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Part 1, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Kiche and White Fang:
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.
Related Themes:
Part 2, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Kiche and White Fang:
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:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[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.
Related Themes:
Part 3, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Kiche and White Fang:
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:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[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.
Related Themes:
Part 5, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Jim Hall and White Fang:
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:
Unlock with LitCharts A+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.
Related Themes:
