[On March 19th, 1951, Herman Wouk published The Caine Mutiny. That’s one of many important American novels set on ships, so this week for its 75th anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy Caine and four others, leading up to a weekend tribute to a colleague studying maritime meanings!]
On how I used to read Jack London’s nautical adventure, and how I unfortunately would now.
In the interest of full AmericanStudier disclosure, I’ll start this post by admitting that I wasn’t familiar with Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf (1904) until I happened to watch the flawed but interesting 1993 made-for-TV movie adaptation starring Charles Bronson (!) and Christopher Reeve (!!). As hopefully is the case with many adaptations of classic literary texts, seeing that film made me curious about London’s original, and when I checked it out I found a book that hits many of the familiar Jack London notes—themes of nature and/vs. civilization, characters trying to survive in extreme circumstances, a much greater interest in male protagonists and antagonists than in female love interests—while moving the action out onto the high seas in a way that definitely hit for a reader who was as a kid obsessed with all things nautical culture (as I suppose this week’s series illustrates, and as I’ve blogged about many prior times as well).
At the heart of London’s novel is one of those classic protagonist-antagonist clashes, between two very distinct characters and types of men: protagonist Humphrey Van Weyden is a sensitive intellectual who finds himself lost at sea and is then rescued but also captured by antagonist Wolf Larsen, an equally intelligent but brutal and (as his name suggests) animalist sea captain. Wolf is a dictatorial bully, not only to Humphrey (whom he renames “Hump”) and to the third main character, the young woman Maud Brewster whom the ship later rescues and over whom Hump and Wolf fight; but also to his crew, for no apparent reason other than that he can be. Jack London was an avowed and passionate socialist, and since I knew that already by the time I read The Sea-Wolf, I read Wolf as a direct critique of the robber barons and attendant mythologies of London’s turn of the century era, an attack on dictatorial bosses who see themselves as entirely “self-made” and through that lens treat both their employees and intellectuals/artists as far beneath them.
I still think that’s an important aspect and theme of London’s text, but in recent years I’ve learned about another, far more fraught and frustrating layer to his political and social perspective: his blatant white supremacy, and the ways he justified it through concepts like Social Darwinism. Much of Wolf’s self-taught interest in philosophy focuses on that latter concept, and he frequently makes the case for Herbert Spencer in his arguments with Hump. Hump eventually triumphs over Wolf in their increasingly violent clashes, especially in the conflict over Maud’s affections, and it would be possible to read that central arc in the novel as a refutation of Wolf’s ideas; but knowing these sides to London’s own, similar ideas, it seems to me now instead that we have to read Hump as having developed more strength (and concurrently less sensitivity) as a direct result of his experiences with Wolf and becoming “fitter” and thus able to emerge victorious. Nautical novels often feature their share of toxic masculinities (Captain Ahab, your table is ready), but in this case it’s impossible to separate that element from other, equally toxic ideas.
Next nautical novel tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Nautical novels you’d nominate or other shipboard stories you’d share?
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