Cold World
Jack London
The Call of the Wild, The People of the Abyss and Daughters of the Rich by Jack London
In the Abyss (and poor London is the Abyss), the people without places to go cannot sleep at night. At least outside. If they try to sleep at night, in the parks or on the streets, they will be none too gently woken by the police and moved along. They will be moved along constantly and without relenting until dawn. It is then, of course, that nature and the need for money requires they go off to the places where they might beg for work. When, all the while, what their bodies impel them to do instead is to find a place to rest. Sleepless, or otherwise sleeping the working days away, the homeless patrol the bounds of the Abyss. There is no escape for them; there is no escape.
It might be good, by contrast, to be the respected dog of a fine, soft family in fine and soft Santa Clara, California. The sun shines on your nicely-groomed coat. The patriarch of the house, a judge, respects you. His grown-up children let you join in with hunts and games. You stand solemn, even haughty, guard over his young grandsons. And you survey your domain contentedly. The other dogs do not hold a candle to you. You’re untouchable, secure beyond belief, certain in your place and in your view of the world.
Until you are not, of course. Not secure, not safe, not certain – wrenched by treachery from your favoured place – now sold, now beaten, now thrown onto the refuse heap. Now taken up to the brutal, frozen north, gold rush country, where torture is considered fair treatment, where the other dogs to whom you are lashed fight and kill each other, all for position. Where to stop is to invite the cudgel, where to lie down at the wrong moment is to ask, quite certainly, for death. The dogs fight among each other and brutally. There is a lot of slashing here; a lot of biting through skin, flesh and bone. Shoulder blades are wrenched; legs are snapped at and crushed and made useless. It is a cruel world – a world of gratuitous cruelty, one might say.
The laws of life out here are simple. The world is unforgiving, vicious, life certain of nothing except the terrified search for its own perpetuation. The dogs fight because they must; they steal food; they scrap and jockey for pack status. The people fight because they are worn down: worn down by lack of food, lack of sleep, lack of everything, where every additional pound of weight means the sled will crawl along – where dog food is dear and heavy, where firewood takes some time to gather and to chop, where the rivers are filled with brutal rapids that will tear the hands to shreds and crush the breath from the lungs – should you be so unfortunate as to fall into their courses.
Soft life that he’s had, why would Buck, the dog in question, not fall to pieces in such a world? He was once respected, but of course even self-respect struggles when treated with alternating contempt and indifference. Buck does have a parade of poor owners: people who over-fill the sleds, who bicker among each other, who hit the dogs, to no effect, when they are not moving because of wounds or having fallen in a state of dead tiredness.
Should not such a world destroy an animal, just as it might destroy a man? Jack London has us believe that the opposite is true. That if the strong survive, they can prosper. If they live long enough, they might fall into the hands of good men, who will not beat them without reason. They might, if given the chance, grow not tired out and tortured but strong and taut as steel. Capable of great feats – made more capable by love for the few who treat them well. Motivated by intense love, love not felt for those who treat them in the soft way, the old soft life, where love is unearned and insincere: a habit, a courtesy – about as real as a social call made not in earnest.
They (the dogs) can hear, too, the immortal sounds of former lives – recollect genetic, blood memory – and find their way into the wilds itself, if circumstances permit. Whether the reader buys into all of this – the call, the insistent demand of the wild, audible at all times, growing louder and more determined the further a dog goes into the wilderness – is up to them, of course.
And in Daughters of the Rich, a young woman absolutely sure and certain that she wishes to live, to escape the banality of money and status, to throw her father’s paternal kindnesses – or so-called kindnesses – in his face because he is not a simple working man in communion with real life, with real things and real emotions.
And she will go some way, some dramatic way, to live her own life in her own fashion, whatever the cost.
Whether the reader buys and of this is, of course, their own affair.