Jack London "The Sea Wolf": book review. "The Sea Wolf": description and analysis of the novel from the encyclopedia Sea Wolf heroes

Novel "Sea Wolf"- one of the most famous “sea” works of the American writer Jack London. Behind the external features of adventure romance in the novel "Sea Wolf" hidden is a criticism of the militant individualism of the “strong man”, his contempt for people, based on a blind belief in himself as an exceptional person - a belief that can sometimes cost his life.

Novel "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London was published in 1904. The action of the novel "Sea Wolf" occurs at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century in the Pacific Ocean. Humphrey Van Weyden, a San Francisco resident and famous literary critic, goes to visit his friend on a ferry across Golden Gate Bay and ends up in a shipwreck. He is saved by the sailors of the "Ghost" boat, led by the captain, whom everyone on board calls Wolf Larsen.

According to the plot of the novel "Sea Wolf" main character Wolf Larsen, on a small schooner with a crew of 22 people, goes to harvest fur seal skins in the North Pacific Ocean and takes Van Weyden with him, despite his desperate protests. Ship captain Wolf Larson is a tough, strong, uncompromising person. Having become a simple sailor on a ship, Van Weyden has to do all the grunt work, but he can cope with all the difficult trials, he is helped by love in the person of a girl who was also rescued during a shipwreck. On a ship, subject to physical force and authority Wolf Larsen, the captain immediately punishes him severely for any offense. However, the captain favors Van Weyden, starting with the assistant cook, “Hump” as he nicknamed him Wolf Larsen makes a career up to the position of chief mate, although at first he knows nothing about maritime affairs. Wolf Larsen and Van Weyden find common ground in the fields of literature and philosophy, which are not alien to them, and the captain has a small library on board, where Van Weyden discovered Browning and Swinburne. And in my free time Wolf Lasren optimizes navigation calculations.

The crew of the "Ghost" pursues the Navy SEALs and picks up another company of victims, including a woman - the poet Maude Brewster. At first glance, the hero of the novel "Sea Wolf" Humphrey is attracted to Maude. They decide to escape from the Phantom. Having captured a boat with a small supply of food, they flee, and after several weeks of wandering around the ocean, they find land and land on a small island, which they called the Island of Efforts. Since they have no opportunity to leave the island, they are preparing for a long winter.

The broken schooner "Ghost" is washed up on the island of Efforts, on board of which it turns out Wolf Larsen, blind due to progressive brain disease. According to the story Wolf his crew rebelled against the captain's arbitrariness and fled to another ship to their mortal enemy Wolf Larsen to his brother named Death Larsen, so the “Ghost” with broken masts drifted in the ocean until it washed up on the Island of Effort. By the will of fate, it was on this island that the captain became blind Wolf Larsen discovers the seal rookery he has been looking for all his life. Maude and Humphrey, at the cost of incredible efforts, restore the Phantom in order and take it out to the open sea. Wolf Larsen, who successively loses all his senses along with his vision, is paralyzed and dies. At the moment when Maud and Humphrey finally discover a rescue ship in the ocean, they confess their love to each other.

In the novel "The Sea Wolf" Jack London demonstrates a perfect knowledge of seamanship, navigation and sailing rigging, which he gleaned from the days when he worked as a sailor on a fishing vessel in his youth. into a novel "The Sea Wolf" Jack London invested all his love for the sea element. His landscapes in the novel "Sea Wolf" amaze the reader with the skill of their description, as well as with their truthfulness and magnificence.

I read the novel with great pleasure! I will try to explain my attitude towards this novel. Let me give a brief description of some of the characters in the novel who made the most complete impression on me.

Wolf Larsen is an old sea wolf, captain of the schooner "Ghost". An irreconcilable, extremely cruel, intelligent, and at the same time dangerous person. He loves to command, urge and beat his team, he is vindictive, cunning and resourceful. The image of, say, Bluebeard, who, in essence, he is. Not one sensible member of his team will express his dissatisfaction to his face, because this is life-threatening. He doesn’t value someone else’s life even a penny, when he treated his own life as a treasure. Which, in principle, is what he advocates in his philosophy, even if sometimes his thoughts differ from his own views on things, but they are always consistent. He considers the ship's crew his property.

Death Larsen is the brother of the wolf Larsen. A small part of the novel is devoted to this personality, but this does not mean that the personality of Death Larsen is less significant. Little is said about him, there is no direct contact with him. It is only known that there is long-standing enmity and competition between the brothers. According to Wolf Larsen, his brother is even more rude, cruel and uncouth than himself. Although it's hard to believe.

Thomas Mugridge - cook on the schooner "Ghost". By nature, he is a cowardly upstart, a bully, brave only in words, capable of meanness. The attitude towards Humphrey Van Weyden is extremely negative; from the first minutes his attitude towards him was ingratiating, and later he tried to turn Help against himself. Seeing the rebuff to his impudence, and that Hemp is stronger than him, the cook tries to establish friendship and contact with him. He managed to make a blood enemy in the person of Laitimer. He ultimately paid severely for his behavior.

Johnson (Joganson), sailor Leach - two friends who are not afraid to express dissatisfaction with the captain openly, after which Johnson was severely beaten by Wolf Larsen and his assistant. The lich, trying to avenge his friend, attempted a rebellion and tried to escape, for which both were severely punished by Wolf Larsen. In his usual manner.

Louis is a member of the schooner's crew. Sticks to the neutral side. “My house is on the edge, I don’t know anything,” in the hope of reaching my native shores safe and sound. More than once he warns of danger and gives valuable advice to Hemp. Tries to encourage and support him.

Humphrey Van Weyden (Hemp) - rescued after a ship crash, by chance ends up on the “Ghost”. He undoubtedly gained important life experience thanks to his communication with Wolf Larsen. The complete opposite of the captain. Trying to understand Wolf Larsen, he shares his views on life. For which he gets poked more than once by the captain. Wolf Larsen, in turn, shares with him his views on life, through the prism of his own experience.

Maud Brewster is the only woman on the “ghost” schooner; I will omit how she got on board, otherwise it will be a retelling, who had many trials, but in the end, having shown courage and perseverance, was rewarded.

Here is just a brief description of the characters that I remember and love the most. The novel can be roughly divided into two components: a description of the events taking place on the ship and a separate narrative after Hemp’s escape from Maud. I would say that the novel is undoubtedly written, first of all, about human characters, expressed very clearly in this novel, and about relationships between people. I really liked the moments of discussion of views on life, diametrically opposed heroes - the Captain and Humphrey Van Weyden. Well, if everything is relatively clear with Hemp, then what caused this behavior with a certain amount of skepticism, Wolf Larsen? - it is not clear. Only one thing is clear, that Wolf Larsen is an irreconcilable fighter, but he fought not only with the people around him, but it seems that he was fighting with his own life. After all, he treated life in general as a cheap trinket. The fact that there is nothing to love this person for is understandable, but there was a reason to respect him! Despite all the cruelty towards others, he tried to isolate himself from his team with such a society. Because the team was selected somehow, and there were different people: both good and bad, the trouble was that he treated everyone with the same malice and cruelty. No wonder Maud nicknamed him Lucifer.

Perhaps nothing could change this man. It was in vain that he believed that anything could be achieved through rudeness, cruelty and force. But mostly he got what he deserved - the hatred of others.

Humphrey fought this giant to the end, and what a surprise he was when he found out that Wolf Larsen was not alien to science, poetry and much more. This man combined incompatible things. And every time he hoped that he would still change for the better.

As for Maud Brewster and Hemp, during their journey, they grew stronger, not only physically, but also spiritually. I was amazed by the willpower to win in this fragile woman, and the tenacity with which she fought for life. This novel convinced me that love can overcome any obstacles and trials. Wolf Larsen all the way proved to Hemp the inconsistency of his (Hemp’s) ideals, which he drew from books until the age of 30, but how much was worth, he still learned only thanks to Larsen.

Despite the fact that life played a cruel joke on Larsen, and everything that he caused to people came back to him, I still felt sorry for him. He died helpless, not realizing his mistakes made during life, but perfectly understanding the situation in which he found himself! This fate was the cruelest lesson for him, but he endured it with honor! Even if he never knew love!

Rating: 10

The first London novel I finally cared about. I won’t say I liked it, because in general, based on the results, it is, perhaps, very far from ideal, but it was in the process that it was interesting and in some places there was no sense of that cardboard template by which the heroes, “good” and “bad,” live and move. And this, it must be said, is entirely the merit of Wolf Larsen, who, whatever one may say, still turned out to be a romantic villain.

Alas, in the best traditions, the villain ultimately faced the punishment of God and the mercy of those whom he had previously tormented, but nevertheless, it is the tough and unexpected episodes with Larsen that greatly enliven the story.

“Sea Wolf” is a deceptive name, because this epithet is applicable equally to the evil captain, whose name is Wolf, and to the unfortunate hero who, by chance, fell into his clutches. We must give Larsen his due, he really managed to make a real man out of the hero during all this time, through threats, torment and humiliation. No matter how funny it is, because Van Weyden, having fallen into the hands of the villain Larsen, in good faith should not have come out of there alive and in one piece - I would rather believe in the option that they would be entertaining the shark, and not the cook who still “one of our own”. But if the concepts of class hatred are not alien to Larsen, but the concepts of class revenge are at least alien to him, he treated Van Weyden no worse than everyone else, and perhaps even better. It’s funny that the hero doesn’t think for a second that he owes it to Wolf Larsen’s science that he basically managed to survive on that uninhabited island and get home.

The love line, which suddenly appeared, like a piano from a bush, somewhat enlivens Larsen’s mockery of everyone and the suffering of the oppressed, which had already begun to become boring. I was already glad that this would be a love story with the participation of the Wolf himself - that would be really interesting and unexpected. But alas, London took the path of least resistance - two hero-victims somehow miraculously managed to escape without dying (although a few chapters ago, former sailors thrown into the sea on a boat, as they said, would probably have died if they had not figured out how to survive on the island and then run away into the dawn, holding hands. Only the presence of the dying Larsen somewhat brightened up this idyll and gave it an eerie shade. It’s strange that it never occurred to the heroes for a second that it might be more merciful to kill the paralyzed Larsen. And it’s even stranger that it didn’t occur to him himself - although it’s likely that it did, he just didn’t want to ask for help, and the fire he started was a suicide attempt, and not at all an intention to specifically harm the heroes.

In general, the novel gives the impression of being quite heterogeneous and diverse. In particular, the periods before and after Maud appeared on the ship are radically different. On the one hand, all the signs of sea life, local revolts of individual sailors against the Wolf and general misadventures were very interesting. On the other hand, Wolf Larsen himself is invariably interesting; in some ways, his behavior constantly represented a kind of flirting with Van Weyden and the reader: either he shows a surprisingly human guise, or again he hides under his villainous mask. I was expecting a certain catharsis in his attitude, to be honest, not like in the finale, but real catharsis. If London had the guts to do a Beauty and the Beast type romance and have Van Weyden and Maude work together to change something about the Wolf, that would be cool. Although I agree that doing this convincingly would also be very difficult.

Rating: 7

A hymn to masculinity as Jack London understands it. A pampered intellectual ends up on a ship, where he becomes a real man and finds love.

Conventionally, the novel can be divided into 2 parts:

Spoiler (plot reveal) (click on it to see)

the hero's maturation on the ship and Robinson's life on the island with his beloved, where the hero learns to put into practice everything he learned on the ship.

If the author had limited himself to the format of the story, he could still have enjoyed it, but he, inflating the volume, tediously describes every day, every little thing. The captain's philosophy is especially annoying. Not because it is bad - no, it’s a very interesting philosophy! – but there is too much of it! The same idea, which has already become ingrained in the teeth, is endlessly presented with new examples. The author clearly went too far. But what’s even more offensive is that he went too far not only in words, but also in actions. Yes, the tyranny of a captain on his own ship was always and everywhere, but how to maim and kill his own crew and kill and capture others is beyond the bounds even for the corsairs of the 17th century, not to mention the 20th century, when such a “hero” was in At the very first port, even if they hadn’t been strung up, they would have been locked up in hard labor until death. What's wrong, Mr. London?

Yes, I’m happy for the hero: he managed to survive and improve in this completely implausible hell, and even grab a woman. But again London has a depressing thought that, supposedly, it would be like this for everyone, they say, whoever didn’t set sails, didn’t survive in the taiga and didn’t look for treasure is not a man at all. Yes, yes, all Jack London fans, if you are sitting in city offices in shirts and trousers, your idol would consider you sub-men.

And all my criticism of this particular novel and my dislike for the author in general boils down to the fact that I am not going to agree with him ON THIS.

Rating: 5

I read the book as an adult, and (as it happened) after watching the Soviet film adaptation. London's favorite piece. Deep. In the film, as always happens, they distorted a lot of things, so I regret that I didn’t read the book first.

Wolf Larsen seemed like a deeply unhappy man. His tragedy began in childhood, and life, with its cruelty, made him infinitely cruel. Otherwise he would have died, he would not have survived. But Wolf Larsen was endowed with intelligence and the ability to reason and understand beauty - that is, endowed with something that rude, uncouth people usually do not have. And this is his tragedy. It was as if he had split in half. More precisely, I lost faith in life. Because I realized that this beauty is made up, just as religion and eternity are made up; there was a place where he says that when he dies, fish will eat him, and there is no soul... but it seems to me that he would like there to be a soul, and for life to flow along a humane, and not brutal channel... but I knew too well, I knew the hard way, that this doesn’t happen. And he did as life taught him. I even came up with my own theory about “sourdough”...

But it turned out that this theory does not always work. That force can achieve obedience, but not respect and devotion. And you can also achieve hatred and protest...

Amazing dialogues and discussions between Wolf Larsen and Hamp - I re-read them sometimes. And it seems that the captain understood life better... but he drew the wrong conclusions, and this ruined him.

Rating: 10

It is clear that Wolf Larsen is a literary negative of Martin Eden. Both are sailors, both are strong personalities, both come from “from below.” Only where Martin has white, Larsen has black. It felt like London was throwing a ball at a wall and watching it bounce.

Wolf Larsen is a negative hero - Martin Eden is positive. Larsen is a super-egocentrist - Martin is a humanist to the core. The beatings and humiliations experienced in Larsen's childhood embittered him, but Eden was hardened. Larsen is a misanthrope and misanthrope - Eden is capable of strong love. Both strive with all their might to rise above the wretched environment into which they were born. Martin makes a breakthrough out of love for a woman, Wolf Larsen out of love for himself.

The image is certainly darkly charming. A kind of pirate who loves good poetry and freely philosophizes on any given topic. His arguments look much more convincing than the abstract humanistic philosophy of Mr. Van Weyden, because they are based on the bitter knowledge of life. It's easy to be a "gentleman" when you have money. Just try, remain human when they are not there! Especially on a schooner like the Ghost with a captain like Larsen!

To London's credit, he managed to retain Mr. Van Weyden until the very end without sacrificing much verisimilitude. At the end of the book, the hero looks much nicer than at the beginning, thanks to a medicine called Wolf Larsen, which he “took in large doses” (in his own words). But Larsen is clearly outplaying him.

The rebel sailors Johnson and Leach are vividly described. The sporadically flashing hunters are absolutely living real people. Well, Thomas Mugridge is generally a literary triumph for the author. This is where the gallery of magnificent portraits, in fact, ends.

What remains is a walking mannequin named Maud Brewster. The image is ideal to the point of complete implausibility and therefore causes irritation and boredom. I remembered the translucent inventors of the Strugatskys, if anyone remembers “Monday”. The love story and dialogues are something special. When the characters, holding hands, drag out their speech, you want to look away. It feels like the romance was HIGHLY recommended by the publisher - but how? Ladies won't understand!

The novel is so strong that it withstood the blow and did not lose its charm. You can read at any age and with the same pleasure. You just place different emphasis on yourself at different times.

Rating: no

Smeared with plenty of psychologism and philosophical dilemmas, this book does not have a single extra word and, it seems to me, is written superbly, a pleasant, even “delicious” style, giving the reader a gap into the cruel world of getting food in survival mode, eyelids sticking together from lack of sleep, dirty and the tattered, sweat-soaked shirts of the lower class sailors, struggling by blind chance due to an “unfortunate birth” in a poor family, for the sake of those treasured calories contained in the crumbs of food, for which they have to constantly sacrifice themselves. But for what? As the title character would put it, I would say, “an anti-hero,” “to fill his belly, which gives life.” Life in the name of what? “We want to live and move, despite all the meaninglessness of this, we want it because it is inherent in us by nature - the desire to live, move, wander,” Wolf Larsen would answer. For some reason, all the time I was reading, I wanted to call him “Varg”; apparently, it was unusual to see a nickname instead of a name, and it is precisely this name that is translated from Scandinavian languages ​​as “wolf”. Frankly, the struggle between philosophical movements and philosophers causes violent conflicts for me. London, which rejects social Darwinism, colorfully reveals to us the personality of the captain of a fishing schooner, nevertheless, supporting idealistic ideas and such abstract, man-made chimeras as “justice, duty, immortality of the spirit, love,” proving that humanity in its development has gone far from animals and the laws generated by reason are objectively consistent with life within society.

Sometimes there is a feeling that Larsen, having failed to achieve success, enviously takes revenge on the pampered aristocrats he meets, who were lucky to be born into noble families and who are “fed by dead hands.” In one of his remarks, the premise of which was Hamp’s question “Why haven’t you done anything significant? The power inherent in you could lift someone like you to any height,” the Wolf says that his parents were simple illiterate people, plowmen of the sea , who sent their sons from generation to generation to surf the waves of the sea, as has been the custom since time immemorial. Because the Wolf “grew up without roots” and did not have a favorable opportunity to rise, he had to plow the ocean abyss on a small wooden world with its own laws and mechanisms of work. But in the end, Hamp benefited from his upbringing on a schooner, and he was able to survive on a desert island thanks to the skills he learned from the crew and the knowledge of its members.

Thus, I wanted to report on this problem, although there are many of them in the novel. But it is precisely this theme that correlates with the socialist worldview of London, the fact that every child should be given equal conditions at birth. It is interesting to note that my friend was extremely annoyed that I first read Martin Eden and then began the real novel. The situations in them are inverted, but still, from past experience, nothing prevents me from analyzing and understanding the connection between these works. I recommend that you read both works.

So, a reference book for a lover of voyages and severe hardships, after reading it you just want to build your own ship and, quoting Rumbaud, “In a fierce crowd I rushed into the distance of the seas,” maneuver and sway in the violent and chthonically indomitable water element.

Rating: 9

“The Sea Wolf” is a philosophical and psychological novel, purely symbolically disguised as an adventure. It comes down to a dispute between Humphrey Van Weyden and Wolf Larsen. Everything else is an illustration of their argument. Van Weyden, alas, did not work out. Jack London did not like such people, did not understand them and did not know how to portray them. Mugridge, Lynch, Johnson, Louis did better. Even Maud turned out better. And, of course, Wolf Larsen.

When reading (not the first time, in my youth, but relatively recently), it sometimes seemed to me that in the image of Larsen the author saw a version of his fate, undesirable, but possible. Under certain circumstances, John Griffith could become not Jack London, but Wolf Larsen. Both did not graduate from universities, both were excellent sailors, both were fond of the philosophy of Spencer and Nietzsche. In any case, the author understands Larsen. His arguments are easy to challenge, but there is no one to do it. Even when an opponent appears on the ship, you can point at him. For his part, Van Weyden understands that in his situation it is important not to argue, but simply to survive. Pictures from nature, seemingly confirming Larsen’s ideas, are again possible in the closed, specific world of “The Phantom.” It’s not for nothing that Larsen doesn’t like to leave this little world and even seems to avoid going ashore. Well, the ending is natural for such a little world. An old large predator, having become decrepit, becomes a victim of small predators. You feel sorry for the wolf, but you feel more sorry for his victims.

Rating: 9

The novel left a double impression. On the one hand, it is brilliantly written, you read and forget about everything, but on the other hand, the thought constantly appears that this does not happen. Well, people cannot be afraid of one person, and one person, even a captain, cannot mock people at sea with impunity, threatening their lives. In the sea! On land it’s okay, but in the sea I don’t believe it. On land you can be held responsible for murder, this stops you, but on the sea you can calmly kill the hated captain, but, as I understand from the book, he is still afraid of death. There was one attempt, but it was unsuccessful, which prevented the use of small arms, which are on the ship, to be sure, it is not clear. The most interesting thing is that some people from the crew themselves take part in this bullying with pleasure, and they do not follow the order, they like it. Or maybe it’s just that I, a land rat, don’t understand anything about sailing, and it’s customary for sailors to risk someone’s life for fun?

And the captain himself resembles the unkillable John McClane from the Die Hard films; even sharp steel cannot kill him. And at the end of the book, he generally resembled a harmful, spoiled child who just wanted to do some mischief. Although he is a well-read person, his dialogues are meaningful, he talks interestingly about life, but in his actions he is an ordinary, as people say, “cattle.” Since he lives by the principle “he who is stronger is right,” then his remarks should have been appropriate, and not the way London painted them.

In my opinion, there is no “you” and “I” in the sea, there is only “we” in the sea. There are no “strong” and “weak”, there is only a strong team that can weather any storm together. On a ship, saving the life of one person can save the entire ship and its crew.

PS. If Jack London would have made the main antagonist not a complete asshole, but cruel but fair, then it would be ideal.

Rating: no

Jack London's favorite book.

Journalist Van Weyden, after a shipwreck, ends up on the schooner "Ghost", led by the gloomy and cruel captain Larsen. The team calls him "Wolf Larsen". Larsen is a preacher of a different morality than Van Weyden. A journalist who speaks passionately about humanism and compassion experiences a real shock that in the age of humanity and Christian compassion there is a person who does not act guided by such ideals. “Every person has his own leaven, Hamp...”, Larsen tells the journalist and invites him not to just eat bread on the schooner, but only to earn it. Having lived in urban bliss and humane ideals, Van Weyden plunges downwards with horror and difficulty and is forced to discover for himself that at the root of his essence lies not the virtue of compassion, but that very “leaven”. By chance, a woman gets on board the Ghost, who becomes partly Van Weyden’s savior and a ray of light, preventing the hero from turning into the new Wolf Larsen.

The dialogues between the Main Character and Wolf Larsen are quite remarkable, the clash of two philosophies from two diametrically opposed classes of society.

Rating: 10

The Sea Wolf by Jack London is a novel inspired by the atmosphere of sea adventures, adventurism, a separate era, isolated from others, which gave rise to its incredible uniqueness. The author himself served on a schooner and is familiar with maritime affairs and put all his love for the sea into this novel: Excellent descriptions of seascapes, relentless trade winds and endless fogs, as well as hunting for seals. The novel exudes the authenticity of what is happening, you literally believe in all the author’s descriptions coming from his consciousness. Jack London is famous for his ability to put heroes in unusual circumstances and forces them to make difficult decisions that prompt the reader to certain thoughts, and there is something to think about. The novel is filled with reflections on the topic of materialism, pragmatism and is not without its originality. Its main decoration is the character of Wolf Larsen. A melancholic egocentric with a pragmatic outlook on life, he is more like a primitive man with his principles; he has gone far from civilized people, is cold towards others, cruel and devoid of any principles and morals, but at the same time a lonely soul, delighted with the works of philosophers and with reading literature (My brother is too busy with life to think about it, I made a mistake when I first opened the book (with) Wolf Larsen), after reading the novel his personality remained a mystery to me, but at the same time I understand what the author wanted to say , in his opinion, a person with such life attitudes is best adapted to life (From the point of view of supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing on Earth (c) Wolf Larsen). He has his own philosophy, which goes against civilization; the author himself claims that he was born 1000 years in advance, because despite his intelligence, he himself has views bordering on primitiveness in its purest form. He served all his life on various ships, he developed a certain mask of indifference to his physical shell, like all crew members, they can dislocate a leg or crush a finger and at the same time they will not show that they were somehow uncomfortable at that moment, when the injury occurred. They live in their own little world, which generates cruelty, the hopelessness of their situation, fights or beatings of their colleagues are a common thing for them and a phenomenon whose manifestation should not cause any questions about their education, these people are uneducated, and in terms of their level of development they are not much different from ordinary children , only the captain stands out among them, his uniqueness and the individuality of his personality, which is simply filled with materialism and pragmatism to the core. The main character, being an educated person, takes a long time to get used to such a wild contingent, the only person in this darkness for him is Wolf Larsen, with whom he talks sweetly about literature, philosophical treatises, the meaning of life and other eternal things. Larsen’s loneliness may fade into the background for a while, and he was glad that, by the will of fate, the main character ended up on his ship, because thanks to him he learned a lot about the world, about many great writers and poets. Soon the captain makes him his right hand, which the main character does not really like, but he soon gets used to his new position. Jack London created a novel about the fate of one person in a difficult time, where sheer adventurism reigned, the thirst for profit and adventure, about his torment, thoughts, through mental monologues we understand how the main character is changing, we are imbued with his nature, we become one with him and realize that Larsen’s unnatural views on life are not so far from the truth of the universe. I definitely recommend everyone to read it

Rating: 10

Jack London

© DepositРhotos.com / Maugli, Antartis, cover, 2015

© Book Club “Family Leisure Club”, edition in Russian, 2015

© Book Club “Family Leisure Club”, translation and artwork, 2015

I managed to save enough money from my earnings to last me three years in high school.

Jack London. Stories from the Fishing Patrol

This book, compiled from the “sea” works of Jack London “The Sea Wolf” and “Tales of the Fishing Patrol”, opens the “Sea Adventures” series. And it is difficult to find a more suitable author for this, who is undoubtedly one of the “three pillars” of world marine studies.

It is necessary to say a few words about the appropriateness of identifying marine painting as a separate genre. I have a suspicion that this is a purely continental habit. It never occurs to the Greeks to call Homer a seascape painter. The Odyssey is a heroic epic. It is difficult to find a work in English literature that does not mention the sea in one way or another. Alistair MacLean is a mystery writer, although almost all of them take place among the waves. The French do not call Jules Verne a marine painter, although a significant part of his books are dedicated to sailors. The public read with equal pleasure not only “The Fifteen-Year-Old Captain,” but also “From the Gun to the Moon.”

And only Russian literary criticism, it seems, just as it once put the books of Konstantin Stanyukovich on a shelf with the inscription “marin painting” (by analogy with the artist Aivazovsky), still refuses to notice other, “land” works of authors who followed the pioneer fell into this genre. And from the recognized masters of Russian marine painting - Alexei Novikov-Priboy or Viktor Konetsky - you can find wonderful stories, say, about a man and a dog (in Konetsky, generally written from the perspective of a boxer dog). Stanyukovich began with plays exposing the sharks of capitalism. But it was his “Sea Stories” that remained in the history of Russian literature.

It was so new, fresh and unlike anything else in the literature of the 19th century that the public refused to perceive the author in other roles. Thus, the existence of the marine genre in Russian literature is justified by the exotic life experience of sailor writers, of course, in comparison with other wordsmiths from a very continental country. However, this approach to foreign authors is fundamentally wrong.

To call the same Jack London a marine painter would mean to ignore the fact that his literary star rose thanks to his northern, gold-mining stories and tales. And in general - what did he not write in his life? And social dystopias, and mystical novels, and dynamic adventure scenarios for newborn cinema, and novels designed to illustrate some fashionable philosophical or even economic theories, and “novels-novels” - great literature, which is cramped in any genre. And yet his first essay, written for a competition for a San Francisco newspaper, was called “Typhoon off the Coast of Japan.” Returning from a long voyage fishing for seals off the coast of Kamchatka, at his sister’s suggestion, he tried his hand at writing and unexpectedly won the first prize.

The size of the remuneration surprised him so pleasantly that he immediately calculated that it was more profitable to be a writer than a sailor, a fireman, a tramp, a dray driver, a farmer, a newspaper seller, a student, a socialist, a fish inspector, a war correspondent, a homeowner, a Hollywood screenwriter, a yachtsman, and even - gold digger. Yes, there were such wonderful times for literature: pirates were still oyster pirates, not Internet pirates; magazines are still thick, literary, not glossy. That, however, did not stop American publishers from flooding all the English colonies of the Pacific Ocean with pirated editions of British authors and (sic!) cheap sheet music by European composers. Technology has changed, people not so much.

In Jack London's contemporary Victorian Britain, moralizing songs with morals were fashionable. Even among sailors. I remember one about a lax and brave sailor. The first, as usual, slept on watch, was insolent to the boatswain, drank away his salary, fought in the port taverns and ended up, as expected, in hard labor. The boatswain could not get enough of the brave sailor, who religiously observed the Charter of service on ships of the navy, and even the captain, for some very exceptional merits, gave his master’s daughter in marriage to him. For some reason, superstitions regarding women on ships are alien to the British. But the brave sailor does not rest on his laurels, but enters navigation classes. “Operates a sextant and will be a captain!” - promised a chorus of sailors performing shanti on the deck, nursing the anchor on the spire.

Anyone who reads this book to the end can be convinced that Jack London also knew this moralizing sailor's song. The ending of “Tales of the Fishing Patrol,” by the way, makes us think about the relationship between autobiography and sailor folklore in this cycle. Critics do not go to sea and, as a rule, cannot distinguish “an incident from the author’s life” from sailor’s tales, port legends and other folklore of oyster, shrimp, sturgeon and salmon fishermen of the San Francisco Bay. They do not realize that there is no more reason to believe the fish inspector than to believe a fisherman who has returned from fishing, whose “truthfulness” has long become the talk of the town. However, it’s simply breathtaking when, a century later, you see how a young, impatient author “writes out” from story to story in this collection, tries out plot moves, builds a composition more and more confidently to the detriment of the literalism of the real situation, and brings the reader to the climax. And we can already guess some of the intonations and motives of the upcoming “Smoke and the Kid” and other pinnacle stories of the northern cycle. And you understand that after Jack London wrote down these real and fictional stories of the fisheries patrol, they, like the Greeks after Homer, became the epic of the Golden Horn Bay.

But I don’t understand why none of the critics have yet let it slip that Jack himself, in fact, turned out to be the slack sailor from that song, who was enough for one ocean voyage. Fortunately for readers all over the world. If he had become a captain, he would hardly have become a writer. The fact that he also turned out to be an unsuccessful prospector (and further along the impressive list of professions given above) also played into the hands of the readers. I am more than sure that if he had gotten rich in the gold-bearing Klondike, he would have had no need to write novels. Because all his life he considered his writing primarily as a way of making money with his mind, and not with his muscles, and he always scrupulously counted the thousands of words in his manuscripts and multiplied in his mind the royalties per word by cents. I was offended when editors cut a lot.

As for The Sea Wolf, I am not a supporter of critical analyzes of classical works. The reader has the right to savor such texts at his own discretion. I will only say that in our once most reading country, every cadet at a naval school could be suspected of having run away from home to become a sailor after reading Jack London. At least, I heard this from several gray-haired combat captains and the Ukrainian writer and marine painter Leonid Tendyuk.

The latter admitted that when his research vessel Vityaz entered San Francisco, he unscrupulously took advantage of his official position as the “senior group” (and Soviet sailors were allowed ashore only in “Russian troikas”) and spent half a day dragging along the streets of Frisco two disgruntled sailors in search of the famous port tavern, where, according to legend, the skipper of the “Ghost” Wolf Larsen loved to sit. And this was a hundred times more important to him at that moment than the legitimate intentions of his comrades to look for chewing gum, jeans, women’s wigs and lurex headscarves - the legal prey of Soviet sailors in colonial trade. They found the zucchini. The bartender showed them Wolf Larsen's place at the massive table. Unoccupied. It seemed that the skipper of the Phantom, immortalized by Jack London, had just gone away.

Some American critics saw in Larsen's image a glorification of Nietzsche's "superman." But it is difficult to agree with this opinion. London does not admire Larsen, but debunks him. It is precisely the debunking and condemnation of Nietzscheanism and the permissiveness, arbitrariness, and cruelty associated with it that “The Sea Wolf” is dedicated to. Concentrating attention on Larsen, London constantly emphasizes his internal, “deep” failure. Larsen's weak spot is endless loneliness.

Artistically, The Sea Wolf is one of the finest works of sea literature in American literature. It combines the content with the romance of the sea: wonderful pictures of cruel storms and fogs are drawn, and the romance of man’s struggle with the harsh elements of the sea is shown. As in the northern stories, London appears here as a writer of “active action.” He does not downplay the dangers encountered at sea. His sea is not a quiet, calm water surface, but an angry, raging element, crushing everything in its path, the enemy with whom man wages a constant struggle. The sea, like northern nature, helps the writer reveal the human psyche, establish the strength of the material from which a person is made, reveal his strength and fearlessness.

"The Sea Wolf" is written in the tradition of a sea adventure novel. Its action unfolds as part of a sea voyage, against the backdrop of numerous adventures. In “The Sea Wolf,” London sets itself the task of condemning the cult of power and admiration for it, and showing in the real light people who stand in Nietzsche’s positions. He himself wrote that his work “is an attack on Nietzschean philosophy.”

Extreme individualism and Nietzschean philosophy erect a barrier between him and other people. It arouses in them feelings of fear and hatred. The enormous possibilities and indomitable power inherent in it do not find proper application. Larsen is unhappy as a person. He rarely feels satisfied. His philosophy makes you look at the world through the eyes of a wolf. More and more often he is overcome by black melancholy. London reveals not only Larsen's internal failure, but also shows the destructive nature of all his activities; Larsen, a destroyer by nature, sows evil around himself. He can destroy and only destroy. It is known that Larsen has killed people before,” and when Johnson and Leach escape from the “Ghost,” HE not only kills them, but laughs and laughs at the people doomed to death. Pity and compassion are alien to him. Even struck by a serious illness, waiting for death to approach, Larsen does not change. The dignity of the novel, therefore, lies not in the glorification of the “superman”, but in a very strong artistic realistic depiction of him with all his inherent features: extreme individualism, cruelty, and the destructive nature of his activity.

The situation becomes even more complicated after the appearance of Maude Brewster. Van Weyden openly resists Darsen, who is ready to commit violence against the girl. The central role in the novel is played by Wulf Larsen, a man of enormous physical strength, unusually cruel and immoral. His philosophy of life is very simple. Life is a struggle in which the strongest wins. There is no place for the weak in a world where the law of strength reigns. “Might makes right, that’s all,” he says, “the weak is always to blame. It’s good to be strong and bad to be weak, or better yet, it’s nice to be strong because it’s profitable, and it’s disgusting to be weak because it makes you suffer.” Larsen is guided by these principles in his actions.

“The Sea Wolf” is a novel by D. London. Published in 1904. This work is the quintessence of his philosophy as a writer, a milestone that marked disillusionment with social Darwinism and the Nietzschean cult of the superman.

The main action of the novel takes place on the hunting schooner "Ghost". The deck of a ship is a frequently encountered image-metaphor of humanity in Jack London (cf. also the novel “Mutiny on the Elsinore”), which in the American literary tradition goes back to H. Melville’s novel “Moby Dick”. The deck of a ship is an ideal platform for staging philosophical “experiments about man.” For Jack London, the deck of the Phantom is a testing ground for the experimental collision of two antipodes, two heroic ideologists. At the center of the novel is Captain Wolf Larsen, the embodiment of the Rousseauian-Nietzschean “natural man.” Larsen rejects any conventions of civilization and public morality, recognizing only the primitive laws of survival of the fittest, i.e. cruel and predatory. He fully lives up to his nickname - possessing wolf-like strength, grip, cunning and vitality. He is opposed by the bearer of the moral and humanistic values ​​of civilization, the writer Humphrey Van Weyden, on whose behalf the story is told and who acts as a chronicler and commentator on the events on the Phantom.

London's The Sea Wolf is an experimental novel. Compositionally, the book falls into two parts. In the first part, Humphrey Van Weyden almost drowns off the coast of California, but is saved from death by Wolf Larsen. The captain turns the rescued man into his slave, forcing the “white hand” to do the most menial work on board. At the same time, the captain, well educated and possessing a remarkable mind, starts philosophical conversations with the writer, which revolve precisely around the key themes of social Darwinism and Nietzscheanism. Philosophical debates, reflecting the deep internal conflict between Larsen and Van Weyden, constantly teeter on the brink of violence. Ultimately, the captain's seething anger is poured out on the sailors. His bestial cruelty provokes a riot on the ship. Having suppressed the rebellion, Wolf Larsen almost dies and rushes after the instigators of the rebellion. However, here the narrative abruptly changes direction. In the second part, the novel's plot receives a kind of mirror image: Wolf Larsen again saves the victim of a shipwreck - the beautiful intellectual Maud Brewster. But its appearance, according to the American critic R. Spiller, “transforms a naturalistic book into a romantic narrative.” After another shipwreck - this time a storm destroys the "Ghost" - and the escape of the crew, the three surviving heroes find themselves on a desert island. Here, an ideological novel about the social Darwinist “struggle for survival” is transformed into a sentimental “love story” with an almost incredibly far-fetched conflict and plot resolution: the Nietzschean Wolf Larsen goes blind and dies of brain cancer, and the “civilized” Humphrey Van Weyden and Maud Brewster spend a few idyllic days until they are picked up by a passing ship.

For all his rudeness and primitive cruelty, Wolf Larsen evokes sympathy. The colorful, richly described image of the captain contrasts sharply with the less convincing idealized images of reasoners Humphrey Van Weyden and Maud Brewster and is considered one of the most successful in the gallery of “strong” heroes of D. London.

One of the writer's most popular works, this novel was filmed several times in the USA (1913,1920, 1925, 1930). The film of the same name (1941) directed by M. Curtis with E. Robinson in the title role is considered the best. In 1958 and 1975 remakes of this classic film adaptation have been made.