It is a work of imagination fermented by a figment of reality.A few chapters are simply centered on the discussion over morality and immortality.It cannot be compared to Melville's Moby Dick.The later is an epic,while the former is no more than a fiction.But the fiction is worth reading in that it provides a "neutral territory" where problems unsettled at Jack London's time can be reached and explored and explained and expounded.The love btween Humphrey and Maud invests a stroke of romanticism and idealism into the novel.The Endeavour Island reminds one of human condition when Adam and Eve were cast out from the Garden of Eden.Man has to labour to,or endeavour to,or even strive to,exist in this stormy world.The uncertainty without and the fear within are what man has to confront in this "Darwinian" world.Actually,there is always a Wholf Larsen and a Maud Brewster in every individual's compostion.As the "clubbing" of Maud suggests,the animality is latent deep in everyone's heart.Even the most cultivated and sublimated "living creature" fails to renounce this animality when his life is endangered.To some extent,Wolf Larsen is a man to be worshipped,for he accepts this animality or brutality as a blessing.But he has gone too far,negelcting the spiritual side of man.Maybe Humphrey is the ideal type of man in Jack London's eyes?Or may I venture to say London expects man to "put some facts in his pcketbook." These facts are to learned in a situation where only the stomach is to thought of and taken care of.
