Work record
White Fang
1906 · Early 20th Century · Novel · English
Abstract
Background. Three years after The Call of the Wild, London wrote its mirror image, carrying an animal out of the wilderness and into a human household.
Plot. A prologue of two sledders hunted by wolves introduces the cub's mother. Sole survivor of a hungry litter, the young wolf is taken into an Indian camp, tormented by the dogs and bound to a hard but fair owner. Sold for liquor to a coward who makes him a pit fighter, he is almost killed by a bulldog, then rescued by a visitor from the South whose gentleness slowly earns devotion; the dog sickens when this master goes away and revives at his return. Carried to California, he masters the rules of a family estate and finally saves the household from an escaped prisoner at nearly the cost of his life.
Point of view. After Part I the narration stays close to the animal's senses, calling humans gods and rendering his learning as a chain of laws.
Themes. Nature and nurture, the moral weight of mastery, cruelty and its reversal, and loyalty earned rather than demanded.
Significance. With its companion it remains one of the most widely read American animal stories, often taught in middle school, and its closing image of the healed wolf among Collie's puppies answers the frozen desolation of its first page.
Main characters
- White Fang: Wolf-dog born in a northern cave
- Kiche: His half-dog mother, once an Indian camp dog
- Grey Beaver: Indian owner who names and trains him
- Lip-lip: Puppy who leads the pack against him
- Beauty Smith: Brutal owner who stages dog fights in Dawson
- Weedon Scott: Californian who buys him and wins him by patience
- Jim Hall: Convict seeking revenge on Judge Scott
Summary
White Fang follows a wolf-dog from his birth in a cave in the frozen North to a sunny estate in California. The novel opens with two men, Bill and Henry, hauling a coffin across the Yukon wilderness while a starving wolf pack trails them. A reddish she-wolf, half dog, lures their dogs one by one out of camp to be eaten; Bill goes after her with his last three cartridges and is killed, and Henry, ringed by fire and almost overcome, is saved only when a party of sledders arrives. The story then follows the she-wolf, who mates with the old wolf One Eye and bears a litter in a cave. Famine kills all but one grey cub, and One Eye dies hunting a lynx. The cub explores the world outside the cave, learns that he must eat or be eaten, and helps his mother kill the lynx that comes for revenge. Wandering near an Indian camp, mother and cub meet men. Grey Beaver recognizes the she-wolf as Kiche, his dead brother's dog, claims the cub, and names him White Fang. Persecuted by the puppy Lip-lip and the other camp dogs, White Fang grows into a lonely, ferocious fighter who respects the gods of the fire for their power and justice but loves no one. Grey Beaver puts him in harness under the boy Mit-sah, and later makes him lead dog. After a famine in which he kills Lip-lip in the woods and is rejected by his mother, he returns to Grey Beaver. At Fort Yukon a cowardly, misshapen man named Beauty Smith gets Grey Beaver drunk, buys White Fang for whisky, beats him into hatred, and exhibits him as a fighting dog in Dawson. White Fang wins every fight until the bulldog Cherokee clamps his throat and nearly strangles him. Weedon Scott, a young newcomer from California, and his dog-musher Matt break up the fight, pry the bulldog loose, and Scott forces Beauty Smith to sell White Fang for one hundred and fifty dollars. Scott's patience slowly teaches White Fang to trust and then to love; when Scott leaves for a time, the dog stops eating. When Scott sails for California, White Fang breaks through a cabin window and follows him onto the steamer, and Scott takes him south. At Sierra Vista, the Scott family estate in the Santa Clara Valley, White Fang learns new laws: not to kill chickens, to tolerate the collie Collie and the deerhound Dick, and to love the children. When Scott breaks his leg in a riding fall, White Fang runs home and makes the family understand. Finally the escaped convict Jim Hall breaks into the house to murder Judge Scott, who once sentenced him; White Fang kills him but is shot three times and badly injured. Nursed back to health, he is called the Blessed Wolf and lies in the sun among Collie's puppies. London published the novel in 1906 as a companion to The Call of the Wild.
Virtues in this work
- Fortitude: White Fang survives famine, Lip-lip's pack, Beauty Smith's pen and Cherokee's grip, and fights on against Jim Hall despite three bullet wounds.
- Friendship: His devotion to Weedon Scott leads him to break through a window to follow him onto the Aurora.
- Charity: Weedon Scott pays to save a dog everyone calls hopeless and wins him by months of patience instead of the club.
- Justice: Grey Beaver, though harsh, defends White Fang against the family of a boy who tried to beat him over meat scraps he had fairly found, and White Fang learns to guard his master's property in return.
Plot or Argument
- Part I: The Wild
Bill and Henry haul a coffin toward Fort McGurry, lose their dogs one by one to the she-wolf and her pack, and Bill is killed; Henry survives the siege of the fire until sleds arrive.
- Part II, Chapters I-III: Born of the Wild
The she-wolf mates with One Eye after a fatal fight among her suitors, finds a cave, and bears a litter; famine leaves only the grey cub, and One Eye, hunting near a lynx's lair, never returns.
- Part II, Chapters IV-V: The Wall of the World and the Law of Meat
The cub ventures out past the wall of light at the cave mouth, kills ptarmigan chicks, is mauled by their mother and a weasel, and helps the she-wolf kill the lynx, learning that life lives on life.
- Part III, Chapters I-III: The Makers of Fire
Grey Beaver reclaims Kiche and names the cub White Fang; Lip-lip and the puppy pack make him an outcast, Kiche is given away to Three Eagles, and White Fang learns the power of the gods with their clubs and fire.
- Part III, Chapters IV-VI: The Covenant
White Fang runs away during a camp move but returns of his own will; he pulls in Mit-sah's sled team, defends his master's property and his master's son, and during a famine survives alone, kills Lip-lip, and is snarled away by Kiche.
- Part IV, Chapters I-III: The Mad God
Made lead dog and hated by the team, White Fang reaches Fort Yukon, where Beauty Smith buys him from Grey Beaver for whisky, beats him, and turns him into a fighting dog in Dawson.
- Part IV, Chapters IV-VI: The Clinging Death and the Love-Master
The bulldog Cherokee nearly kills him; Weedon Scott and Matt rescue and buy him, Scott's patience overcomes his hatred, and liking becomes love; he pines when Scott is away and drives off Beauty Smith's attempt to steal him.
- Part V, Chapters I-III: The Southland
White Fang follows Scott onto the steamer Aurora, comes to Sierra Vista in California, and learns the family's laws, the dangers of the city, and the rule against killing chickens.
- Part V, Chapters IV-V: The Call of Kind and the Sleeping Wolf
White Fang fetches help when Scott breaks his leg and runs in the woods with Collie; he kills the convict Jim Hall in the dark hall, survives terrible wounds, and is named the Blessed Wolf.
Characters
- White Fang, protagonist
Wolf-dog, three-quarters wolf, whose nature is shaped first by famine and cruelty and finally by kindness.
- Kiche, White Fang's mother
Half-wolf, half-dog she-wolf who leads the pack in Part I and returns to her old master Grey Beaver.
- One Eye, White Fang's father
Old, scarred wolf who wins the she-wolf and is killed hunting a lynx.
- Grey Beaver, first master
Indian hunter and trader who names White Fang and rules him by just but heavy force, until whisky undoes him.
- Mit-sah, Grey Beaver's son
Boy who drives White Fang in his first sled team and whom White Fang defends from other boys.
- Lip-lip, rival puppy
Camp puppy who torments White Fang for years and is finally killed by him in the woods.
- Beauty Smith, second master
Cowardly, misshapen camp cook who makes White Fang a fighting dog by hatred and the club.
- Cherokee, bulldog
Tim Keenan's fighting bulldog, whose clinging grip nearly kills White Fang.
- Weedon Scott, the love-master
Young Californian in Dawson who knocks down Beauty Smith, rescues White Fang and wins him by patience and kindness.
- Matt, dog-musher
Scott's helper who first pleads for White Fang after being bitten.
- Judge Scott, Weedon's father
Retired judge of Sierra Vista whom the convict Jim Hall swears to kill.
- Jim Hall, escaped convict
Brutalized prisoner, wrongly convicted, who breaks into Sierra Vista for revenge.
- Collie, sheep-dog
Scott family collie who torments White Fang, then runs with him and bears his puppies.
- Henry and Bill, travellers
Two men hauling a coffin through the Wild in Part I, pursued by the she-wolf's pack.
Lessons
Clay and the potter's hand
London says White Fang's heredity is like clay and his surroundings mould it. Under Lip-lip's persecution and Beauty Smith's club he becomes a killer; under Scott's patience the same animal becomes a guardian who licks a puppy's face. The novel asks readers to see how much of character is formed by the treatment a creature receives.
- Which events in Part III make White Fang morose and solitary, according to the narrator?
- How does Jim Hall's story in Part V echo White Fang's own?
- Does the book leave any room for White Fang's own choices, or is everything done to him?
Three masters
Grey Beaver rules by force but is just and protects his property; Beauty Smith rules by cruelty and cowardice; Weedon Scott rules by kindness. White Fang serves all three, but only the last wins his love.
- Why does White Fang return to Grey Beaver after running away in Part III, Chapter IV?
- What makes Beauty Smith cruel, in London's account?
- What does Scott do differently from the first moment he meets White Fang?
Patience that heals
After White Fang bites Matt and Scott, Scott chooses to give the dog a chance instead of shooting him. Day after day he offers meat, speaks gently, and keeps his hand still until White Fang allows a touch. London shows trust being rebuilt slowly, step by step.
- Why does Matt argue for White Fang after being bitten?
- What is the first sign that White Fang is beginning to trust Scott?
The law of meat and a higher law
In Part II the cub learns that life lives on life: eat or be eaten. In California he learns that chickens belong to the gods and must not be killed, and that the children are to be protected. London presents a progression from the bare law of survival to a law of loyalty and restraint.
- How does White Fang learn not to kill the chickens at Sierra Vista?
- Is the law of meat ever really left behind? Look at what he does to Jim Hall.
Context
The northern chapters are set in the Mackenzie and Yukon country of northwestern Canada and in the Klondike gold-rush towns of Fort Yukon and Dawson around 1898, when thousands of prospectors came north and dogs were the main winter transport. London drew on his own winter in the Yukon in 1897-98 and on the ideas of heredity and environment, struggle and adaptation, that he took from Darwin, Herbert Spencer and other writers. The final part moves to the Santa Clara Valley of California, the same valley where Buck begins The Call of the Wild.
Composition
London conceived White Fang as a companion to The Call of the Wild, reversing its direction so that a wild animal comes in to the fire and to civilization. The novel was serialized in Outing magazine in 1906 and published in book form by Macmillan the same year.
Reception
The book sold widely and has remained in print as one of London's two most popular novels. It drew some criticism in London's lifetime for attributing human thoughts to animals, a charge London answered in his essay The Other Animals. It has been filmed several times, including Disney's 1991 version.
Comparisons
- the-call-of-the-wild
London's companion story runs the opposite road: Buck goes from a California estate to the wolf pack, while White Fang goes from a wolf's cave to a California estate, and both end in the Santa Clara Valley or begin there.
- the-jungle-book
Kipling's jungle and London's Wild each have a law that governs animals; Mowgli is a human raised by wolves who returns to men, White Fang a wolf raised by men who comes at last to love them.
- black-beauty
Both pass an animal through a series of masters good and bad and make the reader feel each one from below; Sewell writes to reform treatment of horses, London to show how treatment forms a nature.
- on-the-origin-of-species
The law of meat, the famine that kills the weaker cubs, and London's talk of heredity and environment draw on popular Darwinism.
- lassie-come-home
Two famous dog stories that turn on loyalty to a master; Lassie's devotion is there from the first page, while White Fang's has to be won after years of cruelty.
Quotes
Frequently cited
“Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway.”
Frequently cited
“And love was the plummet dropped down into the deeps of him where like had never gone.”
“It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.”
“The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten.”
“His heredity was a life-stuff that may be likened to clay.”
“One of the potencies of whisky is the breeding of thirst.”
“Human kindness was like a sun shining upon him, and he flourished like a flower planted in good soil.”
For Students
A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.
Reading Guide
Watch for
- Part I is told from the men's side; from Part II onward the story is seen through the wolf's senses. Notice when and why London changes point of view.
- The word gods for human beings, and how White Fang judges each god by his power, his justice and finally his love.
- The club, the fire and the outstretched hand: three ways men approach White Fang.
- The image of clay, which London uses for White Fang in Part III and again for Jim Hall in Part V.
- Moments when White Fang chooses to return to a master rather than run free.
Key terms and names
- The Wild
- London's name for the frozen northern wilderness and its pitiless law, described in the novel's opening paragraph.
- The law of meat
- The rule the cub learns in Part II: eat or be eaten, the strong live on the weak.
- Gods
- What the animals call human beings, the makers of fire who rule by club and gift.
- The covenant
- The bargain White Fang makes with Grey Beaver in Part III: his loyalty and work in exchange for food, fire and protection.
- Love-master
- White Fang's name in thought for Weedon Scott, the first man he loves.
- Sierra Vista
- Judge Scott's estate in California's Santa Clara Valley, White Fang's last home.
Seminar Questions
- Comprehension What happens to Bill and Henry's dogs in Part I, and how is Henry saved?
- Comprehension How does Grey Beaver know Kiche, and how does White Fang get his name?
- Comprehension How does Beauty Smith get White Fang from Grey Beaver, and how does Weedon Scott get him from Beauty Smith?
- Interpretation Why does London begin with two men and a coffin instead of with the wolf cub?
- Interpretation The narrator says White Fang's heredity is like clay. What forces mould him in Part III, and what remoulds him in Part IV?
- Interpretation Why does London tell us that Jim Hall was innocent of the crime he was sentenced for? How does that change the final chapter?
- Big Question Can kindness undo years of cruelty, in an animal or a person? What does the novel suggest, and what does it leave out?
Faith Connections
- Proverbs 12:10 (Scripture)
A righteous man regards the life of his beast. Beauty Smith, who torments White Fang for profit, and Weedon Scott, who pays to rescue him and spends months winning his trust, are two sides of that proverb.
- Jeremiah 18:1-6 (Scripture)
God shows Jeremiah a potter reshaping marred clay. London's repeated image of White Fang's nature as clay moulded by its surroundings invites comparison, though for London the shaping hand is environment and for Jeremiah it is God.
- 1 John 4:19 (Scripture)
We love because he first loved us. White Fang learns to love only after Scott has loved him first, patiently and at cost.
- Augustine, Confessions IV (Great Conversation)
Augustine reflects on how love shapes the soul toward what it loves. White Fang's whole nature turns as his attachments change, from the law of meat to devotion to his master.
Logic and Rhetoric
Central argument: A creature's character is formed by inheritance and environment together. White Fang inherits the wildness of a wolf; famine, persecution and cruelty mould him into a killer, and patient kindness remoulds him into a loyal guardian. Therefore, London argues, what a creature becomes depends heavily on how it is treated, and the same holds for a man like Jim Hall.
Rhetorical device: anadiplosis. In Part II, Chapter V, London builds the law of meat in short linked sentences in which the end of one becomes the start of the next: the aim of life was meat, life itself was meat, life lived on life (the book's third quote).
Debate: Resolved: Weedon Scott was right to take White Fang to California.
Memory Work
And love was the plummet dropped down into the deeps of him where like had never gone.
The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten.
Writing Prompts
Essay: Compare Grey Beaver, Beauty Smith and Weedon Scott as masters, and argue which qualities in a master most shape White Fang's character.
Comparison with The Call of the Wild: Buck goes from civilization to the Wild and White Fang from the Wild to civilization. Using both novels, argue which journey London presents as the more natural, and why.
Medical Lens
White Fang is an animal story, but several passages bear on human medicine and on period ideas of mind and inheritance. London's portrait of Grey Beaver's ruin in Part IV, Chapter II is a compact clinical narrative of alcohol dependence as the period understood it: the drink breeds thirst, the trader's money and temper go together, and in the end he sells his best dog for bottles. The famine chapters (Part II, Chapter II and Part III, Chapter VI) describe starvation in wolf, dog and human camps. The final chapter is a small study of trauma surgery and convalescence around 1900: a local surgeon works an hour and a half, lists a broken hind leg, three broken ribs with a pierced lung, heavy blood loss and three bullet wounds, the Judge calls for an X-ray and a specialist from San Francisco, and the women of the house nurse the dog through weeks in plaster. During that convalescence White Fang has recurring nightmares in which electric streetcars become screaming lynxes, and he relives the fights in Beauty Smith's pen; a modern reader may think of post-traumatic dreams, but this is an interpretive reading of an animal character. London's repeated image of heredity as clay moulded by environment, applied also to the convict Jim Hall's brutal upbringing, reflects turn-of-the-century debates about inheritance, environment and criminality.
- Part IV, Chapter II
Beauty Smith plies Grey Beaver with whisky until the trader's craving consumes his money and goods and he sells White Fang for bottles.
- Part III, Chapter VI
Famine in the Indian camp: dogs eat each other and their harness, and White Fang flees to the woods to hunt alone.
- Part V, Chapter V
The surgeon's examination and verdict after the fight with Jim Hall, the call for an X-ray and a San Francisco doctor, and the weeks of nursing in plaster casts and bandages.
- Part V, Chapter V
During convalescence White Fang dreams again of the lair, Lip-lip and Beauty Smith's fighting pen, and suffers a recurring nightmare of electric cars turning into lynxes.
- Part V, Chapter V
The account of Jim Hall's childhood and prison treatment, described as soft clay moulded by brutality.
Listen to the book
Public-domain audiobook from LibriVox, read by Mark F. Smith. Recording: White Fang (Version 2) on LibriVox (Internet Archive).
LibriVox recordings are volunteer readings released into the public domain. The reading may follow a different edition from the text in this library.
Creative Prompts
- Fiction
Retell the night of Jim Hall's break-in from the point of view of Alice Scott, who has secretly let White Fang sleep in the hall.
- Dialogue
Write the argument between Weedon Scott and Matt in Part IV, Chapter V about whether to shoot White Fang or give him a chance.
- Classroom
Make a timeline of White Fang's life with each master, and beside each stage write one word for what that master taught him.
Further Reading
- The Call of the Wild, Jack London
The companion novel, in which a dog goes from California to the wolf pack.
- To Build a Fire and Other Stories, Jack London
- Wolf: The Lives of Jack London, James L. Haley
- Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush, 1896-1899, Pierre Berton
Verification notes
All seven quotes were checked with Grep against content/texts/white-fang.txt (Project Gutenberg #910) and appear verbatim, with the file's curly apostrophes. Part and chapter structure (five parts, chapter titles from the Contents), names, the hundred-and-fifty-dollar purchase, the steamer Aurora, Sierra Vista, Jim Hall's fifty-year sentence, and the surgeon's verdict were checked against the same text. Serial publication in Outing and the Macmillan book edition of 1906 are standard facts written from knowledge.
- Serialization in Outing magazine (May to October 1906) and the exact month of Macmillan's book publication.
- London's essay The Other Animals as a reply to the nature-faker criticism, and its date (1908).