Jack London

The Sea-Wolf (Annotated) by Jack London

The Sea-Wolf is a 1904 psychological adventure novel by American writer Jack London. The book's protagonist, Humphrey Van Weyden, is a literary critic who is a survivor of an ocean collision and who comes under the dominance of Wolf Larsen, the powerful and amoral sea captain who rescues him. It's first printing of forty thousand copies was immediately sold out before publication on the strength of London's previous The Call of the Wild. Ambrose Bierce wrote, "The great thing-and it is among the greatest of things-is that tremendous creation, Wolf Larsen... the hewing out and setting up of such a figure is enough for a man to do in one lifetime... The love element, with its absurd suppressions, and impossible proprieties, is awful."What happens, when a snooty gentleman gets shipwrecked and finds himself on board of a seal-hunting schooner ... and forced to become a crew member instead of getting back on land at the next stop ...? Exactly that happens to Humphrey van Weyden as he gets confronted with Captain Wolf Larsen, a tyranny with his own philosophy of the value of life and society. Van Weyden is forced to find a way to survive in the small world of a ship full of brutality and inhumanity ...