The Sea-Wolf, written by Jack London, has become one of my favorite novels of all time. It’s about the power of goodness when held onto and lived despite terrible obstacles, and also it's ultimately about the power of moral partnership to prevail over what seems to be invincible evil. It’s a message perfect for our time. I first read this in 2014 but too quickly. On my second read, just finished, I came to appreciate its depth as well as its compelling narrative.
Wolf Larsen is a thoroughly amoral leader, the captain of a seal hunting ship, whose only personal value is power and its exercise. He’ll kill a man just to feel that power. In our own time with too many amoral people in leadership positions, Wolf stands apart. He has the body and physical strength of an Achilles and a brilliant mind, though rough and unfinished through being entirely self-educated, even at the earliest stages of reading and writing. He was born of a poor family in a remote region of Norway and lived a rough adventure that led him to the leadership role in a seagoing ship. He has attracted a crew who are mostly as hardened and casually evil as he can seem to be. We learn of him through a highly educated literary man who survives the capsizing of another boat near San Francisco and is “rescued” by the Ghost, Larsen’s ship. The Lord of the Flies has nothing on what subsequently transpires, with our narrator, Humphrey Van Weyden, forced into service on the ship and treated with abominable cruelty.
This castaway is puzzled by the seasoned crew members on board, who seem able to endure agonizing physical injuries without complaint, but will “fly into the most outrageous passion over a trifle” (40, Book of the Month Club Edition). Van Weyden says of a particular seal hunter aboard:
<<He was doing it now, vociferating, bellowing, waving his arms, and cursing like a fiend, and all because of a disagreement with another hunter as to whether a seal pup knew instinctively to swim. (41)>>
He goes on to comment about the rest of the men:
<<Childish and immaterial as the topic was, the quality of their reasoning was still more childish and immaterial. In truth, there was very little reasoning or none at all. Their method was one of assertion, assumption, and denunciation. They proved that a seal pup could swim or not swim at birth by stating the proposition very bellicosely and then following it up with an attack on the opposing man’s judgment, common sense, nationality, or past history. Rebuttal was precisely similar. I have related this to show the mental caliber of the men with whom I was thrown in contact. (41)>>
And the moral caliber of most of them was much, much worse, with a few exceptions, soon to be roughed up and killed. Later, our narrator says of the ongoing discussion, modeling the political discourse of our own day:
<<The hunters were still arguing and roaring like some semi-human amphibious breed. The air was filled with oaths and indecent expressions. I could see their faces, flushed and angry, the brutality distorted and emphasized by the sickly yellow of the sea-lamps which rocked back and forth with the ship. (43)>>
One of the mates tells the new arrival about the captain, making what he takes to be a useful distinction: “He’s not black-hearted like some men. Tis no heart he has at all.”
Of the amoral and power-hungry skipper and his top henchmen, reflecting again too much that's wrong about our own world now, our narrator says:
<<The callousness of these men, to whom industrial organization gave control of the lives of other men, was appalling. I, who had lived out of the whirl of the world, had never dreamed that its work was carried on in such a fashion. Life had always seemed a peculiarly sacred thing, but here it counted for nothing, was a cipher in the arithmetic of commerce. (64)>>
Later in the story, after Humphrey witnesses the may terrible and unpredictably evil actions of the captain, who keeps our narrator alive only because his education amuses the brute, and this autodidact skipper among fools finally enjoys having someone to talk to about literature and philosophy, an event of great significance happens. The ship spots and picks up some other marooned sailors and a passenger from another ocean going vessel who are bobbing about in the vast pacific clinging to a small boat and hoping for rescue. An elegant and exquisitely educated young woman, Maud Brewster, a famous poet who is by wild coincidence known to our narrator—a literary critic who loves her work—is among them. Humphrey desperately tries to tell her about the captain:
“You must understand, Miss Brewster, and understand clearly, that this man is a monster. He is without conscience. Nothing is sacred to him. Nothing is too terrible for him to do. It was due to him that I was detained aboard in the first place. It is due to his whim that I am still alive. I can do nothing, can do nothing, because I am a slave to this monster, as you are now a slave to him; because I desire to live, as you will desire to live; because I cannot fight and overcome him, just as you will not be able to fight and overcome him.” (208)
The ship was a sort of hell presided over by Wolf Larsen. Maud eventually calls him Lucifer. Humphrey comments on the man and his henchmen:
<<Wolf Larsen it was, always Wolf Larsen, enslaver and tormentor of men, a male Circe and these his swine, suffering brutes that groveled before him and revolted only in drunkenness and secrecy. (243)>>
But the tale is not told with too much gruesome detail. It’s not like what I would imagine one experiences reading a horror novel. There’s psychological complexity and a wonderful narrative flow. Wolf and Humphrey even debate their opposing worldviews marvelously, when alone, the crass materialist and the spiritually sensitive man of morals debating life and death and value. The conversations are fascinating. Larsen enjoys the rare intellectual challenges, but on a whim might thrown his interlocutor across the room or choke him nearly to death, just to display his power.
Humphrey and Maud know they have to escape the ship where their deaths are eventually inevitable. And there the story takes off and becomes one of the most amazing tales of all time. The two of them face the greatest odds imaginable and adversities that would be impossible to imagine in advance, much like Odysseus in The Odyssey, but brought into a more modern and less mythological day.
There are lessons about persistence and resilience and courage and confidence and success again the odds all through the book, but especially in its final third. I wish I could take the time here to share more of the lessons on goodness and partnership in the face of evil and overwhelming adversity, because they’re reassurances we all need right now. But instead of going on and on, I’ll simply commend the book to you in the strongest possible terms. If you buy it on amazon, take care the publisher. There are independent publishers now who mangle the text and make it microscopic, and Amazon has unhelpfully put the same comments on each edition, though the complaints clearly apply only to one or two. I’ll paste here a reliable publisher, and you can just click the pic. At some point, please read this book! And yeah, in advance, you’re welcome!
For the book, click HERE.
