A great book! My student really enjoyed this book, written over 110 years ago. Accompanied with "Call of the Wild", very good selection for teachers. This book focuses on the domestication of White Fang, a "dog-wolf", whereas "Call of the Wild" focuses on Buck's return to nature. Very interesting! ( )

The language and grammar was pretty insufferable. The story itself was quite upsetting to my kids ( )

Extremely similar to Call of the Wild in many ways, but also opposite in a sense. While Call of the Wild was about degradation of the human side, and an embrace of instincts and the wild side of the dog, "White Fang" is a repression of instinct and wild, and succumbing to a life of love and domestication.

In many ways, this feels like a grander version of TCotW, London feels a bit more confident in his writing, and expands on ideas a bit more in gratifying ways. ( )

White Fang is, much like Black Beauty, unrelenting in its depiction of animal misery. As an adult, I find the misery rather tiresome, but it would have no doubt been far more bestirring when I was child. It's emotionally evocative, and it forces the reader to embody an animal perspective very different from their own and confront the pain caused by animal cruelty.

I still want to make note that it's an unrealistic depiction of wolf mentality. While books about animals don't have to be realistic, the wolves in White Fang are unrealistic in ways that uphold longstanding harmful narratives about wolves and the wilderness. In White Fang, the fact that wolves are not obedient to humans is a problem--and it doesn't just make them bad pets, but bad in terms of their moral character. In White Fang, the wild wolf is cruel, brutal, and lonely because nature requires it, because wolves cannot think beyond their selfish individual needs without human help and love--even though in nature, unlike the novel, wolves are highly social and companionable with one another, and rarely benefit from increased contact with humans. Wolves are not especially violent or dangerous animals, and the idea that they are has fueled the anti-wolf policies still in place in much of their natural territory today.

All of that is bad enough; still worse, the idea that wilderness and wild animals are a problem that must be solved feeds directly into the novel's harmful depiction of Native Americans. Just as White Fang is part-wolf and part-dog, Native Americans in this novel are presented as part-wild and part-civilized. And just as White Fang benefits from being tamed and becoming more doglike, it's clear that Native Americans would benefit from becoming more civilized, like their colonizers. This bias is not subtle: when White Fang meets Native Americans for the first time, he sees them as gods; and when he meets white people for the first time, he explicitly states that they are superior gods. Add to that the fact that the primary Native American character is an animal abuser and an alcoholic (a common stereotype) and the depiction becomes especially distasteful. I'd suggest reading Black Beauty instead. ( )

This is my first time reading Jack London. I acquired the audiobook through my Audible membership and thought I would give it a try. As a lover of animals and nature, I suspected I would appreciate London’s work. I was a bit apprehensive as the description mentioned White Fang’s cruel owners. (One thing that seriously turns my stomach is animal abuse.) While reading about the abuse White Fang endured hurt my heart immensely, it also made my love for him grow. I was anxious and hopeful he would find a human that would love him dearly and treat him the way he deserved. This is an incredible story of endurance and perseverance; I loved it from beginning to end. ( )