通过《海狼》和《马丁•伊登》解读杰克•伦敦的达尔文主义(2)
The Sea-Wolf was an adventure fiction published in 1904. The main characters of this book were Wolf Larsen, Humphrey Weyden, and Maud Brewster. According to London, Larsen was attributed to a real sailor that he met on the journey to Japan. In this book, Larsen was depicted as a super powerful captain who was crucial to his sailors. By accident, he saved Humphrey Weyden, who was literary critic living on writing. Though Larsen saved him, he forced him to work for him on his boat Ghost. At the beginning, they have completed different understanding of life. However, under the influence of Larsen, Humphrey almost assimilated himself to Larsen’s superman theory. At this moment, Larsen saved a woman called Maud from a sea accident. She was the key character that waked Humphrey that he should still believe in civilization and humans. Due to the collaboration, they together defeated Larsen and got rescued.
Many Western Scholars have studied The Sea-Wolf for a long time. What they mainly focuses are feminism, naturalism, Nietzscheism and Social Darwinism.
Many critics thought that The Sea-Wolf was a good tutorial about the argument on Darwinism. Mitchell focused on the symbol “leg,” which frequently appeared in this book. As Mitchell analyzed, “leg” refers to one’s ability to survive an isolated society. In a primary and wild environment, one should first stand on his legs. Biologically speaking, the symbol of leg was a good interpretation of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.” Socially speaking, “leg” reflected a person’s masculine power to live in a society (Mitchell, 1998).
Through the analysis of Larsen’s death, Critic Link concluded that Jack London disagreed with Nietzsche’s superman theory. He mainly focused on five reasons: Death by god; Death by Nietzsche; Death by Darwin; Death by Death; Death by Capitalism. Link thought that a society only relied on power could not last long. People had to collaborate and survive together. Compared with Link’s analysis, Park focused on Humphrey and came to the conclusion that Jack London preferred to believe in a socialism society (Link, 2010).
Compared with Link’s analysis on the death of Larsen, Critic Parkay focused on the characters Van Humphrey and Maud, the characteristics of whom reflected that London has transferred his mind towards believing in Huxley’s moral society. To worth mention, Parkay raised an interesting self-contradictory. Following in Nietzsche’s superman theory, Maud should choose Larsen as his ideal man to breed a superior child, however, she chose Humphrey who was relatively weaker. Her choice proved that human’s feeling was an uncertain factor that supermen failed to take into consideration. At the end of his analysis, he succeeded in explaining that cooperation was the core idea that London tried to say when interpreting “survival of the fittest” (Parkay, 1971).
Based on these critics, Critic Berkove made a detailed conclusion for the audience. He focused on the word, “fittest” and used linguistics to deny the possibility of Spencer’s perfect society. And then, he came to the conclusion that moral society was a possible social mode for social Darwinism (Berkove, 1984).
Chinese critics also took efforts to research on The Sea-Wolf. They also made contributes to making researches on London’s Social Darwinism and so on. Critics Yong Liu and Hui He cooperated and completed “the superman spirit of Jack London,” which explained how London formed his superman theory. In addition, they used details from the book to show London’s ambivalent feelings towards superman theory. Since then, the audience could understand the ambiguous emotions within London on his path in pursuing power (Yong, Liu and Hui He, 2002).
Critic Xing Chen analyzed how London formed his ideology through the language and plot of The Sea-Wolf. In her “The important information existed in London’s The Sea-Wolf,” Chen depicted the beauty of the figures so that the audience could feel the charming of the book. After that, Chen made a critical debate on philosophy to lead the audience to the core idea of the book (Chen, 1983).