Jack London's Pacific Voyage of Transformation

An Anthropologist Looks at <i>The Cruise of the Snark</i> (1911)

Abstract

Most people today associate the author Jack London (1876-1916) with his adventure stories such as Call of the Wild (1503) or White Fang (1906), manly tales of derring-do set in the cold snowy wilds of the Yukon during its gold rush days. And yet, as literary critic John Eperjesi points out, "Even though Jack London is most well known for his Yukon fiction, the Pacific was his career" (2005, 107). For example, London's The Sea Wolf (1904) -another tale whose hero exhibits elements of the Nietzchian"ubermensch" or rugged individualist associated with London's prose-was set in the (cold) North Pacific. Readers rarely, if ever, associate Jack London with images of palm trees, sandy beaches and surf boards, iconic symbols of the
more salubrious South Paciffc.