Choose one of those themes and explain how it is developed. (It does not need to be the main theme.) Include three pieces of textual evidence in your analysis.
Throughout White Fang, Jack London uses the theme of naturalism. Generally, naturalism refers to those who viewed life strictly from a scientific approach; in this case that translates to the view that man and other creatures were victims of their heredity and environment. The environmental theme is signaled at the onset of White Fang as London vividly describes the landscape, paradoxically combining a foreboding animism with a sinister desolation. With the environmental theme in mind, this novel is written with biological and social determinism, and London insists that although Beauty Smith was "a monstrositythe blame of it lay elsewhere. He was not responsible." Jim Hall is also portrayed as a victim of his environment, not responsible for his actions. White Fang's heredity is carefully defined, "one-fourth dog, three-fourths wolf," leading up to the struggle within him between his civilized impulses and his wild ones. London is also particularly careful to adhere to established facts of a wolf's life cycle in White Fang's early years.
But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space. (Chapter 1)
It still regarded them with the merciless wistfulness of hunger. They were meat, and it was hungry. (Chapter 2)
The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. (Chapter 8)
White Fang
