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Simile
Explanation and Analysis—The Sphinx's Laughter:
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.
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