In Part 1, Chapter 1, London uses an extended simile to compare the frozen Northland wilderness to a sphinx, thus characterizing it as cruel and enigmatic and painting the relationship between humans and nature as hostile. In the following passage, he depicts nature as laughing cruelly in the face of humanity’s struggle to survive in the harsh arctic landscape:
The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement; so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness—a laughter that was as mirthless as the smile of a Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking in the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life.
In this passage, London first personifies the landscape by depicting it as laughing cruelly, then using a simile to compare its laughter to the “mirthless […] smile of a Sphinx.” This characterization of the sphinx’s smile as “mirthless” highlights the Wild’s hostility toward life, as well as emphasizing the cruel irony of the fact that nature, despite being the creator of life, should also seek to destroy it.
In Greek mythology, the sphinx is a creature with the head of a woman, the wings of an eagle, and the body of a lion who stands guard outside the city of Thebes, asking anybody who desires entrance to answer a riddle. If they answer correctly, they are allowed to enter the city; if they cannot, the sphinx devours them. By comparing the wilderness of the Northland to a sphinx, London is suggesting that nature here is both cruel and mysterious, as inscrutable as a riddle one doesn’t know the answer to. In this simile, the “riddle” could represent survival: anyone who can solve the riddle of how to survive in this inhospitable landscape will be allowed to live, while those who can’t will be devoured.
In Part 1, Chapter 1, London uses an extended simile to describe the effect of the Northland on Bill and Henry’s psyches, exploring the smallness of human pursuits when compared with the vast power of the natural world:
On every side was the silence, pressing upon them with a tangible presence. It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of deep water affect the body of the diver. It crushed them with the weight of unending vastness and unalterable decree. It crushed them into the remotest recesses of their own minds, pressing out of them, like juices from the grape, all the false ardors and exaltations and undue self-values of the human soul, until they perceived themselves finite and small, specks and motes, moving with weak cunning and little wisdom amidst the play and interplay of the great blind elements of great blind elements and forces.
First, London characterizes the huge silence of wilderness as heavy and oppressive, “pressing on them with a tangible presence,” as if it is alive and attempting to squash the life out of them. He uses a simile to compare this weighty silence to the heaviness of the ocean pressing down on a diver. This comparison highlights the unknown, unexplored aspects of the Northland wilderness, as well as its danger.
London then uses another simile to express the way that the Wild affects Bill and Henry’s mental states. He compares the weight of it pressing down on their minds to a wine press crushing the juice out of grapes. The grape juice in this simile is “all the false ardors and exaltations and undue self-values of the human soul,” meaning everything that separates humans from animals, such as ideals, self-awareness, and imagination. When those things are stripped away, all that’s left is the stark will to survive. This reveals the way that, when a person is struggling to survive in a dangerous situation (like Bill and Henry, who are struggling to survive the harsh arctic weather and the hunger of a wolf pack), they are completely present in the moment, focused on only immediate needs like food, shelter, and sleep. Throughout the novel, London glorifies the feeling of presence and exhilaration that comes when one is fighting for their survival, suggesting that it is only at moments when one is in danger of death that one feels truly alive.
In Part 2, Chapter 3, London uses a simile to compare White Fang and his siblings to plants moving toward the light that shines through the entrance of the cave they were born in:
The life of his body and every fiber of his body, the life that was the very substance of his body and that was apart from his own personal life, had yearned toward this light and urged his body toward it in the same way the cunning chemistry of a plant urges it toward the sun […] The light drew [the pups] as if they were plants; the chemistry of life that composed them demanded the light as a necessity of being; and their little puppet-bodies crawled blindly and mechanically, like the tendrils of a vine.
Throughout the novel, light is a symbol that represents the will for life and growth inherent within all living things. White Fang’s initial movement toward the light as a puppy represents his will to live, thrive, and grow. This will is not conscious but instinctual and closely associated with White Fang’s deep connection to the wilderness, which at several points in the novel is metaphorically represented as “roots” connecting him to his origins in the Wild. That this will to life is described in the above passage as something “apart from his own personal life” suggests that it is not his individual will, but rather nature’s will existing within all living things and urging them toward growth and movement. London’s choice to compare White Fang to a plant also reflects this, because plants don’t have conscious will—they grow toward the sun automatically, driven by an external force larger than themselves.
In Part 5, Chapter 4, when White Fang has been living on Weedon Scott’s estate for several months and is settling into his new life of comfort and domestication, London uses another simile to compare White Fang to a plant, only this time, he describes him as being like a flower rather than the wild “tendrils of a vine:”
There was plenty of food and no work in the Southland, and White Fang lived fat and prosperous and happy. Not alone was he in the geographical Southland, for he was also in the Southland of life. Human kindness was like a sun shining upon him, and he flourished like a flower planted in good soil.
The effect of this second simile is twofold. First, it expresses that White Fang’s nature has by this point in the novel “flowered,” meaning that its innate potential, originally cramped and stunted in its growth by cruelty and struggle, has been fully realized under the kindness and love of Weedon Scott. Second, it reveals that the “roots” connecting him back to the Wild have finally been severed, meaning that he is by this point in the novel completely domesticated—he’s gone from being like a tree rooted in the forest to being like a potted plant, healthier from being watered and tended to by his human masters, but no longer planted in the soil of the wilderness. This simile reveals the complexity of White Fang’s domestication. While on the one hand he is happier and safer as Weedon Scott’s pet, on the other, much of his strength when he was young came from his deep connection to the wilderness, and the severing of his wild roots represents the loss of this primal strength as well as his freedom. By submitting to the mastery of humans, White Fang gives up as much as he gains.
In Part 2, Chapter 3, London uses a simile to compare White Fang and his siblings to plants moving toward the light that shines through the entrance of the cave they were born in:
The life of his body and every fiber of his body, the life that was the very substance of his body and that was apart from his own personal life, had yearned toward this light and urged his body toward it in the same way the cunning chemistry of a plant urges it toward the sun […] The light drew [the pups] as if they were plants; the chemistry of life that composed them demanded the light as a necessity of being; and their little puppet-bodies crawled blindly and mechanically, like the tendrils of a vine.
Throughout the novel, light is a symbol that represents the will for life and growth inherent within all living things. White Fang’s initial movement toward the light as a puppy represents his will to live, thrive, and grow. This will is not conscious but instinctual and closely associated with White Fang’s deep connection to the wilderness, which at several points in the novel is metaphorically represented as “roots” connecting him to his origins in the Wild. That this will to life is described in the above passage as something “apart from his own personal life” suggests that it is not his individual will, but rather nature’s will existing within all living things and urging them toward growth and movement. London’s choice to compare White Fang to a plant also reflects this, because plants don’t have conscious will—they grow toward the sun automatically, driven by an external force larger than themselves.
In Part 5, Chapter 4, when White Fang has been living on Weedon Scott’s estate for several months and is settling into his new life of comfort and domestication, London uses another simile to compare White Fang to a plant, only this time, he describes him as being like a flower rather than the wild “tendrils of a vine:”
There was plenty of food and no work in the Southland, and White Fang lived fat and prosperous and happy. Not alone was he in the geographical Southland, for he was also in the Southland of life. Human kindness was like a sun shining upon him, and he flourished like a flower planted in good soil.
The effect of this second simile is twofold. First, it expresses that White Fang’s nature has by this point in the novel “flowered,” meaning that its innate potential, originally cramped and stunted in its growth by cruelty and struggle, has been fully realized under the kindness and love of Weedon Scott. Second, it reveals that the “roots” connecting him back to the Wild have finally been severed, meaning that he is by this point in the novel completely domesticated—he’s gone from being like a tree rooted in the forest to being like a potted plant, healthier from being watered and tended to by his human masters, but no longer planted in the soil of the wilderness. This simile reveals the complexity of White Fang’s domestication. While on the one hand he is happier and safer as Weedon Scott’s pet, on the other, much of his strength when he was young came from his deep connection to the wilderness, and the severing of his wild roots represents the loss of this primal strength as well as his freedom. By submitting to the mastery of humans, White Fang gives up as much as he gains.
