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by Peter Kratzke At issue to Jack London's first collection of short stories, The Son of the Wolf (1900), is the connection between the theory and practice of the law. In theory, the law achieves justice in its alignment of rules with principles. In practice, one may argue that American law sustains this alignment in the process of competition, a process that involves an implicit cooperation between individuals even as each individual is given the fair chance to achieve his goals. Although it is by no means consistent, London's point of view throughout The Son of the Wolf emerges as essentially optimistic. In order to approach each of the stories of The Son of the Wolf, one may consider law as it structures the means by which individuals act and authority reacts. Broadly speaking, legal theorists focus on how rules are created, legitimized, and applied.(1) Within a given society, legal rules have universal, public, and tangible implications; to some extent, these qualities distinguish such rules from those of other social systems associated with religion, politics, and the like. Ultimately, rules (of whatever kind of system) are based on principles, which refer to substantive objectives. As London's stories demonstrate, individuals emphasize rules in their decisions and actions, while authority, as it is manifest in the role of judges, emphasizes principles in its reactions. In their 1993 essay, "A Journey Through Forgetting: Toward a Jurisprudence of Violence," Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns argue that legal theorists rarely consider the violence as it may be integral to the practice of law. In other words, no matter how well formulated may seem the law, its ultimate effectiveness depends on the threat that it imposes. Sarat and Kearns conclude: There is a deep schism between a jurisprudence of rules and principles, whether traditional or critical, and the practice of legal violence, a schism rarely noted and nowhere bridged. The former is always concerned with law's rhetorical justifications and with the question of whether assent and obedience are warranted, the latter with pain, bloodletting, and the role the pervasiveness of violence plays in the constitution of the legal subject. (265) In fact, Sarat and Kearns ask whether, in the face of such violence, individuals have any real choices. One potential bridge spanning the "deep schism" between legal theory and practice is the process of competition. When individuals compete, they do so, of course, in a social context. This context involves rules of law that promote both individual goals and collective development. When the law is formulated to achieve these ends, individuals submit to it and thereby implicitly cooperate with each other. This condition presumes that no individual has a vested interest in the formulation of the law - for certain, a slippery presumption. When competition becomes wasteful, society stabilizes the results with status, but not so much that individual goals become disproportionately difficult. For his part, London well understood the process of competition. As he wrote to his friend (and newspaperman) Cloudesley Johns in a 1900 letter: "Man must have better men to measure himself against, else his advance will be nil, or if at all, one-sided and whimsical. The paced rider makes better speed than the unpaced" (167). London's sense of the law began with his demand for "fair play" between individuals and authority. However, stories as early as those of Tales of the Fish Patrol (1905) reflect that he increasingly considered the threat of violence as necessary to the law's effectiveness. In "The King of the Greeks," Big Alec "open[ly] and flagrant[ly]" uses illegal "Chinese lines," which capture all sturgeon that touch them, until he is captured (2: 825). In "Yellow Hankerchief," London questions the predictability of his Chinese captives, for "fair play was no part of their make-up" (2: 890). In the stories that comprise a collection like When God Laughs (1906), he repeatedly illustrates the reductive conclusion to all systems of rules and principles: as the character Carquinez expresses the thesis of the title story, the gods "make new rules for every system that is devised. [People] have no chance to win" (2: 1109). By the time he wrote his novel Burning Daylight (1910), London would even describe society as "a vast bunco game" (157). Despite its eventual path, London's early career reflects that he did believe in the process of competition, and The Son of the Wolf provides a variety of examples of how the law may sustain this process. In all, as James McClintock says in White Logic (1975), "To understand process and to perform perfectly are implicit goals for London's characters in their quest for identity" (61). When his characters achieve these goals, they uphold what critics have identified as London's "code." McClintock discusses the underpinnings of this term: What the code does is to give some certainty, some internal logic to human relationships. Without the law, chance rules and the human community dissolves into competing individuals who will not only destroy one another, but themselves as well. (87) In the Klondike, then, London's characters benefit from the law not only in their "quest for identity," but also in the protection it gives from the uncertain and unknowable universe (the "White Silence"). If the law does not so exist or function, then society must formulate or alter it accordingly, and the stories of The Son of the Wolf consistently show society facing such measures. Here, because these stories are largely from the perspective of individuals, one may divide the book by the three ways that individuals may respond to the law - obedience, disobedience, or misapprehension. Section One: Obedience Obedience to rules, whether legal or otherwise, is at issue in three stories of The Son of the Wolf. "The Men of Forty-Mile," "The Wife of a King," and "In a Far Country." Generally speaking, obedience helps individuals achieve their goals; in the Klondike, these goals often involve survival. This condition figures in "The Men of Forty-Mile." David Bettles doubts Lon McFane's report that mush-ice freezes at the bottom and floats to the top. In order to settle the debate, the two decide to duel, for "There was no law in the land. . . . Each man measured an offense and meted our punishment in as much as it affected himself" (1: 135). The Malemute Kid, the quintessential London code character who serves at once as both individual and judge, understands the chaos that this absence of law threatens. The Kid explains that it is only when people live under law that allows them the chance to succeed that "They'll stake their whole pile on the one chance in a thousand. Take away that one chance, and - they won't play (1: 137). He thus proposes a plan to "establish a precedent which will last the men of Forty-Mile to the end of time" (1: 137). The Kid does this by threatening the victor with immediate hanging. Yellow Fang, a troublesome dog, disrupts the proceedings, and McFane courageously fights the dog before Bettles shoots it. Although Bettles and McFane obey the law by subsequently not dueling, that night, "Scruff" Mackenzie asks the Kid what would have happened if they had; the Kid responds, "I haven't found the answer" (1: 140). The Malemute Kid's inconclusiveness suggests that he does not fully estimate the threat of violence that seems necessary in order to sustain the law. McClintock thus dismisses "The Men of Forty-Mile" as "a local color story with the heroic Kid superimposed upon it" (68). The Kid is a "trickster," McClintock says, whose imagination "is merely the exercise of intelligence and reason acting upon a knowledge of human nature . . . not the instinctive and emotional, as well as intelligent, apprehension of nature's laws that elicits the implementation of the code in 'The White Silence'" (6869). However, one may argue more simply that the story depicts the necessary formulation of the law. When the law initially aligns individual goals with collective development, then the process of competition may begin. "The Wife of a King," a story of the social system of courtship, sheds some light on the Klondike's legal rules and principles. In fact, London's own sense of eugenics was essentially competitive. In his collaboration with Anna Strunsky, The Kempton-Wace Letters (1903), London's character Herbert Wace even argues that a person may understand the laws of natural selection and thereby "control the blind forces and direct their operation. Having ascertained the laws of development, he is able to take hold of life and mold and knead it into more beautiful and useful forms" (31-32). "The Wife of a King" illustrates two individuals doing just that. In the story's first part, the newly-rich Cal, secure with the rights to the half-breed Madeline that he obtained from her drunkard uncle, takes her and builds a cabin in Circle City. There, white women come, and it was these newcomers whose "word was law; their law was steel" (1: 285). In other words, the white women formulate (and obey) social rules that will achieve their substantive objectives, the white men. Although Cal remains true to Madeline, "he felt a vague yearning for his own kind" (1: 285) and, what with rumors of riches in Eldorado, departs under false pretenses. Madeline eventually seeks the Malemute Kid and his company for help, and, in the story's second part, the men teach her to dance and to obey other rules of courtship. In the end, she becomes a prize, a veritable embodiment of white woman's rules: she walks in their shoes and not her moccasins; she comports herself with their dignity; and she responds only in their English. McClintock comments: "This unintended [racist] ambiguity ruins the story" (70).(2) McClintock is correct from the point of view of how the story may affect a current reader. If one reads the story in the light of the rules and principles of social systems, however, one finds that London might have in mind a social alignment, for the story ends as Madeline, an embodiment of rules, is asked by Cal, an embodiment of principles, to dance. In contrast to "The Wife of a King," "In a Far Country" illustrates the kind of social obedience that demands the strict formulation of the law. Carter Weatherbee, a clerk "with no romance in his nature - the bondage of commerce had crushed all that . . ." (1: 210), and Percy Cuthfert, a bored blue-blood with "an abnormal development of sentimentality" (1: 210), find themselves with Jacques Baptiste and others on a difficult journey. These "two shirks and chronic grumblers" (1: 210) shrewdly undercut social rules by obeying them only nominally. For example, they circumvent every chore, from being "the first to turn in at night" to cutting "the water at each stroke and allow[ing] the boat's momentum to float up the blade" (1: 211). Even the weakened, 90-pound Sloper "could walk them into the earth in a day's journey" (1: 213). Finally, the party comes to a point at which it must rigidly formulate the law, for it can no longer collectively sustain Carter and Percy's actions. They do so, and the two "shirks" choose to remain behind the party at a cabin with food "for three times the men who were fated to live upon it" (1: 214); the group allows them, in other words, their goal. However, because Carter and Percy are without a sense of code, they ultimately kill each other in fear that the other will cheat with the food supply. Section Two: Disobedience Four stories in The Son of the Wolf, "The White Silence," the title story, "To the Man on Trail," and "The Wisdom of the Trail," illustrate the implications of disobedience to the law. In each story, at issue is whether rules are in alignment with principles. In "The White Silence," the Malemute Kid, traveling with Mason and Ruth, Mason's pregnant Indian wife, must decide to kill the mortally injured Mason in order to save himself and Ruth. Mason slips into a coma, and the Kid must consider the alignment of the legal rule against homicide with the principle of preserving three lives, including Ruth's unborn baby, against saving one. In the end, the Kid contrives to catapult Mason's body into an "aerial sepulcher . . ." (1: 149) simultaneously with his death shot to Mason. The simultaneity of the Kid's act, which one may say eclipses the issue of his guilt, reinforces that the law must serve those who submit to it, even if their submission means their technical disobedience to rules. In the book's title story, "Scruff" Mackenzie presses his suit for Zarinka, the daughter of Chief Thling-Tinneh. In this "meeting of the stone age and the steel" (1: 198), Scruff at first does obey the tribe's legal rules by offering gifts. However, when his suit is unsuccessful, he creates his own rules by disobeying the old ones: "Listen to the Law of the Wolf: Whoso taketh the life of one Wolf the forfeit shall ten of his people pay" (1: 206). Because Mackenzie then successfully takes Zarinka, his imperialism changes the law of the tribe - a solution that a current reader may find particularly obnoxious. Nonetheless, one might at least say that Mackenzie's triumph reestablishes the process of competition when status, here in the Chief's law, hinders individual goals and no longer furthers collective development. London's Christmas story, "To the Man on Trail," demonstrates the triumph of the Klondike's law. London assembles the Malemute Kid, Big Jim Belden, and others; when a stranger, Jack Westondale, enters, the Kid recognizes him from a description by Sitka Charley. Westondale shows pictures of his wife and rests; refreshed and provisioned, he leaves. Fifteen minutes later a policeman enters in search of Westondale, who has stolen forty-thousand dollars from Harry McFarland's gambling business. Taking their cue from the Kid, the men are uncooperative, and the policeman leaves without the advantages given Westondale. Explaining his actions, the Kid reasons that "honesty, above all, was man's prime jewel" (1:163): it seems Westondale had given his whole load, forty-thousand dollars, to Joe Castrell to invest in the ultimately rich Dominion stake. Castrell, however, had lost the money in gambling at McFarland's while Westondale had tended his partner who was stricken with scurvy. The question, then, is how the law serves both Westondale and society. In the end, as it is in "The White Silence," the law must serve those who submit to it, for Westondale has stolen only what he had unjustly lost. Indeed, one feels in this Christmas story the stature and decency of Westondale. He is six-foot two, two Colt revolvers and a hunting knife strapped to him, with a "smooth-shaven face nipped by the cold to a gleaming pink . . . he seemed, of a verity, the Frost King . . ." (1: 158). In all, the immediate understanding between him and the Kid demonstrates the justice that the process of competition sustains. Last, "The Wisdom of the Trail" illustrates that the law must, after all, involve tangible penalties. London begins the story: "Sitka Charley had achieved the impossible. Other Indians might have known as much of the wisdom of the trail as did he; but he alone knew the white man's wisdom, the honor of the trail, and the law" (1: 302). As a result of his knowledge, Charley finds himself in a position in which he must judge whether to execute the Indians Kah-Chucte and Gowhee. Both Kah-Chucte and Gowhee, who are "beyond the pale of the honor and the law . . ." (1: 302), have stolen from the common share. The law, which protects those who submit to it, also exposes those who do not. After Kah-Chucte and Gowhee acknowledge their crime, Charley executes them just as another party arrives. Noting their arrival, Charley "smile[s] viciously at the wisdom of the trail . . ." (1: 308). McClintock explains: Sitka Charlie [sic] can live in an ambivalent situation; the individual and the code may be limited but he has a sense of dignity and inner worth. Killing, although destructive, is partially redemptive. Not only killing by the code, but dying by it as well, provides a measure of salvation. (88) McClintock's argument centers on the limitations of people if they are to survive - in a sense, only if they are capable of making efficient, untroubled, and sometimes violent decisions. McClintock is correct, for Charley knows that to mitigate Kah-Chucte and Gowhee's punishment would undermine the Klondike's law. In competition, again, people must first submit to the rules; only later may they come to consider larger consequences. However ironic the arrival of the "Men of the Yukon" might seem, Charley knows that he has judged fairly. Section Three: Misapprehension London's stories in The Son of the Wolf that treat the misapprehension of individuals and judges demonstrate that the law needs to adapt to changing social needs. In a system of religion that illuminates that of the law, the alteration of rules is at issue in "The Priestly Prerogative." Father (Paul) Roubeau must decide whether Grace Bentham, married to the weak Edwin, may escape with the man whom she loves, Clyde Wharton. Grace reasons: "My misery with him [Edwin] has been great. Why should it be greater?" (1: 191). Father Roubeau does not relent, however, reasoning that Grace and Clyde would have an unhappy life of illegitimate love and children. Nonetheless, the Father perhaps misapprehends his principle-bound role as a judge, for Grace's case is not easily categorized. The Father's rigid sense of rules, in other words, is not necessarily in alignment with the principles of his religion, for the substance of his religion should bring individuals peace. When the scene shifts to a few weeks later and the Father is fishing with the Malemute Kid, the Father wonders if he was correct, after all, to decide as he did. Like "The Priestly Prerogative," the last story in The Son of the Wolf, "An Odyssey of the North," shows that London demanded that law work for society. Naass, whom the Malemute Kid and Prince call "Ulysses" in this framed story, recounts his travails in recapturing his fairly won bride, Unga, from an invading white man. Naass follows the white man and Unga to the south and then to the remote corners of the globe. They finally meet again in Dawson and Naass, unrecognized by the couple, becomes their guide. He is, essentially, outside the law in seeking direct revenge. The results are grotesque. He takes the couple to a remote cabin, keeping hidden enough food for himself; when he has reduced the two to an animal-like state, revenge would seem to be his. However, after Naass stabs the white man, Unga decides to stay with her dying husband. Prince calls the whole story one of "murder," but the Kid responds, "There be things greater than our wisdom beyond justice" (1: 258). The point, here, is that those things remain undefinable, for the case clearly transcends the law's boundaries. In its emphasis on the potential alignment of rules with principles, London's Klondike is a world in which justice is possible. Given this possibility, one may contest McClintock's thesis that "Pessimism is the pervasive mood of The Son of the Wolf" (80). Rather than being a pessimist, or even a red-in-the-tooth naturalist, London simply took a harsh environment and showed why and how it often compelled people to define better their society. The result, London shows in his stories, can even foster the process of competition and, with it, a bridge between the theory and practice of the law. 1 Of course, it would be convenient if rules and principles (also called standards) were discrete. In answer to difficult cases, Duncan Kennedy argues in his 1976 Harvard Law Review article that form anticipates substance and that rules are tied to individualism (using law's certainty to effect pre-existing private ends) and principles to altruism (using law "in terms of a universal ideal of human brotherhood" [1772]). Rather than seeing these terms as thus creating a profound ambivalence, other legal theorists, like Pierre Schlag, attempt to deconstruct the distinction altogether. Schlag writes in his 1985 article for the UCLA Law Review: "Rules are certain when they are appropriately flexible; standards are open-ended when they are appropriately stable. Once we introduce flexibility in order to achieve certainty, and stability in order to achieve open-endedness, it is hard to know where to stop" (411). 2 London's views often smack of racism. Indeed, his "laws" of the Klondike may be equated with statements of racial supremacy. Earl Wilcox's 1973 article discusses this issue. Apparently, London's racism only solidified with time. In 1917, Oliver Madox Hueffer wrote: When I last saw him[,] The Valley of the Moon was, or was to be, for I forget if it was actually published, the greatest of his works - a judgment in which I do not agree with him. It was, fundamentally, an appeal to the Anglo-Saxon not to allow himself to be pushed out of the most fertile valleys of the Pacific by the lesser breeds without the law. Characteristically, it suggested no way in which this ideal was to be attained. (Wilcox 33) For a discussion of London's use of Benjamin Kidd's views, see John Perry's Jack London: An American Myth (1981). Perry contests that London understood Kidd. WORKS CITED Hueffer, Oliver Madox. "Jack London: A Personal Sketch." The Living Age 12 Jan. 1917: 124-26. Rpt. in Critical Essays on Jack London. Ed. Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin. Boston: Hall, 1983. 31-34. Kennedy, Duncan. "Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication." Harvard Law Review. 89 (1976): 1685-1778. London, Jack. Burning Daylight. 1910. Oakland: Star Rover House, 1987.
-----. The Complete Short Stories of Jack London. Ed. Earle Labor, Robert C. Leitz, III, and I. Milo Shepard. 3 vols. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1993.
----- and Anna Strunsky. The Kempton-Wace Letters. 1903. Ed. Douglas Robillard. New York: NCUP, 1990.
-----. "To Cloudesley Johns." 10 March 1900. The Letters of Jack London. Ed. Earle Labor, Robert C. Leitz, III, and I. Milo Shepard. Vol. 1. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1988. 167-69.
-----. "What Communities Lose by the Competitive System." The Cosmopolitan. Nov. 1900: 58-64. McClintock, James I. White Logic. Grand Rapids: Wolf House, 1975. Perry, John. Jack London: An American Myth. Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1981. Sarat, Austin, and Thomas R. Kearns. "A Journey Through Forgetting: Toward a Jurisprudence of Violence." The Fate of Law. Ed. Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1991. Schlag, Pierre. "Rules and Standards." UCLA Law Review 33 (1985): 379-430. Wilcox, Earl. "'The Kipling of the Klondike': Naturalism in London's Early Klondike Fiction." Jack London Newsletter 6 (1973): 1-12. PETER KRATZKE has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M International University. He is working on a study of bicycles in American fiction.
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