White Fang

A Tale of The WolfMr. Jack London has written another capital animal story. The opening chapters describing a wolf pack on the meat trail are thrilling in the extreme. As a piece of vivid descriptive writing, Mr. London has never done anything better. There is something of the gruesomeness of one of Edgar Allen Poe’s tales in his account of how the famished wolves hunted their victims across the snow. The scene in which the survivor crouching in the centre of a ring of fire surrounded by a circle of starving wolves who look upon him hungrily as a delayed meal that is soon to be eaten, is one which cannot be easily forgotten. The rest of the book is devoted to a description of the birth, upbringing, and adventures of White Fang, the offspring of a union of a dog and a wolf Nature, as Mr. London describes it, is indeed red in tooth and claw. The hunt for food among the wild animals is described with a minuteness that some readers will regard as excessive. Nor is there much improvement in this respect when the wolf cub becomes a servant of man. The savage struggle for existence still continues. A more humane element is only introduced towards the close of the book when White Fang comes into the possession of a Californian who masters his savage nature by the power of love. It is a powerful story and is certainly one of the best books that the present year has yet brought us.From The Review of Reviews, Vol. XXXV, Jan-June 1907, Pag 321.