The Sea Wolf

“Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, for it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds of rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. The supply is too large.”

I remember watching the tv adaptation of Jack London's The Sea-Wolf with my gran, but all I remember are images of sails and the ocean. I don't remember anything of the story show more from that time. So, when The Sea-Wolf came up as a buddy read, I jumped right on it.

The story is told by Humphrey van Weyden, a wannabe author and self-professed gentleman, who is shipwrecked and picked up by the crew of The Ghost and their Captain - Wolf Larsen. Contrary to Humphrey's (Hump's) expectations, he is not set ashore but is Shanghaied by Larsen, who is short of crew and short of time.

While on board, Hump transforms from a man of thought into a man of action, while witnessing the brutality of life at sea and especially the brutality of The Sea-Wolf, Captain Larsen.

“Wolf - tis what he is. He's not blackhearted like some men. 'Tis no heart he has at all.”

It's an interesting book in which London explores human motivation and philosophises about the meaning of life and the value that society attaches to one profession over another. It is not always easy to follow, London's train of thought, however, and it is not at all clear whether some of the views are the author's own.
In some ways, I was reminded of Verne's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, with its anti-hero Captain Nemo, whose disdain for human society somewhat parallels that of Larsen - except that Nemo had reason that are more relatable than those of Larsen.
The Sea-Wolf remains a mystery until the end.

Despite this, tho, the story works - even as just a simple story of adventure.

The only aspect that really grated on me was that London felt it necessary to add an element of romance into the adventure and side Hump with a lady journalist, who he falls in love with. This is not the grating bit. The grating bit is that she's a pretty strong character and her falling for Hump - who is a patronising wimp - is pretty unlikely. It's Hump's interaction with the lady journalist and his description of her as feeble and weak, even though she does more than her fair share of manual labour on the ship, that really made me want to kick him over-board.

“You are one with a crowd of men who have made what they call a government, who are masters of all the other men, and who eat the food the other men get and would like to eat themselves. You wear the warm clothes. They made the clothes, but they shiver in rags and ask you, the lawyer, or business agent who handles your money, for a job.

'But that is beside the matter,' I cried.

Not at all. It is piggishness and it is life. Of what use or sense is an immortality of piggishness? What is the end? What is it all about? You have made no food. Yet the food you have eaten or wasted might have saved the lives of a score of wretches who made the food but did not eat it. What immortal end did you serve? Or did they?” show less

My reactions to reading this novel in 1991. Some spoilers follow.

A very enjoyable novel to read -- for about the first half. Brutal, brilliant, relentlessly Darwinian Wolf Larsen, captain of the Ghost, is one of fiction’s great characters. His utter reasoned, selfishness, malicious ruthlessness, and passion for life’s struggle are charismatic. Brutal he may be (and London explicitly compares him to Milton’s Lucifer) but, like Humphrey van Weyden and Maud Brewster, we are fascinated by him, his body, mind, and the soul he would deny. Larsen stands as an eloquent exponent of the pure Darwinian struggle where a man is rewarded by elation for living, for moving. He owes only himself gratification (“piggishness” as Larsen calls it) show more and knows he must live by preying on other life. But, unlike van Weyden, he makes no distinction between man and the rest of life. Man struggles and preys and is as amoral as any other animal. This great story of dramatized philosophical conflict between Larsen and “sissy” van Weyden’s bookish (Larsen is impressively versed in many matters), civilized, spiritual values is compelling.

Then the character of Maud Brewster is introduced and the novel degenerates. It is not enough that, through contrived coincidence, Brewster and van Weyden know each other. They have to develop a sappily described romance. Granted their demeanor may have seemed natural to London, and Gilligan's introduction indicates his displeasure, but he says London’s personal life was often filled with such nonsense. Brewster is Larsen’s antithesis. This is explicitly stated, and London does an implicit contrast between Larsen’s finely developed body and Brewster’s perceived fraility. Larsen's materialism is compared with Brewster's spirituality. But the dialogue and romantic description is overblown to modern ears. I think London could have portrayed the same events in less grating, shorter ways.

Gilligan is also right in seeing this as sort of a brutal, adult Captain Courageous where Larsen, in his own words, teaches van Weyden to stand “on his own legs”. Unlike Gilligan, I don’t have any particular problems with van Weyden transforming from scrawny, pretensious, bookish, isolated, pampered literary critic to hardened, practical man of the sea who has seen man’s brutality and accepted a bit of the vista Larsen has shown of life. He is willing to revert to the primitive in protecting his “woman”.

This savagery of the animal kingdom shows up elsewhere in the novel. Leach’s constant challenges to Larsen seem like a young pup challenging the alpha wolf of a pack. Van Weyden’s protectiveness of Brewster is mirrored in the seal bulls protecting their harem. But Brewster is annoying. I kept hoping Wolf would throw her over the side or somehow shut her up. And both van Weyden and Brewster refuse, being the sensitive, civilized, literary types they are, to gun Larsen down. A shortcoming that Larsen himself berates and mocks. He mocks van Weyden’s squimishness, his inability to act out of self-interest to preserve his interest, to forsake morality and convention for self-gain, to forsake, I suppose, government for anarchy (Larsen, towards the novel’s end, calls himself an anarchist).

I find the conflict for van Weyden’s soul between Larsen and Brewster interesting in terms of London’s own values. To an atheist, materialist Larsen represents a view of life’s struggle, its self-contained value apart from notions of immortality and soul and life’s unfairness towards those less fortunate and the tragedy of brilliance like Larsen’s wasted due to the circumstances its born into. Larsen is unswayed by Brewster sentimental, spiritual arguments right up to the end, even though his body is imprisoning him and the essential quality of life for him -- movement -- is being taken. To London, Brewster’s caring, her gentleness, even towards Larsen, must temper the Darwinian universe and make it a better place for man, but he personally rejected her and van Weyden’s religious values. A brilliant character in Larsen that transcends the book’s faults -- including the Ghost coincidentally showing up on Endeavor Island or the obvious symbology in Larsen’s illness. show less

Book source ~ Audio purchased at Chirp

I listened to this back in August and it has stuck with me. Wolf Larsen is such a brutal man. I don’t care how harsh the conditions out there on the open sea, his brutality is extreme. Yikes. What an asshole. I do admire how he educated himself though and bought himself a ship to hunt seals. Humphrey van Weyden sure gets an education himself at the hands of the Sea-Wolf. The addition of a lady love to the mix strains credulity and the ending is a bit too tidy, but overall this is a tale that has settled into my psyche and I don’t think it will leave for a very long time.

This is only my second book by Jack London. I am slowly making my way through his works. The Sea-Wolf is starkly different in contrast to his other works and just as engaging. The story of a man unused to physical labor, nature’s elements or the wiles of the treachery his fellow man can be capable of. The Sea-Wolf highlights all the elements of human nature at its worst and most demanding. Pressed into service on a ship loaded with rogues our main character finds himself at the whims of a world he could never have imagined. The character development is amazingly done. The Captain of the Ghost is a man unable to be described, the devil himself. What makes the Captain so dangerous is not only his brimstone manner but his intelligence show more and desire. This is a wonderful story of resolution, desire, sacrifice and staring the odds down…even when they have the foot of fate on your neck. One of Jack London’s strong points is attitude in the light of adversity. Great Classic Literature.
The better part of my adult years and childhood has been spent on and around boats and ships. The latter part consisting of eight shipboard deployments to the Middle East and South East Asia. This book has the smell and the lure of all those factors which enticed me to the Sea. I honestly feel a tad bit coy having just now read it. Better late than never. show less

The Sea Wolf is the book I read to shreds when I was 12 and it was probably at least indirectly responsible for all the time I spent in my late teens-early twenties riding in not-particularly-seaworthy ferries, or working in fish canneries and pickle factories, or generally spending a lot of time having adventures i.e. bumming around. Even though I'm now a suburban mama of two this book totally still calls to me, I'm only partly embarrassed to admit. Its only flaw is the character of Maude Brewster, who should have stayed on dry land and entirely out of this book.

I'll quickly forgive incredible plot-lines if something else redeems a novel -- interesting characters, good sentences, snappy dialog. Here, London moves solidly towards redemption, with excellent passages about the handling of sailing ships and insight into the lives of isolated men doing difficult, demanding work. But he doesn't get there.

Humphrey Van Weyden, a "man of letters" is shipwrecked and picked up by the sealing schooner Ghost with the brutal (but smart and beautiful) Wolf Larson as master, headed off to the sealing grounds in the North Pacific. Van Weyden is made cabin-boy, then mate (with no sailing experience and without objection from the crew), from which position in a couple of months he learns everything he needs to show more know to later re-fit a beached and de-masted wrecked ship and sail it out of a small cove on a lee shore. Then Maude Brewster, a poet beloved (in her poetry) by Van Weyden is also picked up by the Ghost, also a victim of shipwreck. They escape the Ghost on one of the hunting boats and are shipwrecked on a small island deserted except for thousands of seals. Then the Ghost, with only Larson, now blind, on board, wrecks in the same small cove Brewster and Van Weyden have settled in. While Larson slowly dies, Van Weyden and Maude refit the ship and sail it off, declaring their love just before they are picked up by a mail boat.

Uh huh.

It's worth reading, for the yarn and for some of the dialog (not, though, the philosophical discussions) -- I'm sure that like me, everyone thrills to cries of "Boat Ho!" and "Stand by that jib with Johnson and Oofty! The rest of you tail aft to the mainsheet! Lively now! or I’ll sail you all into Kingdom Come! Understand?" And there's this appreciation of being at sea in a storm: "And oh, the marvel of it! the marvel of it! That tiny men should live and breathe and work, and drive so frail a contrivance of wood and cloth through so tremendous an elemental strife."

London covered the intellectual matter better in Martin Eden, I think, but whereas that's a better story, this one is better told. show less

Shear genius! This is one of my new all-time favorites. Who knew London could write like this after laboring through "White Fang," which was good but not great. But this, this is as captivating as Wolf Larsen's eyes and behavior! Only through London's imaginative descriptions could I marvel at an entire page about a man's eyes.
“The eyes—and it was my destiny to know them well—were large and handsome, wide apart as the true artist’s are wide, sheltering under a heavy brow and arched over by thick black eyebrows. The eyes themselves were of that baffling protean grey which is never twice the same; which runs through many shades and colourings like intershot silk in sunshine; which is grey, dark and light, and greenish-grey, and show more sometimes of the clear azure of the deep sea. They were eyes that masked the soul with a thousand guises, and that sometimes opened, at rare moments, and allowed it to rush up as though it were about to fare forth nakedly into the world on some wonderful adventure,—eyes that could brood with the hopeless sombreness of leaden skies; that could snap and crackle points of fire like those which sparkle from a whirling sword; that could grow chill as an arctic landscape, and yet again, that could warm and soften and be all a-dance with love-lights, intense and masculine, luring and compelling, which at the same time fascinate and dominate women till they surrender in a gladness of joy and of relief and sacrifice.”

Excerpt From: London, Jack. “The Sea Wolf.” iBooks.
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Most of the book was like this. I was glad to be on my iPad so I could look up a lot of words to get the full expression of his writing. Fun read. I devoured it faster than usual. I could actually read it again to absorb the dialogue better. The many discussions about the ferment of humanity are awesome and there's even a bit of Ayne Rand philosophy in Wolf Larsen's attitude about altruism. Love this book! show less