KidLit Forum

Can we see Wilderness as a force in "White Fang"? How?

Before starting the discution on wilderness, I want to point out the movie made after John Krakauer's bestseller Into the Wild where a yong man is letting himself dive into the arms of wilderness and he calls it the real life. I want to highlight the ideea that wilderness is so perfect, yet very cruel and unforgivable, but some have the guts to fight it and to embrace it as their own.

Here is the trailer (2007): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA_wR4B7Ah0

This can apply also in White Fang and Call of the wild by London to both humans and animals after being stroke by this force, like a tsunami, called wilderness.

The force of wilderness comes from its "hidden" character. You never see it, but you feel it everywhere.

- It's powerful and untameable:

[the beginning] "On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toil was over, - a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. 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." (Part 1, Ch. 1)

from these lines we found out something about this great "thing": it's mercyless, cold and heartless. It hates movement, for it is static like a bear trap. You never see it, but you always get caught.

- The wild doesn't understand tenderness. She aims at the weakest and mold the fittest:

"... this was the love-making of the Wild, the sex-tragedy of the natural world that was tragedy only to those that died. To those that survived it was not tragedy, but realization and achievement." (Part 2, Chapter 1).

- The Wild keeps the senses to their best level and treat the ordinary violence with a lot of cleverness:

"Much of the Wild had been lost, so that to [other dogs] the Wild was the unknown, the terrible, the ever menacing and ever warring. But to him, in appearance and action and impulse, still clung the Wild. He symbolized it, was its personification..." (part 4, chapter 1)

- It has a very simple law: "EAT OR BE EATEN... He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all." (Part 2, Chapter 5)

The Wildness in the book is as a character that shaped his belongings. The author chose to write it with a proper letter as a name of a character. It works only from the inside and it is inherited from ancestors. This is the case of White Fang, in his blood flows the Wildness. Its laws are coming involuntary at the surface. White Fang did not escaped from wild among human. Wildness kept him alive and stronger. He need it to survive in another wold. As in the movie made after John Krakauer's bestseller Into the Wild they say "How important is it in life not necessarily to feel strong but to be strong; to measure yourself at least once". White Fang had the chance to show how strong it was among dogs and how unbeatable is the Wild. Sometimes human have a little bit of wildness, are cruel and dominated by desires of power like Beauty Smith. The civilization and the rules of society make them obedient. The savage part is inherit in everybody as Freud said and it seems to be the same in the case of the animals.
"A constitution of iron and the vitality of the Wild were White Fang's inheritance, and he clung to life, the whole of him and every part of him, in spirit and in flesh, with the tenacity that of old belonged to all creatures."[Chapter The Sleeping wolf]

"It was the Wild in him, the fear of hurt and of the trap, that had given rise to the panicky impulses
to avoid contacts. It was the mandate of his instinct that that head must be free. And now, with the
love-master, his snuggling was the deliberate act of putting himself into a position of hopeless helplessness. It
was an expression of perfect confidence, of absolute self-surrender, as though he said: "I put myself into thy
hands. Work thou thy will with me."[Chapter THE LOVE-MASTER]

In the wild are know two things: good and evil. But what separates animal from human is their strong senses of bad. They anticipate the bad and in this way they can escape. Wildness give them this to protect themselves. But this is not enough in front of the human, they seems to have reason that make them superiors.

"With the simpler creatures, good and bad are things simply understood. The good stands for all things that
bring easement and satisfaction and surcease from pain. Therefore, the good is liked. The bad stands for all
things that are fraught with discomfort, menace, and hurt, and is hated accordingly. White Fang's feel of
Beauty Smith was bad. From the man's distorted body and twisted mind, in occult ways, like mists rising from
malarial marshes, came emanations of the unhealth within. Not by reasoning, not by the five senses alone, but
by other and remoter and uncharted senses, came the feeling to White Fang that the man was ominous with
evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, and therefore a thing bad, and wisely to be hated. [Chapter The Mad God]

Humans can make the wild to be theirs, they are the masters who can control everything. But with this freedom is annihilated. That is way White Fang became tamed.

"The seal of his dependence on man had been set upon him in that
early day when he turned his back on the Wild "[Chapter THE LOVE-MASTER]