a use of technical jargon which classifies the author as "authentic," entitling him to comment upon an unusual experience. As he often would later, London chose to identify himself with a masculine group existing outside polite society. The substance of the piece is a dramatic incident in a natural, crisis situation which appeals to a love of action and adventure.1 Five years after the publication of "Typhoon,' when he began his intensive study of magazine fiction, what he foundmust have struck a responsive chord in his mind and heart. Anyone who turns to the magazines to acquire "a knowledge of literature as it [was] produced" in 1898 and 1899 can not avoid having adventure stories forced upon his attention. A glance at the magazine contents at this time attests to the overwhelming trend in public taste and literary expression for aggressive, adventurous materials; they dominate page after page of the leading big circulation magazines: Hagper's Monthly, Scribner's, Atlantic Monthly, Century, Cosmopolitan, ZMCCIure's and Youth's Companion. Frank Luther Mott notes in ézflistogy 1"Typhoon" is reprinted in Dutch Courage and Other Stories (New York, 1924), pp. 21-31. .g§_American Magazines that With the coming of the Spanish-American War, trumpets blared and swords flashed in the pages of the magazines. This effect came not from war material alone, but from the swash- buckling stories which were the fashion of the moment. Even a conservative magazine like Harper's Monthly felt reader pressure for tales of violence, action, and insurgent masculinity during London's apprenticeship. Characteristic of Harper's fiction at this time, for example, were westerns by Garland, Wister and Remington, including Remington's "Sun-Down" series, surrounded by articles about Cuba, Mexico and the arctic.2 Scribner's, too, indi- cated its participation in the vogue by publishing Crane's "The Open Boat" which is almost inconspicuous among the other tales in the issue because of the surface qualities of crisis and outdoor adventure it shares with them.3 The Atlantic, drOpping in circulation, attempted to regain its readers with stories like "Where Angels Fear to Tread," a dialect tale of shipboard cruelty and mutiny, and "The Commodore" whose title character "rode the waves like a cork and climbed the rigging like a cat," diSplaying superhuman strength.4 Century joined the other major magazines with its "Heroes of the Deep" stories about 11v (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), p. 401. 2xcvn (1898). 3xx1 (June, 1897), 728-40. 4Morgan Robertson, LXXXII (Aug., 1898), 206-20; Justine Ingersoll, IXXXII (Aug., 1898), 235. 7. Glouchester fishermen which were part of a larger series entitled Heroes gfhgga9231 Cosmgpolitan printed "The Confessions of a Sea- faring Blackmailer" and war stories such as Crane's "The Woof of the Thin Red Threads" (later retitled "The Price of the Harness" in Wounds iggghg Raga) set in Cuba and Charles B. Lewis' similar but weaker "The Story of His First Battle."2 The Overland Monthly, London's first consistent market, Specialized in stories and articles featuring outdoor life in the West, and more than any other magazine printed articles capitalizing upon the Klondike gold mania.3 ,All major publications participated in the worship of active strength and virile adventure. The materials of London's life auto- matically blended with the materials he studied in the magazines, and eventually he would find markets for his stories in all these magazines. But it was McClure's Magazine which would publish some of London's best stories like "Grit of Women," "The Law of Life," and "The God of His Fathers" and offer him an editorial position, that most consistently printed the kinds of materials which would make lHerbert Ward, LVI (JulyeAug., 1898), 364-77, 517-25. 2John R. Spears, XXVIII (April, 1900), 667-68; XXVI (Dec., 1898), 164-72; XXV (June, 1898), 216-19. 3For a selective bibliography of Alaskan articles appearing in this periodical, see "Alaskan Articles that have Appeared in The Overland," Overland Monthly, N. 8., XXX (Oct., 1897), 382. London famous. To demonstrate how thoroughly the magazines were saturated with danger, violence and individualistic action set in frontier and exotic locales, one need only examine the McClure's pages in the winter of 1898-1899 when London began to publish his Alaskan tales. Interest centered around the Spanish-American War, an interest allied with larger issues of jingoistic imperialism and masculine adventure in the out-of-doors, both preoccupations of London. Racism is blatantly but unselfconsciously apparent in "500 Years of the Anglo Saxon," an article "documented" with charts showing the "inevitable" domination by the white man.1 Adjacent to this article is a companion short story, "The Fore-runners of Empire," set in the South Pacific, which could have been written by Londonhad he been ready to treat race conflict in the South Seas.2 In the February issue appeared the most notorious statement of white imperialism and racism-Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" (March, 1899; 190-93). The jingoistic spirit was fed by war articles in these issues, typified by Crane's "Marines Under Fire at Guantanamo" (332-36) and Stephen Bonsal's "The Day of Battle: Stories Gathered in the Field" (223-31). Simultaneously, Alfred Mahan's The War gn_the Seas and Its 1George B. Waldron, x11 (Dec., 1898), 185-88. When convenient the following references to this magazine will be included in the text. 2Mortimer o. Wilcox, x11 (Dec., 1898), 189-92. Lessons appeared monthly.l Outdoor life and rugged masculinity provide subjects for the bulk of the remaining pages, focusing upon articles like Garland's "Hitting the Trail" which extols the virtues of a return to nature to replenish a spirit dissipated by civilization (298-304) and his Indian adventure story "Rising Wolf--Ghost Dancer" (Jan., 1899; 241-48). Garland, moreover, shows interest in the new frontier, the Klondike, in his Northland poems celebrating manhood, "The Trail to the Golden North" (April, 505-07). This list of articles and stories from McClure's (similar to lists which could be compiled from most of the major periodicals) glorifying individualism, strength and race identity is extensive. Often these stories are weighted more heavily with the ridiculous than the sublime especially since adult taste had become indistinguish- able from the adolescent. The adult audiences of magazines like McClure's, for example, could not seem to satiate their hunger for stories like Ray Stannard Baker's "A Story of the Fire Patrol" (Nov., 19-22) and JaSper Ewing, Jr.'s serial Adventures gf_aj&ain Dispatcher (Nov., 44-48), more suitable for children. And "a boy's story," Frank Norris noted, "must now be all about the doings of men, fighters preferably, man-slayers, terrible fellows full of blood and fury..."2 London would reSpond to this merger of adult and adolescent imagi- nation, but often rise above the decline in public taste: for 1x11, 110—18, 231-40, 353-62, 470-80, 527-34. 2The Responsibilities gf_the Novelist (Boar's Head edition; Cambridge, Mass., 1962), p. 238. 10. example, "To Build a Fire," his most widely known story, was origi- nally published in Youth's Companion in 1902 but later issued with some modifications as an adult story in 1910.1 If these adventurous materials dominated the magazines, one figure represented to the reading public the best that this type of fiction could offer--Rudyard Kipling. Following the 1887 publication of Plain Tales from the Hills, Kipling's fame in America had been immediate, and during the nineties, his work was appearing in every 2 Robert Louis Stevenson, until his death major American magazine. in 1894, had been the darling of the magazine story readers, and although his stories and imitations of them continued to be popular for more than two decades, the public gave its first loyalty to Kipling. They were obsessed by Kipling. F. L. Mott writes that "at the turn of the century Kipling was a Colossus bestriding this narrow wodd of letters."3 Fred Lewis Pattee had noted earlier that after Mark TWain and his followers had treated "the sweep and vastness of the American Frontier, and its coarseness and its democratic abandon" came "the Kipling school, raucous, masculine, far-flung in 1Lost Face (New York), pp. 63-98. 2In 1899, at the height of London's apprenticeship, Doubleday and MbClure, Co. published Thg_Works gf_Rudyard Kipling which includes: Plain Tales from the Hills, Soldiers Three, The Story 2f_the Gadsbys, 12 Black and White, Under the Deodars, The Phantom 'Rickshaw, Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories, Life's Handicap, Beipg_Stories 2f Mine Own Pegple, The Light that Failed, Mapy Inventions, The Juggle Book, The Dayls Work, From Sea 29 Spa. 3Histogy gf_American Magazines, IV, p. 33. 11. its materials."1 Kipling's success was meteoric but solidly establish- ed, and Kipling imitators fill the magazines with materials that London, too, would use--race, exotic locales, masculine characters who were do-ers rather than dreamers, who knew "the repes" of their trades.2 The MbClure's issues, that London probably studied, are again representative of this Kipling mania. During the mid and late nineties, McClure's printed Kipling's "Quigierern" (an Eskimo story), "The Ship that Found Herself," "In the Rukh" (a reprint of the first Mowgli story), "Slaves of the Lamp," and two serials: Captain's Courageous and Stalkyand‘gg.3 This last serial began in the November 1898 issue, and in the same issue and the December one following it appeared W. A. Fraser's "Raja Singh and Other Elephants" and "A Tiger in the Tea Gardens" which are typical Kipling imitations.4 London, who would be called the "American Kipling" by early reviewers, returned from the Klondike, where he had read Kipling's Seven Seas, already an ardent admirer of the Englishman.5 In the following years he could defend Kipling against his attackers and promote an interest in Kipling whenever he could. Perhaps on his 1American Short Story, p. 263. 2For a brief comparison of materials and themes shared by Kipling and London see Abraham Rothberg, "The House that Jack Built: A Study of Jack London" (unpublished dissertation, Columbia University, 1952), pp 0 363-65 0 3v (Nov. 1895), 552-61; v1 (March, 1896), 328-37; v11 (June, 1896), 23-39; 1x (Aug., 1897), 837-59; VIII-IX (Nov., 1896-May, 1897); XII-XIII (Dec., 1898-June, 1899). 4x11, 40-44, 176-78, reSp. 5Richard O'Connor, Jack London: A Biography (Boston, 1964), p. 91. 12. arrival in San Francisco, penniless from his adventure in Alaska and the Yukon, he saw the Kipling window display at Doxy's book store which a Bookman contributor noticed was the center of literary conver- sation in June, 1898.1 If London did, it must have confirmed his resolve to seek the same fame. At any rate, Kipling had done what London hoped to emulate--achieved an immediate and unrivaled recogni- tion by writing stories based upon his special knowledge of the remote areas of the world and the lives of men who fought for survival against other men and their environment in order to perpetuate their race. Jack London did not immediately realize, however, that the .Alaskan adventure short story would be his way to fame. During the fall and winter of 1898, he desperately tried to get into print. He ignored Northland short fiction, and sounded the market for popular materials and genres of lighter weight. At this time, the initial stage of his apprenticeship, he dashed off and submitted an assortment of manuscripts including jokes, triolets and essays as well as stories. A few of them found their way into print: "Eggs Without Salt," a joke; "He Chortled with Glee," and "If I Were God for One Hour," poems; and several essays capitalizing upon the information he acquired in the Klondike--"From Dawson to the Sea," "Through the Rapids on the Way to the Klondike," and others.2 He submitted a 21,000 word serial to Youth's 1v11 (June, 1898), 282. 2Town Topics (Aug. 31, 1899); Town Tgpics (April 20, 1899); Town ,Ifimigg (May 11, 1899); Buffalo Express (June 4, 1899); Home Magazine (June, 1899). 13. Companion but it was rejected, and he began to rely on short stories as his most likely vehicle to success.1 When he began to concentrate on stories in the fall of 1898, committing himself to making a living through fiction, he recognized that he was lacking in the literary skills that could shape his ‘materials into dramatic fiction. In November, he wrote to the "Lily Maid," Mable Applegarth, revealing his intention to acquire technical skills: I shall not be ready for any flights till my machine is perfected, and to that perfection I am now applying myself. Until then, to the deuce with themes. I shall subordinate thought to technique till the latter is mastered; then I shall do vice versa.2 Ideas and his preoccupation with Alaskan adventure would have to wait until he had found the "tricks" that made a story marketable. "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan," published five years before he chose fiction as his vocation, is a useful example of London's rough writing skill which needed to be harnessed by technique. In "Typhoon" he may have instinctively turned to adventure, but the account is an overly verbal report of an unusual incident. At times he shows power, as in the following passage which is often quoted to document London's early capacity for using colorful detail to achieve evocative effects: 1O'Connor, p. 110. 2Letters (Nov. 27, 1898), 4. Jack haped to marry Mabel, but her indecisive personality and her mother's desire for a better match interferred. She was his first literary confidant with whom he Shared his early enthusiasms and was the model for Ruth in Martin .§§§p_(New York, 1909). 14. A soft light emanated from the movement of the ocean. Each mighty sea, all phosphorescent and glowing with the tiny lights of myriads of animalculae, threatened to overwhelm us with a deluge of fire.1 This leaves a false impression, however, since his early delight in words overwhelms the brief, ten page, story and is more character- istically trite than fresh and specific: The waves were holding high carnival, perform- ing the strangest antics, as with wild glee they danced along in fierce pursuit--now up, now down, here, there, everywhere, until some great sea of liquid green with its milk-white crest of foam rose from the ocean's throbbing bosom and drove the others from view. (QC, 24-25). These descriptions of the ocean are the piece's raison d'etre--there is no characterization, no concrete action, no theme. The point of view is an awkward and undramatic third person plural, observer- participant. He had reason to criticize himself for want of technical skill. Determined to perfect his "machine," Jack began like a first year medical student...to dissect the stories in the current magazines, taking them apart, tracing their nerves and sinews, and striving to reproduce the articulation of their joints.2 What he produced as the result of this study are short story equiva- lents to the light weight jokes and poems which were his introduction 1Dutch Courage, 28-29. 2Joan London, p. 169. 15. into print.1 Like his autobiographical hero, Martin Eden, he learned the "formula" for successful stories: The formula consists of three parts: (1) a pair of lovers are jarred apart; (2) by some deed or event they are reunited; (3) marriage bells. The third part was an unvarying quantity, but the first and second parEs could be varied an infinite number of times. He did place one of these formula stories, "In the Time of Prince Charley," in Conkeyfs Home Journal.3 In it, the first person pro- tagonist, "Griffin Risingham, captain to our good king, George II," and guardian to the captive Prince Charley, falls in love with a noble Highland beauty (1). A dashing "black-bearded Highlander" interrupts the lovers one night, embraces the lady Aline, releases Prince Charley, and departs with the willing Aline to France. Not until a year later, while "in France on a secret mission," does Griffin accidentally and jealously encounter the bearded antagonist who, with the proper suSpense, reveals that he is Aline's brother. "What a fool I had been!" exclaims Griffin, "Would she, could she ever for— give me? (3)." She does, of course. The story has villains, heroes, 1The bulk of the London manuscripts is in the Huntington library. Only a few of these stories found their way into print. Nevertheless, the few published stories are helpful in determining the nature of London's apprenticeship and will be discussed as representative of those stories written before he mined the Klondike vein. Publication dates of the stories are unreliable as guides to dates of composition since London often did not publish stories until years after writing them. My information concerning dating comes primarily from.an investigation of the Letters which contains a large quantity of business correspondence, as well as personal letters, in which London discussed work in progress. 2Martin Eden (Rinehart edition; New York, 1956), p. 226. 3V (Sept. 1, 1899), 1-3. This story is uncollected and undoubtedly was one of the stories which London wrote early in his apprenticeship, deepite the fact that it was published after he had written and published stories of a higher quality. l6. duels, high passion and noble sentiment--all highly marketable. London, like Martin Eden, had learned that these stories: should never be tragic, should never end un- happily, and should never contain beauty of language, subtlety of thought, nor real deli- cacy of sentiment. Sentiment it must contain, plenty of it, pure and noble, of the sort that in my early youth had brought applause [from the gallery]. This story demonstrates that London was sensitive to the stock forms that were appearing in the magazines. But it also reveals that he was not yet aware of new narrative methods and short story princi- ples. For instance, "In the Time of Prince Charley" is not really a short story at all but, instead, a condensed historical romance novel with a large list of characters, multiple and complex incidents, lengthy explanations of the passage of time and changes of place, and a first person narrator who sometimes assumes omniscient duties. Another early story, "A Thousand Deaths" which appeared in Black Cat Magazine, confirms London's sensitivity to the literary fads at the turn of the century.2 Black Cat Magazine held prize competitions in.story writing and became famous for a stock "Black Cat story" whiCh emphasized the bizarre, the weird, and the grotesque. In January, 1899, London won a place for his story. Like "In the Time of Prince Charley" it testifies to the sincerity of London's remark that he would "subordinate thought to technique." The story is a first person account lMartin Eden, pp. 225-26. 2(May, 1899), 33-42. 17. of a young seaman from "good, English stock" who had left an unloving father after committing "the wildest and most audacious folly" and years later is rescued from drowning in San Francisco Bay by his father who no longer recognizes him (33). The father, a mad scientist, takes his son to a South Sea island and uses him as a subject to per- form experiments in the suSpension of life (hence, the title "A Thousand Deaths"). Eventually, the young seaman escapes his mad father by deve10ping a scientific technique of his own which disinte— grates living tissue, leaving just a whiff of ozone. With it, he murders his father. "A Thousand Deaths" capitalizes upon pages of pseudo-scientific information, unrelieved sentiment for the unloved and handsome hero, and a taste br horror.l Although pompous in its language, a prepensi- ty noted in the early "Typhoon" and prominent in much of London's later, more serious fiction, the story is fairly controlled. It is limited to depicting two economically drawn characters (if stereo- types), a few related incidents, and has an even tone. Nevertheless, it is obviously hack work. During this initial stage of London's apprenticeship, then, London produced some poems, jokes, articles and stories that can only be described as hack work, corresponding in form, matter and manner to the popular, light items appearing in the magazines he had been study- 1See also "The Rejuvenation of Major Rathbone," Conkey's Home Journal (Nov. 7, 1899), 5-6, 29, for a similar science fiction story Written during this period. It uses the fountain of youth convention. {“41 u». .. it ('1 I 18. ing. He learned that he could find editors willing to publish these pot-boilers. He had discovered the "trick" of successful authorship that would, at worst, tempt him to prostitute his art when he was capable of composing quality stories. There was, however, a change in his attitude, and he rebelled against the writing of low quality stories. After he had proved to himself and his friends that he could make money at his typewriter, he tired of these confections. London has Martin Eden write horror stories similar to “A Thousand Deaths," and the narrator describes Martin's disillusionment with them: ...his horror stories...he did not consider high work. To them they were frankly imagi- native and fantastic, though invested with all the glamour of the real, wherein lay their power. This investiture of the grotesque and impossible with reality, he looked upon as a trick--a skilful trick at the best. Great literature could not reside in such a field. Then Eden writes "Adventure," "Joy," and "The Wine of Life," his best work.2 And London goes from horror to adventure. Dissatisfied with reproducing stock forms, Jack London decided to attempt "great literature" that would compare favorably with the best stories appearing in the current periodicals. He had been praised by his friends as a professional, not an artist, and had written as such. He had acquired the stock techniques of others but had none of his own. He could imitate but not create. Therefore he began anew: 1See Chapter V for an analysis of London's pot-boilers. 2Martin Eden, pp. 212-13. 19. The farther I wandered from the beaten track, (I mean the proper trend of modern style and literary art), the more enconiums were heaped upon me--by my friends. And believe me, the darkness I strayed into was heartbreaking. Surely, I have since thought, they must have seen where I was blind. So I grew to distrust them, and one day, between four and five months ago, awoke to the fact that I was all wrong. Everything crumbled away, completely lost-- had no conception even of the relative values of the comma, colon, and semicolon. Since then have been digging. "Between four and five months ago" refers to the time when London had begun to write his Northland tales which appeared in the magazines throughout 1899 and would be collected into his first volume, The Son 2f.the Wolf, in April, 1900. This letter to Cloudesly Johns announces the beginning of the second stage of his apprenticeship, his quest for a "modern style and literary art" and his utilization of masculine adventure materials. While seeking a modern technique, he would incorporate important themes. The pattern of his development can be seen in the stories collected in The Son.gf_the Wolf, The God 2f_His Fathers and Children ngthe Frost. Fortunately, London began to "dissect the stories in the current magazines," to "dig" for a "modern style and literary art," at a time when a new consciousness of the short story as a genre was being expressed. Articles discussing the nature of the short story and Sometimes giving practical advice appeared side by side with the grow- ?lng number of stories in the periodicals. The specific articles 1Letters (to Cloudesley Johns; March 7, 1899), 19-20. . . ’15“ chi-Ltd . u ' v i .1: ‘1 _ _ ' n V' at: . “mutt d 9; -- h» ‘g\ ‘ s an...” 4'”... -‘P\ t“? . iv 'v 0 III 20. London encountered are unknown, but N. L. Goodrich's extensive bibliography of turn-of-the-century articles discussing fictional theory and technique demonstrates that there were so many that London, studying the magazines, could not have been unaware of them.1 Moreover, London, himself, contributed to magazines like The Editor, The Writer and Review gf_Reviews which emphasized discussion of fictional theory and techniques.2 The short story theoreticians were uniform in inveighing against the conception of the short story as merely a condensed novel, and London would reSpond to them, never again composing stories like "In the Time of Prince Charley." Brander Matthew's essay The Philosophy g£_the Short-Story was the most influential of the many that would appear and found its inspiration in Poe's famous dictum from his review of Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales to seek "unity of effect or impression."3 Others before Matthews had made the same plea; for example, the anonymous critic who wrote in 1869 that short story "construction is an art, far more so than is generally believed" because a story: has laws, and bears very nearly the same relationship to the novel that the song does to poetry, which always prOperly possesses one definite idea thrown into a compact, symmetrical form. Writers of short stories 1"Prose Fiction: A Bibliography," Bulletin gf_Bibliography, IV-V CJuly, 1906-Jan., 1908). 2"On the Writer's Philosophy of Life" (Nov., 1899); "The Question Of a Name" (Dec., 1900); and "Economics in the Klondike" (Jan., 1900), reap. 3New York, 1901. This essay originally appeared in the Oct., 1885 issue of Lippincott's Magazine. 21. cannot hope to attain success unless they pake this form of composition a profound study. But it was Matthews who was most responsible for reaching a wide audience in his advocacy of a short story which differed from a novel "chiefly in its essential unity of impression" acquired by dealing with "a single character, a single event, a single situation."2 Inspired by Matthews, writers of short story handbooks and manuals joined him in attempting to uncover the "laws" of the short story and combined scholarly competence in describing current fiction with quantities of prescriptive "do it yourself" advice for aspiring authors. For example, the first of these handbooks, Charles R. Barrett's Shggg S_tqu Writing. _A_ Practical Treatise 93 the A_r_t_ pf the Short Story, appeared in 1898 just as London began his serious study.3 It, like the deluge of handbooks which followed, begins with Matthews' assumptions, describes the kinds of stories appearing on the market, and goes on to argue that compression, unity, momentum and originality are the unique qualities found in the short story.4 lAppleton's Journal, I CMay 29), 282. 2Matthews , 15-16 . 3There is no evidence that London studied any specific handbook, although Joan London's statement that Jack "worked laboriously through books on style and structure" might indicate that he was aware of the handbooks in general. The handbooks do, however, summarize the techni- ques and theoretical arguments London was exposed to in the magazines and are, therefore, more convenient than the magazines as a vehicle for discussion. Barrett's handbook is the most convenient because of its date of publication and representative nature. 4For a bibliography of the best handbooks, see Pattee, pp. 337-338. For a satirical treatment of the handbooks, see F. L. Masson, "Simple, Isn't It?" Bookman, XLVIII (Feb., 1919), 709-711. F-4h41~*— . 22. This "single effect" advice, to distinguish short stories from novels, was not lost on London, although he naively tended to see the Observation of the time and place unities as a sufficient guard against diffusion. London picked up Matthew's statement that "the Short-story fulfills the three false unities of the French classic n1 drama [by showing] one action, in one place, on one day and applied it to an analysis of the short stories which were collected in his own first two volumes: Remember this--confine a short story within the shortest possible time-limit--a day, an hour, if possible--or, if, as sometimes with the best of short stories, a long period of time must be covered,--months--merely hint or sketch (inci- dently) the passage of time, and tell the story only in its crucial moments. Really, you know, development does not belong in the short story, but in the novel. The short story is a rounded fragment from life, a single mood, situation, or action. ...Take down and Open Son of the Wolf. Though several of them cover fairly long periods —of time-- the time is sketched and made subordinate to the final situation. You see, the situation is con- sidered primarily--"The Son of the Wolf" in beginning is hungry for woman, he goes to get one; the situation is how he got one. "The Priestly Prerogative" is the scene in the cabin--the rest is introductory, preliminary.2 "The Wife of a King"--not a good short story in any sense. "The Odyssey of the North"--covering a long period of time (the whole life of Naass) is ex- ploited in an hour and a half in Malemute Kid's cabin. lMatthew, p. 16. 2London oversimplifies--actually several cabins are involved, and this story does not have unity of place. 3London uses the plot from Kipling's "Three--and an Extra" (see below, p. 33) but expanded the characterizations so that there is <flmaracter development. The story is diffuse in its setting, time and characters . 23. Take down and open God 2f.His Fathers. First story, single situation. "Great Interrogation"--single situation in cabin where the whole past history of man and woman is exploited. And so on, to the last story, "Scorn of Women"--see how time is always sketched and situation is exploited--yet it is not a short story.2 But if London sought a unity of impression through an observation of the unities and by telling a story "only in its crucial moments" to avoid writing condensed novels, he did not immediately grasp the critics' entire message. In general, the short story theorists, and practitioners, too, like Howells, Aldrich and James, were reacting against digressive, expository stories that had their roots in Irving's famous conception of the short story: "For my part I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials."3y The handbook theorists rebelled against the looseness of structure inherent in Irving's idea and found in the practice of countless writers who followed him. It was common practice, before this renewed interest in the "well-made" story, for writers to have pages of digressions both as introductory material and as authorial observations inter- 8persed throughout the story. And London's early stories, despite his attempt to observe the unities, had more in common with the discursive 1The situation is the pitting of two white men's wills against an Indian's. 2Letters (to Anna Strunsky, Oct. 13, 1904), 163-164. He probably Objected to the "Scorn of Women" for the same reasons he objected to "The Priestly Prerogative"--the story has too many develOping characters, incidents and settings. 3Letter to his brother-in-law, 1824, as quoted in American Short Stcuies, ed. Eugene Current-Garcia and Walton R. Patrick (Chicago, 1964), pp. xiii-xiv. 24. story writers than with the new interest in economy. When London began dissecting the magazine fiction in order to find "the prOper trend of style and literary art" which led to the publication of the Northland stories, one of the first techniques he discovered was the use of the reliable, omniscient narrative point of view. He dropped the loose first person point of view that allowed his stories like "Typhoon," "In the Time of Prince Charley," "A Thousand Deaths" and "The Rejuvenation of Major Rathbone" to ramble in chronicle fashion and began to utilize more narrative control in the Alaskan tales. Switching to the third person narrator brought him into line with the most commonly used narrative method employed by his contemporaries.1 But with it, he inherited its legacy of authorial intrusion, even though writers were learning to restrict narrative privilege. Many of his stories, particularly in his first an essay-exemplum type of construction reminiscent of earlier writers who prefixed rambling sermons to their stories.2 In the long quotation above in which London discusses the unities, he unwittingly reveals that he considered "introductory, preliminary" materials organic rather than supplementary, unlike later writers who tried to eliminate the ' impedimenta. He thought of his short stories as having a block form 1Austin Mg'Wright, The American Short Story ip_the TWenties (Chicago, 1961), p. 280. 2The following are the essay-exemplum stories in the first two ‘volumes: "The Son of the Wolf," SW, 21-51; "In a Far Country," SW, 69-101; "The Wife of a King," SW, 160-189; "The God of His Fathers," EEL 1-33; "At the Rainbow's End," GE, 230-251. 25. of introduction-story rather than as a single entity. In these introductory essays, in order to give the text, London would pose as an Alaskan social historian ("The Wife of a King," "The God of His Fathers," and "At the Rainbow's End"); a modern philosopher ("In a Far Country"); or psychologist ("The Son of the Wolf") among other roles. Then the illustrative story would follow. No doubt, this was the simplest method for presenting unequivocally the peculiarities of life in surroundings unfamiliar to the readers. Since London's first loyalty was to ideas and values, this uncompli- cated form allowed him to present them so clearly that no reader could misunderstand. He never forgot his audience, and in these essay-exemplum stories, his didacticism led him to present views rather than to merely use them. Often the essays are superfluous, detachable moralizations whose import is implicit in the stories themselves. "The Son of the Wolf," for instance, begins with an essay on sexual instinct, justifying miscegenation in the Klondike: Man rarely places a proper valuation upon his womankind, at least not until deprived of them. He has no conception of the subtle atmosphere exhaled by the sex feminine so long as he bathes in it; but let it be withdrawn, and an ever-growing void begins to manifest itself in his existence, and he becomes hungry, in a vague sort of way, for something so indefinite that he cannot characterize it....he will lose interest in the things of his everyday life and wax morbid; and one day, when his emptiness has become unbearable, a revelation will dawn upon him.(§W, 21). The story follows as Scruff Mackenzie, compelled by his sexual drive, 26. travels into the hunting land of the treacherous Tanana Stick Indians to claim a bride. Apparently, London was following the journalistic advice he presents to a novice writer in one of his own short stories, "Amateur Night": "Tell it all in the Opening paragraph as advertise- ment of contents, and in the contents tell it all over again."1 By discovering the omniscient narrator, London did improve beyond his early first person experiments. Although he sometimes rambled or padded his materials in these introductory essays which characterize many of his early Klondike tales, he generally used only those ideas which were germane to his story. Still, he was violating the primary concern of the short story theorists, the movement towards a more dramatic story. But call as they would for economical story-telling, the critics were not fully understood by London or other practicing magazine writers. Theory remained, to some extent, divorced from practice. The omniscient narrator did not move unobtrusively behind stories; instead, the narrator continued to impose his personality upon the fiction. He was privy to his characters' minds and hearts, had access to all knowledge and cavalierly interrupted at will to pass judgment upon his characters, situations and life in general. London's first Northland stories demonstrate that he was not an innovator in this regard. Even after the introductory essays, the narrator insistently performs many functions. The characters do not reveal themselves through their actions and speech; instead, the leon-Face and Other Stories (New York, 1906), 59-85. 27. narrator intrudes to comment and evaluate in passages like the following from "The Son of the Wolf": As has been noted, Scruff Mackenzie was a prac- tical man. If he wanted a thing he usually got it, but in doing so, went no farther out of his way than was necessary (SW, 23). and ...he went among them [the Indians] single-handed, his bearing being a delicious composite of hum- ility, familiarity, sapg-froid and insolence. It required a deft hand and a deep knowledge of the barbaric mind effectually to handle such diverse weapons; but he was a past master in the art, knowing when to conciliate and when to threaten with a Jove-like wrath (SW, 24). He does the same with situation as with character, using narrative intrusions not only for evaluation, their main function, but to disPIay the "fine writing" which mars many of the early stories: For all the world, it was like a scene of olden time,--a lady and her knight. Mackenzie drew her up full height and swept her red lips with his mustache,--the, to her, foreign caress of the wolf. It was a meeting of the stone age with the steel (SW, 28). Often these intrusions are epigrammatic summaries used to resolve one section of the story before going on to the next. Rather than being inconspicuous, they draw attention to themselves and exist for their own sakes as well as for structural purposes-for example, this aside to the reader from "The Priestly Prerogative," one of the most flagrantly non-dramatic stories he ever wrote: "Some people are good, not for inherent love of virtue, but from sheer laziness. Those of 28. us who know weak moments may understand (SW, L30)." Besides the precious, epigrammatic language, the intrusions are often particularly noticeable because of their exuberant, emotional or moralizing tone that draws attention to the highly personalized narrator who is indistinguishable from the author. In "The White Silence" the narrator emotes: Happy is the man who can weather a day's travel at the price of silence, and that on a beaten track....he who can keep out of the way of the dogs for a whole day may well crawl into his sleeping-bag with a clear conscience and a pride which passeth all understanding; and he who travels twenty sleeps on the Long Trail is a man whom the gods may envy (SW, 6). Of course, the narrator also performs more normal and less obvious functions like providing build-ups for scenes and indicating transitions in time. In general, though, London's use of this type of narrator correSponds directly with the most common practices and abuses of the popular magazine writers as he deliberately draws attention to the narrator by giving him a voice which is conspicuous in tone and allows him to make dramatically unnecessary observations. When studying the critical commentary appearing in the magazines and handbooks, it becomes clear that a call for dramatic presentation wes not a demand for practices we associate with Hemingway's "The Killers" even though at first it may seem to be. Barrett, for instance, in his handbook describes a variety of short stories appearing in the current magazines and reserves the honored place for the "dramatic story" which he defines as: 29. ...a story shorn of all needless verbiage, and told as nearly as possible in the words and actions of the characters themselves...The short story has Dramatic Form when the author's nec- essary comments correspond to the stage directions of the drama. At first glance this seems to be a recommendation for a "stage- manager" narrator who simply provides stage directions for the characters and then lets them act out their parts. But the phrases "all needless verbiage" and "as nearly as possible" allowed latitude for what was acceptable practice. Barrett, himself, after present- ing this argument for dramatic fiction, uses Kipling's stories as models of this "highest type of the short story."2 Kipling may have been more dramatic than the youthful London, but he was no Hemingway. Apparently Barrett and the others were merely interested in eliminating the most flagrant abuses of authorial intrusion. That London became sensitive to these demands is demonstrated by the perceptible movement in his Alaskan stories towards less narrative intrusion, a heavier reliance upon dialogue and action rather than exposition. He was learning "the art of omission" which he found most difficult but realized that its mastery meant the difference between a powerful story and one whose strength was dissipated.3 As early as February, 1899, he wrote to Cloudesly Johns advising him to: 1pp. 39-40. 2loc.cit. 3Letter to Mable Applegarth, quoted in Charmian K. London, The Mg Jack London, I (New York, 1921), p. 259. 30. Let the reader learn...through the minds of the .men themselves, let the reader look at the ques- tion through their eyes. There are a variety of ways to do this--the most common would be to have them talk to each other. Such a method would have more emotional impact then pure exposition.l And dialogue does begin to replace the narrator in some stories, but often it is a mere transplantation of the narrator's essay into the mouths of the characters, as, for example, Karen's discussion of "race affinity" in "The Great Interrogation" (pg, 56-57). But no matter how amateurishly executed, this is a step towards depersonal- izing the narrator. Furthermore, London began to find techniques which would eliminate the author, or, at least, camouflage his operations. Eventually he would develop a theory which corresponds directly with Barrett's. It is revealing that Barrett chose Kipling's stories as the perfect example of dramatic form. All eyes were turned to Kipling, and London hit upon a form of which Kipling was the master--the frame story. In these stories the narrator provides some kind of setting that permits a Character to elicit a story from another, recalls some story told to him, or provides some motivation for a character to recall a personal experience.2 These frame stories represent London's first major movement towards a more dramatic form of story-telling. They begin early in his work, while he continued to produce the essay- 1Letters, 15. 2For a catalogue of the relationships between frame and the story- W1thin, between teller and hearer, see Clara Margolin, Jack London's Short Stories, Ihre Form and Ihr Gehalt (Heidelberg, 1926), pp. 19-33. 31. exemplum form, and became a significantly large portion of his total canon.1 They are a modification of the essay-exemplum type since the frame takes the place of the essay, and the story-within often illus- trates some idea that is discussed in the frame section. "An Odyssey of the North" is a well known London story which exemplifies his experimentation with this more dramatic type of story. An omniscient narrator begins by introducing the characters, familiar from earlier stories, and establishing the setting. The Malemute Kid and Prince take over the narrative functions through their dialogue and provide the frame. They discuss the various Northland types of men who are in their cabin, eSpecially the mysterious visitor who is later revealed as Naass, the central figure who narrates the odyssey in the title. The initial part of the frame ends here. Finally, the tale within the story is told by Naass in the long first person narrative passage which is the central interest of this story. After Naass' tale, the "Odyssey of the North" concludes with the final part of the frame as the Kid and Prince ponder what they have heard. Narrative functions which were left to the omniscient narrator in previous stories are now fulfilled by the central character. Naass establishes his own reliability through his confession of the murder of Unga, who was promised to him in their early tribal days, and Axel 1The following are frame stories which occur in the first three ‘VOlumes: "An Odyssey of the North," SW, 190-251; "Siwash," CF, 86-113; "Grit of Women," g2, 156-184; "Nam-Bok the Unveracious," Children 9f jflyipggg§£_(Fitzroy edition; London, 1963), orig. 1902, 39-55; "The Sickness of Lone Chief," CF, 92-101; "The Death of Ligoun," CF, 113-123; "The League of Old Men," 93, 143-160. Notice that there are more frame stories in the second volume than in the first, and more in the third thall in the second. 32. Gunderson, the "blond beast" who married her. The quality of Naass's love, the hardship he endured to find Unga, his reSpect for the man he murdered, and his honesty in returning a loan to the Malemute Kid testify to his integrity and worth, eliminating the necessity for authorial intrusions. Moreover, Naass's description of his world-wide quest for Unga and the heroic actions of Unga and Axel after Naass has found them are so vivid and complete within themselves that they serve as implicit comments upon the quality of Northland life and the capacity of human beings for love and suffering. Unfortunately, a final, rather officious summary comment is made at the end of the frame in the last lines of the story: "'There be things greater than our wisdom, beyond your justice. The right and the wrong of this we cannot say, and it is not for us to judge' SW, 251)." But even this London epigram comes from a major character, the Kid. There is, also, too much narration in the introduction, but London was learning to find powerful expression by eliminating himself, or his representative, from the story. In his movement from the essay-exemplum form to the frame story, Iondon was not only responding to a general dramatic trend reflected in the construction of magazine stories, but revealing his indebtedness to Kipling's example. Rothberg and other critics have documented the themes and materials shared by Kipling and London, and Joan London ‘mentioned that Jack attempted to imitate Kipling's style.1 But no one 1See above, p. 11; Alfred Samuel Shivers, "Romanticism in Jack London" (unpublished dissertation, Florida State University, 1962), PP- 39-40, 68-69; Joan London, p. 170. 33. has noticed the remarkable similarity of their short story structures. Moreover, Jack London's testimony that he studied the magazines when Kipling was in the first rank in order to find the prOper short story form and techniques, his Open and frequently mentioned admiration of Kipling, and the striking correspondences between the two authors' short story patterns, even plots, are strong evidence that London used Kipling's stories as models for his own. An 1895 review of some of Kipling's stories mentions that Kipling has a "...preaching strain in the background of his soul."1 And, like London, the moralizing intent of his early short stories, eSpecially those in Plain Tales from the Hills, is blatantly apparent in the introductory comments or essays prefixed to the stories which illustrate a point in morals or some phase of human character.2 In "Three--and an Extra," for example, the introductory comment is "After marriage arrives a reaction, sometimes big, sometimes a little one; but it comes sooner or later, and must be tided over by both parties if they desire the rest of their lives to go with the current."3 Following this statement is the story of a man who leaves his wife and gives his attentions to the fascinating Mrs. Hauksbee before his wife recaptivates him by displaying her beauty and charm at a dinner dance. London's "Wife of a King" parallels the plot of this story, replacing 13. R. Crockett, "On Some Tales of Mr. Kipling's," The Bookman, I (Feb., 1895), 24. 2Doubleday, rev. ed; New York, 1917. I have used flis edition throughout this study for all references to Kipling's stories. 3Plain Tales, 10. V v n, . ‘1 O ’ 2: O ..‘ahb (rs. dig (to O O U 34. the wife with an Indian girl and Mrs. Hauksbee with Freda Moloof, a bewitching Greek dancer. He might also have used the same introductory statement, but chose, in the same manner at least, a more lengthy dissertation on men taking native wives and then facing the inevitable attraction of racial "kind" which creates domestic crises (SW, 160- 161). And this London essay, itself, is parallel to one with which Kipling Opened "Beyond the Pale": A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed. Let the White go to the White and the Black to the Black. Then whatever trouble falls in the ordinary course of things-- is neither sudden, aliennor unexpected. But the point here is not even the similarity of London's ideas, charac- ters and plot incidents so much as his imitation of form. Walter Mbrris Hart, the first critic to undertake a full study of Kipling's short story artistry, notes that most of Kipling's early stories, the Indian tales, follow this pattern and also "definitely betray, in some way, the presence of a narrator behind the narrative."2 Kipling, like London, does not remain impersonally behind the scenes, but summarizes, takes sides, explains and demonstrates a continual awareness of his audience to whom he does not wish to entrust the obligations of interpretation. But Kipling, too, de-emphasized this non—dramatic form and turned to the frame story as the other major form for his early work. Some lPlain Tales, 171. 2Kiplingthe Story-Writer (Berkeley, 1918), p. 32. 35. stories in Plain Tales.and many from Soldiers Three use the frame pattern, and Kipling maintained it throughout his long career. How similar in basic form, as well as in content, the two men's stories often are is illustrated by a comparison between Kipling's "The Three Musketeers" and London's "The Death of Ligoun."1 In both stories the frame consists of a story collector providing drinks to loosen the tongues of men who have special information to impart. Kipling's narrator sits with privates Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd, recurrent Kipling favorites, and says, "They told me this story, in the umballa Refreshment Room while we were waiting for an up-train. I supplied the beer. The tale was cheap at a gallon and a half."2 London's narrator, in the Klondike rather than India, remarks to the reader: I held the bottle between our eyes and the fire, indicated with my thumb the depth of the draught, and shoved it over to him; for was he not Palitlum, the Drinker? Many tales had he told me, and long had I waited for this scriptless scribe to Speak of the things concerning Ligoun; for he of all men living, knew these things best (SS, 113). Not only are the frames sometimes parallel, but also the stories themselves. Kipling's "Dray Wara Yow Dee," for instance,is a story told by a native to a white audience, a tale of his quest over the whole of India to find and kill his wife's lover.3 The parallel with "An Odyssey of the North" is obvious. London emulated his admired 1Soldiers Three, 1-9. 2Soldiers Three, 1. 3_1_p_ Black and White, 1-16. 36. Kipling, so like him in his moralizing impulse, by using the forms that Kipling had proven artistically and commercially sound for pre- senting the kinds of ideas London wished to communicate. The price of imitation is often that the disciple rarely dupli- cates the successes of the master. London was more verbose than Kipling in the essays prefixed to exempla and never reached the artistic complexity in his frame stories that Kipling exhibits in a few stories like "The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney" in which the relationship between frame and story-within is so economical and organic that no less than four points of view are utilized.1 Moreover, London was not consistently artistic in using these forms, and, as his mentor often did, succumbed to the looseness inherent in both forms. It may be said of London's work what Hart has said of Kipling's: One does not get the impression that he planned his stories carefully from beginning to end, as Poe and Stevenson did. He worked rather, one would imagine, instinctively, spontaneously; in a sense artlessly; with a strong feeling about the story in hand rather than a definite plan as to its form. There is form, a plan, but the power of the stories often strains against the mechanical structure. London did, however, learn to use the frame story adequately, and it allowed him to explore his ideas more thoroughly than the essay- exemplum type. In the essay-exemplum stories the narrator was constrain- ed to speak in what can only be the author's authoritative voice rather lSoldiers Three, 41-82. 2Kipling, p. 51. 37. through a persona. Mast of the explicit comments made by the narrator are awkwardly overbearing and dOgmatic in their attempts to force ideas upon the reader and commit the story-teller to arriving at definite conclusions. But London's frame stories, using a teller who is clearly distinguishable from London himself, allowed him to present more complicated social and moral situations. For example, in "An Odyssey of the North" Naass, an admirable and complex character- narrator, comes into conflict with two other idealized characters. The Situation is morally complex since Naass's suffering and loyalty are emotionally equivalent to Unga's and Axel's love for each other, and equally justified. Yet the two sets of emotions are incompatible, and the story rightly remains unresolved. Because the point of view is not that absolutely omniscient and reliable author's, the dilemma can be left without final auctorial redress and pontifical judgment. And in the Northland tales as a group we find that the frame tale becomes a frequently employed form for presenting Stories which deal ‘with the conflict between civilization and primitive culture, the white man and the Indian, topics complex in their moral overtones. In general, London, probably influenced by Kipling, came upon the frame story as an answer to the twin demands for a more dramatic presentation and a framework for presenting characters and themes of a greater complexity than he had first attempted. The frame story was an improvement over the essay-exemplum form, although London does not always achieve a tightly organic relationship between frame and story within. The twenty stories in his first two volumes, composed in 1899 38. and 1900, are a record of his gradual acquisition of dramatic methods, and even though the stories in order of appearance do not follow an orderly progression from exemplum typeto frame, the drift is un- deniably in that direction. Sometime in late spring, 1900, only a year and a half after beginning his serious apprenticeship and after composing most of the stories eventually collected in Son g§_the Wolf and God 9§_His Fathers and beginning to work on the Children gfi_£§g_§£ggg_stories, Jack London began to recognize the need for a more satisfactory dramatic form that would encompass an entire story, rather than being limited to the story within another Story. In the course of the next few months he develOped his most SOphisticated theory and practice of dramatic fiction which brought him close to Barrett's definition of "the highest type of the short story" and allowed him to depersonalize the intruding narrator and to achieve the "single effect" intensity so highly prized by short story theorists. On June 16, 1900, London wrote an excited letter to Johns that proves his awareness of the critical exhortations for more dramatic fiction. vehemently he criticized Cloudesly for interjecting authorial responses into his stories: Don't you tell the reader the philosophy of the road (except when you are actually there as participant in the first person). Don't you tell the reader. Don't. Don't. Don't. But HAVE YOUR CHARACTERS TELL IT BY THEIR DEEDS, ACTIONS, TALK, ETC. Then, and not until then, are your writing fiction and not a sociological 39. paper upon a certain Sub-stratum of society... The reader doesn't want your dissertations on the subject, your observations, your knowledge as your knowledge, your thoughts about it, your ideas--BUT PUT ALL THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE YOURS INTO THE STORIES, INTO THE TALES, ELIMI- NATING YOURSELF.1 This is more than talk. By thkitime London had begun to write stories that exhibit these principles more definitely than any stories he had composed in the preceding years. And in the following letter to his friend, London reveals that the source of his enthusiasm in the June letter was the composition of "The Law of Life," one of a series later collected in Children 2§_£WE_SIQS£, This letter analyzing "The Law of Life" is the most thorough critique of his own form that he ever wrote and demonstrates his conscious struggle to acquire more dramatic techniques: Yesterday I corrected proof sheets of a story for McClure's. It was written some eight months ago. It will be published in the February number.2 Do look it up so that you may understand more clearly what I am trying to explain. It is short, applies the particular to the universal, deals with a lonely death, of an old man, in which beasts consummate the tragedy. My man is an old Indian, abandoned in the snow by his tribe because he cannot keep up. He has a little fire, a few sticks of wood. The frost and Silence about him. He is blind. How do I approach the event? What point of view do I take? Why, the old Indian's, of course. It opens up with him Sitting by his little fire, listening to his tribesmen breaking camp, harnessing dogs, and departing. The reader listens to every familiar sound; hears the laSt draw away; feels the silence settle down. The old man wanders back into his past; the reader wanders with him--thus is the whole theme exploited 1Letters, 106-107. 2Actually published in the March, 1901 issue. 40. through the soul of the Indian. Down to the con- summation, when the wolves draw in upon him in a circle.‘ Don't you see, nothing, even the moral- izing and generalizing, is done, save through him, in expressions of his experience. Indeed, in this story London discovered that he could use a limited, rather than fully omniscient, third person point of view for a dramatic effect powerful in its simplicity. There is no essay in the beginning, and the setting is established in terms of the old man's awareness so that there is no awkward shift from narrative landscaping to action; therefore, the reader is not conscious of a direct bid for his attention. "Even the moralizing and generalizing" could be done dramatically by presenting them as the tenor of the old man's thoughts rather than as the author's own. For example, in this philosophical generalization from the story, the narrator lies just behind Koskoosh's thoughts and gives the illusion that they are the old man's by using short, simple sentences that London associated with Indian speech, sentences unlike the involved, clever ones he had used to display the worldly and urbane generalizations of his previously invoked omniscient narrator: It was the way of life, and it was just... Nature was not kindly to the flesh. She had no concern for that concrete thing called the individual. Her interest lay in the Species, the race (CF, 31). The narrator does, however, intrude in the next sentence to state that "this was the deepest abstraction old Koskoosh's barbaric mind was capable of, but be grasped it firmly," much in the same way that he 1Letters (Dec., 1900), 115. 41. necessary to provide some explanation of how a dog could "think" (SS, 31). Nevertheless, there is not the kind of evaluation that discusses the folly or astuteness of a character's actions or thoughts that had appeared in earlier stories. Moreover, the comments made by the narrator are tailored to the demands of character rather than in- appropriately out of the range of the characters' perceptions and are so appropriate in tone and style that no unusual emphasis draws attention away from the character's point of view. Obviously, London was still employing a conventionally omniscient narrative point of view, but he had learned the lesson Martin Eden imparts to Ruth when she criticizes his hostility towards Operatic conventions. She says that even "in writing...the writer must be omnipotent. You accept as perfectly legitimate the author's account of the secret thoughts of the heroine, and yet all the time you know that the heroine was alone when thinking these thoughts, and that neither the author nor anyone else was capable of hearing them (WS, 118)." and Martin replies, "Yes, I understood that...All the arts have their conventions...But even the conventions must be real. Trees, painted on flat card- board and stuck up on each side of the Stage, we accept as a forest. It is a real enough convention. But, on the other hand, we would not accept a sea scene as a forest. We can't do it. It violates our senses (WE, 118-119)." What he objected to in the Opera was the unnecessary drawing of attention to lihe conventions, particularly the "attitudinizing" of the physically 42. ill-matched and histrionic stage lovers. Similarly, London was finding narrative techniques which would not draw attention to them- selves. A.writer must give the illusion of reality by focusing attention upon the world of the story rather than upon his manipu- lations. Although none of the stories following "The Law of Life" in Shg_ Children 9§_£Wg S22§£_(1902) are as rigorous as it in point of view nor in artistic simplicity, stories like "Nam-Bok the Unvaracious," "The Sunlanders," and "Keesh, the Son of Keesh," (told "from the Indian's point of view, through the Indian's eyes as it were") do demonstrate that London was avoiding direct philosophical, social or psychological evaluations of character or setting in the voice of the narrator appealing directly to his audience.1 As has been mentioned, this method would be used for his most artistic work, Thg_gagg;g£ Egg WESS, and would account for the power of "To Build a Fire," the only two London efforts that have found perennial favor with the critics and public alike. London, then, was learning techniques which allowed him to be more economical and dramatic. The logical extension of this movement toward depersonalizing the narrative voice is a scenic method which uses a Stage-manager narrator who merely records what can be seen and heard but who does not enter the characters' minds, analyze their motives, nor explain the source and implications of the scenes. The product of 1Letters (To George P. Brett, June 30, 1902), 129. 43. such a method would be similar to a painting, a pictorial represen- tation of a Situation. In theory, at least, London did develop such a dramatic theory and presented it as the theme of "The Sun-Dog Trail."1 The story (itself, however, in the frame story format) consists of a discussion between a painter and Sitka Charlie, London's most idealized male Indian, about the meaning of several paintings hanging on the cabin wall and a story told by Charlie that illustrates his conclusions. The painter is eager to interrogate Charlie because he is "a sheer master of reality," presumably because he is an Indian who lives in a world of action and whose artistic assumptions have not been corrupted by education: "He had lived life, and seen things" and "had never learned to read or write" (SS, 208, 203). At first the paintings have no meaning for Charlie because they have "no beginning" and "no end" (SS, 205). But through further discussion, Charlie arrives at the conclusion that a painting is like life, a scenic presentation of "something that happened" from which only the picture seared into the brain remains (SS, 240). The motives and actions of the figures in the painting remain undefined and uncompleted. Charlie then relates an experience of his own which illustrates this conclusion. He tells of being hired by a woman to take her to Dawson where she meets a man; the three of them travel across the Yukon wastes until they meet another man. The man and woman shoot him. The climaxing murder is committed in an intensely visualized setting: "'And all about is the snow and 1Love o_f_ Life (New York, 1906), 203-241. 44. the Silence. And in the Sky are three suns, and all the air is flashing with the dust of diamonds' (SS, 238)." He concludes, "'It was a piece of life' (SS, 241)." The point of the story is that Charlie was never aware of the true identities of the woman and two men nor their motives. He remembers the "something that happened" because of the intensity 0f the image; not because he fully under- stands why the incident happened. "The Sun-Dog Trail" thematically seems to demonstrate.that London subscribed to the theory of dramatic fiction which describes rather than prescribes, shows rather than tells, presents ideas implicitly rather than explicitly by using Scenes rather than exposition. He seconds Barrett's admiration of stories which present a "bit of life" in Dramatic Form."1 Ironically, "The Sun-Dog Trail" itself is discursive, a denial of its expository statements. It was written after London had es- tablished his basic narrative patterns as represented by "The Son of the Wolf" (essay-exemplum), "An Odyssey of the North" (frame), and "The Law of Life" (limited third person narrator); and he never actually practiced purely stage-manager narration. The theory pre- sented in "The Sun-Dog Trail" written in 1904 yielded to the practices he had acquired from 1899 to 1902. But there is an important basic correlation between London's theory and his actual practice. From.the beginning of his Klondike stories, I“: had relied upon dramatic scenes as the core around which the rest lbarrett, pp. 39-40. 45. of the story coalesced. Although the story might contain narrative essays and other authorial interference, an evocative scene lay at Even the .center of dramatic interest in the best of these stories. an early critic recognized the visual quality achieved in the Children 31; _t_h_g Sgggg as a mark of distinguished writing and wrote that in "The Master of Mystery," "The subject is so interesting and the treatment so powerfully simple and sincere that the picture Stands out clear The poorer stories, the ones that London himself dis- and flawless . " liked, such as "The Wife of a King" and "A Priestly Prerogative," fail to focus upon a single dramatic scene. London realizedthat such scenes replace the author, or, more accurately, become the author in the -sense that his emotional and intellectual experience can be em- bodied more compactly and forcefully through scene than through expo- One of' the more frequently mentioned "tips" he gave to Sition. aspiring story writers was to "Paint--paint pictures of characters and etnot:Lons--but paint, paint, draw, draw" so that the author's voice w°uld be eliminated from the work.2 The ideas contained in "The Sun-Dog Trail" prove that London had d iscovered "the proper trend of literary art" that he sought so ener- geizj«tally, as does the general movement from the essay-exemplum form ‘l: O the frame Story and, finally, to a more organic and dramatic form w hich fused the narrator with character perception. He was reflecting t he critical interest in the "well-made" story prized for its Single 1Carl Hovey, Bookman, XVII (March, 1903), 84. 2Letters (To H. A. Harmer, Jan. 29, 1911), 335. 46. eflhct. Writers were learning to limit the range of characters, settings, and time Within a story; to depersonalize the narrator and avoid summary and analysis; and to use dialogue or action or scene to portray the crucial moments in their stories. But it has been mentioned that the theory of dramatic method presented in "The Sun-Dog Trail" was never fully implemented in his practice. Even though he had learned dramatic techniques well enough to discuss them in his theoretical statements, he continued to rely upon the three major story forms he had discovered throughout the rest of his career. His social criticism stories, South Seas stories, the good ones as well as the pot-boilers, are cast in these familiar molds. At their best, stories in all three categories wed form and content, transcend formal deficiencies, by emphasizing a central, powerful scene. At worst, worn materials are plugged into London's own mechanical structures that had become sterile through repetition. Just why London curtailed experimentation in form and technique near the end of 1902 is a moot question. Certainly the oft repeated slogan that the quest fordollars and the daily routine of 1000 words would not permit development has a measure of truth in it. That is not the entire answer, however. He wanted money and wrote a thousand words daily at the beginning of his career when he wrote jokes, poems and, among others, horror stories; and still, obviously, he went on to experiment successfully with forms, techniques and ideas. Several other factors must have been equally as important as money and quantity of daily wordage in arresting his develOpment. 47. London had StOpped writing hack work because his ambition had changed. Not satisfied to Stay in the ranks of nameless professional hack writers, he dedicated himself to a higher goal. This necessitated a change in literary method. From 1899 to the end of 1902, he developed that method and was accepted as a writer of stories evidencing the "prOper trend of literary art." Afterwards, his conception of art and sense of mission as a writer did not change radically, and neither did his forms. Most important in causing a petrification of his technique and short story structures was the nature of this literary mission. Early in his career he had remarked that he would "subordinate thought to technique till the later is mastered; then I shall do vice versa." He saw himself primarily as a purveyor of new ideas and gave priority to them. Charmian London records that Jack often claimed that: "I will sacrifice form every time, when it boils down to a final question of choice between form and matter. The thought is the thing." He was suSpicious that craftsmanship masked dishonest or conventional thinking.1 By the end of 1902, Jack London had found forms that were adequate for presenting his themes and had put technique in a sub- ordinate position. The essay-exemplum form remained a staple for pre- senting ideas dogmatically, particularly when presenting new ideas about strange lands or Situations whether in the Northland, the South Seas, or among the "submerged tenth" in America. The frame stories 1P. 49. 48. allowed him to develOp more complex ideas, but his concept of form still dissociated preliminary materials from the story itself. The more dramatic forms and techniques were used for statements about basic human experiences which needed no explicit introduction, but demanded emotional impact. Moreover, after The Call of the Wild was written in 1903, he began to lose interest in the short story genre; and although he continued to write some superb stories, they were just more successful exploitations of the old forms and techniques.1 In a sense London was justifiably suSpicious of technical virtuosity. H. S. Canby summarized the excesses of the well-made short story when he wrote of them: Our modern short story began as a technique for a worthy effect. In lesser minds, at least, it is degenerating into a technique whose effect is merely technical. The specific word, the rapid introduction, the stressed climax, the careful focus, and the studied tone, are too often the masters, not the servants, of the story. Facility is widespread, artificiality rampant. Scores of well-known short-story writers prepare to ascend their little peaklet of narrative accoutered like Tartarin in his Alpine regalia, equipped not for their Rigi but Mont Blanc...A less labored Story must come back.2 But if London avoided technical Showmanship, he often took an equally flawed course and equipped himself for Rigi in order to scale Mont Blanc. 18cc below, Chapter V, for a fuller discussion of this decline in interest. 2Henry Seidel Canby, The Short Story Sp English (New York, 1909), pp. 349-350. Chapter II Apprenticeship in Literary Theory: 1898-1902 During his apprenticeship, London was not only seeking an adequate formibr his short stories, but also attempting to define his literary attitudes in relation to the continuing debate between realism and romance. And just as his development of short story structure was dependent upon his desire to propagate ideas, so was his acquisition of a literary theory. Theoretical, critical matters, like his artistry, were always subservient to his didacticism. Again, the magazines were his classroom. Although he thought of himself as a realist, his fiction and critical opinions are actually a compromise, or eclectic synthesis, of current views discussed in the magazines he studied from 1898 to 1903. From his analysis of the magazine critical debate between realism and romance to the discovery of Herbert Spencer's Philosophy 2£_S£ylg, which helped him to synthesize his observations and intuitions, London's didactic intent determined what he would accept and what he would reject. Jack London, as we have seen, began writing when the most influ- ential short story theorists and commentators had fallen under the Spell of realistic technique; Brander Matthews, for example, was a disciple and ardent defender of Howells. And London believed that "conventions must be real" and learned from the realists "how to forbear the excesses of analysis, to withhold the weakly recurring 1Boston, 1892. 50. descriptive and caressing epithets, to let the characters suffice for themselves," to be "dramatic" rather than "tediously analytical."l He advised H. A. Hanner, a young writer, to "paint, paint, draw, draw" in order to eliminate the author's voice from the work and idealized Sitka Charlie in "The Sun-Dog Trail" as a "sheer master of reality" because he saw "things that happened," reminiscent of the realists' "slice of life."2 This emphasis on depersonalized narration and scenic method would seem to place London in the realists' camp. The most thorough account of what realism meant to London, by Robert Holland, is an excellent, often penetrating, statement of London's theoretical kinship with Howells', Garland's and Norris' con- cepts of realism.3 He correctly sees the impulse toward realism in London's regard for empirically observed facts, honesty, and a love 4 Certainly London used most of the realists' catchwords for reality. like "facts," "truth," "reality," and "honesty" to characterize his own intention and practice and to praise the works of other writers whom he admired most. But the full contexts of "The Sun-Dog Trail" and the letter to Hanner, mentioned above, belie so easy a generalization making London a realist. In "The Sun-Dog Trail" Charlie uses for an example of "things that happen" a night-marish journey climaxed by a brutal murder 1William Dean Howells, Criticism and Fiction (Boar's Head edition; Cambridge, Mass., 1962), pp. 19-21. 2Love 2£_Life, 208. 3"Jack London: His Thought and Art in Relation to His Times" (unpublished dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1950), pp. 74-99. 41bid. 51. committed against a fantastic backdrOp of snow "diamonds" flashing under "three suns."1 And in his letter to Hanner London continues, "grab your motif, Master it. Make it live and Spout blood and spirit and beauty and fire and glamor."2 In both instances, the Shift from advocating a "piece of life" to demanding an evocative atmosphere, from advocating objective description to emphasizing the intense and unusual, reveals London's desire to add a romantic tone to his realistic techniques.3 In fairness to Holland it ought to be mentioned that the burden of his argument is that London produced a "romantic realism"; neverthe- less, he, like other London critics, falls prey to London's own equivo- cations concerning realism: ...many of London's characters are real men. Much of his setting is realistic. In fact, the characters and settings; though often unique, are not impossible. The problem in this passage lies in the use of the word "real," a familiar stumbling block in all criticism of this period. Holland is using the word as London would have: London often mentioned with pride that his materials were from the realm of experience ("like 90% of my Stories, 'The Benefit of the Doubt' is based upon actual experience").5 1Love 2§_Life, 238. 2Letters, 335. 3It is this use of the unusual that causes F. L. Mott to classify London as a romantic: "Introduction," The Call g§_the Wild and Other Stories (New York, 1935). ' 4"Jack London: His Thought and Art," p. 109. 5Letters (To Churchill Williams; act. 4, 1910), 319. 52. But London's "near-at-hand" truth and his autobiographical materials, came from the Klondike, the high seas, and the tropics--familiar places to him but not to his readers. The places and characters are "not impossible,‘ as Holland states, and no doubt were "real" to London, but not real in the Howellsian sense of the "average" or the "commonplace" which were hateful words to London.1 The experiences London used as the stuff for his fiction had sprung from his lower class existence and included the crude, the violent and the sordid, all "average" to him, but not to Howells who assumed the middle class American as the norm for perception. Nor is a biographical base for materials an argument for realism if those materials are shaped by a romantic imagination before appearing in print. In order to understand just what London meant when he defined himself as a realist and why romantic elements are found in his stories, it is helpful to turn to the magazines again. London's life and scientific reading unquestionably account for ideas and materials he fictionalized, as has often been noted by the critics; however, no one has noticed the importance of the magazine criticism as a source of his literary self-concept and the referent he used to measure his contri- butions against those of other writers. Comparing London's critical views with men like Howells, Garland and Norris has obvious merit; but London thought within another context. It can be shown that London caught the drift of criticism in the reviews appearing in periodicals 1Joan London, p. 169. 53. he hoped to contribute to and to which, it has been demonstrated, he turned to learn the art of fiction. His literary theory parallels an eclectic compromise between realism and romance implicit in the reviews written by the more fashionable pOpular magazine critics. Virtually every American magazine that printed reviews or literary gossip at the turn of the century had staff members and outside contrib— utors who took part in the battle between romance and realism. Today, of course, university-originated critical studies dominate critical exchange, but in 1900 the general magazine was the medium for almost all critical commentary. For over a decade, Howells had been defending realism and attacking romance in Hagper's on a relatively high level of controversy. Other magazines, like Lippincott's, The Forum, The Critic and The Bookman had contributed their voices. The Bookman and Shguggggg were particularly notable for the consistently good coverage they gave to both sides of the issue.1 By the turn of the century, the skirmishing was nearly completed; the major areas of contention defined and almost settled. Intellectu- ally, the battle had gone to Howells and the realists, but the popular victory had gone to the critics who favored stories which in some way managed to combine elements of realism and romance. From this com- promise London took his cue, demonstrating his sensitivity to the pOpular arguments. London's daughter mentions the general nature of 1For a discussion of The Forum's intra-mural debate, see Edwin Cady, Realist §£_War (Syracuse, 1958), pp. 29ff. He does not discuss the compromise however. 54. his awareness of the controversy and Suggests that London did not firmly grasp the fundamental issues, but instead, responded to popular notions: The magazines were reflecting the battle-to- the-death between the moribund literary mores of the closing decades of the nineteenth cen- tury and the harbingers of the twentieth. He did not understand the issues of the conflict, which was unfortunate. His sense of timeliness, while acute, was for the superficial in writing, not its perspectives. The popular critics, like James MacArthur, staff reviewer for The Bookman and exponent of sentimental romance, recognized two kinds of literary production: one was "very probable, very life-like, and very disagreeable" and the other "quite improbable, in externals strange, yet true to the motives and passions that sway men and women."2 The "very disagreeable" referred to stories using a wider range of materials then had been used before, and such expressions usually referred to Zola's novels which were at the center of critical attacks upon "immoral" materials. To the popular critic, the use of such materials constituted "realism." Many critics were predicting doom for Zola and his imitators, as did Edward Fuller: "The pseudo-realism preached by Zola and echoed by his imitators has ended, or is ending, in dismal failure...the best and most vital literature cannot be produced in a period of decadence."3 But James MacArthur, who called this fiction "disagreeable," reluctantly admitted, while reviewing Chimmie 1Joan London, pp. 170-171. 2"Romance and Realism," rev., Bookman, I (May, 1895), 257. 3"Art for Art's Sake," Bookman, I (May, 1895), 241. 55. Fadden and SSQW Stories 9S_London, that "the enduring novel of New York or London of the future" would undoubtedly be shaped by such pernicious materials; thereby indicating that some popular romantic critics were begrudgingly admitting the inevitability of sordid detail as fictional material.1 They stood Shoulder to shoulder, however, with the more intransigeant against any work which seemed to use naturalistic detail for its own sake and to equate the human with the bestial. On the other hand, the "quite improbable" romantic fiction that MacArthur obviously prefers was also coming under attack. This literature, represented by Andrew Lang's fiction, itself imitative of Stevenson's, existed solely for entertainment and whisked the reader to the pleasant land of noble sentiments and happy endings that were the substance of the Trilby and The Prisoner 2£_§gpgg crazes. Even though romance was popular with the readers, two major and related critical objections, with which London would have agreed, were being levelled against this type of story:2 First, it failed to discuss significant experience. Bliss Perry, for instance, castigates Stevenson and his followers because, "few or none of these men have revealed themselves as great personalities seriously engaged in interpreting the more vital aSpects of human experience."3 Secondly, romantic fiction was being criticized for ignoring the impact of new ideas in lBookman, I (Feb., 1895), 12. 2See Martin Eden pp. 225-226 when Martin rejects the sentimentality and absence of tragedy in popular fiction. 3; Study .o_f_ Prose Fiction (New York, 1902), p. 278. 56. biology and psychology that were changing old conceptions of nature. E. F. Andrews, even though he was an apostle of "moral" literature and an Opponent of Zola's influence, finds that he must criticize romantic fiction "if the romantic element prevails to such an extent as to contradict nature..."1 Briefly then, both the purely natural- istic use of sordid detail and the purely sentimental kind of romance were rejected by the popular critics as being ill-conceived extremes.2 The view that triumphed, if the repeated testimony in its behalf is the measure of its acceptance, was a combination of what was felt to be the essence of the two positions. The pOpular critics of both persuasions would accept as artistic any work which combined materials from the world, even though unsavory inisolation, if they were Shot through with some kind of idealism. Typical of the critical commentary arising from such a position is this passage from a review of Frank Harris' Elder Conklin and Other Stories. The reviewer praises Harris' characters who are like The Bret Harte type--only much less sentimental-- or hard-fibered, unpolished dwellers in tamer places. It is a grim, unlovely life, and the author paints it very relentlessly, yet letting in now and again a ray of pure idealism...We see no searching after the ugly, but a philo- SOphical accepance of the sordid as forming no inconsiderable part of the life he designs to paint.3 1"Rudimentary Suggestions for Beginners in Story Writing," Cosmopolitan, XXII (Feb., 1897), 446. 2See N. L. Goodrich, "Prose Fiction: A Bibliography," Bulletin 2S_Bibliography, IV-V for a full sampling of the articles debating the merits of realism and romance. 3Unsigned, Bookman, I (Feb., 1895), 48. 57. The point of MacArthur's and Andrew's articles was to promote this fusion of new materials with idealism, and a legion of critics made the same point: "Without true realism and genuine romanticism-- actuality and ideals--good work was never done," one critic put it, and another, "no worthy work of fiction may be properly labelled romantic, realistic or symbolic, Since every great work of art contains all these in some proportion."1 This fusion became the trademark of many stories appearing in print and the mark of success as far as the rank and file critic was concerned. Even Howells could accept this compromise with some reservations. He did object to those writers who were "content to use the materials of realism and produce the effect of romanticism" since, regardless of the realistic materials, romantic conventions were Still Operative, producing "effectism" and denying the prOper seriousness inherent in 2 Nevertheless, Howells did tolerate, as legitimate good fiction. literature, fiction that avoided the cliches of realism and romance and combined the serious spirit of both modes, that give precedence to principle rather than to mere evocation of passion or to "entertain- ment."3 It must be remembered that Howells recognized in Norris and Zola a new kind of romancer whom he could admire and that he praised Kipling by finding his fiction "heroic" rather than "romantic."4 By 1Frederick M. Bird, "Magazine Fiction and How Not to Write It," Lippincott's (Nov., 1894); Gilbert Parker, "The Art of Fiction," 232. Critic, XXXIII (Dec., 1898), 467. 2A3 quoted by Harry Thurston Peck, rev. of Wy_Literary_Passions, Bookman, I (July, 1895), 400; Criticism and Fiction, 65. 3Criticism and Fiction, 95, 99. l'Cady, Realist §£_War, pp. 35, 251. 58. making this distinction between heroic and romantic, Howells was actually hitting at the core of the new compromise and accepting it himself: in essence, he was attempting to isolate the "false" romance, one that exists in order to entertain by flattering the reader's sense of his own nobility, from a higher romance which presents Spiritual man existing even in an ugly setting. Like the other critics, Howells rejected popular romance but could accept new materials if they were charged by an idealism that was true to nature. This magazine compromise is the fundamental critical conception behind Jack London's short stories. And an attempt to combine idealism with the rough external world he observed, to balance a vital emotional life with the truths of scientific observation, is a recurrent theme in both London's life and his work. In the summer of 1899 he wrote: I early learned that there were two natures in me. This caused me a great deal of trouble, till I worked out a phiIOSOphy of life and struck a compromise between the flesh and the spirit. Too great an ascendancy of either was to be abnormal, and since normality is almost a fetish of mine, I finally succeeded in balancing both natures.....I have small rigard for an utter brute or for an utter saint. This statement, and Similar ones, allows one to presume that Martin Eden's literary theory is a statement of London's own. Early in his career Martin learns to avoid both romantic and realistic cliches in his works but to combine the best elements of both realism and romance: He had discovered, in the course of his reading, two schools of fiction. One treated of man as a god, ignoring his earthly origin; the other 1Letters (To Johns; Aug. 10), 50-51. 59. treated of man as a clod, ignoring his heaven- sent dreams and divine possibilities. Both the god and the clod schools erred, in Martin's estimation, and erred through too great single- ness of sight and purpose. There was a com- promise that approximated the truth, though it flattered not the school of god, while it challenged the brute-savageness of the school of clod (WE, p. 212). Like the popular magazine critics, London objected to the "too great singleness of sight and purpose" shown by both sides. On the "clod" side, he objected to the Zolaesque "brute-savageness" if it existed for its own sake. On the "god" side, he objected to a senti- mental view of human nature. At first glance, London's fiction would seem to make him an apostle of the sensationally shocking. Joan London noted that "he soon became a pioneer of American 'realism.‘ He broke every writing tradition long revered in America, seemed...u1tramodern and Shocking" because, like Martin Eden, he used "scenes that were rough and raw, gross and bestial (WE, p. 76)."1 He had contempt for the avoidance of violence and the artistic capitulation to feminine sensitivities. He agreed with Crane's sentiment, "Tradition, thou art for suckling children,/ Thou art the "2 Never- enlivening milk for babes;/ But no meat for men is in thee... theless, London agreed with the realist and romantic critics who deplored the cataloguing of sordid experience, or, indeed, any kind of detail which did not have a clear relevancy to the fates of the characters. In his review of The Octopus, for example, London criticized Norris for 1P. 76. 2"XLV," "Black Riders and Other Lines," The Collected Poems 2E Stephen Crane, ed. Wilson Follett (New York, 1942), 48. It is interest- ing that London uses "meat" as an equivalent for bold masculine experience in the Smoke Bellew stories (New York, 1911). 60. his indiscriminate use of detail when describing Hooven's safe, and in another place argues that the writer must employ only those details which have emotional significance, that elicit a response from the l depths of the human heart. Like Howells, London believed that facts must have human significance. Howells noted that: When realism becomes false to itself, when it heaps up facts merely, and maps life instead of picturing it, realism will perish too. Every true realist instinctively knows this, and it is perhaps the reason why he is careful of every fact, and feels himself bound to express or to indicate its meaning at the risk of over- moralizing. In life he finds nothing insigni- ficant; all tells for destiny and character... Romantic critics, too, often mentioned this principle of selection as the difference between art and non-art: There must be no misconception about great fiction being a transcript of life. Mere transcription is not the work of an artist... the human significance of facts is all that concerns one. The inwardness of facts makes fiction the history of life, its emotions, its passions, its sins, reflections, values. These you cannot photograph nor transcribe. Selection and rejection are two profound essentials of every art. London felt privileged to use the "rough and raw, gross and bestial" materials characteristic of the "clod" school but exercised a principle of selection. He wanted only those materials which bore human signi- ficance, facts which documented the subjective. 1Quoted by Philip S. Foner, Jack London, American Rebel...(New York, 1947), p. 509; Letters (To Johns, Feb. 22, 1899), 15. 2Criticism and Fiction, pp. 15-16. 3Gilbert Parker, "Art of Fiction," 468. 61. Just as he could accept man's unpleasant surroundings and actions but could not accept the bestial as the total explanation for human nature, London both accepted and rejected elements of the "god" school doctrine. Like the popular critics, he rejected "light and airy romances, pretty and sweet and beguiling."l But he wanted to portray a human nature which transcended the animal, that described "spirit- groping and soul-searching" and the "fancies and beauties of imagination" (WE, p. 212). With harsh fact he strove to combine "the stinging things of the spirit."2 "Actuality" and "ideals" were to be the staples of his fiction. London's compromise between the "god" and "clod" schools, thus, approximates the compromise made by magazine critics. He rejected the commonplaces of both groups and attempted to salvage what was serious in both. Neither "airy romances" nor "brute-savageness" should be the exclusive preoccupation of fiction, he believed; instead, he accepted the impulse to root his fiction in an expanding reality of harsh facts and, yet, to depict ideals. Neither the saint nor the brute, or by implication, the pleasant nor the sordid, optimism nor pessimism would dominate his stories. He believed that man's environment and mental- emotional life could not be divorced from one another. Jack London had reason to attempt to infuse sordid materials with idealism, ugly truths with self-sustaining values, when he began to compose the Alaskan stories. By 1899, when he broke into The Overland 1Jack London, "'Foma Gordyeeff'," rev., quoted in Foner, p. 512. London praises Gorky for avoiding the conventions of popular romance. 2"What Life Means to Me," quoted in aner, p. 396. 62. Mbnthly with "To the Man on Trail," the "clods" (Zola's disciples) had rejected a belief in the possibility of achieving personal fulfill- ment in a scientifically described universe. In February of that year, MbTeague appeared in which Norris symbolized the death of humanistic values and announced a crisis in the American identity by leaving McTeague stranded in the wasteland, confused and pursued, holding his gilded bird-cage in one hand and chained to a dead man by the other. Joan London, in her biography of her father, has catalogued the economic, political, social and spiritual upheaval of the decade during which London became aware of the American ways of life and which provided the background for his awareness that all was not well with the American Dream. Fundamental American values had been dis- located, or as Malcolm Cowley has it, "The American faith that was preached in the pulpits and daily reasserted on editorial pages had lost its connection with American life."1 It was characteristic of London, however, that this dislocation of values should be felt personally, temperamentally, rather than as a cultural abstraction. In John Barleycorn, there is an episode from his youth that is emblematic of both the awareness of despair and the formula for modifying it that informs his Alaskan short stories. He recoiled from toiling "twelve hours a day at a machine for ten cents an hour" not because of the subsistence level pay, but because there 1"'ANatural History of American Naturalism'," Documents of Mbdern Literarngealism, ed. George J. Becker (Princeton, 1963), p. 436. 63. were "no purple passages in machine toil."l Being a mechanical extension of a machine, a "work beast" (a typically naturalistic reductive statement) was repugnant because it eliminated a romantic sense of intense excitement, a sense of "something more." Thereafter, he joined the oyster pirates on San Francisco Bay to recover excite- ment and vitality. But while London was among the pirates, the pattern repeated itself. The life was sordid, and disillusionment was only temporarily held in abeyance by the boozy illusion of comradely adventure. Once again he confronted futility, this time precipitating an attempted suicide in the bay. What prevented him from drowning, according to his account, was the recurrent promise that wonder, excite- ment and awe could be felt, suggesting to him that a triumph over material circumstances is possible: For always, drunk or sober, at the back of my consciousness something whiSpered that this carous- ing and bay-adventuring was not all of life. This whisper was my good fortune. I happened to be so made that I could hear it calling, always calling, out and away over the world. It was not canniness on my part. It was curiosity, desire to know, an unrest and a seeking for things wonderful that I seemed somehow to have glimpsed or guessed. No there was something more, away and beyond (SS, pp. 112-113). This romantic "whisper" from beyond the world of sordid appearances enticed him from his life on the Oakland waterfront to the sea and 1New York, 1913, p. 112. Sam S. Baskett in "Jack London on the oakland Waterfront," American Literature, XXVII (Nov., 1955), 363-371, cautions that this work is factually inaccurate. But Barleycorn is psychologically revealing. What is important here is not the specific conditions of London's youth but, instead, his emotional organization of them. This work is second only to Martin Eden in its revelation of London's own emotional and intellectual life. 64. Klondike. The Northland, presumably, is the place where an integrated Spirit is possible and annihilation circumvented. The call of romantic adventure to participate in the "stinging things of the spirit" would, he intuited, triumph over "actuality." He thought of himself as a realist, but a romantic intention lies behind his fiction. The flight from society in order to find completion in a new land indicates that London, unlike Frank Norris, was not ready to admit that the frontier Spirit had lost its vitality. The frontier was Still the place to "begin anew" (in romantic fashion) if one hoped to shed the decadent values of civilization and to join the "gods": "When a man journeys into a far country, he must be prepared to forget many of the things he has learned, and to acquire such customs as are inherent with existence in the new land."1 And properly addressed, the "new land" might answer the requirements of the romantic whisper. It could be the land of romantic completion where a man could find the self- identifying and self-sustaining values that assured him of his nobility. But London was not content to write stories that would escape the import of McTeague. The Northland would not be the place of easy romantic identification. Despite the pattern of flight from futility recorded in the "whiSper" passage, London presents the Klondike as the land of the "actual," the arena for a confrontation with death. Actuality, the real, bad to be fused with the romantic. In another place in Barleycorn, he wrote a significant description of scientific, 1"In a Far Country," SW, 69. 65. deterministic truth, which he calls "primary truth," that the "White LOgic" or alcoholically induced imagination will not allow him to escape: John Barleycorn sends his White Logic, the argent messenger of truth beyond truth, the antithesis of life, cruel and bleak as interstellar Space, pulseless and frozen as absolute zero, dazzling with the frost of irrefragable logic and unfor- gettable fact... that "destroys birth and death," rendering insignificant the landmarks of life (SS, p. 308).1 What is revealing in this description of an order of truth that strips man of hope and is "the antithesis of life" is that London uses the imagery of the Northland to evoke it. It is cosmic, cold, and "pulseless." The burden of cosmic truth is death, and it saturates the Arctic landscape. Compare the introduction of White Fang, for instance, with the description of primary truth: A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without move- ment, so lone and cold that the Spirit of it was not even that of sadness. It is not the way of the Wild to like Movement. Life is an offense to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. The new land that calls men to be yea-sayers is infused with a law of necessity, with cold, stillness and death that Spell an ever-lasting No. That the Northland is a symbol of death needs no complete examin- ation here Since recent critics, particularly Maxwell Geismar, have 1It is important that the earlier "whisper" passage saw life- giving truths beyond appearances; whereas, this passage indicates that the "truth beyond truth" is death-dealing. The early stories ambiva- lently portray both concepts, but most emphasize life-giving truths. The strongly pessimistic tone of this passage is more typical of London's later mood and was written in 1912. 2The Call 2; the Wild and White Fang (Bantam edition; New York, 1963), pp. 105-106. 66. recognized that the Northern wilderness is a "wasteland" and "London's typical figure a voiceless traveler journeying across the ghostly leagues of a dead world."1 This idea is examined more fully by Earle Labor, and he concludes that a Just God rules over the Northland nature but is indifferent to man's aspirations.2 Both men cite this passage from "The White Silence" as the source of their commentaries (the source of Geismar's vocabulary as well): Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity,--the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of the earth-quake, the long roll of heaven's artillery,-- but the mosttremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sac- rilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole Speck of life jour- neying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggot's life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And the fear of death, of God, of the universe comes over him,--the hope of immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence,--it is then, if ever, man walks with God (m. 7). When London makes this aside in "The White Silence," the characters are on the trail, and the pattern for many London stories is a ritual trip to confront death and Self. Labor notes in his dissertation that the Northland tales have a "pervasive oneric quality" as figures on the trail pass archetypally into the "other world".3 In many stories the 1Rebels and Ancestors: The American Novel, 1890-1915 (New York, 1963), p. 144. 2"Jack London's Symbolic Wilderness: Four Versions," Nineteenth Century Fiction, XI (1962), 149. 3Labor, Earle Gene, "Jack London's Literary Artistry" (unpublished dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1961), pp. 15, 23-24. 67. trail movement that "lays a man naked to the very roots of his soul" is at the center of the narrative, working subtly upon the characters' awareness.1 Sam Baskett compares "In a Far Country" with Joseph Conrad's "An Outpost of Progress" and notes that when London presents his statement of "the horror" that lies within man and nature, he, unlike Conrad, makes no attempt to "use the traditional imagery and symbolism of the voyage to Hades which Conrad, like Virgil and Dante employed 'to create that otherwise formless region into which not only the artist but every man must descend if he wishes to understand him— self.'"2 But in other stories London does. In "An Odyssey of the North" Axel, Unga and Naass, on the trail, follow a map in their quest for gold and finally move into the unchartered land. In this passage the archetypal, romantic descent to the nadir of experience where life and death confront each other is presented entirely. Naass narrates: T‘h90ne looked for a valley beyond, but there was no valley; the snow Spread away, level as the great harvest plains, and here and there about us mighty mountains shoved their white heads among the stars. And midway on that strange plain which should have been a valley, the earth and the snow fell away, straight down toward the heart of the world...{ 'It is the mouth of hell,‘ he [Axel] said; 'let us go down.‘ And we went down. 1"In a Far Country," SW, 72. The trail is at the center of many excellent tales: "White Silence," "Wisdom of the Trail," "An Odyssey of the North" in the first volume. But the technique is often the height of achievement in an otherwise poor story: "Trust" in Lost Face, "The Meat" in Smoke Bellew and "The One Thousand Dozen" in SW3 Faithlg£.ng, 2"London's Heart 2: Darkness," American Quarterly, X (Spring, 1958), 74. He quotes from Lilian Feder, "Marlow's Descent into Hell," Nineteenth Century Fiction, IX (March, 1955), 292. 68. "And on the bottom there was a cabin, built by some man, of legs which he had cast down from above. It was a very old cabin; for men had died there alone at different times, and on pieces of birch bark which were there we read their last words and their curses....And the worthless gold they had gathered yellowed the floor of the cabin like in a dream (SW, 240-241)." presented in almost identical language, causing Geismar to remark: "Could anything be better than the long trip into the wilds in search for hidden treasure, from which no man had ever returned: this 'great journey into the East,’ past the tall peaks which marked the backbone of a continent, into the land of gold and death?"1 The Northland, then, is the unchartered land of the Spirit where man seeks his identity by facing death, by participating in life's essential contest for preservation of meaningful selfhood. It is not merely the place to escape from civilization; instead, it is the place where men could confront the essential facts of life (actuality) and undertake a romantic quest for identity (ideals). The Alaskan land- scape, the cosmic landscape, is identified with naturalistic logic and the monist's position that denies human significance. This is startling because London sees the frontier unlike any writer who preceeded him. Hamlin Garland in his short stories, for instance, had his characters withdraw from civilization to find new identities only to be disappointed by the dreary facts of the middle-border; but no one, until London, had put this confrontation in such darkly dramatic and universal terms. lRebels and Ancestors, p. 152. 69. The Northland nature itself is clearly not a source of positive values. Isolated, the "White Silence" passage makes a convincing argument that man iS just a finite "speck" traveling in a "dead world," and man's impulse to define himself heroically and transcend his mortality is "mere Striving." If London had made the rest of the story consistent with the import of this poetic essay, he would have made his characters into mindless, brutal McTeagueS. But it must be remembered that London hoped to combine with the "world of actuality" the record of man's "Spirit-groping" and "soul-reaching." "Actuality," which he associated with the unpleasant, he found by leaving civili- zation where death is "a prearranged pageant, moving along a well-oiled groove to the family vault, where the hinges are kept from rusting and the dust from the air is swept continually away" to the Arctic where 1."1 Values, "Spirit-groping," death stalks "about gruesome and accidents the god-like in man, must be shown as the product of man, himself, responding actively to the whiSper calling to completion. The early Northland stories do combine the "actual" and the "ideal," the real- istic and the romantic, since romantic heroes quest in an environment suggesting terror and futility. The external would be the actual and the internal the ideal. London may have thought of himself as a realist because he believed that he was engaged in recording truth honestly and would have agreed with Howells that the goal of the writer is to describe reality 1"The Unexpected," Love g£_Life (New York, 1906), 126. 70. and that "all tells for destiny and character." But London's con- ceptions of truth, reality and character were remarkably different from the realist's. Holland was correct in assuming that "the deeper philoSOphical points of departure always color the work and interweave themselves into the story and set the pace and determine the impact of the fiction."1 Something happens to London's fiction when he promotes ideas. Jack London was seriously recording truth, but not mere truth. He desired to present "strong truth," and to make absolutely clear to his reader his own conception of that truth.2 To him, a neglect of either the external or of man's subjective experience would be an abandonment of that truth-seeking: the realist's "fact" had to be converted into a romantic "truth." It is this impulse to didacticism, his compelling desire to communicate "strong truth" forcefully, that leads to the romantic intensity of his fiction. Howells conceived of reality as changing but Still rather static in its undramatic process from event to event. London, on the other hand, thought of the cosmic process as more vital, Operating according to a dynamic principle. He never explicitly defined this principle, but it is implicit in his use of the word "force." Like Martin Eden, "he had accepted the world as the world, but was now comprehending the organization of it, the interplay of force and matter QWS, p. 88)." Force is the most significant and underlying fact in the universe. 1"Jack London: His Thought and Artistry," p. 109. 2Joan London, 209. 71. Arthur McDowell, as early as 1918, realized that this belief is fundamentally hostile to realism: ...just as there is a form of art which regards life as the embodiment of some one guiding thought or feeling, so it has been a common trait of philosoPhers to choose one element of the uni- verse and look in it for the meaning of the whole. 50 Spinoza chose substance, Schopenhauer chose will, while modern theorists who start from physical science interpret everything in terms of activity or force. This point of view realism also repudiates as deceptive in its assumptions and its Simplicity. London's reading of Darwin, Spencer, Kidd, Nietzsche and Marx, to name a few, hastily but energetically undertaken when he began to incorporate serious ideas into his stories, demanded that he "interpret everything in terms of activity or force."2 To fictionalize this interplay of forces demanded of London some- thing more than a mere objective documentation of external nature, "the world as world" as London called it, in order to avoid the "end- less book-keeping of existence" as Philip Rahv describes the naturalistic tendency.3 Consequently, he poeticized his descriptions in order to charge them with life, energy and force, as in the "The Sun-Dog Trail's" descriptive "dust of diamonds" for snow or in the 1Realism: A Study Sp_Art and Thought, excerpted as "Conclusions and Applications" in Documents 2§_Modern Literary_Realism,_p. 569. 2For a discussion of London's reading and his confused understand- ing of it see the Holland dissertation and Abraham Rothberg, "The House that Jack Built: A Study of Jack London" (unpublished dissertation, Columbia University, 1952). More systematic studies are: Sam 8. Baskett, "Jack London's Fiction: Its Social Milieu" (unpublished dissertation, university of California, 1951) and Roy Werner Carlson, "Jack London's Heroes: A Study of Evolutionary Thought" (unpublished dissertation, University of New Mexico, 1962). 3"Notes on the Decline of Naturalism," quoted in Documents 9S Mbdern Literary Realism, p. 579. 72. landscape of Naass' odyssey in "An Odyssey of the North." Indeed, so strong is the poetic and evocative element in London's short stories that Pattee declared it the feature which distinguishes London from his predecessors in the craft.1 London applied the notion of force to his conception of character psychology as well as to his phiIOSOphy of external environment. Character and destiny were bound together with powerful emotions, "the Splendid stinging things of the Spirit," "wild " "stress and strain," "terror and tragedy (WE, p. 108)." insurgencies, London believed that primitive emotions lay at the center of human experience. Fear, in particular, was the basic emotion which nature evoked in man and which men either learned to live with or perished.2 Portrayal of intense emotions became not only his fictional goal but also the yardstick by which he measured the success of other writers and the rationale behind his praise for Kipling, Gorky and Upton Sinclair.3 For Howells, with his mild moral ethic, this reliance upon powerful emotions must have seemed an "itch of awakening at all cost in the reader vivid and violent emotions" that he deplored in romance 0 4 1The DevelOpment 9£_the American Short Story, pp. 352-353. 2"The Terrible and Tragic in Fiction," Critic, XLII (June, 1903), 540-542. See also the opening passage in Before Adam (New York, 1907). He shared this idea with Nietzsche, although he probably had not read from the phiIOSOpher's works at this time, and with Stephen Crane. 3See Foner's reprints of London's reviews, pp. 507-524. “Criticism and Fiction, p. 65. 73. Responding to the whisper calling from a nature ruled by the interplay of forces, the London heroes participate in an intense quest for completion, battered by external forces and the power of their emotions, hoping to reach a state of perfection. Jay Gurian comments on the ambiguity of this quest: "For London depicts protagonists fighting to win in a causitive naturalist universe; but he also depicts antagonists fighting to overcome the causitive universe and to affirm beliefs not possible within the dialectics of that universe."1 However, this longing for perfection as a basis for action combined with his notions of force, whether or not psycho- logical unity is achieved, is fundamental to London's romanticism. Nor was London's concept of force restricted to his views of the universe and character psychology--he applied it to literary Style as well. To present "strong truth," London believed, a writer must have 2 "strength of utterance," as Opposed to the precision of fine writing. He conceived of style as the forceful relationship between author and audience or as the use of language to convey the author's ideas and characters' emotions directly, without modification to the readers. It is the link between "strong truth" and forceful emotion. For this reason, during his apprenticeship, he searched for a theory of style and the style itself which would give him direct access to his reader's minds and basic emotions. 1"The Romantic Necessity in Literary Naturalism: Jack London," American Literature, XXXVIII (March, 1966), 112. 2Joan London, p. 287. 74. Among the several books that he took to the Klondike was one destined to crystalize his ideas about forceful style and how to achieve it-Herbert Spencer's PhilosoPhy 3: Style, consisting of two sections discussing the "causes of force in language."1 Accord- ing to Charmian London, Jack had said in later years that this essay taught me...the subtle and manifold operations necessary to transmute thought, beauty, sen- sation and emotion into black symbols on white paper; which symbols through the reader's eye were taken into his brain, and by his brain transmuted into thought, beauty, sensation and emotion that fairly corresponded with mine. Among other things, this taught me to know the brain of my reader, in order to realize my thought, or vision or emotion. Also, I learned that the right symbols were the ones that would require the expenditure of the minimum of my reader's brain energy, leaving the maximum of his brain energy to realize and enjoy the content of my mind, as conveyed to his mind. Spencer believed that the reader had only so much mental "energy" at his disposal and that the writer must tap this energy without allowing it to be squandered on peripheral matters. Simple words and sentence structure would conserve the energy and direct it towards the idea or emotion communicated by the writer. London's statement demonstrates that he comprehended Spencer's thesis. But more importantly, his enthusiasm for Spencer's doctrine reveals what London prized in writing. First, he felt that nothing must stand between the reader and the direct apprehension of the writer's ideas. The writer Should never confuse the reader by using a Latinate vocabulary or intricate plots, 1For a discussion of the Specific recommendations London acquired from this essay (for instance, his use of "Saxon English"), see Holland, 211, p. 50. 75. complex characters or subtleties of emotion. All these "waste" the reader's "energy" as a magazine critic influenced by Philosophy 9S ‘Sgygg.stated.l London never lost Sight of his readers, and because of his didactic intention, his preoccupation with idea rather than technique, he accepted Spencer's theory that simple, evocative language was the best way to convey "each thought into the mind, Step by step with little liability to error."2 Spencer was giving London the key for unlocking closed minds so that they could receive his gOSpel of new values. Secondly, London learned from Spencer that forceful expression could be achieved by selecting "from the sentiment, scene, or event described those typical elements which carry many others along with them"; or, in other words, the most direct method and style is the most suggestive one.3 So London tried to acquire a simple but evocative structure and style. As has been mentioned, the height of his stylistic achievement was just this evocative and poetic effect. Not that he was always a brilliant stylist--Spencer warned that the economy that elicits poetry could degenerate into bombast, a fault that an early critic found in London's style: He is a worshipper at the shrine of Action, and action he interprets through the medium of force....According to the rhetorics, Force is one of the...e1ements of style. [He] has more of the brass band in his idiom than of the string quartet...such writing bears the same relation to literature as a shriek does 1Vernon Lee, "On Literary Construction," Bookman, II (Sept., 1895), 21. 2Spencer, pp. 31-32. 31bid., p. 28. 76. to singing. The method of London is a sort of deliberate hysteria. Nevertheless, London had found a theory of language to complement his romantic interest in force, intensity and Simplicity. Although no other work of literary theory compelled his imagi- nation as much as Spencer's, it is clear that he did not move directly from assimilating this "scientific" theory of style to the practice of his own. London may have found that Spencer's advocacy of simplicity in form and style in order to achieve a forceful communication was a remarkably coherent statement of what he wished to do, and the essay may have provided him with some Specific techni- ques. Still, from theory to practice was too great a leap. Instead, he acted upon another passage from the first page of the philosopher's observations: ...there can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon ac- quaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts need- less. He who daily hears and reads well-framed sentences, will naturally more or less tend to use Similar ones. Accordingly, in quest of a forceful style, London did as he had done when seeking an adequate form. He took down his Kipling, and "labor- iously, in longhand, and for days on end, he copied page after page and Story after story of Kipling" until he was able to approximate his lPorter Garnett, rev. of Iron Heel, Pacific Mbnthly as quoted’ in "Attempt to Place Jack London," Current Literature, XLII, (May, 1907), 513. 77. Often, London's prose is Similar to Kipling's in its measured cadences and rhythmical, incantatory, movement. Particularly in the Northland Indian stories, London achieved "a haunted sense of unshaped mystery and sound" growing into "melody, a hint of some primeval cradle-song, brooding and weird, merging into words and rhythm" that an early reviewer found romantic characteristics of Kipling's "Toomai and the Elephants."1 London, like Kipling, sought a prose that was Simple and direct, yet evoking Strong, intense emotion from its short sentences. Both writers, particularly through the Speech patterns of their native characters, invested their prose with Biblical overtones by employing allegorical rhetoric.2 They combined a grandiloquent tone with the matter-of-fact, the exotic with the ordinary, an epic swing with the rapid movement of clipped, journalistic reportage.3 DeSpite London's realist's vocabulary, then, London was a romantic to the extent that a dynamic dimension, rooted in his con- cepts of the universe and human personality, infuses his stories. His desire to portray this intensity led him to assimilate Spencer's theory of style as the best way to communicate his intellectual and emotional intensity and Kipling's practice as a practical guideline. This 1J. B. P. (Jennette Barbour Perry), "Mr. Kipling as an Artist," Critic, XXXIII (Dec., 1898), 473. 2For London's theory of primitive language see "The Phenomena of Literary Evolution," Bookman, XII (Oct., 1900), 48ff. Some reviewers objected to this element of style--for example, see the Athenaeum review of Children _o_f_1:_t_1_e_Srgs_t (Jan. 17, 1903), 77. 3Kipling's stylistic legacy to London is not all positive, however. "Kiplingesque smartness of diction [is what] Willa Cather later identi- fied as the period mannerism..." that infected the stories of many writers [See Warner Berthoff, The Ferment 2; Realism, American Literature, 1884-1919 (New York, 1965), p. 229]. Many of the "clever" elements of London's style are Kiplingesque. 78. dynamism removed London from the rank and file realists, who either indulged in the commonplace or denied man a vital emotional or mental life. It also removed him from the romanticists who viewed life through intense but pleasant emotions and disembodied spirit from experience. The dynamic dimension requires that London's fiction be described by adjectives like: "mighty," "bold," "poetic," "tragic" and "mythic." In a June, 1899, letter, London made a passing comment about Walt Whitman's style which is not without significance, for in many ways his apprenticeship demonstrates that he was Whitman's literary child.1 London's "god" and "clod" eclectic literary theory demonstrates that like Whitman he wished to embody in his fiction both.matter and spirit, both the body and the soul, and to forge a new relationship between them. With Whitman, and other serious romantics, London shared a sense of active participation in a dynamic cosmos that was lacking in Howellsian realism. This vitality had died in popular romance, too, which retained the vestiges of idealism in the form of a sentimental moralism allied to an aristocratic conception of society and disembodied from new philosophical and psychological information. London hOped to shock his readers into a sense of active, masculine forces shaping their characters and destinies and to drag them bodily into an aware- ness of new values. Like Whitman, he felt the prophetic impulse and lurked egotistically in and behind his stories, exuding a self-conscious intensity and recommending a new approach to life. And if Whitman used 1Letters (To Johns), 41. 79. prose-poetry to evoke a sense of cosmic power, London employed a poetic prose Style to infuse his grand landscapes with mythic Signi- ficance. In many ways London was seeking to do for prose what Whitman had done at mid-century for poetry. The comparison with Whitman is a little too flattering. London was not a technical innovator, nor did he contribute revolutionary ideas that would forever alter the form of the short story genre. By no means, though, was the young Jack London without insight, pro- fundity and real understanding. His visions of nightmare and glory as they erupt from his Alaskan short stories prove that his fiction is more than a prefabricated construction built from the commentaries of magazine critics. He did learn from them, however; and it is fair to say that his apprenticeship, in its broad outline, is a record of his pragmatic Study of, and sensitivity to, the Short story form and theory that had Opened the door of success for others. He learned from the magazines and handbooks that there would be a market for fiction that presented bold materials--the adventurous, violent, even sordid--if they were Shot through with idealism; that critical acclaim went to those stories which were presented dramatically and created a Single impression. Consequently he developed a dramatic method and suggestive Style which allowed him to present "strong truth" forcefully. Indirection, suggestion, proved to be more direct than overt propa- gandizing. In all this, he was reSponding to the dominant serious and popular trends in short story theory and technique. And it is not surprising 80. that his stories reflect a mixture of both serious and pOpular attitudes and practices. London's dogmatically expressed theories and good intentions are not always consistent with his practice. He might deride the conventionalities of sentimental romance or commonplace realism, but both find places in the nineteen volumes of collected short stories.1 Even in work which cannot be described as hack, he would glaze his strenuous idealism with sentimental platitudes or lace his evocative prose with insignificant detail. One must admire his acquisition of so much learning and so many skills in a brief period of time but also must regret that his energy did not lead him to continue perfecting his art. Nonetheless, from the magazines, from Kipling and from Spencer he had acquired a short story form, theory and technique which was the "proper trend of style and literary art" and which gave him access to his goal of making technique subservient to idea. He was adequately prepared to explore the implications of his major theme, the clash between actuality and the ideal. 1See Chapter V below for a discussion of London's use of popular conventions. Chapter III The Malemute Kid: Ideals and Actuality Jack London's quest for a form, technique and philosophy of composition was characterized by his desire to present truth in the most forceful manner. In his moments of self-characterization, he thought of himself foremost as a truth-seeker and a public educator and, secondarily, as an artist. He mastered the rudiments of short story form and technique and assimilated Spencer's philosophy of composition, which had as a premise that the forceful communication of ideas and emotions was the primary function of fiction. The forceful truth London wanted to demonstrate to the world was that life-giving values could be Operative in a death-dealing environment, that ideals could triumph over actuality. Consequently, upon the cosmically cold, pulseless and deterministic "primary truth" embodied in the Northland landscape, he superimposed a more Optimistic, idealistic order of truth--"secondary truth," he would later call it. In Barleycorn he writes of secondary truth: This is the order of truth that obtains, not for the universe, but for the live things in it if they for a little Space will endure ere they pass. This order of truth...is the sane and normal order of truth, the rational order of truth that life must believe in order to live... What is good is true. And this is the order of truth...that men must know and guide his actions by, with unswerving certitude that in the universe no other order can obtain (p. 308). The "whisper" in Barleygorn hints the truths from the secondary order, 82. ideals like love, courage and individual completion that are missing in civilization, can be restored by reSponding to the calltn adventure. Ideals may be revitalized even in the face of a naturalistic actuality. drew initial critical attention to the young writer during 1899 and 1900, are the results of London's attempt to combine realism and ' or "primary" and "secondary" truths.1 romance, "actuality and ideals,‘ "I am an emotional materialist," London explained, and associated the external world with realistic materialism and subjective man with romantic idealism.2 These Stories which have the Malemute Kid as a central character or as a by-stander supplying the moral norm for the stories, are fictional attempts to validate the efficacy of the intuited whiSper that somehow the individual man, a "spirit-grOper" in love with the "Stinging things of the Spirit," can outwit a stultifying environment and find "things wonderful." In his youthful idealism, while writing the Malemute Kid series, he tried to stack the deck in this contest between actuality and ideals to prove that the ideal was possible even in a naturalistic universe. The ideal, the Kid, was to conquer actuality. His explicit theme for these stories is an Optimistic affirmation of man's power to defy determinism and reassert life-giving ideals. The implicit theme of these Stories, however, contradicts his 1The Kid appears in six of the nine stories: "White Silence," "To the Man on Trail," "The Priestly Prerogative," "The Men of Forty-Mile," "The Wife of a King" and "An Odyssey of the North." 2Letter to Anna Strunsky, Dec. 20, 1902, as quoted in Franklin Walker, Jack London and the Klondike (London, 1966), p. 219. 83. optimism. Throughout these stories, London demonstrates an ambivalence rooted deeply in his temperament; the actual and the ideal are never bonded and remain an emulsion. The Kid stories that argue that man is powerful and can control his fate through the exercise of thought wedded to action are, in the final analysis, morally confused and artistically feeble. It must be remembered that if the whisper tell- ing of the rewards of adventure is an illusion, despair and death are the inevitable alternatives (the suicide would have been consummated if the whiSper had not intervened). Since what the whisper promises is an empirically unproven intuition, it could well be merely the vain promptings of the human heart that lead to a further and final dis- illusionment. And in fact, the drift of the Malemute Kid series is towards a dominance of primary, naturalistic truth. The explicit theme of mastery metamorphosizes into a more compelling implicit theme of failure. Jack London identified himself strongly with the Malemute Kid and saw him, probably, as an idealized extension of himself. He wrote to Cloudesley Johns about this character: You surprise me with the aptness of your warning, telling me I may learn to love him too well myself. I am afraid that I am rather stuck on him--not the one in print, but the one in my brain. I doubt that I ever shall get him in print.1 Even the "Malemute" half of the character's name has a personal connection with the writer because London, it is well known, used the 1Letters (April 17, 1899), 29. 84. nick-name "Wolf" with intimates and idealized dogs in several fictional works.1 The "Kid" part of the name, too, identifies London with the character Since London in his autobiographical comments took obvious pride in the "Sailor Kid" "monicker" bestowed upon him by the brotherhood of waifs on the road. London had a great personal Stake in this character who embodied what man could hope to achieve by responding to the whisper that called him to adventure. Through him can be found the pattern of London's quest for life-sustaining values and the failure of that quest. "are held together by their northern settings and by the appearance and reappearance of a group of characters of whom Malemute Kid is the most noteworthy,‘ and that early reviewers immediately recognized the Kid's literary forefathers: Reviewers at once labelled Malemute Kid an Argonaut Mulvaney, recognizing the Kipling influence as truly in the central chaacter as in London's use of the paragraph of aphorisms, 'the vague and choppy abstract,' as one critic put it, with which he opened many of his tales. They also recognized that the Kid was a de- scendant of some of Bret Harte's characters. Malemute Kid is a sourdough with a heart of gold. Though he has 'lived on rabbit-tracks and salmon-belly' and can both think straight and act quickly and, if necessary, roughly, he is sensitive to all finer emotions. 1The Call g§_the Wild; White Fapg; "Brown Wolf" in Love 2§_Life; Jergy g£_the Islands; and Michael, Brother 2S_Jergy. 2Jack London and The Klondike, p. 215. 85. succinctly puts it, is its "central intelligence."1 The Kid has literary antecedents, personal relevance and a structural and thematic function. In the romantic tradition, the Malemute Kid comes from an unknown origin and is not tied to civilized institutions such as marriage or business. He is the spirit of the Northland human experience and is free to fulfill his promise by pining his virtues against the cosmic odds. AS a citizen of the Arctic wastes, he is not insulated by society from life's central problem of death and has faced it many times. When a tree crushes Mason in "The White Silence" while Mason, the Kid and Ruth (Mason's Indian wife) are on the "Long Trail," the narrator inter- jects: "The sudden danger, the quick death,--how often had the Kid faced it! (10)." The narrative focus at this crucial moment in the story is Shared equally by the natural event described as "the tragedy of life" and the Kid'sreactions to it. Mason, dying, is of secondary importance. The real interest for London is in portraying an idealized man, the Kid, reacting to the facts of violence and death--ideality confronting actuality. Through the Kid's reactions to this tragedy, London presents the masculine code that preserves human dignity and worth and dramatizes the imposition of secondary truths upon primary. For London, like Joseph Conrad, the code is "that belief in a few Simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy."2 1"Jack London's Literary Artistry," p. 34. 2Lord Jim (Mbdern Library edition; New York, 1931), pp. 33-34. 86. Experienced in the ways of life and death, the Kid leaps into action because "those of the Northland are early taught the futility of words and the inestimable value of deeds (11)." At the moment of imminent death, London's characters act from habit, or instinct, and abstractions are suspect because action, after all, is man's Sign of living in an Arctic environment that equates stillness with death. Strength is the dynamic of action, and the Kid is "capable of felling an ox at a single blow (5)." Such strength is, as Malcolm Cowley has pointed out, not only a physical but a moral attribute to naturalists.1 The Kid then builds a heat reflector from some canvas, "a trick which men know who study physics at the fount of experience (10)." Often the instinctual or habitual action taken in the face of death is a ritual one or in some way demonstrates expertise that symbolically represents human control over natural forces. Ritual, whether it is in the more symbolic realm of journeying on the "Long Trail" or in the more denotative fashion of using Northland lore, is always allied in London's fiction with self-definition or self-preservation. The building of the reflector Shows not only that the Kid is experienced in Northland ways, but demonstrates that he knows the tricks that bring the light and warmth associated with life.2 To understand process and to perform perfectly are implicit goals for London's characters in their quest for identity. Wholeness of personality is not a given in his fiction 1"A Natural History of Naturalism," in Becker, p. 438. 2That light and warmth images are associated with life in London's fiction has been noted by several critics including Earle Labor in his dissertation and Ann S. Jennings in "London's Code of the Northland," .Sigskap_Review, I (1964), 43-48. 87. and must be accomplished through the ability to act with style. Experience, action, strength and expertise, although the basic virtues of the code, are not enough, however. Tenderness and love must temper courageous action. The ideal man should be not only "practical insofar as the mechanics of life were concerned" and "brave and game" but "delicate and tender...an all around man."1 The motive for action is to preserve life and to exhibit the love that makes life worth living. The Kid, already shown as strong and practical, is tender and "could not bear to beat the poor animals....almost wept with them in their misery (5)." Such sympathy is mawkishly senti- mentalized particularly since the Kid's emotions are described in Similar terms when he faces and carries out the mercy killing of Mason that closes the story. Nevertheless, love for all living creatures is a hall-mark of London's idealized characters.2 Mason is only an inch less a man, and he dies. He is, of course, killed by the "great tree, burdened with its weight of years and snow," which "played its part in the tragedy of life (10)." But preparation is made for his death by contrasting the Kid's tenderness for the dog Carmen with Mason's impatient cruelty with the lash. In typical London fashion, the author is ambivalent about whether the responsibility for Mason's death is naturalistic or human because he violates the code which stipulates that when on the trail, close to death, true manhood is 1Joan London, p. 229. Joan London presents this as a quote from her father describing what he desired in the ideal comrade. He never did find this reflection oftis self-concept in real life but did create it in the Kid. 2The emphasis on love fits in, of course, with London's social brother- hood theme, but love is not extended to all. A capacity for love is found in London's self-extensions: brutes and animals as well as those who live by the code and reSpond to the spirit of adventure. Code violators are condemned without pity. 88. defined not only through strength but through generosity, control and compassion. Many critics have seen that struggle, action and Strength, arising from a Darwinistic conception of the human situation, color the Northland characterizations. But no one, with the exception of Earle Labor, has given attention to the key quality possessed by the "Spirit-grOping," idealized characters--"imagination." In the ideal comrade passage from Joan London's biography mentioned above, London also demanded that his soul mate be "fanciful, imaginative, senti- mental where the thrill of life was concerned."1 An active imagi- nation is synonymous with the capacity for adventure. London's unimaginative men, like Edwin Bentham in "The Priestly Prerogative," do not have this capacity and are content merely to make money in the Klondike rather than to find riches of the spirit through adventure.2 Only complete men have the imaginative capacity that speaks to them in a "whisper." Most important, through the exercise of the imagi- nation London's characters avoid the "clod" label because they have active consciousnesses. They face the naturalistic environment not only with their brute strength held in common with nature, but with a zestful mental and emotional awareness. The imagination concept is more complicated than the capacity for responding to the whisper. Earle Labor writes that in London's fiction, 1P. 229. 2§_W_, 120. ...the man who is to endure the long arctic winter must be exceptionally gifted in that highest of human faculties--imagination: he must understand the ways of the northland so sympathetically that he can anticipate its emergencies before they occur, always adapt- ing himself to nature's laws, never attempt- ing foolishly to impose the frail, devious customs of society and civilization upon the inviolable wilderness. Possibly "To Build a Fire" was in Labor's mind when he wrote this 89. description of imagination because it is there that London makes his most explicit statements about this faculty. The man in "To Build a Fire" dies because he does not understand the Northland laws of nature and, consequently, can not intuit the danger that waits for him: The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfort- able, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe.2 The two ingredients of or qualities prerequisite to the possession of imagination in this Story are instinct (found in the dog in the story) and experience (represented by an old sourdough's admonitions); and they permit one to understand the human Significance of the facts of nature . 1"Symbolic Wilderness," 152. 2Lost Face (New York, 1910), 65. 90. The Kid in "The White Silence" possesses the imagination that the unnamed man in "To Build a Fire" lacks. Keeping him from becoming a sentimentalized romantic idealization, London gives the Kid the power of imagination which tells him that the significance of the Arctic cold is death unless he acts unhesitatingly. And because of his experience he is able to act swiftly, instinctively, and, finally, decisively by shooting Mason in order to allow Ruth and himself to live. Because he perceives the human Significance of natural facts, he is not ruled by the sentimental code of civilization that would deplore the mercy-killing and urge him to stay with his friend Mason even though it would mean the death of all three characters. An understanding of the operation of the imaginative faculty in London's short stories is essential if one expects to appreciate fully the import of the Malemute Kid series. London's concept of this faculty is both more Simple and more complex than either Labor's estimate or as a Sign of the capacity for adventure because it operates in different ways in different stories. Let it suffice for the present, however, that the imaginative faculty permits the Kid to be aware of the threat of the Northland environment and to challenge it by calling the code into play to avoid disaster. If the theme of "The White Silence" is two-fold, that nature is indifferent to man but that man, equipped with imagination, can find meaning by practicing the code of manhood, "To the Man on Trail" is a further develOpment of the second. In this and the three Kid stories 91. which followed it, London tried to make the ideal dominate actuality. This is the story that first drew attention to London, and in it he presents the most positive view of manhood he could muster. The Story takes place on Christmas day as the Kid, "a born raconteur," surrounded by a democratic fellowship of Northland friends, encourages the host to make the drinks Stronger and begins the heroic tale, which had passed into Arctic folklore, of acquiring a bride for Mason. The tale told, the Kid proposes a toast: "'A health to the man on trail this night; may his grub hold out; may his dOgS keep their legs; may his matches never miss fire'" which is a prayer for human life to prevail over death (105). This serves as an incantation. AS the toast concludes, noises are heard outside the cabin, and, shortly, Jack Westondale enters: He was a striking personage, and a most pictur- esque one, in his Arctic dress of wool and fur. Standing six foot two or three, with proportion- ate breadth of shoulders and depth of chest, his smooth-shaven face nipped by the cold to a gleam- ing pink, his long lashes and eyebrows white with ice...he seemed, of a verity, the Frost King (106). From the description it is apparent that this is another of London's idealized, virile characters, experienced in the ways of the trail and strong. He grips hands with the Kid and "though they had never met, each had heard of the other, and the recognition was mutual (108)." A corollary to the code of manhood is that its practitioners instinctive- ly know each other. It is a recognition of wholeness of character. The Kid's close friendships have as their bond this mutual recognition 92. of completed identity or, at least, the potential for it. Prince, a young mining engineer, is the Kid's protege who is learning the North- land ways in order to complete his potential for manhood.1 It is this bond, too, that is the basis of mutual respect between Sitka Charlie and the Kid. In "The Wisdom of the Trail" Charlie proves that he can undertake "an unknown journey through the dismal vastnesses of the Northland, and he knew it to be of the kind that try the souls of men (149)" and still live by the code, "the honor and the law," which means death if it is broken (148, 154). The last of the integrated spirits is Father Roubeau who "but one in all the Northland knew [as] the man Paul Roubeau, and that man was Malemute Kid...Before him alone did the priest cast off the sacerdotal garb and stand naked" because they had shared "the last and inmost thought, on the barren stretches of Bering Sea, in the heartbreaking mazes of the Great Delta, on the terrible winter journey from Point Barrow to the Porcupine."2 In "The Wife of a King" the Kid hears the priest's confession, and this is significant because as the ideal man of imagination, experience, action and compassion, the Kid is the true priest of the Northland morality. He is the high priest in the new land. He becomes the moral norm for the stories in which he appears and the "law-giver" that London admired so greatly.3 Returning to "To the Man on Trail," after the 1This character appears in "To the Man on Trail," "The Wife of a King" and "An Odyssey of the North." With some modifications, he becomes the protagonist in London's first novel, A Daughter 2S_the Snows (New York, 1902). 2"The Priestly Prerogative," SW, 143. The priest appears in the same stories as Prince. 3London often used "law-giver" in the sense of imposing a Nordic code of race supremacy upon uncivilized or under-civilized cultures (Alaskan, tropical or Mexican). The phrase occurs, for example, in the title of an article extolling the power of Americans in Mexico ("Lawgivers," Collier's, 4111 Tuna 101A 16-17- 28-29). But in these early stories, glVlng the .93. story has presented the Kid as the ideal and Westondale as a kindred spirit, the Kid, knowing that Westondale is a fugitive from the Mbunted Police, deliberately helps him to escape. When the other men in the cabin, who represent the Northland democracy, discover that the visitor had stolen $40,000 from McFarland's gambling casino, they are angry with the Kid for misleading them. The resolution of the story is the Kid's rationale for helping the thief escape, the basis of his Northland morality: "'It's a cold night, boys.'" Westondale has "'traveled trail'" and you "'know what that stands for'," he tells them (117). He has been "'taking care of his partner with the scurvy'" when another partner lost $40,000 of Westondale's money gambling and dashed the hOpeS he had of returning to the wife and "'exactly what boy he's never seen' (118)." Consequently, he stole his partner lost-—forty thousand' (118)." Legally, also logically, of course, Westondale is guilty, and London even idealizes the Mbunty representing civilized law. But the Kid is Spokesman for the law of the Northland code that transcends a civilized morality. Westondale is acquitted because he is a completed Spirit who has faced the essential facts of life (the trail, the cold and misfortune) and mastered them. Mbreover, he had practiced the masculine code by obeying the law of comradely self-sacrifice and remaining loyal to his tender love for his wife and child. Finally, he maintained his integrity by taking only what had been his, money lost not through natural misfortune but through a corrupt social 94. institution-the gaming table.1 Westondale is justified because he is wronged in a way that society is incapable or unwilling to rectify. He, therefore, is judged by the Northland code that admires mascu- linity kept in Spite of hardship and is found justified in his actions. London, incidentally, was not satisfied with this ending, perhaps because of the doubtful morality that Charmian London noticed; never- theless, it is consistent with his portraiture of idealized men and valuable as an example of the Kid acting as law-giver.2 If "The White Silence" demonstrates the qualities inherent in the Kid that make him the ideal man and person most likely to explain to others how a meaningful life can be lived while facing death and violence and "To the Man on Trail" shows him actively, although arbitrarily, imposing his code in order to resolve a moral dilemma, "The Men of Forty-Mile" and "The Wife of a King" extend the thesis that the Kid, educated in the truths of Northland life, is a law-giver, truth-bearer and righter of wrongs. Both of the two later stories, however, are artistically and intellectually weak, testifying to London's difficulty in sustaining an ideal hero and, consequently, a belief in the ideal. In "The Men of Forty-Mile" Lon McFane and Bettles, two of London's regulars in the early Northland tales, both frustrated by the Arctic 1Here, implicit, is London's Operational belief that it is immoral to gain money without work by "farming" fellow humans. It is one of the minor social themes that recurs throughout his "non-social" fiction. See, for example, "The Passing of Marcus O'Brien," Sggghgggg, 169, for a parallel objection to gambling. 2letters (To Johns, Nov. 11, 1899), 68. 95. winter, squabble over an insignificant matter, and despite their friendship, decide to settle the issue by dueling with rifles. The two men leave the cabin to prepare for the encounter, and the narrator comments, "There was no law in the land...The Mounted Police was also a thing of the future" as he prepares for the entrance of the law- bringer Kid (57). After a few more comments on the customs of settling differences on the lawless frontier, there is "a scurry of moccasins and loud cries, rounded off with a pistol-shot....Then the storm-doors Opened and Malemute Kid entered, a smoking Colt's in his hand and a merry light in his eye (58)." Once again, as in "To the Man on Trail," there is the melodramatic entrance of the ideal man of action. The problem is presented to the Kid, he takes "charge of the affair" and makes this pronouncement about human nature: "Life's a game, and men the gamblers. They'll stake their whole pile on the one chance in a thousand. Take away that one chance, and--they won't play (60)." The chance that each of the contestants believes in is that the other will die and he will live. Both have "an unswerving faith in the God of Chance (66)." What the law-bringer proves to the men is that ulti- mately there is no chance and that all men must die. He declares that he will hang the winner of the duel. McFane and Bettles see the wisdom of this and call off the contest just as a rabid dog tears into the camp and leaps to attack Bettles. McFane intercepts the dog; and, finally, Bettles shoots the animal. In a frame-work of farce, London has presented the dominant theme of the Malemute Kid series: among 96. good men, the knowledge of the inevitability of death calls them to self-sacrifice and comradeship. The Kid teaches the law of necessity, and the men have never known him to lie. His spirit presides over the men's instinctual decision to practice the code that cheats death and unites them in brotherhood. But despite the serious theme of "The Men of Forty-Mile," the story does not evoke the mythic-poetic Spirit of the Northland that serves as a backdrop for a heroic journey into a dangerous knowledge of the outer world and of Self. Instead, the focus of this story is upon the comical, impetuous and quarrelsome men of little learning and polish who, conventionally, have hearts of gold beneath crude exteriors. Irish and working class dialects give humor to the serio- comic banter. The narrator interrupts the dialogue to mention the Arctic customs and psychology and to sustain the action. The result is a local color story with the heroic Kid superimposed upon it. The Kid, himself, is reduced to little more than a master of the revels who is necessary to the story only because he holds the device, the trick, which restores order after the foolery has Spent itself. It is the Kid as "trickster" that is the most symptomatic change in "The Men of Forty-Mile." The change is fundamentally an over- simplification of the concept of "imagination" that turns the story into a tale of conventional heroics more closely associated with London's juveniles than with the complex Stories like "The White Silence." Tales g£_the Fish Patrol, for example, which is a collection of 97. adventure stories about the oyster pirates and lawmen of San Francisco bay written originally for The Youth's Companion, contains "moral purposes insidiously inserted."1 One of the morals he advocated was the necessity of using a less complicated kind of imagination than the Kid uses in "The White Silence" and the kind that he does employ in "The Men of Forty-Mile." In "A Raid on the Oyster Pirates" the boy-hero's life is saved because his adult comrade, Charley, has the foresight to envision the course of the action and to alert the law to stand guard on the beach.2 The story ends with this moral tag: "'That comes of imagination...When you see a thing, you've got to see it all around, or what's the use of seeing it at all?‘ (102)." And the burden of the moralizations in the Fish Patrol series in general is that success in outwitting the forces of lawlessness and death depends upon possessing an imagination which allows one to see the ' a clever plan of pattern of human affairs and upon using "ingenuity,' action, to avoid disaster. An imaginative grasp of the whole combined with a plan of action permit the good to live. The Kid's imagination in "The Men of Forty-Mile" is like Charley's. It is merely the exercise of intelligence and reason acting upon a knowledge of human nature that allows him to "see it whole" and devise a trick to solve the problem; not the instinctive and emotional, as 1New York, 1905. Despite the publication date, these stories were written during the spring of 1902 (see Letters, 140); See also Charmian London, I, p. 348 for London's remark that he deliberately moralized in his stories for boys. 2Fish Patrol, pp. 71-102. 98. well as intelligent, apprehension of nature's laws that elicits the implementation of the code in "The White Silence." Instead of pitting a Spirit-grOping man against cosmic odds, London presents a lesser confrontation between an intelligent man and comical caricatures. Because of the inequality of the contestants, trickery can replace the code in exercising death. Apparently, London was having difficulty in creating artistically, intellectually and emotionally provocative Stories that had at their center the consciousness of an ideal man. From toast-master who invokes the law of the Northland in "To the Man on Trail," to master of the revels in "The Men of Forty-Mile," the Kid degenerates into the head of a finishing School in "The Wife of a King." This story, mentioned earlier as one purloined from Kipling, uses the Pygmalion device that so delighted the Victorian mind when it took its fantasy holidays from rigid social and class distinctions and pretended that training was more important than birth. Its importance in the Malemute Kid sequence is that it shows the idealized man as a righter of social injustice and a restorer of "real" values. Cal Galbraith, the Klondike "King," leaves his Indian wife, Madeline, lured to the glittering tent cities which were socially dominated by white women. These pretentious white women had "come last" to the Northland, "knew least, but...ru1ed the land (164)." One of the first rules they legislated was that Indian women are inferior to white. The narrator announces sententiously, "There were false ideals in the land. The social strictures of Dawson were not synonymous with those 99. of the previous era, and the swift maturity of the Northland involved much wrong." The "Malemute Kid was aware of this" and "he was minded to teach a great lesson (168)." The Kid, with the aid of Jack Harrington, Bettles and Prince, teaches Madeline the social graces--pr0per carriage, the art of dancing and even techniques of bullying, wheedling and patronizing-—in the manner of the sophisticated white women. At the masked ball that con- cludes the story, Madeline uses these bewitching accomplishments to rescue Cal's interest in her. In short, the Kid turns her into a white woman and, ironically, London has shown the Kid not correcting "false vanes" but reinforcing them. This unintended ambiguity ruins the story. A brief interlude in the story is more characteristically London than the finishing school antics, indicating that the Kid is still to be taken as the spirit of the Northland experience as it is presented in more successful stories. Sandwiched between the education of Madeline and the climaxing masked ball is a page on which the Kid confronts Cal with his neglect of Madeline. In this place only are the "real values" presented and a "great lesson" taught. Just as the Klondike King begins to rationalize, the Kid stills him with a gesture as they step out of the cabin into the Northland night reigned over by the "miracles of color" of the aurora. The mythic atmosphere is evoked. A dog begins to howl, and the Kid again restrains Cal from Speaking. The passage which follows contains the logic of the 100. Northland for which the Kid stands, the source of values that are most important for joining man and woman: Dog after dog took up the strain till the full- throated chorus swayed the night. To him who hears for the first time this weird song, is told the first and greatest secret of the Northland; to him who has heard it often, it is the solemn knell of lost endeavor. It is the plaint of tortured souls, for in it is invested the heritage of the North, the suffering of countless gener- ations-~the warning and the requiem to the world's estrays. Cal Galbraith shivered slightly as it died away in half-caught sobs. The Kid read his thoughts openly, and wandered back with him through the weary days of famine and disease; and with him also was the patient Madeline, sharing his pains and perils, never doubting, never complaining (179). The "White Logic" speaks to Cal of the vanity of human desires and mocks man with his futility. The only important values are found when two people share a love that withstands suffering, despair and death. The Kid stands in the night with Cal and is the Northland priest who mediates between imperfect man and a higher truth. Cal is reminded that love and loyalty, aspects of secondary truth, must be given the highest value if finite man is to endure in the face of a crushingly impersonal primary order of truth infused in nature and threatening tragedy. The tone and import of the above passage is in keeping with the spirit of seriousness that is in London's best stories but fails to raise the Kid above his characterization in the rest of the story--as an organizer and participant in a social comedy, a.g§ll§n£_who can too easily correct injustice because "in him was centered the wisdom of ages, that between his vision and the future there could be no inter- 101. vening veil (168)." Again, he exercises the imagination of mere intelligence and ingenuity. The Kid is a liability to the story as a comparison with "The Great Interrogation" demonstrates.1 In that story, a man faces the similar problem of choosing between an Indian wife and a wealthy woman who appeals to his "race affinity." The white woman is pre- sented forcefully and is not the narrative abstraction found in "The Wife of a King." Therefore, the temptation is presented more strongly, his indecision is greater and more dramatically presented. He decides to remain with his Indian wife for the reasons which appear in "The Wife of a King's" Northland "dog chorus" but not because she becomes "whier." "The Great Interrogation," as a result, is a stronger inditement of culturally sanctioned racial bigotry and a more convincing resolution of it. No outside agent, like the Kid, is needed to trick the character into solving his dilemma. Two final stories result in the Kid's fictional demise. "The Priestly Prerogative" and "An Odyssey of the North" are extremely diverse artistically and thematically, but they share the device of using the Malemute Kid as a passive observer to a moral dilemma, as the moral norm. In the first, possibly the weakest of London's Alaskan tales, the Kid is little more than an echo to social convention. Grace Bentham, one of London's idealized white women who practice the code of masculinity despite their sex, wants to leave her husband, 1The God 2: His Fathers, 34-64.. 102. Edward Bentham, whom London surrounds with a barrage of pejorative attributes: he tears wings from butterflies, is a "selfish cry-baby" with "a skin-deep veneer of culture and conventionality" and, most contemptible, permits his wife to break trail for him (121). He is one of London's "incapables" who lack self-knowledge, self-respect and an imaginative response to adventure. Grace falls in love with Clyde Wharton, who has a capacity for manhood and love, and decides to live adulterously with him. In the Kid's cabin, Father Roubeau convinces her that adultery is wrong because it will do emotional damage to the bastard children and disgrace her family. Taken by this logic, Grace is reduced to groveling on the cabin floor and returns to her hellish marriage (139). The priest, while on the trail with the Malemute Kid, reveals that he is distressed by the consequences entailed in making her go back to Edward; nevertheless, the burden of the story supports the moral code of Mrs. Grundy's civilization, and the Kid gives his tacit approval to the resolution. This is the lowest point in London's extended characterization of the Malemute Kid,who, as the spirit of the Northland, the new land beyond the pale of bankrupt social institutions with their hollow or moribund morality, has stood for new values that bring dignity to essential human relation- ships. All the Kid's experience and imagination, implicit in the story because of his presence, result in a degrading reinforcement of society's conception of a prOper marriage, one that may be spiritually putrid as long as appearances are maintained. The last portrayal of the Kid occurs in "An Odyssey of the North." 103. Once again he passively oversees a moral dilemma, but this time admits that he can not resolve it. The confusion is integral to the theme and characterization rather than a flaw in the narrative. There is no need for the Kid to point out the lesson of the Northland's cosmic logic nor to recommend the code as a solution to it because the central characters (Axel, Unga and Naass) travel into the wasteland, practice the code and, yet, do not preserve life or love. Naass kills Axel and Unga. The Kid admits that there is no moral basis for judging Naass: "'There be things greater than our wisdom, beyond our justice. The right and the wrong of this we cannot say, and it is not for us to judge' (251)." Neither the simple imagination that weds common sense to American ingenuity nor the imagination that through intelligence, instinct and experience senses diaster and sponsors the active code to mitigate the threat are adequate concepts for dealing with death and violence. The Kid is the passive witness to the central problem London has raised in the Kid series, but no longer can act as an active agent of good, the righteous lawgiver and Northland priest. Naass's adventure does not make him a whole man, the journey and the code do not provide men with self-completion. There are indeed "things greater than our wisdom" and man can not "see it all around." Man is limited. Consequently, London's perfect man, the Kid, ceases to exist. The Malemute Kid series was a noble experiment attempting to prove the hypothesis that man, who "alone among the animals, has the awful privilege of reason" that "can penetrate the intoxicating show of things and look upon a universe brazen with indifference towards him and his 104. dreams," can act meaningfully and morally to preserve the dream of his significance (QB, p. 207). "Only in man is morality, and man created it—-a code of action that makes toward living," London states in John Barleycorn, a statement which could have been the theoretical basis for the Kid's characterization (315). The Kid, through the exercise of common sense, intelligence, ingenuity, integrity, loyalty, love and active strength within the context of adventure, challenges the Darwinian nightmare with his code. An awareness of actuality, of primary truth, challenges man to reaffirm humanly satisfying values from the order of secondary truth so that he can achieve a sense of worth and dignity. Austin M. Wright in his The American Short Stor112§ the Twenties suggests, indirectly, the importance to literary history of London's undertaking.1 Wright demonstrates that the awareness of mortality, of death, of the dissolution of the individual identity, is the in— sight common to writers like SherwoOd Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway that prompted them to use disillusioned characters who in fear and resentment at the loss of their capacity for wonder, awe and appreciation of beauty engage in adventure to restore them.2 In the stories of the twenties, he continues, adventure is associated with youth and undertaken with a sense of urgency since "to lose is to 3 die." The parallel with the motives of London's stories is provocative 1Chicago, 1961. zwright, pp. 121-123. 3Quoted by Wright, p. 123. 105. and establishes London's thematic relationship with the short story writers who followed him. A more apt parallel historically with London's attempt to use youthful adventure as a buffer between man and death, however, is Conrad's fiction, particularly nggg. The young Marlow ships aboard the "Judea" whose motto is "Do or Die" in response to an inner, romantic voice calling him to the mysterious East.1 Marlow's disillusionment is the explicit theme of the narrative. The same disillusionment is the implicit theme of London's Male- mute Kid series. Stories like "To the Man on Trail," "The Men of Forty- Mile," "The Wife of a King" and "The Priestly Prerogative," which show man in control of his fate, are artistically puerile, scarred with moral confusion, and were recognized by London himself as little more than popular successes. Although the explicit themes and character— izations of these stories promote the efficacy of a mandmade morality, their intellectual and artistic failure deny it. The "whisper" turns into derisive laughter. The failure of these stories was implicit in London's conception of the short story which claimed that the world of actuality, the Darwinian cosmos, could be infused with the ideal. He did incorporate the wasteland into his fiction; but, with the exceptions of "The White Silence" and "An Odyssey of the North," it is superficially imposed upon the stories. Beneath the gloss of unpleasant subject matter-- 1Joseph Conrad, nggh; ALNarrative (New York, 1964), orig. 1902, pp. 5-6. For a comparison of London's and Conrad's treatment of youth and disillusionment, see Sam.S. Baskett, "Jack London's Heart g£_Dark- ness," American Quarterly, X (Spring, 1958), 70-76. 106. theft, brawling and adultery--the illusions that infested the pleasant land of romance control his stories. The operative values, the idealized qualities of the Kid, are straight from the American Dream: the belief in the power of the human will, the legendary American common sense and ingenuity, and integrity and love and that these potent virtues are capable of affirming the dignity of the individual and restoring a humane order to human affairs. Rationality provides not only a scientific description of the universe, but mastery over it. London, it seems, had brought with him to the North- land the Optimistic baggage of a dead morality that had already been undermined by newer, more pessimistic, conceptions of the universe that he, ironically, simultaneously promoted. He tried to solve a twentieth century problem of alienation, despair, futility, suffering and death with a nineteenth century set of values that presumed a rational, man-centered world order. It has long been recognized that London's themes are confused and confusing. Partly this is due to the cursory nature of his read- ing, undertaken with more excitement and energy than method and analysis, when he was discovering the "strong truths" he hOped to communicate.1 Faced with this confusion, Gordon Mills argues, the most important function a critic can perform is not to find the specific sources of London's themes, but to uncover the principle that 1For a discussion of confused values, see the Holland and Rothberg dissertations. London relied upon David Starr Jordan's popularizations of Darwin and Spencer, for example. 107. organizes his ideas. Mills argues perceptively, for example, that the much debated issue of whether London was an individualist or a socialist has little meaning because London was ruled by two desires rooted more deeply in his personality than in his reading: "the desire for adventure, combat and power" and "the desire for friend- ship, justice, and a serene intellectuality," regardless of whether 1 the tOpic was socialism or individualism. It is Erich Fromm in Escape From Freedom, however, who provides the most useful key to London's temperament and, consequently, to an understanding of the ambiguity in his themes. Fromm remarks that in some men's inner lives there is a dialectical exchange between a growing sense of freedom and a deve10ping sense of futility: On the one hand it is a process of growing strength and integration, mastery of nature, growing power of human reason, and growing solidarity with other human beings. But on the other hand this growing individuation means growing isolation, insecurity, and thereby growing doubt concerning one's own role in the universe, the meaning of one's life, and with all that a growing feeling of one's own powerlessness and insignificance as an individual. This same dialectic, an ambiguity in London's thinking, informs the Malemute Kid series of stories. In his excitement with his own intellectual and artistic growth and in his haste to communicate his new found "strong truths," ambivalence necessarily resulted, an ambivalence between ideals and actuality, between secondary and primary truths. l"Jack London's Quest for Salvation," American Quarterly, VII (Spring, 1955), 8. 2New York, 1941, p. 35. 108. Later in his career London recognized the logical inconsistency, albeit the emotional necessity, of what he had done. In Barleycorn, after he had defined the "White Logic" and before concluding his remarks on man-made morality, he states that the code that "makes toward living, secondary truth," is "of the lesser order of truth (215)." Friendship, strength, the sensation of mastery that comes from a successful adventure, and all the values the Kid represents, are but human constructs deSperately formulated to insulate him from the primary truth of their futility. The rest of Barleycorn testifies to London's own inability to maintain an emotional commitment to these life-giving truths against the onslaught of primary truth. So, too, does his early fiction prove that London was unable to sustain artistically and intellectually a belief in the secondary truths as a buffer between life and death. A passage in Conrad's Youth captures the essence of London's early disillusionment, the dissipation of his early enthusiasm to advance the dogma that reSponding to the call of adventure will infuse life with the ideal. Marlow, having taken his voyage to the East, the fabled land of romance, reflects upon his own disillusionment: I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more--the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, perils, to life, to vain effort-- to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in a handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires-~a2d expires, too soon, too soon—-before life itself. 1P. 41. 109. "The White Silence" and "An Odyssey of the North," the only stories in his first volume that conclude tragically, contain the desPerate struggle between "primary truth" and "secondary truth" for ascendancy. At the end of the first story, the Kid who has brought all the talents of the imaginative, code-practicing hero to bear upon the fact of death, flees the scene in terror: "The White Silence seemed to sneer, and a great fear came upon him. There was a sharp report; Mason swung into his aerial sepulchre; and the Malemute Kid lashed the dogs into a wild gallop as they fled across the snow (19-20)." The conclusion is unresolved. There is a delicate balance between the magnificent example of the Kid's courageous and decisive actions and his terrifying glimpse into the futility of his prideful manhood that undercuts his usual composure. The end of "An Odyssey" is also inconclusive, and the "things beyond our wisdom" threaten to turn to mockery any rational basis for finding a unity between man's desires and the cosmic facts of life. In both stories, the central characters practice the code but the mythically invoked Northland atmosphere, that Speaks of tragedy, penetrates the action so that the characters become partici- pants in vblence and death rather than bringers of law and life. The whisper that called to completion becomes a call to face human limitations. From this point on, London's better fiction portrays limited or deficient characters who live in a universe that actively seeks their destruction rather than completed heroes who wrest mastery through imagination. London had Opened the door leading to llO. fear and irrationality and would have to give some response to Charley's question in "A Raid on the Oyster Pirates," that when one can't "see it allaround" then "what's the good of seeing it at all?" What was a rhetorical question in that early story becomes the crucial problem in London's mature fiction. Chapter IV The Best Stories: 1898-1908 It has been shown that the fundamental philOSOphical assumption behind the characterization of the Malemute Kid as he is presented in "The Men of Forty-Mile," "The Priestly Prerogative," and "The Wife of a King," the least artistic of the stories in The Son 2£_the Wolf, is that man can master his fate by rationally comprehending the ways of men and the cosmos. He is at home in the "new land," a citizen of the Northland, and can "see it all around." He is a protector of the American Dream. Most casual critics and some London scholars discuss the entire London canon of fiction as if, at its base, it merely reflects the American Dream that all inevitably leads to individual mastery and social perfection. For them the idealized Malemute Kid must represent the most important aspects of London's thought and fiction. Abraham Rothberg writes in "The House that Jack Built" that Actually, he [London] was committed to an earlier heritage of absolutist ethics fundamental to the thinking of the mid-19th century. These ideas were derived chiefly from 18th-century ideas Of nature and moral law. Here nature was favorable to man rather than indifferent or hostile; the concept of historical development was both progressive and optimistic rather than retrogressive and pessi- mistic; rather than a view of life in which man's nature is conceived of as beastly and irrational Operating in a completely determined fashion, ruled over by blind forces or brute forces, man's nature was conceived as reasonable, and his behavior was based on free will Operating in a universe governed by a benevolent providence. 1?. 33o. 112. Kenneth Lynn in his Dream gf_Success characterizes London, and presumably his fiction, as a product of the Horatio Alger myth.1 And even so recent a critic as Warner Berthoff, although he admits "darker, more complex intuitions" in London's fiction, places his emphasis upon the theme of mastery and domination in London's stories: He had a shrewd instinct for the chronic main currents of middle—class hallucination, eSpecially a kind of retributive day-dreaming about acts of pure domination or unconditional conquest. He appealed strongly to readers who wanted their day-dreams explained 3 little, dignified by an overglaze of objective theory. The condescension, even contempt, exhibited by such commentators is not wholly unjustified when discussing London's weaker fiction, but it has occupied for too long, too prominent a place in London criticism. For the triumphant Malemute Kid disappears early in 1899 from London's fiction, and birth is given to a new Kid, the one in "The White Silence" and "An Odyssey of the North," who receives a terrifying glimpse of human finitude. After this revelation, the hero as completed and masterful man is no longer possible and the limited, code- practicing protagonist takes London's stage. Pessimism is the pervasive the major themes of his stories from the beginning of his career. To "The White Silence" and "An Odyssey of the North" can be added two and "In a Far Country"-~making in a collection of nine, four superior stories which deny the American Dream of drifting Optimistically 1 Boston, 1955, pp. 75-118. 2The Ferment gf_Realism: American Literature, 1884-1919 (New York, 1965), p. 245. 113. towards perfection. They present the nightmare of "things greater than our wisdom" which suggest tragedy, horror, irrationality and human impotence. Rather than portraying characters who master themselves and their environments, London depicted them either reaching an uneasy accommo- dation with internal and external forces or being destroyed by them. indifferent or even sadistically irrational forces inhibit man's puny efforts to control his fate; they are not man-oriented or man-controlled. Rather than nineteenth century preoccupations, London engaged twentieth century concerns: alienation, disenchantment, ironic ambivalence, and impotence. What philOSOphical difficulties there are in these stories are not the result of a superficial Objective philosophy but instead, the consequence of London entering a new, terribly demanding fictional territory. Early in his career he began to compose excellent stories within this pessimistic context and continued for ten years. Although he wrote and published short stories from 1898 until his death in 1916, most of what are adjudged his superior stories were written in a ten year period between the fall of 1898 and the spring of 1909, when he stopped for a variety of personal reasons.1 During this decade he wrote stories which were eventually collected into the six volumes of Alaskan tales that established his fame then and continue it now: The Son of the W21£_(l898-99), The Egg gf_His Fathers (1900-01), Children g£_the Frost (1900-02), The Faith gf_Men (1901-03, 1See below, Chapter V, for an analysis of London's decline as an artist. 114. but primarily 1903), pm 9; £253 (1904-06) and Lfit 33$ (1905-08).l The height of London's technical and thematic achievement is recorded in these Alaskan stories. The "socialist" stories, the other group of tales upon which London's literary and pOpular fame rests, were also written during this decade, but they were written primarily during 1906 and 1907. The most important collection of these is The Strength gf-the Strong.2 In addition to the Northland and socialist stories, this ten year period also saw the composition of two volumes of tales set in a South Seas locale: South Seas Tales and House 2: Pride (written by 1908).3 "Interestingly, the order of these three groups of short stories is not merely chronological; it also indicates a pattern of decline--the Northland stories are Often excellent, the socialist and South Seas tales rarely good.4 1The dates following the titles are approximate dates of composition. NO one has affixed definite dates for the individual stories, but some dates of composition are unsystematically revealed in the Letters and provide this rough, but generally accurate estimation. 2New York, 1914. 3New York, 1911 and 1912, reap. A letter written by London to George Brett in October, 1908 demonstrates that London had prepared these two volumes for publication long before they actually were publish- ed: Letters, 260-61. 4By 1909 London had written not only his best short stories but also Thg_Call gf_thg_Wild (1903), The Sea Wolf (1904), White Fang (1906), The Iron Heel (1908), and Martin Eden (1909), his best novels. After the Snark cruise in 1909 he turned to hack work which produced his seventh Northland collection, Smoke Bellew (1912) and a third volume Chapter V below. Therefore, I have chosen 1909 as the decisive year in London's short story career. Not until the last year of his life did he resume writing serious stories. It should also be mentioned that during this creative decade London also wrote some volumes of lightdweight short fiction: Tales of the Fish Patrol (1905), Moon- Face (1906) and When God Laughs (1911). 115. The encounter of limited man with a mysterious cosmos, an encounter which defines the limits of rationality, is the major theme of London's best fiction. London continually readjusts the boundary between the rational and the supra-rational: from the entirely rational Kid living in a rationally comprehensible universe, London begins to portray protagonists who live by various kinds of laws which they apply to the knowable parts of their existence while being aware of the ultimately unknowable and incomprehensible nature of life. At first these limited characters find some way to maintain identity; but eventually, the characters participate with, or are crushed by, the non-rational. London finally portrays protagonists who become victimstn the irrational elements in the unknowable because there is no law which affords protection. This pattern of readjust- ments by limited characters to the "Unknown" is the dynamic thematic principle which gives life to London's finest short stories. In the Malemute Kid stories that emphasize rationality, control and mastery, the poetic landscape of the "white silence" plays no integral part in the fates of the characters; in fact, it is almost unmentioned. In the best stories, the reverse is true and the land- scape is constantly crushing in upon the characters' consciousness. That the stories which evoke the mythic wasteland are the same in which the protagonists fail to "see it all around" is no accident; for, as has been mentioned, the Alaskan landscape symbolizes the unchartered 116. land of the spirit where man must confront but can not conquer the supra-rational if he is to experience life fully.1 Perhaps the importance of the mythic landscape as a symbol of the region beyond logical comprehension, indicating London's awareness of the limits of positivism, can be more fully realized if one remembers London's early enthusiasm for Herbert Spencer's First Principles and acknowledges the connection between the landscape and Spencer's doctrine Of the "Unknowable."2 Commenting on the nature Of the scientist, Spencer summarizes his doctrine of the "Unknowable": He learns at once the greatness and the little- ness of the human intellect--its power in deal- ing with all that comes within the range of ex- perience; its impotence in dealing with all that transcends experience. He realizes with a special vividness the utter incomprehensiblness of the simplest fact, considered in itself. He more than any other, truly knows that in its ultimate essence nothing can be known. London, as we have seen, was torn between the "greatness and the little- ness of the human intellect...its power [and] its impotence." This is the lesson of the "white silence," and often London's characters learn, as London did from Spencer, the absurdity of the finite contemplating the infinite. The Northland landscape is the "unknowable" which can not be comprehended through positivistic logic and must be evoked symbolically and poetically. Spencer also writes that 1See above, pp. 64-69. 2See Martin Eden, pp. 98-107 for Martin's enthusiasm at discovering this work. See also London's letter to Johns saying that "to be well fitted for the tragedy of existence...one must have a working philOSOphy" of life and goes on to mention Spencer's notions of matter and force which are fully presented in First Principles: Letters (March, 1900), 101. 3First Principles gf_§ New System 9£_Philosophy (New York edition, 1876), p. 76. 117. ...when the size, complexity, or discreteness of the object conceived becomes very great, only a small portion of its attributes can be thought Of at once, and the conception formed of it thus becomes so inadequate as to be a mere symbol; that nevertheless such symbolic conceptions...are indis- penSible in general thinking. Again and again, London's best protagonists move into the unchartered, unknown land and experience awe, mystery and terror that arise Spon- taneously as the landscape Speaks to them symbolically. The characters are compelled to confront the mysterious unknown and to learn either how to live amidst it or to perish. Like an aspect Of mind, destructive forces can not be escaped nor conquered: "These protagonists consider that the world is a dark and futile place," Sam Baskett writes, "but even as they investigate this insight they struggle with that darkness and futility."2 Earle Labor claims that the Northern land of the unknowable "is a regiontn escape from--not to"; but, to the contrary, London and his characters are compelled to explore its dimensions.3 That the Unknowable is not completely accessible to logic is a sub-theme in both "The White Silence" and "An Odyssey of the North." While the Kid analyzes the alternatives he confronts when Mason is injured, he must consider the inevitability of his and Ruth's deaths as well as Mason's. He considers the logic of the crisis: "In the abstract, it was a plain mathematic prOpOSition,--three possible lives against one doomed one" (the third is Mason's unborn child).4 A sense 1First Principles, p. 29. 2"London's Heart 9f Darkness," 75. 3"Four Versions," 150-51. 4g, 16. 118. of brotherhood makes him hesitate, but finally he acts in accord with the "mathematic proposition," with reason, and Shoots Mason. The man of reason has killed rationally, but rather than mastery and conquest, the consequence is ambiguous: He has preserved his life, Ruth's and the unborn child's. But as important, he ironically has discovered the limits of his power, the limits of logic. The symbolic unknown has been brooding behind the events, and as he acts rationally, he experiences terror as the White silence "sneers."l The non-rational unknown teaches the Kid the lesson that he is limited. Although he acts logically, he is aware that his action forces him to cross a boundary between rationality and a threatening non-rationality. Similarly in "An Odyssey" reason, legality in this case, tells Prince that Naass's Slaying of Unga and Axel convicts Naass of murder. But the Kid intervenes with his Observation that "there be things greater than our wisdom" that necessitate violence and killing. Why is beyond explanation. Even Naass, the killer, has discovered that premeditation has not led to mastery and that the personal implications of his actions are unclear. He senses that he can neither submit himself to the law for judgment (only the possibility that they will hang him and he "will Sleep good" appeals to him) nor return to his native village and live on "the edge of the world (§fl, 250)." Neither the civilized nor the primitive, the rational nor the instinctual or non-rational, provide solace. Both are necessary components of the internal and external worlds, but even together they yield no completely satisfactory 1Ibid., 19-20. 119. basis for actionnor for understanding the consequences Of action. At the end of the Story, Naass remains undecided and confused and can only stammar, "'Yet--no; I do not know' (250)." The impotence of rationality when confronting the unknown in effect demands that London turn to violence and death. Only in death is there finality, and only in non-rational action can one identify himself with his environment. The "unknowable" symbolized by the Alaskan landscape is organically linked with violence and death. It is Significant that in the stories that portray the Kid as master and conqueror not only is there no artistic evocation of the landscape, but no death either by murder or by accident. But in "The White Silence" and "An Odyssey" death is the basic experience which raises the crucial issue of the limits of man's powers in the unknown. Death is at the center of almost all of London's important stories. Placed in a crisis situation without comforting landmarks, the protagonist defines the border between the rational and the supra- rational, the known and the unknown, by acting violently. His violent actions, even killing, force him to move beyond the rational and to participate with the death-dealing unknown. Violence may not justify his existence, but it defines it. The predominance of death and violence in London's Short stories disturbed some of the early critics who rejected him as a sensationalist, and very few later critics have realized that through violence London was probing experiences neglected by his contemporaries. MOreover, 120. he probed with an integrity, sincerity and insight rarely associated with him. For Earle Labor, at least, "London deserves some attention as one Of the first modern writers to realize the significance of death and violence as a central motif in twentieth century fiction."l Death and violence serve as an "initiatory rite into manhood."2 And "manhood" can be more fully understood as a full awareness of the individual's participation with the unknowable universe that has an anti-human malignancy as one of its components. The act of killing is a concession to the unknowable and an admission that man has an internal counterpart to destructive natural forces. The introduction of violence and death coupled with the unknown into London's fiction has important consequences: it demands limited characters who can not predict all the implications Of their actions nor understand all their consequences; the supra-rational is wedded to the rational and mystery to the known; tragedy rather than comedy becomes the mode; irony rather than a confident certainty becomes the mood. "The Wisdom of the Trail" contains the elements that go into one kind of excellent London story: a limited protagonist ventures into the unknown; he lives by a code that permits, even demands, that he kill; and death tragically and ironically defines the fluid boundary between rationality and the threatening supra-rational.3 1"Jack London's Literary Artistry," p. 12. 21bid. 3S!, 145—159. AS I will use the term, "limited" means that the character is the best that he can be but Shares limitations inherent in the human condition. "Deficient" will be used as the pejorative term: a deficient character lacks good qualities that, presumably, are avail- able to him. 121. Sitka Charlie, the Siwash Indian protagonist, who is the "Sheer master of reality" in "The Sun—Dog Trail," contracts with Captain and Mrs. Eppingwell to "go beyond the pale of the honor and the law" by undertaking "an unknown journey through the dismal vastnesses of the Northland, and he knew it to be of the kind that try to the uttermost the souls of men (146, 149)." The story Opens on the trail, and Charlie has become the guide because he has the "wisdom of the trail" lacking in two other Indians, Kah-Chucte and Gowhee, "who had bragged that they knew every landmark of the way as a child did the Skin-bales of the tepee, [but had to] acknowledge that they knew not where they were (151)." Charlie, uncertain Of their exact location (he does not suffer a damning hubris about the unknown), knows that they have passed the "Hills Of Silence" and are moving towards the Yukon River. His "wisdom" means more than a knowledge of geography however; it also means that he knows that "honor and law" are what precariously separate men from annihilation. He is a code hero. Kah-Chucte and Gowhee are told the law by Charlie. But tortured by the trail so that "there was no flesh to their faces; their cheek bones were massed with hideous scabs which had cracked and frozen alternately under the intense frost" and "the dead-white tips of the toes, in various Stages Of mortification, told their Simple tale Of the trail," the two break honor and law by Stopping to rest and Stealing a little, but life—sustaining, flour from the provisions (146, 148). Charlie Observes them, reminds them that they had contracted to live by the law and then passes the judgment, 122. which they accept, that they must die. He Shoots them, and immediately afterwards hears other Shots that indicate that the travelers have reached the safety of the Yukon settlement. The Story invokes the mythic powers of the unknown that threaten tragically to destroy worthy individuals. Like the lesser characters on this ritualistic journey to confront the dangerous but fascinating unknown, Charlie has little notion Of where he is and, at the end, is surprised to learn that he has reached safety. Since it is the human condition, Charlie, like both the fit and the unfit, suffers physically and emotionally because he Struggles to Survive in "such places [where] death was quick and easy (148)." But Charlie survives for two reasons: The first, the will to live, he shares with the others since in all men "the ego seemed almost bursting forth with its old cry, 'I, I want to exist!‘ the dominant note of the whole living universe (147)." The second, which he Shares only with Captain and Mrs. Eppingwell, is that he is a code hero who lives by the "honor and the law" that "forbade a mighty longing to Sit by the fire and tend his complaining flesh (148)." This law demands that he be willing to kill coldly, lucidly, in order to maintain his dignity, control and life. What the code does is to give some certainty, some internal logic to human relation— ships. Without the law, chance rules and the human community dissolves into competing individuals who will not only destroy one another, but themselves as well. The code is an artificial, sometimes inhumane, order imposed upon the rationally unknowable cosmic condition and replaces, in London's fiction, individual, logical comprehension of an orderly universe. 123. The ending of "The Wisdom of the Trail," like the endings of "The White Silence" and "An Odyssey Of the North," is an important turning point in London's fiction because it is ironic. A Simple kind of dramatic irony is discernible in a story like "The Men of Forty-Mile" or "The Wife of a King" Since the audience is privy to a joke upon one of the principals. Tragic irony is, however, impossible because the main character, the central consciousness, in such stories has complete power of manipulation so that all is eventually resolved comically. He is so powerful that he can restore order. But in "The Wisdom of the Trail," the human condition is limited and permits a more mature irony. The rigid, but orderly code, representing the zenith of man's control over himself and his environ- ment, like the men who practice it, is not perfect. 0n the symbolic level, the code killing at the end and climax of the Story brings salvation. The ritualistic murder purges the destructive element in man and "magically" Charlie and the Eppingwell's discover that they have endured long enough to escape the white silence and find "the Men of the Yukon." Ironically and tragically, it iskilling that brings life. But on another level, it is the limitations of man and the code that permit the tragic irony. The code provides man with a way to exist, but not with a way to "see it all around." At the end Of the story Charlie, practicing the code, discovers that the execution of the two Indians was unnecessary as the means to save the other travelers' lives. Since the code is practiced not for sadisti— cally punitive reasons, but, instead, to preserve life, it is tragically 124. ironic that safety had been reached without the execution. Charlie's limited nature permits this irony and tragedy. But because he is aware Of his limitations, represented by his miscalculation, and aware of the ironical and tragic quality of life, Charlie experiences no remorse. He accepts the Situation because he has made a partially successful accommodation with the unknown and assumes that violence is unavoidable: He can "smile viciously at the wisdom of the trail" because he recognizes that violence and evil are inherent in nature. Sitka Charlie can live in an ambivalent Situation; the individual and the code may be limited but he has a sense of dignity and inner worth. Killing, although destructive, is partially redemptive. Not only killing by the code, but dying by it as well, provides a measure of salvation. Gowhee and Kah-Chucte give last messages for Charlie to convey to their families and are asked, "'Are ye content to die by the law?'" They respond stoically, "'We are' (159)." Their acceptance of the penalty demanded by the law emobles them and counterbiances the two men's earlier hubris and cowardice. Dignity is available to all men who realize that suffering, violence and death are unavidable consequences which must be accepted if one has the courage to explore the unknown. Implicit in this story is an irony that becomes a dominant motif in later stories which focus upon the suffering experienced on the long trail. In "The Grit of Women," which has been called one of London's best because it has an organically related "theme, character, 125. setting, mood," Sitka Charlie is again on the trail that has been the cause of suffering, sorrow and death and considers the irony of human existence: "Life is a strange thing. Much have I thought on it, and pondered long, yet daily the strangeness of it grows not less, but more. Why this longing for life? It is a game which no man wins. To live is to toil hard, and to suffer sore, till Old Age creeps heavily upon us and we throw down our hands on the cold ashes of dead fires. It is hard to live. In pain the babe sucks his first breath, in pain the old man gasps his last, and all his days are full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes down to the Open arms of Death, Stumbling, falling, with head turned backward, fighting to the last. And Death is kind. It is only Life, and the things Of Life that hurt. Yet we love Life, and we hate Death. It is very strange (GE, 176-77)J' Trouble, suffering, sorrow and futility are the primary elements of life; but, ironically, life is dear to Charlie, and he practices a code which the limited man must impose upon the unknown aS a buffer between his imperfectly ordered existence and certain annihilation demanded by a destructive universe. "In a Far Country," also in the first volume of collected stories, concentrates on the grotesque misery in life; and in it, London attempts to reinforce his code premise by reversing the coin. London means to portray what happens when two men, Carter weatherbee and Percy Cuthfert, face the unknown without the code. He intends these two to be deficients since they lack heroic qualities available to them. However, within the Story there is an unintentional shift of emphasis that unveils a far deeper pessimism than reveled in any previous story. 1"Jack London's Literary Artistry," p. 42. 126. The malign, irrational powers of the cosmos are so predominant and so destructive that they make codes ludicrous attempts at self- deception. The basic irony of life found in "The Grit Of Women" and "The Wisdom of the Trail" is resolved because life is no longer dear. In this story London explores the irrational demands made by the unknown and, implicitly, concludes that the deficient man in the beginning of the story is really the best he can be, a limited man. "Limited" and "deficient" become synonymous terms. The major part of the Story becomes a parody of what London has claimed for the ritual journey into the unknown and for the practice of the code which demands love, imagination, and, sometimes, ritual killing in order to give a measure of dignity to limited human beings. The story begins as if it were to be an exemplum for a text about Darwinian adaptability separating the fit from the unfit. Jacques Baptiste and Sloper are fit men who live by the code. They contract to guide the "Incapables" or deficients, Weatherbee and Cuthfert, into "the Unknown Lands" and begin the "arduous up-stream toil" of the long trail (SW, 74). But the two deficients refuse to meet the hardships of the trail and decide to remain during the heart of winter in a cabin "built when and by whom, no man could tell [Since] the cabin was one of the many mysteries which lurk in the vast recesses of the North (77)." The rest and most important part of the story is an account Of Weatherbee's and Cuthfert's physical and mental deterioration which climaxes in their killing one another. 127. Together, the two Incapables, represent a perversion of the ideal man of reason and imagination: Weatherbee has the doggedly pedestrian and literal mind of an ex-clerk, and Cuthfert possesses a sentimental diletante's imagination "which mistook...the true Spirit of romance and adventure (72)." They follow "civilized" codes of behavior and are unequipped, therefore, to confront the demands Of the unknown as would Charlie or the Kid by exercising comradeship and discipline. So in the depths of winter, in terra incognita, without the protection of the rational—imaginative man's code as a buffer between life and death, they are vulnerable to the message and power of the "white logic." .Defenseless as they are, the central power and interest in the story becomes the unknown and its death-dealing attributes. At first the men deteriorate socially and physically, but the last fifteen pages of the story catalogue the effects Of the unknown upon their sanity. They experience "the Fear Of the North...the joint child of the Great Cold and the Great Silence, [which] was born in the darkness Of December (86)." Fear inSpired by the unknown causes the unimaginative Weatherbee to hallucinate men rising from two graves beside the Cabin who tell him of their suffering. Death and suggestions of death continue to pervade the story. But it is through the imaginative man, Cuthfert, that the nature of the unknown iS revealed. Early in the Story London had made the point that his "imagination" is deficient because it provided him.with illusions about the meaning of adventure. But for the rest of the story his imagination gives him valid insights into 128. cosmic truths. Without the aid of the code to protect him, the message of the white logic captures his spirit: He dwelt upon the unseen and the unknown till the burden of eternity appeared to be crushing him. Everything in the Northland had that crush- ing effect,--the absence of life and motion; the darkness, the infinite peace of the brooding land; the ghastly silence, which made the echo of each heart-beat a sacrilege; the solemn forest which seemed to guard an awful, inexpressible something, which neither word nor thought could compass (88). Cuthfert's discovery that life is an illusion is captured in a passage that typifies some of London's most suggestive prose: Once, like another Crusoe, by the edge of the river he came upon a track,--the faint tracery of a snow- shoe rabbit on the delicate snow-crust. It was a revelation. There was life in the Northland. He could follow it, look upon it, gloat over it. He forgot his swollen muscles, plunging through the deep snow in an ecstasy of anticipatiOn. The forest swallowed him up, and the brief midday twilight vanished; but he pursued his quest till exhausted nature asserted itself and laid him helpless in the . snow. There he groaned and cursed his folly, and knew the track to be the fancy oflis brain; and late that night he dragged himself into the cabin on hands and knees, his cheeks frozen and a strange numbness about his feet. A week later mortification set in (90). This passage is a parody of the archetypal quest motif in London's other stories. Rather than to accommodation or mastery, this quest leads to disillusionment. Archetypally, man wants to explore and dis- cover (like Crusoe) and ecstatically follows a faint trail, despite the agonies of the flesh, SO that he can affirm life. He enters the wilderness and passes the brief day of his life. At the end of the brief Span, he loses his illusions and learns that life has been a cheat, 129. and he is filled with an agonizing selfdmockery. Exhausted, dis- illusioned, he senses his imminent death. Cuthfert possesses London's third and final kind of imagination, the "thrice cursed gift of imagination."1 This kind of imaginative man does not "see it all around" so that he can not act constructively, nor does he "understand the ways of the northland so sympathetically that he can anticipate its emergencies before they occur, always 2 adapting himself to nature's laws." Instead, this imagination fills him with "soul-sickness, life sickness": He sees through all illusions. He transvalues all values. God is bad, truth is a cheat, and life is a joke. From his caLmdmad heights, with the certi- tude of a god, he beholds all life as evil. Wife, children, friends--in the clear, white light of his logic they are exposed as frauds and Shams. He sees through them, and all that he sees is their fraility, their meagerness, their sordidness, their pitifulness. No longer do they fool him. They are miserable little egotisms, like all the other humans, fluttering their May-fly life-dance of an hour. 80 is he (QB, pp. 13-14). This is the imagination that allows London's limited and deficient characters to merge. The code, the law and the honor, are merely life-giving lies, frauds, tricks to avoid recognizing that life is a mockery and death and pain the reality. Cuthfert, deSpite the contempt with which London surrounds him in the Opening of the story, perceives truths that make the basis of that contempt inOperative. Cuthfert is everyman; instead of being deficient, he turns out to be limited, the 1JB, p. 12., See above, Chapter III, for a discussion of the other kinds of imagination. 2Labor, "Symbolic Wildernesses," 152. 130. best that men can be. And the fundamental qualities of his life and eventual death are grotesquery, malevolency, degeneracy and insanity. The end of the story is an ironic and grotesque parody of London's other stories that use the ritualistic killing to ennoble both killer and victim. Weatherbee, gone mad, approaches Cuthfert with an axe: There was neither pity nor passion in his face, but rather the patient stolid look of one who has work to do and goes about it methodically (97). Cuthfert shoots him in the face, but Weatherbee swings the axe which "bit deeply at the base of the Spine, and Percy Cuthfert felt all consciousness of his lower limbs leave him (98)." They fall together in a final clinch, an image that ironically recalls to the reader the embrace of tender fellowship described two pages earlier and, more generally, London's emphasis upon comradeship as part of the code in other stories. This double killing, described in terms of lucid, rational action, does not ennoble. Instead, it is grotesque. By killing, Sitka Charlie and the Malemute Kid had made concessions to the white Silence, but simultaneously had salvaged dignity for themselves and their victims. Cuthfert and Weatherbee become one with the malevo— lent unknown. The disappearance of Baptiste and Sloper in the beginning of the story, despite London's intention, symbolizes the death of the code as anything more than a system of illusions. In "In a Far Country," then, London explicitly attempts to re- affirm the necessity of the code, but implicitly he denies the efficacy 131. of a code in the face of the message revealed to Cuthfert. London wanted deSperately to announce the revitalizing nature of "true adventure" and intended to satirize the enervating effects of civilization upon Weatherbee and Cuthfert who were unequipped to live according to new laws demanded by the new land; but he found this impossible. Eagerness to believe succumbs to the impossibility of belief. Not only has mastery become impossible, but accommodation as well. Sam Baskett, commenting upon this story, captures its funda— mental revelation: "London goes beyond a concern with social theory to make a final comment on life...Essentia11y this comment is--the 1 horror." The stories which follow "In a Far Country" eventually make explicit its implicit concerns: The God 2f_HiS Fathers, Children nature of the code or the "law" as London makes a series of adjust- ments to the terrifying insights in "In a Far Country." No adjust- ment, however, could prevent him from coming to the edge of the abyss. 1899, in summary, has a range of talent and depth of insight unexpected in a first volume of short stories. Against a Northland landscape, poetically invoked because it is a symbol of the unknown which lies beyond factual, logical comprehension and control, characters actively explore the dimensions of their internal and external worlds. London dramatizes a mythic encounter with the tragedy that man's most highly prized attributes are merely self-sustaining illusions which can not 1"London's Heart 2; Darkness," 76. 132. protect him from the terrifying suSpicion that life is empty of Significance and the irony that the best man's clearest thoughts and most purposeful actions have ambiguous consequences. Forced to live on the edge of annihilation and to participate in violence, code practicing protagonists act violently, even kill, SO that they can revitalize the Spirit of adventure and experience "the intense personal satisfaction that comes from knowing one is self-sufficient in a dangerous world."1 But finally, as in "In a Far Country," the code is inOperable and characters kill because they are linked to a destructive cosmic evil which demands death and violence. his independence from popular tastes can be appreciated, perhaps, when it is pointed out that W. M. Frohock in TthNgyglngf'Violence‘ig America concludes that the treatment of violence by writers of the twenties, thirties and forties is the distinguishing mark of twentieth century American fiction.2 His generalizations about the elements of this fiction reveal London's originality as he labored in the first decade of this century. "At their best," Forhock writes, "these tragic novels...conceive of violence as the characteristic mark of the human, and acts of violence themselves are performed with great lucidity."3 Furthermore, he characterizes the literary structure and techniques that necessarily belong with this subject matter, and they are applicable lMorris Renek, "Reflections on Violence as a Literary Tool," Stggy, I, no. 1 (May, 1967), 53. 2Dallas (second edition, 1957). 31bid., pp. 8-9. 133 O to London's fiction: To discuss such [fiction], one is almost forced to adopt terms borrowed from the drama: "Situation," "mounting tension," "climax," "resolution of tension." Inversely, certain concepts traditionally useful for the criticism of fiction hardly apply. One does not look in the novel of violence for "rounded" or "three- dimensional" figures; such notions as "density" or the "rich texture of life" are rarely of value.1 London's best stories meet this description and join content and form artistically. Characters, in a crisis situation, kill or act violently but "lucidly" and, thereby, expand their conceptions of self and their connections with the cosmos. The dramatic focus upon situation, tension, and climax that Frohock sees inherent in the "novel of violence" are terms descriptive of Short story form and theory as London understood and practiced it.2 London is a legitimate prede- cessor of such writers as Hemingway and SteinbeCk. Although London's second collection of Alaskan stories, The God 2§_His Fathers containing stories written during 1900 and 1901, continues the author's concern with violence, horror, the code and the unknown, it is generally inferior to Ihg_§ggggf_£hghflglf, "Grit of Women," for example, has already been mentioned as Similar in matter, theme and technique to "The Wisdom of the Trail"; but it, deSpite its virtues, suffers Slightly from a sentimental treatment of women that more seriously mars "Siwash," another Sitka Charlie story, and "The Great Interrogation." This last story, like "Which Makes Men Remember," "Where the Trail Forks," "A Daughter Of the Aurora" and "At the Rain- 1Ibid., p. 10. 2See above, Chapters II-III. 134. bow's End," all in thesame volume, is flawed by thematic confusion. For example, in both "The Great Interrogation" and "Where the Trail Forks" the white protagonists' motives for kindness towards Indian are unclear--do they sacrifice themselves because they love and appreciate for themselves the good qualities of these women or do they merely act chivalrously as "white men"? Social comedy, like that found in the clumsy "The Wife of a King," is resurrected in "The Scorn of Women" and given a perverse twist in "A Daughter of the ' a story that appears to be a product of London's efforts to Aurora,‘ write his first and unfortunate novel, A_Daughter Q; thgfl§222§_(1902). "Jan the Unrepentant" is another "The Men Of Forty-Mile" in its portrayal of comic violence erupting among isolated miners; but like it is more cynical about human nature. In this volume, too, there is less emphasis upon the demands of the mythic unknown and more upon the demands of the "law" Of Anglo-Saxon race supremacy. Generally, then, this volume lacks the stature of its predecessor because of its recurrent appeals to sentimentality and adolescent humor, its thematic confusion and its use of race theory as an explanation for motive and action. The title story of Thgfl§9g_gf_HiS Fathers does, however, represent with the best stories in Children gf_the Frost, London's third and, perhaps, finest collection. "The God of His Fathers" is an attempt 135. to deny the implications of "In a Far Country" but without return- ing to the use of the personal code. London attempts a return to the theme of mastery by emphasizing a new 1aw--race supremacy. The story is set in the Northland's "forest primeval" at "the moment when the stone age was drawing to a close (l-2)." Hay Stockard, his Indian wife and child, and Bill, his companion gold-seeker are in an Indian camp attempting to get an assurance from Baptiste the Red, an independent, dignified but hostile half-breed chief, that his tribe will not molest them in the quest up the unchartered Koyukuk River. They are joined by another white man, Sturgis Owen, a self- righteous and fanatical priest. Baptiste the Red refuses to let them pass unless they renounce the Christian God whom he hates because priests had refused to legitimatize his birth, to solemnize his marriage to a white woman, and to punish the Factor who raped and killed Baptiste's daughter. Sturgis Owen refuses to blaspheme, and out of race pride the non-religious Stockard refuses to turn over the missionary to torture. A bloody battle results, at the end of which the missionary recants to save his life and Hay Stockard is killed, a martyr to the "God of his fathers,"—-his race. This is the first of London's stories in which race is the dominant theme.1 Race is the true God: [Sturgis Owen's] courage, if courage it might be called, was bred of fanaticism. The courage of 1Race, however, is a motif in almost all of the earlier stories. In "The Wisdom of the Trail," for example, Mrs. Eppingwell is capable of mastering the rigors of the trail because of her Anglo-Saxon heri- tage, and Charlie can practice the code because he has learned the "honor and the law" from whites and is, therefore, superior to his Indian companions. 136. Stockard and Bill was the adherence to deep- rooted ideals. Not that the love of life was less, but the love Of race tradition more, not that they were unafraid to die, but that they were not brave enough to live at the price of shame (25). This sentimental fillip, in the vein of the tone and language of ' reinforces a Richard Lovelace's "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars,‘ major London theme of individual nagedy accompanying racial triumph. Hay and Bill, "fair-faced, blue-eyed, indomitable men, incarnations of the unrest of their race," die; and the narrator generalizes melodramatically: SO many an unsung wanderer fought his last and died under the cold fire of the aurora, as did his brothers in burning sands and reeking jungles, and as they Shall continue to do till in the . fulness of time the destiny of their race be achieved (2). The Story is sententiously phrased and loosely structured; never- theless, it is Significant in the development of London's major themes. Earlier, as has been shown, London had written poor Stories attempting to Show the mastery of the individual in an orderly cosmos; then, because of a deepening pessimism Suggesting a more Complex view of reality, he had written more probing stories using more artistic control in which limited protagonists like Sitka Charlie reached an accommodation with a hostile, chaotic cosmos by living by an imposed code; finally, he recorded the failure of individualancommodation in "In a Far Country." Having found individual identity impossible to integrate, London turns to race identification, a blood brotherhood, in "The God of His Fathers" and, thereby, returns to the theme of 137. mastery. His pessimism is held in temporary abeyance. The individual human may be weak, but law and order are restored to the cosmos and link man (white men, at least) with nature. After the collapse of the powers of reason and imagination in "In a Far Country," London now romantically asserts a unity beyond the appearance of flux. This time, however, his Optimism depends upon mastery achieved by the aggregate rather than the individual. Group identification for sus- taining humanly meaningful values supplants the powerful individual wresting mastery on his own terms. That London found this new theme personally sustaining is demonstrated by the exuberant tone of the racial theory passages, like the one above, in "The God of His Fathers." Literarily, race theory had the advantage of allowing London to continue some of his best practices. He did not have tO yield his concept of the limited individual. In fact, in a later story, "The Terrible Solomons," the narrator defines the major limitation of the "inevitable white" who is the hero of London's racial stories which have white men as protagonists: ...the white man who wishes to be inevitable, must not merely despise the lesser breeds and think a lot of himself; he must also fail to be too long on imagination. He must not understand too well the instincts, customs, the mental processes of the blacks, the yellows, and the browns; for it is not in such fashion that the white race has tramped its royal road around the world. Characters like Stockard, a blasphemOus, adulterous, violent man, could serve the inevitable law which, ironically, demands that he support the lSouth Sea Tales (New York, 1909), 200-01. 138. fanatical Sturgis Owen and attack the more noble Baptiste the Red. Moreover, by means of race theory, London's impulse towards power and mastery could be joined with his sense of insignificance and power- lessness Since all individuals are impotent participants in the work- ing out of the inexorable natural law. Finally, the mythic could be invoked Since, as George Becker suggests, teleological concepts are implicitly epical and mythic, demanding poetic effects rather than the use of mundane details found in realism of the commonplace. However, the race theory has disadvantages as well. The pro- tagonists, whom London means to be positively received, Often degenerate into brutal fascists, especially when London's racism is less consciously used than in "The God of His Fathers." The lines which precede the above passage from "The Terrible Solomons" capture the racism that goes beyond race theory in some Stories: [The protagonist] must have the halldmark of the inevitable white man stamped upon his soul. He must be inevitable. He must have a certain grand care- lessness of odds, a certain colossal self-satisfaction, and a racial egotism that convinces him that one white is better than a thousand niggers every day in the week, and than on Sunday he is able to clean out two thousand niggers. For such are the things that have made the white man inevitable.2 The bigotry and savagery necessary in such a character's make-up are not, despite London's intention of course, heroic; they disgust. And if Wayne C. Booth in his The Rhetoric gquiction is correct that in making aesthetic judgments, the beliefs of the reader necessarily and 1"Introduction," Documents, 23. 2South Sea Tales, 200-01. 139. legitimately influence critical evaluations, these stories are aesthetic failures on that basis alone. Fortunately, the "unimaginative" white protagonist who carries out the dictates of his heredity by inflicting personal and social injustice is not Often a positively portrayed hero in London's North- land short Stories. There is injustice, but Since London's more responsive emotional and philosophical milieu was a tragic and ironic sense of failure, his artistic efforts are more Often sympa- thetic with the, albeit "inevitable," despair of the Indians who suffer at the hands of the white invaders. London might write that a white "unimaginative man" (in the sense that he is indifferent to and unaware of the human values of non-whites) is the ideal and that "we must come to understand that nature has no Sentiment, no charity, no mercy; we are blind puppets at the play of great, unreasoning forces; yet we may come to know the laws of some of the forces and see our trend in relation to them"; but his Northland Indian stories in Children 2: EEEHEEQEE Show London, himself, "imaginative," "sentimental," "charitable," and "merciful."2 The stories collected in Children 2£_thg Eggs; were composed from 1900 to 1902 at the same time London was writing those collected in IIhgfldiflgf_His Fathers; but they are more dramatic, mythic, tragic and ironic, a continuation of the best in T_hg_ _S_9_t_1_ 9f 293.119.1111: DeSpite Earle Labor's claim that "most of the stories are mediocre in artistry," "The League of Old Men" and "Keesh, the Son of Keesh," although some- 1 Chicago, 1961, pp. 140-44. 2Letters (to Johns; July 5, 1899), 43. 140. times too discursive, rise above some Structural awkwardness by evoking the epic Struggle of the individual rebelling against the demands of social and cosmic law and compare favorably with "The White Silence" any "An Odyssey of the North."1 "The Death of Ligoun," "The Sickness of Lone Chief" and "The Law of Life" are dramatically and economically written and capitalize upon the melifluous Style arising from the dignified language London associated with Indian Speech. Technical flaws are not difficult to uncover; however, these stories were written at the height of London's apprenticeship in Short Story technique and theory. This means, for example, that this volume avoids the essay-exemplum form and concentrates on more dramatic forms.2 At this time his letters reveal his enthusiasm for the genre, and he published more reviews and articles about the writing craft than at any other time in his career. And in 1903 he also and competence. Although he would write other excellent Stories, no single volume of Short stories is as consistent in quality of artistry and control of theme as Children 9f_thgfl§£g§t. MOreover, the collection demonstrates a more explicit treatment of "the horror" than he was To George Brett, his publisher, London wrote: The idea of The Children gf_thgfl§£g§5, is the writing of a series of tales in which the reader will always look at things from the Indian's point of view, through the Indian's eyes as it were. Heretofore the vieWpoint in my Northland 1"Jack London's Literary Artistry," p. 43. 2See above, Chapters I-II. 141. stories has been that of the whiteman's.1 Because of the Indian point of view, the Special pleading and exhor— tations found in earlier stories are curtailed and the demand for ideal characters iS diminished. He might have added to his note to Brett that the theme linking the stories would be inevitable loss. The Indians in all of these stories had possessed all that London's white conquerors came to the Northland to find: individual dignity, courage, contact with and adjustment to the elemental strength of nature, and a sense of community within the tribe. Such a theme was compatible with London's emotional gestalt and could be handled with a consistency unmatched in even the best stories in the first two volumes which threatened to break apart upon the ambivalent require— ments of mastery and failure. The Indians are limited protagonists who are victims to both cosmic and social laws. London returns to his theme that human values are tragically inappropriate, but redeeming, in a hostile cosmos; eventually, he suggests that they are not even redemptive. Hay Stockard in "The God of His Fathers" is a martyr for his race: his death, and the deaths of other white men, will be redemptive for the Anglo-Saxon race. "The League of Old Men" in Children 3;.ggg Eggs; is a companion story Since it too employs race martyrdom as the dramatic situation; however, the latter story has the power of tragedy, while the former only pathos. Unlike Stockard who is a contributor to group mastery, Old Imber the Indian protagonist is a social and cosmic rebel and martyr. If London admired the "glad perisher" epitomized by 1Letters (January 30, 1902), 129. 142. Stockard, his growing pessimism made him more at home with this new glad perisher for "lost causes."1 The basic nature of the race theme in "The League of Old Men" is the same as in "The God of His Fathers"; the judge's thoughts at the end of Imber's trial for murdering scores of white adventurers, reveals both the theme and the judge's admiration for the Indian: ...all his [the judge's] race rose up before him in the mighty phantasmagoria--his Steel-shod, mail-clad race, the law-giver and worlddmaker among the families of men. He saw it dawn red-flickering across the dark forests and sullen seas; he saw it blaze, bloody and red, to full and triumphant noon; and down the shaded SlOpe he saw the blood—red sands drOpping into night. And through it all he observed the Law, piti- less and potent, ever unswerving and ever ordaining, greater than the motes of men who fulfilled it or were crushed by it, even as it was greater than he, his heart Speaking for softness (160). Although the judge subscribes to race theory, his heart is moved by a pity not appealed to in "The God of His Fathers" because that story does not have the sense of tragedy and irony that is at the center of interest in this. Old Imber, the last of his kind, a "bronze patriot," remembers his Edenic youth when "the land was warm with sunshine and gladness" and when "men were men (152)." Therefore, he organizes a band of old men to assassinate the white men who had brought whiskey, gambling, small- pox and tuberculosis and had taken away women and young men and turned them against tribal customs and honor (155-56). Because of his pride, Imber refuses to accept white culture and rebels against it, consequently 1One of the attractions of John Barleycorn was that in bars, London Often mentioned, one found men willing to engage in a futile rebellion. 143. rebelling against the cosmic law. The "old men departed up river and down to the unknown lands," where they murdered. Eventually, only Imber was left, and exhausted, "it being vain fighting the Law," he surrenders to the police (159-60). It is both tragic and ironic that men like Imber who are courageous, loyal and intelligent must suffer and die at the hands of contemptible whites acting out nature's "law." Imber's martyrdom is moving and even suggests to the judge something like the "things greater than our wisdom, beyond our justice" at the end of "An Odyssey." MOreover, the tragedy of this story goes beyond the pathetic death of Stockard Since Imber's rebellion against and final submission to social and cosmic injustice will not be redemptive; his nobility ends with his death. SO, although the Situation and underlying beliefs might be the same as in "The God of His Fathers," the emphasis Shifts from the Hay Stockards of the North to the Red Baptistes and Imbers, from a somber Optimism to inevitable tragedy. London has invested his racial theme with the rhetoric of defeat and submission rather than conquest and triumph. "Keesh, the Son of Keesh," is Similar in theme to "The League of Old Men" since it dramatizes the loss of racial identity as the non-whites fall before their Anglo-Saxon superiors. But, contrary to the critics' usual response to this story, it is more than social criticism that reveals London's ambivalency towards non-whites; for the theme of loss in Children gf_thg_§32§t is more than the loss of racial identity. The tragic loss is the death of London's previously held illusions that some code, some system of belief, some systematic 144. description of reality, would redeem men from fear, violence, death and deSpair, or at least that the archetypal journey would yield a self-sustaining myth as a buffer between man and the terrors of a meaningless universe. Keesh, a young chief of the Thlunget Indians left his tribe to be educated in the "higher morality" by Mr. Brown, a Christian missionary, and had learned that killing iS immoral. Since this emasculates him in the eyes of other Indians and allies him with the white Oppressors, he is denied the hand of Su-Su, the daughter of the chief of the Tananaws. She agrees to disobey her father if Keesh will "bring me, not scalps, but heads...three at least (108)." At first loyal to his catechism, Keesh finally decides, "No, I go to hell" and returns to Su-Su's camp which is described in terms suggest- ing the place of archetypal confrontation: [It was] in an Open Space, striving to burrow into the snow as though for Shelter from the appalling desolate- ness...Ringed all about, a dozen paces away, was the sombre forest. Overhead there was no keen, blue Sky of naked Space, but a vague, misty curtain, pregnant with snow, which had drawn between. There was no wind, no sound, nothing but the snow and Silence (109-110). There he murders Su-Su's father and three other men who Spoke against him, decapitates them and then allows Su-Su to guess what he has wrapped in the moose hide. After she plays her coy and sexually exciting guess- ing game, he rolls the heads before her: There they lay--the soft-featured Nee-KOO; the gnarled Old face of Gnob; Makumuk, grinning at her with his lifted upper lip; and lastly, Nossa- bok, his eyelid, up to its old trick, dropped on 145. his girlish cheek in a suggestive wink. There they lay, the firelight flashing upon and playing over them, and from each of them a widening circle dyed the snow to scarlet (112). A dog sniffs at the head of Su-Su's father and raises a "long wolf- howl" as the girl bears her throat to Keesh's knife, ending the story. There is social criticism in this story. In eloquent Speeches, the men whom Keesh eventually murders, list the injustices: whites lad married Indian women, breaking the unity of the tribe; had degraded the men by making them do "squaw work"; and are driving the Indians from their land. MOreover, the whites are hypocritical since, although they Speak of killing as both criminal and immoral, they kill at will (104-05). As in "The League of Old Men" it is tragic and ironic to London that the dignified Indian had to give way to cultural pressures. But the power of the story goes beyond social criticism. It arises from the tension between conflicting codes or value systems, each of which is deficient in sustaining positive human values.