Tag: Jack London

‘Love of Life’ by Jack London

Reading 365 short stories was a great opportunity to dip into authors I’d previously missed or avoided. This particular story is famous as one of those London was accused of plagiarising from a factual article that appeared in the same magazine four years earlier. London said: “I plead guilty… I took the facts of life contained in it, added to them the many other facts of life gained from other sources, and made, or attempted to make, a piece of literature out of them.”

Whatever its genesis, it is a gruelling, thrilling story of survival in the cold, wolf-infested northern wilderness. Our hero, a prospector, is abandoned by his mate when his crocked ankle begins to slow them down. Left with an empty rifle and an empty stomach, what keeps him moving, to his own amazement, is his desperate desire to live.

Obstacle after obstacle, pain after pain, I found myself rooting for him, and completely immersed in a beautiful but hostile landscape. By the final act, it has become a story of suspense. Rescue is at hand, but does he have the strength to crawl that final mile?

“The patience of the wolf was terrible. The man’s patience was no less terrible. For half a day he lay motionless, fighting off unconsciousness and waiting for the thing that was to feed upon him and upon which he wished to feed. Sometimes the languid sea rose over him and he dreamed long dreams; but ever through it all, waking and dreaming, he waited for the wheezing breath and the harsh caress of the tongue.”

First published in McClure’s Magazine, December 1905. Collected in Love of Life and Other Stories, 1906, available online via Project Gutenberg

‘White Fang’ by Jack London

This is the first part of the famous novel, but I’ll argue that it’s a wonderful, standalone short story unto itself. Henry and Bill, two men almost as stoic as the surrounding Yukon wilderness, are discomfited by the sound of a wolfpack in the near distance. Six dogs haul their sled, which contains the third, already casketed, member of their party. Night after night, a single dog disappears from the camp. The men squabble over various topics: the disappearances, the lack of coffee, the constant, pervasive cold. It’s set up almost like a murder mystery, though the first disappearance is met with derision and irritation rather than concern.

By the time Frog, their strongest dog, disappears, the men realize the problem is serious. A beautiful she-wolf with a reddish tinge to her coat turns out to be the culprit; seducing the sled dogs one by one and leads them into the maws of the hungry pack. With fewer dogs to push the sledge, and only three bullets remaining, Bill and Henry’s chances of survival are slim, and the tension is running high.

“It looked at them in a strangely wistful way, after the manner of a dog; but in its wistfulness there was none of the dog affection. It was a wistfulness bred of hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, as merciless as the frost itself.”

First serialized in Outing Magazine, 1906, and published as White Fang, Macmillan, 1906