生存竞赛——杰克伦敦动物小说中的社会冲突 Survival Competition: Social Conflicts in Jack London’s Animal Novels

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摘 要

杰克·伦敦(1876-1916)是十九世纪末二十世纪初美国最伟大的作家之一。作为自然主义作家的代表人物之一，他的作品充满现实主义风格，但同时又不乏浪漫主义的伟大想象。作为最受中国读者欢迎的外国作家之一，其作品往往深刻揭露了社会现实的同时带有浓厚的个人主义风格。

《野性的呼唤》和《白牙》是杰克·伦敦最为著名的两部动物小说，无论其风格主题，表达手法，还是思想内涵代表其巅峰水平。两部动物小说通过自然主义的表现手法，从动物与人的双重角度出发，融合了自己丰富的个人经历，直接或者间接地表达了杰克·伦敦对于当时社会现实的看法。他的作品中表达出了强烈的生态思想。与此同时，作者对于社会现实中的个体之间，不同阶级以及个体与社会环境之间的冲突揭露得同样深刻。

本文主要分析杰克·伦敦两部动物小说中的三重冲突，分别从人与人，人与社会，人与环境角度出发，结合杰克·伦敦的个人经历与当时的社会现实，具体探讨作品中表现出的两种看似矛盾的思想：社会主义和社会达尔文主义。第一章从当时美国社会最底层个体的之间的矛盾出发，结合自然界中动物的行为剖析当时社会底层人群的各类行为。第二章重点关注作品中的人与动物之间的相互关系，发掘其中所隐含的当时不同阶层之间的矛盾冲突和微妙关系。第三章主要聚焦作品中个体与环境之间的冲突，探寻产生个体最终结局不同的原因。通过以上三章的分析，论文作者指出以适者生存为核心的达尔文进化论，以及以平等团结为核心的社会主义思想对于杰克·伦敦产生了巨大的影响，这两种思想也为当时社会冲突中的表现提供了理论阐释的可能。

关键词：杰克·伦敦；动物小说；《白牙》；《野性的呼唤》

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements i

English Abstract ii

Chinese Abstract iii

Table of Contents iv

Introduction 1

Chapter One The Conflicts between Individuals 4

1.1 The Survival of the Fittest among the Same Species 4

1.2 Different Outcomes of Different Individuals 6

Chapter Two The Conflicts between Different Classes 9

2.1 The Domestication of Animals 9

2.1.1 Whip and Club Policy 9

2.1.2 Human’s Caring and Sympathy 11

2.2 The Feedback from Animals 12

2.2.1 Animals’ Resistance against Human Beings 12

2.2.2 Animals’ Loyalty and Love 14

Chapter Three The Conflicts between Individuals and the Environment 16

3.1 Different Choices of Wolves and Dogs 16

3.1.1 Different Instincts 16

3.1.2 Different Environments 17

3.2 The Development and Evolution in the Environment 19

3.2.1 The Retrogression of Buck 19

3.2.2 The Evolution of White Fang 21

Conclusion 23

Work Cited 25

Introduction

Jack London, who created 19 novels, more than 150 short stories, is regarded as one of the greatest novelists and journalists as well as the representative of American adventure literature. His works are of a variety of types, especially famous for Northland tales. He is always considered to be a typical American dream achiever who realized a great achievement after going through the pain of struggle. His life experience can be found in his novels.

Most of his works exhibit a certain kind of affection for the wild. His naturalistic and realistic style of writing and the expression of a complicated topic, American dream, influenced some later writers as Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis and Scott Fitzgerald. At the beginning of the 20^th century, the agricultural economy was replaced by industry in American society. It is known that he was the born and dead at the exact time of the second industrial revolution, which was the fastest development of capitalist period in American history. His Northland tales, especially animal novels, are always considered as the fables about human beings. As a naturalist writer, he depicts everything of nature in an objective way. As a realist writer, he tells the stories of American people at that time from the perspective of nature.

Jack London considers himself as a realist writer. He holds the view that writers must record the life truthfully. Through analyzing his works, we can find the traits of class conflicts in American society. It can help readers have a better understanding of his writing style. His experience also cast the shadow on his works. He struggled to move from the bottom of the society to a higher social position and this also helps readers have a deeper understanding of his creating concepts and style.

Darwin’s theory of evolution and socialism form the most pivotal proportion of central ideas in his works. Great importance should be attached to the second industrial evolution which provides the background for Jack London’s novels. That period best embodied the conflicts of these two theories. His animal novels combined the human society with ecological environment. Therefore, it can be found that the conflicts between people and outside factors drove people at that time to compete for survival.

Academic researches about Jack London began when he was alive. The study on him at the early stage mainly focuses on his life. In following decades, scholars make analysis of his writing from the perspectives of feminism, structuralism, new historicism, psychoanalysis and myth archetype. Joan D. Hedrick in Solitary Comrade: Jack London and His Work(1982), discussed the relationship between the Jack London’s inner world and the thoughts expressed in his novels on the aspect of culture and politics. Christopher Gair’s Complicity and Resistance in Jack London’s Novel from Naturalism to Nature(1997) regards his novels as expressions of special period of America. American Realism and Naturalism (2000), edited by Donald Pizer, discusses the influence of heredity and environment on the figures of the wolves, dogs and human beings. In China, the study on Jack started since the New Culture Movement. The study focused on his socialism in his novel. After 1980s, more Jack London’s novels were introduced into China, and researches on him became various. Qi Yikai in Jack London and His Novels(1981) highly praised the influence of his realism on American Literature. Li Shuyan’s The Study on Jack London(1988) gathered researches of foreign scholars and provided directions for Chinese study. After the late 20^th century, the study on Jack London became more diversified. One of the most authoritative books, The Study on Jack London(2009) of Yu jianhua, analyzes some of his representative novels and discusses social, historical and cultural connotation in his novels.

This thesis attempts to analyze Jack London’s animal novels through analyzing his life experience and social background. Jack London was born and died in the exact period of second industrial revolution, which was the very turning point in America. The social conflicts were specially obvious. American dream became a vent in people’s life to escape from the hard reality. And it also became an important subject in literature. Moreover, the author tasted the life of different classes, which also influenced his writing. His two famous animal novels have remarkable characteristics of that age. Different stages of life more or less affected his ideas, which led to the disparities of content, plots in his two animal novels.

Chapter One mainly discusses the conflicts between animals, which could be viewed as the reflection of the conflicts among the working classes. It is the part that truly embodies the Darwin’s theory of evolution. In this chapter, the trace of the author’s early life also could be found. Chapter Two concerns about the conflicts between two classes. The conflicts are presented in the depiction of the relationships between human beings and animals. As a person who successfully enters the middle class, the author observes the conflicts from two angles. The description of this relationship reflects the change of his ideas as well. Chapter Three is about the conflicts between animals and the environment. The Call of the Wild and White Fang exhibit the readers the two processes of evolution and shows his different understandings about different stages in the author’s life.

Chapter One The Conflicts between Individuals

The real condition of his times offers a colorful and truthful background to his novels and it is full of conflicts. His first animal novel, The Call of the Wild, profoundly portrayed the conflicts among the dogs of the same kind and this is also the most splendid part of whole story. This conflicts could be regarded as the conflicts of the lower class people and the early fight in the early period of evolution.

1.1 The Survival of the Fittest among the Same Species

No matter what kind of environment is used as the background in his novels, Jack London integrates the theory of evolution of Spencer and Darwin and extracts the essence of humanity from his own experience unconsciously. As main characters, animals fight not only against the environment, but also against human beings and compete with others within their own species.

Take Buck, the protagonist of the Call of the Wild, as an example. At the beginning, he is only a domesticated dog as a pet in a judge’s house. Once he is kidnapped and thrown into the cutthroat environment of the north land, facing threats from the freezing weather, heavy workload and the bully from other dogs, he learns fast and grows fast to solve all these problems. To survive, Buck physically and mentally develops all kinds of skills to gear into the environment and competition fighting against other dogs.

“His development (or retrogression) was rapid. His muscle became hard as iron, and he grew callous to all ordinary pain. He achieved an internal as well as external economy.” (London, the Call of the Wild, 23)

Jack London interprets the theory on two aspects. The former one is the real condition of living environment. For most people in his time, American dream became an even more attractive goal than earning bread. Considering the time, which was the beginning of the 20^th century, when Jack London created The Call of the Wild, American society just stepped into the industrial era. London, as a naturalist and realist writer, employed animals to present people’s life at that time. Buck was forced to leave home and fought everything to adapt to the environment. It’s a typical example of successful American dream. Like many other Americans then, they held a dream to seek fortune overnight. Only the fittest of them made it. But most people, like the other dogs in the story, died in the process of realizing the dreams of their employers, or worse, died for struggling for living. This miserable plot reflected many lower class workers and laborers died for their bosses’ dreams of making money.

The second part is about what people are faced with in the process of survival. In other words, what factors decide who is the fittest to survive and who would be eliminated. First and foremost, the competition among the people from the same class is an important one. In White Fang, the little wolf encountered the defiance from a dog in the Indians’ camp at the beginning. In another story, the combats between Buck and Spitz was the main focus of the first half of the novel.

“On the other hand, possibly because he divined in Buck a dangerous rival, Spitz never lost an opportunity of showing his teeth. He even went out of his way to bully Buck, striving constantly to start the fight which could end only in the death of one or the other.” (London, White Fang, 25)

The quoted words above from the novel show the readers directly that to be nice is hard to survive in a chaotic world. Even if you don’t want to make any trouble, trouble still would come to you. It seems incredible for human beings that there are conflicts among the people from the same class.

“Therefore London has portrayed a character who is enormously strong and who sees his ability to survive as dependent on that strength. His survival also depends on his brutality.” (Nelson 54)

Besides the animal novels which uncovered the reality through the fables, Jack London also wrote such works as Martin Eden and Sea Wolf to unveil the real condition of working class life. It is the direct presentation of social Darwinism. People have to do anything in order to survive.

In the large scale manufactural society, the competition of survival is extraordinarily fierce. The workers try every means to alleviate the workload. They even push out, isolate and hurt the coworkers who don’t act with them together to hold back the speed of production(Nash 602). London used his unique naturalist style to portray a horrible picture of a strange world, where brutal competition reflects the truth of humanity and life. Not all the people from the lower class are pitiful and worthy of sympathy. The lower class people are common people, and they did something they had to do to survive at that time. But it is the age and society that are to be blame. So the conflicts within the individuals of the same kind is a truthful description of the social reality.

Including human species, all creatures belong to the chain of revolution, either in a higher or a lower way. Even if in the competition of society, people’s behaviors still have to follow the rules under which we used to hunt in the jungle. The dogs owners watch dogs fighting for different reasons with different methods. At the same time, people from the upper class watch the lower class people fighting against each other using different methods. Both dogs and the lower class did the same thing for the same purpose of survival.

1.2 Different Outcomes of Different Individuals

In both of his animal novels, the author portrays many dogs. Different dogs in the same environment have different destinies. The most important factor leading to those outcomes must be their characters. Many examples can be found in The Call of the Wild.

“Billee’s one fault was his excessive good nature, while Joe was the very opposite, sour and introspective, with a perpetual snarl and a malignant eye.”(London,White Fang, 16)

“He was called Sol-leks, which means the Angry One. Like Dave, he asked nothing, gave nothing, expected nothing.”(London, White Fang, 17)

The author especially portrayed the characters of all kinds of dogs. Different dogs have different reflections and reactions to the same circumstance and the action of other dogs. Hence their ending is determined by their characters. From the quoted words above, readers could easily get to know those dogs’ personality and guess their final fate. When they were driven by Hal and Mercedes, who knew nothing about Northland but were crazy about finding gold in Alaska, every dog struggled to get up under the threat of the leash except Buck. He insisted not to do that and luckily his insistence attracted the attention of Thornton. Meanwhile the weather started to be warm and ice began melting. As a result, Buck’s companies as well as Hal and Mercedes, fell into the ice water and died. Different choices lead to different fate and different choices come from different characters. Buck was an ordinary dog at the beginning. His spirit of resistance spurred him to beat Spitz and not everyone was dare or smart enough to do that.

No matter they fail or succeed, the outcome they get is another form of theory of the evolution. Not the strongest species survive, but the fittest. Both White Fang and Buck were not the strongest animals in the their environment. But they are smart enough to choose the best way they lived in the environment. It seemed that they were the lowest tool for human beings and didn’t have any right.

Jack London makes these animals main characters but he uses them to be symbols of human beings. London accurately portrays the dominant theme that influences the workers at the turn of the century Social Darwinism (Nelson 52). Spitz wanted to reign all the dogs in the team, but his life was ended by Buck and the dogs he dominated. Buck’s behavior differs from all his buddies, that’s how he became the king in the forest. It’s not hard to imagine that if Buck still lives in the Judge Miller’s place, he could have never suffered a lot but also never got to know the feeling of freedom and wildness.

The author used his own experience to prove that there were always chances to choose. After the civil war and Gilded Age, America ended the agricultural economy and stepped into the second industrial revolution. America developed at an extremely rapid speed, which offered everyone opportunities to build up from nothing. In the wasteland of north America, there were no absolute dominator and rules were not yet set up for gold excavators and animals. Everyone had chance to establish the order. The order of the American social class was not completely formed as well in that period. Actually, the so-called new money appeared more than any other era and countries in history. Several most famous ones, such as Rockefeller, Carnegie and Henry Ford, also came from the lower social class. Jack London used animal fables to tell the destinies of human beings. Some animals surrendered to the oppression of human and terror of nature, so they lost their lives in the wild. Even though the gap between the rich and the poor was broadened, the social mobility reached an unprecedented peak at that time.

Like the most crucial nature in the novels, the social environment provided a dangerous stage but filled with opportunities as well. And Jack London uses his experience as an example to prove that American dream was not just empty words.

Chapter Two The Conflicts between Different Classes

The relationship between human and animals is another important point that Jack London attaches great importance to. Even though in recent years, scholars focus more on nature in his works from ecological perspective, he is seldom regarded as an ecological writer. In this way, the relationships between human and animals should not be viewed merely as the relationship between human and animal, but that of different classes.

2.1 The Domestication of Animals

2.1.1 Whip and Club Policy

Except for the brutal environment, readers nay sympathize those dogs also because of the abuse from human beings. The author uses detailed words to describe the situation when animals made mistakes and were to be punished. In The Call of the Wild, London even used the second chapter, named the Law of Club and Fang to conclude the situation of the punishment they should get. For readers, it was hard to accept the rude treatment of dog owners at the beginning. But they would get used to it later. Even for a relatively kind owner, he would use club effectively to let dogs follow their orders and to resolve the conflicts among dogs.

This problem should be handled on two aspects. For owners, they have to take different ways because they are not to tame the wild animals to the “civilized dogs”(London, White Fang, 19) or little puppies at home. They have to teach those “workers” to learn the rules of the wild quickly to survive and work in the cruel world. The memory of pain was the fastest way to realize this purpose. And they were more cunning than the house raised dogs because of the cruel environment. So when readers started to be aware of the necessity of club is to keep orders, they are accustomed to the treatment of dogs. For these dogs, they didn’t resist against their owners and accepted it quickly. After adapting to the law of club, they regarded the club as usual things. Actually, their skins and muscles became firm with the beat of club. They even were bold enough to challenge the club to realize their aims.

“His lash was always singing among the dogs, but it was of small avail. Directly his back was turned they were at it again. He backed up Spitz with his whip, while Buck baked up the remainder of the team.” (London, The Call of the Wild, 45)

Only once, Buck and his companies resisted against the orders of their owners to get rid of the threats of Spitz and set up new orders. In this way, animals’ cunning overcame the fear of club. The purpose of survival determines the dogs whether choose to obey the order or not.

“Club and whip were both used upon him, and he experienced the worst beating he ever had received in his life......Beauty Smith enjoyed the task. He delighted in it. He gloated over his victim, and his eyes flamed dully, as he swung the whip and club and listened to White Fang’s cries of pain and and to his helpless bellows and snarls.”(London, the Call of the Wild, 127)

Whip and club served mainly as a feedback system to correct mistakes and teach lessons. However, sometimes, it functioned beyond this and it was used to abuse animal to entertain their owners. Jack London didn’t write too much about this. In the Call of the Wild, the example of owners’ bad behaviors was only abusing dogs. London expressed his warnings in the book.

The conflicts between human beings and animals are the exact conflicts between two classes in America. When American society started industrial revolution, the farm owners became factory owners, and peasants turned to be workers in the workshop. It didn’t mean their positions had risen in any sense. They worked for nine hours a day, and what they earned made them merely alive. The right way to use club and whip was an effective means for the upper class people to use the poor as machines to make fortune for them. At the end of the 19^th century, the national labor organizations like American Federation of Labor, were established to resist against the unfair treatment in the work place. But most entrepreneurs chose to ignore the voice from the bottom class and suppress their uprisings. At the beginning, under the shadow of the fears of guns, workers went back to their posts to continue their work. With the development of the organization of labor, they started to use more effective and efficient methods to deal with the suppression of the capitalists. And employers had to sit on the bargaining table negotiating with workers. Such situation was like the brutal environment of animals who worked hard but ate little. London used to be a child laborer in a can food factory where he continuously worked for 18 to 20 hours when he was only 15 years old. That made him eager to go out to see the world. Jack London’s life experience exerts great impact on his writing. He didn’t think what he wrote was the typical growth novel or novel of initiation but he just tried to tell interesting stories. But he integrated his plights, which are one of traits of the model of a novel of initiation, in his past life to finish the novels.

2.1.2 Human’s Caring and Sympathy

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