White Fang (1905) is the title of a novel by
American author Jack London. The novel was first serialized in The Outing Magazine in May through October of 1906.
Plot introduction
White Fang is the story of a wild wolf-dog hybrid's journey toward becoming civilized in the Canadian territory of
Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush, at the end of the
19th Century. White Fang is a companion novel (and a thematic mirror) to London's best-known work, The Call of the Wild, which concerns a kidnapped civilized dog turning into a wild wolf.
The book is characteristic of London's precise prose style and his innovative use of voice and perspective. Much of the novel
is written from the view-point of the animals, allowing London to explore how animals view their world, and how they view humans.
White Fang examines (sometimes graphically) the violent world of wild animals, and the equally violent world of
supposedly-civilized humans. The book also explores complex themes including morality and redemption.
White Fang has been adapted into a movie numerous times, including in 1991.
Plot summary
The story begins before White Fang is born, with two men and their sled dog team. The men,
Bill and Henry, are stalked by a large pack of starving wolves over a course of several days.
This pack advances nearer whenever the men are off their guard. They also lure out the dogs one by one, with the help of the
she-wolf in the pack, to be eaten. Eventually, they kill Bill too. Henry must stay alert for
as long as he can and fight back the wolves with burning brands from the fire. After tense stand-offs, four sled teams finally
find Henry and rescue him.
The story then follows the wolf pack, who have been robbed of their last prey, and are bitter for it. When the pack finally
manages to bring down a moose, the famine is ended, but tension continues to grow. All but four wolves leave the pack for
solitary lives. The remaining four are: the she-wolf (who is a wolfdog); One-Eye, a
strong old male wolf; and two young, quite foolish, males. The latter three are trying to attract the she-wolf's attention, and
are on a vendetta against one another. This culminates with One-Eye cunningly (perhaps unfairly) killing the two younger
ones.
And so, the story now follows the she-wolf and One-Eye. They discover a cave near the
Mackenzie River, and here the she-wolf gives birth to a litter of pups. All but one, the
greycub, die from famine. One-Eye, while out hunting, is killed by a female lynx, and the
greycub and the she-wolf capably fend for themselves.
The greycub goes on many adventures of his own within at least 10 meters of the cave. He discovers the law of meat: Eat or
be eaten, that he ate the non-meat-eaters and meat-eaters smaller than himself, and that he could be eaten by meat-eaters larger, or about the same size, as
himself. He kills and eats some ptarmigan chicks and a weasel, and learns how water works.
On one of these adventures he encounters man for the first time, in the form of five Amerindians. He feels threatened, and tries to hurt the leader, Grey Beaver, who in annoyance, clouts him
round the head. The greycub howls in despair, on which point the she-wolf hears him and comes to his rescue. Grey Beaver,
recognizes the she-wolf as Kiche, his brother's wolfdog, who escaped at the start of the famine, and joined the wolf pack. He
motions to Kiche, who reluctantly comes to him, showing that she is really quite a tame animal. Grey Beaver attaches a
leather thong to her neck, and declares that, since his brother is dead, he reserves the
right to take Kiche from the wild to his camp. The greycub naturally follows his mother. Grey Beaver christens him White
Fang.
White Fang has a harsh life in Grey Beaver's camp. The current puppy pack, seeing him as a wolf, and thus an outcast,
immediately attack him. He is saved by Kiche and the Amerindians, but the puppies never accept him, and the leader Lip-lip marks
him out for special persecution and bullies him. But White Fang gets his revenge every so often when he leads Lip-lip on a wild
goose chase, haring round the tepees but finally reaching Kiche, who proceeds to attack Lip-lip.
White Fang becomes savager by the day, and his unpopularity makes him morose and solitary. He adapts to become a deadly fighter,
"The Enemy of his Kind", and can easily handle any of the dogs, except Lip-lip.
One sad day, Kiche is separated from him and taken up the Mackenzie to another camp. He becomes worse, and in order to face
the constant danger of hurt and even of destruction, his predatory and protective faculties were unduly developed. He became
quicker of movement than the other dogs, swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with iron like muscle and
sinew, more enduring, more cruel, more ferocious, and more intelligent. He had to become all these things, else he would not have
held his own nor survived the hostile environment in which he found himself.
When White Fang and the rest of the puppy pack are 8-10 months old, they are attached to a sled, in fan formation, and start a long trip up the Mackenzie with Grey Beaver, his squaw Kloo-kooch, and his son Mit-sah. Mit-sah had witnessed Lip-lip's persecution of White Fang. He had hardly
found it fair, but then, Lip-lip wasn't his dog. But now he is, and it's time for revenge. Mit-sah deliberately puts Lip-lip at
the head of the fan formation, so now all the dogs effectively chase him whenever they're pulling the sled, making them go fast
and he the fastest. If Lip-lip turns round he will get a gutskin whip in his face from Mit-sah.
The trips takes them to many Amerindian camps, until they finally stop at one indefinitely (for the time being). Here White
Fang meets his mother Kiche. However she has forgotten him and turned her attentions to a new litter of pups, fathered presumably
by a dog. White Fang doesn't care, as she has no use in his life any longer. He feels no love.
After a few weeks, a famine breaks out - the salmon in this part of the Mackenzie did
not spawn well this winter. The dogs slowly begin to run away to the forest, as the weaker ones are being put in the pot. White
Fang is fine, he is suited perfectly for the forest, but the domesticated dogs are not.
White Fang, like them cannot find prey, so he begins to eat squirrels and other
rodents, until one day he finds a wolf, and runs down and kills him. Hours later, completely by
chance, he bumps into Lip-lip, who is weak from the famine, and completely unable to defend. White Fang kills him, but isn't
hungry for his flesh after his wolf meal.
Life in the forest is dull and food has become almost inexistent. White Fang wants to return to Grey Beaver, and begins a trek
up the river that eventually returns him to Grey Beaver, who is currently living in a more bountiful camp. When White Fang
appears, he is rewarded with lots of meat. He is happy, however he still feels no love for Grey Beaver, or anyone for that
matter.
Grey Beaver's next trip is to Fort Yukon so that he can trade with the gold
hunters. He takes White Fang and the dogs with him. At every camp they stop at, White Fang kills any and all dogs who challenge
him.
At last, they reach Fort Yukon. Here, they stay for quite a long time. Grey Beaver trades his animal
furs and textiles, and the dogs hang around the docks. White Fang, whenever a new boat
arrives, attacks any dogs who land. He rushes at them, knocking them down and tearing into their throats, then he retreats
silently, to watch the fun. The rest of the pack proceeds to rush in and finish the dog off. And so, it is members of the pack
that are shot by the despairing owners.
The men of the fort have been watching in interest. They hate the newcomers, coming in high hopes from the south. One man in particular enjoys the daily killings, and that man is John "Beauty" Smith, so nicknamed
because of his grotesque bodily features. He does the cooking in the fort. He is a cruel man, who has been in the
dog fighting business quite a bit. It is he that will make the story take a decidedly
darker turn.
Beauty Smith enters Grey Beavers tepee one day and makes offers of buying White Fang. Grey Beaver declines, as he is a very
useful animal. Beauty Smith thinks he knows the ways of the Amerindians, and slowly introduces Grey Beaver to alcohol. White Fang
is sold at last for want of more whiskey, and tied up in the fort.
The next day White Fang is back in Grey Beaver's tepee. He has escaped, but Beaty Smith is back and reclaims him, giving him a
terrible beating, and later tying him up with leather and a wooden stick. It takes hours, but White Fang gnaws through it, and
returns to who he believes to be his rightful master. This time on his return to the fort he is given an appalling beating, and
chains him up in a steel and wooden pen at the rear of the fort. White Fang is infuriated. Day after day, he becomes angrier and
angrier.
One day, a mastiff is let loose in his pen. At last, White Fang has something to take his
anger out on other than dead material. He attacks and kills the mastiff with ease. The days follow like this, a new dog being
brought in each day. He becomes known as "The Fighting Wolf", as he never loses a match. Men pay good money just to see him in
his pen, and they poke him with sticks and laugh at him. This makes him infuriated. He is no longer just the enemy of his kind,
he is the enemy of everything. After a while his fighting location moves to a secret pen in the forest, to avoid the
mounted police of the region.
White Fang defeats all opponents, including four dogs in succession, two dogs at once, a wild wolf, and a wild lynx. He is
invincible until the first bulldog in the Klondike,
named Cherokee, is brought in to fight him. The bulldog manages to get a grip on the skin and fur of White Fang's neck, and
slowly and surely begins to throttle him. White Fang has nearly suffocated by the time two men on a dog sled drive up quite by
coincidence, and come to see what the crowd of people are doing. When one of them, the gold hunter Weedon Scott, sees what's
going on, he whacks his fist into the face of Beauty Smith, who has started kicking White Fang. He then puts C$150 into Beauty
Smith (in payment for White Fang), and separates the fighting animals with the help of a young man he has employed to help him
find gold, called Matt.
At Weedon's cabin, the men discover that White Fang is very intelligent as well as strong, and that he was once a sled dog.
Weedon sees that White Fang just needs some love, something of which he has never had previously, apart from Kiche, but of course
that was wiped out when he discovered she had forgotten about him. Weedon attempts to tame White Fang and after a long patient
effort he has success, with White Fang literally eating out of his hand. He caresses White Fang with his hand, and White Fang
develops a crooning growl, not a gesture of anger, but of love (he cannot purr or so on, because his throat is only used to
growls). White Fang becomes very loyal, too, and guards the cabin every night.
One day Weedon takes a trip away from the cabin, leaving White Fang behind with Matt. White Fang becomes becomes deeply
depressed, doesn't eat, doesn't guard the house at night. He mopes about without making any noise. Matt sends a letter to Weedon,
describing his wolf's behavior. Soon after, Weedon returns. White Fang is ecstatic with joy. In a heartwarming moment he bounds
up to Weedon and greets him with a hug.
Months later, Weedon attempts to return to California without White Fang -
he is sad, but he has many reasons not to take him. He says goodbye for what seems the last time, and sets off to the steam boat.
He says farewell to his employee, Matt, telling him to take good care of his wolf. The men turn to go their separate ways, but
they see the very object of their conversation standing on the deck, who has clearly broken through the window, so desperate is
he to go with his master. Scott decides to take White Fang with him back to his home.
Weedon's real home is in the Santa Clara Valley, and so they go to a farm in the
country there, where Weedon's family live. The final chapters bookend the two novels White Fang and The Call of the Wild, ending at Judge Scott's estate as The Call of the Wild started at
Judge Miller's, both places being in Santa Clara.
In Santa Clara, White Fang has to make many changes to adjust to the laws of the estate. At the end of the book, a murderous
criminal, Jim Hall, tries to kill Judge Scott, who had sentenced Hall to prison for fifty years. White Fang kills Hall and is
nearly killed himself, but survives. The women of Scott's estate name him "The Blessed Wolf", and the story ends with White Fang
relaxing in the sun with the puppies he had fathered with the sheepdog Collie.
External links
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