About five years ago, I heard about Jack London as a writer only in the context of the work "White Fang", which, however, I had never read before, which caused a lot of surprise among those with whom I had ever had to discuss literature.
(In other respects, I have never watched any film adaptations, although I corrected this annoying misunderstanding with a film directed by Randal Klizer in 1991, a very good film, by the way.)
Then, and until the moment of listening to this novel, London became familiar to me through several more works, which, however, were rather badly deposited in my memory, which is very indicative for me personally.
This is unlikely to happen with "White Fang" – this work is too bright. But who exactly is this White Fang?
So, he was born in the Northern Wilderness. The only survivor of the entire brood, a small puppy whose father was a one-eyed wolf, and whose mother was half a wolf and half a dog, was too early faced with a situation in which he had to start relying on his own – then quite insignificant – strength and independently take up the study of the surrounding world. A world in which he hardly had any chance of survival.
At least, this continued until the cub met his first man, the first god, an Indian, in whom there was enough power to force White Fang to obey.
However, not being afraid of a person, the puppy doomed himself to an endless and even more cruel struggle for life than could be expected in nature. In the human world, whose laws sometimes contradict the calls of nature, the Fang had several owners, and each of them had different rules; everyone treated him differently, awakening one facet of his being, a dog, then another, a wolf.
Thus, throughout his life, he comprehended indifference in some degree of its manifestation; and cowardice, which causes only pity; and hatred, tied to the thirst for profit; and affection, patient and bright.
The latter, attachment, turned out to be the strangest form of relations with the gods for him, sometimes even the most incomprehensible form, but the most pleasant and comfortable.
After the frequent cruelty, far from always deserved, that White Fang faced, of course, it was very difficult to learn how to respond with kindness to kindness and love to love, as well as not to succumb to natural instincts.
After being taken over by the greedy and cowardly Handsome Smith, who used a dog in the arena, blood and pain almost turned it into a wolf, hardened it and imposed one single law: to obey a person, to kill dogs.
But the hard training with the patient engineer Whedon Scott, who saved Fang from death, was worth it, and later White Fang was convinced of this more than once.
The plot of the novel is actually quite simple, even to some extent banal, but it is very fascinating to dive into such a story, because the main thing here is not even its intricacies, but the very essence – the human essence, which the author shows from very different sides.
He presents the reader with various assessments of situations, considering every action both from the position of a dog who firmly follows the installation "man is god, which means he is always right", and from the position of a person. Thus, Jack London not only makes a complete picture of what is happening in all colors, but also does not allow the person who opens the book to feel the feeling of an imposed opinion.
The text, however, does not turn out to be dry and impartial, but in the process each reader decides for himself what is good and what is bad.
In addition, frequent psychological analysis of actions and motivations and the very description of these actions dilutes the description. Not only characters and appearance, but also landscapes. Recently I came across an opinion, they say, why do you need to describe nature at all, because the reader, reading an audiobook or reading an ordinary book, does not sit with the thought: "Wow, there were such-and-such flowers and such-and-such a sky".
Yes, of course, this is not true, and the description of nature can really sometimes be superfluous and overloading the text. But only in situations when it is really useless, because nature itself can play several important roles in the work at once: it can be used to express the atmosphere and mood of what is happening, and sometimes it is an important actor itself.
So, for example, nature can bring trouble to the actors when they go beyond the framework and disturb her peace. This happens a couple of times in the novel "White Fang".
In general, for me personally, the nature of Jack London is somehow special. It feels incredibly close, but it does not cause a feeling that this happens only because it is found literally at every step (even in a huge city it is impossible not to get rid of it – it follows so resolutely on the heels from north to south), and because I infinitely love the northern landscapes and atmosphere.
P.S. It turns out that Jack London has a lot of works in general, whose plot revolves around wolves and dogs. At least, this is the impression created when viewing the list of his works with covers. I don't know what exactly this is connected with, but it looks interesting
1059.727 SRY