White Fang and his mother Kiche function as foils for one another throughout the novel. While White Fang’s journey is from wildness to domestication, Kiche moves in the opposite direction, beginning life as a domestic dog and eventually settling down in the wilderness with the wolves.
At the beginning of the novel, Kiche, who has left her home with the Indians and is running with a pack of starving wolves in the Northland, lures Bill and Henry’s sled dogs one by one into the forest to be devoured by the hungry pack surrounding them. She is repeatedly described as looking at the two men and their dogs “wistfully”—for example, in this passage from Part 1, Chapter 2:
[Kiche] looked at them in a strangely wistful way, after the manner of a dog, but in [her] wistfulness there was none of the dog affection. It was a wistfulness bred of hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, as merciless as the frost itself.
Later, when she encounters the Indian camp—her old home—in Part 2 Chapter 1, this description of her “wistfulness” is repeated, but this time, the wistfulness is one of affection rather than hunger:
[Kiche] was strangely stirred, and sniffed and sniffed with an increasing delight […] A new wistfulness was in her face, but it was not the wistfulness of hunger. She was thrilling to a desire that urged her to go forward, to be closer to that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men.
Kiche’s wistfulness, or deep longing, is mentioned whenever she sees signs of civilization. They remind her of something deep-rooted within herself—so deep-rooted that it has become as instinctual as hunting food for herself when she is starving. Throughout White Fang, domestication is represented as being deeply rooted within dogs. Domestic dogs haven’t just been trained by humans—their minds have literally been shaped by them through thousands of years of contact. London repeatedly refers to “the ancient covenant” between dogs and men, referring to the fact that dogs have been kept by humans as pets since prehistoric times. Because of this ancient covenant, humans have played a role similar to nature in the evolution of dogs, which is why White Fang eventually comes to regard them as gods with “unseen and occulty” powers over the minds of dogs.
White Fang’s wistfulness, however, comes when he looks into the forest and remembers his deep-rooted wildness. In Part 3, Chapter 2, shortly after Kiche and White Fang join the Indian camp, White Fang stares longingly into the woods and tries to get his mother to escape with him:
Later on that day, Kiche and White Fang strayed into the edge of the woods next to the camp [...] There was something calling to him out there in the open. His mother heard it too. But she heard also that other and louder call, the call of the fire and of man—the call which has been given alone of all animals to the wolf to answer, to the wolf and the wild-dog, who are brothers.
Despite their wistfulness, Kiche eventually returns to the wild, while White Fang chooses domestication. This speaks to the complex combination of wilderness and civilization embedded within each of them.
White Fang and his mother Kiche function as foils for one another throughout the novel. While White Fang’s journey is from wildness to domestication, Kiche moves in the opposite direction, beginning life as a domestic dog and eventually settling down in the wilderness with the wolves.
At the beginning of the novel, Kiche, who has left her home with the Indians and is running with a pack of starving wolves in the Northland, lures Bill and Henry’s sled dogs one by one into the forest to be devoured by the hungry pack surrounding them. She is repeatedly described as looking at the two men and their dogs “wistfully”—for example, in this passage from Part 1, Chapter 2:
[Kiche] looked at them in a strangely wistful way, after the manner of a dog, but in [her] wistfulness there was none of the dog affection. It was a wistfulness bred of hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, as merciless as the frost itself.
Later, when she encounters the Indian camp—her old home—in Part 2 Chapter 1, this description of her “wistfulness” is repeated, but this time, the wistfulness is one of affection rather than hunger:
[Kiche] was strangely stirred, and sniffed and sniffed with an increasing delight […] A new wistfulness was in her face, but it was not the wistfulness of hunger. She was thrilling to a desire that urged her to go forward, to be closer to that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men.
Kiche’s wistfulness, or deep longing, is mentioned whenever she sees signs of civilization. They remind her of something deep-rooted within herself—so deep-rooted that it has become as instinctual as hunting food for herself when she is starving. Throughout White Fang, domestication is represented as being deeply rooted within dogs. Domestic dogs haven’t just been trained by humans—their minds have literally been shaped by them through thousands of years of contact. London repeatedly refers to “the ancient covenant” between dogs and men, referring to the fact that dogs have been kept by humans as pets since prehistoric times. Because of this ancient covenant, humans have played a role similar to nature in the evolution of dogs, which is why White Fang eventually comes to regard them as gods with “unseen and occulty” powers over the minds of dogs.
White Fang’s wistfulness, however, comes when he looks into the forest and remembers his deep-rooted wildness. In Part 3, Chapter 2, shortly after Kiche and White Fang join the Indian camp, White Fang stares longingly into the woods and tries to get his mother to escape with him:
Later on that day, Kiche and White Fang strayed into the edge of the woods next to the camp [...] There was something calling to him out there in the open. His mother heard it too. But she heard also that other and louder call, the call of the fire and of man—the call which has been given alone of all animals to the wolf to answer, to the wolf and the wild-dog, who are brothers.
Despite their wistfulness, Kiche eventually returns to the wild, while White Fang chooses domestication. This speaks to the complex combination of wilderness and civilization embedded within each of them.
White Fang and his mother Kiche function as foils for one another throughout the novel. While White Fang’s journey is from wildness to domestication, Kiche moves in the opposite direction, beginning life as a domestic dog and eventually settling down in the wilderness with the wolves.
At the beginning of the novel, Kiche, who has left her home with the Indians and is running with a pack of starving wolves in the Northland, lures Bill and Henry’s sled dogs one by one into the forest to be devoured by the hungry pack surrounding them. She is repeatedly described as looking at the two men and their dogs “wistfully”—for example, in this passage from Part 1, Chapter 2:
[Kiche] looked at them in a strangely wistful way, after the manner of a dog, but in [her] wistfulness there was none of the dog affection. It was a wistfulness bred of hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, as merciless as the frost itself.
Later, when she encounters the Indian camp—her old home—in Part 2 Chapter 1, this description of her “wistfulness” is repeated, but this time, the wistfulness is one of affection rather than hunger:
[Kiche] was strangely stirred, and sniffed and sniffed with an increasing delight […] A new wistfulness was in her face, but it was not the wistfulness of hunger. She was thrilling to a desire that urged her to go forward, to be closer to that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men.
Kiche’s wistfulness, or deep longing, is mentioned whenever she sees signs of civilization. They remind her of something deep-rooted within herself—so deep-rooted that it has become as instinctual as hunting food for herself when she is starving. Throughout White Fang, domestication is represented as being deeply rooted within dogs. Domestic dogs haven’t just been trained by humans—their minds have literally been shaped by them through thousands of years of contact. London repeatedly refers to “the ancient covenant” between dogs and men, referring to the fact that dogs have been kept by humans as pets since prehistoric times. Because of this ancient covenant, humans have played a role similar to nature in the evolution of dogs, which is why White Fang eventually comes to regard them as gods with “unseen and occulty” powers over the minds of dogs.
White Fang’s wistfulness, however, comes when he looks into the forest and remembers his deep-rooted wildness. In Part 3, Chapter 2, shortly after Kiche and White Fang join the Indian camp, White Fang stares longingly into the woods and tries to get his mother to escape with him:
Later on that day, Kiche and White Fang strayed into the edge of the woods next to the camp [...] There was something calling to him out there in the open. His mother heard it too. But she heard also that other and louder call, the call of the fire and of man—the call which has been given alone of all animals to the wolf to answer, to the wolf and the wild-dog, who are brothers.
Despite their wistfulness, Kiche eventually returns to the wild, while White Fang chooses domestication. This speaks to the complex combination of wilderness and civilization embedded within each of them.
In Part 5, Chapter 5, after White Fang has been living at Weedon Scott’s estate for several months, an escaped convict named Jim Hall is introduced into the novel as a foil to White Fang. Like White Fang, his personality has been molded by his cruel and punitive environment. While White Fang has been shaped by the harsh hand of the Northland Wild and his masters, Jim Hall is depicted as being molded by the equally harsh hand of society:
In San Quentin prison […] punishment failed to break his spirit. He could die dumb-mad and fighting to the last, but he could not live and be beaten. The more fiercely he fought, the more harshly society handled him, and the only effect of harshness was to make him fiercer. Strait-jackets, starvation, and beatings and clubbings were the wrong treatment for Jim Hall; but it was the treatment he received from the time he was a pulpy little boy in a San Francisco slum—soft clay in the hands of society and ready to be formed into something.
The description of Jim Hall’s time in San Quentin prison is reminiscent of White Fang’s traumatic experience being kept as a fighting dog by Beauty Smith. Also a prisoner, White Fang was forced to stay with Beauty Smith through violent beatings and torture, as well as being kept locked in a cage whenever he wasn’t fighting. White Fang, like Jim Hall, endures “beatings and clubbings” at the hand of Beauty Smith, and when he fights back to defend himself, he is treated still more viciously than before. That this passage echoes the novel’s earlier metaphor of “soft clay” for Jim Hall’s nature, “ready to be formed into something,” indicates that London is drawing a direct parallel between him and White Fang; both are described as containing endless potential within the “clay” of their nature, and as being shaped by their environment over time into something violent and angry.
That White Fang’s initially vicious nature melts away into something loving, calm, and expansive under Weedon Scott’s caressing hand suggests that if Jim Hall were shown the same level of kindness and empathy by human society, he might be able to change as well. Indeed, Jack London was a staunch advocate for prison reform during his lifetime, condemning such harsh practices as straitjacketing and solitary confinement in California prisons and supporting the rehabilitation of incarcerated people in order to help ease their return into society. As his characterization of Jim Hall makes clear, he believed that harsh punishments like “straitjackets, starvation, and beatings and clubbings were the wrong treatment,” serving only to increase the chances that someone would go on to commit more crimes and eventually return to prison, starting the cycle over again.
London’s critique of the prison system connects to White Fang’s overall thematic focus of environmental determinism. Looking through the lens of environmental determinism—or the idea that one’s character is shaped by environment, culture, and upbringing—nobody is inherently a criminal, but rather driven toward criminal actions through hardships in their environment. By including the character of Jim Hall in the novel, London encourages the reader to draw connections between White Fang’s journey and various social issues in human society.
