Just as White Fang must first learn to become domesticated before he can become a dog, Buck must first “learn to be wild” before he can become a wolf. Weakness, Buck quickly learns, equals death in this land of the “law of club and fang,” a lesson he learns as he witnesses Curly, the good-natured Newfoundland, torn to pieces by the pack. “So that was the way,” Buck concludes. “No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you” (p. 16).

The “fittest” species—those that are most successful in the struggle for existence—survive and reproduce. For Buck, this law translates to “Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten” (p. 60). In an interesting move, London translates these evolutionary principles into a brief Socialist tract he wrote in 1899, entitled “What Communities Lose by the Competitive System.” Darwin, along with Herbert Spencer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Karl Marx, not only confirmed London’s belief in Socialism, but also gave him a way to comprehend the communities of humans and dogs he encountered in the Klondike. In his essay, London declares, “[H]is strength lay in numbers, in unity of interests, in solidarity of effort—in short, in combination against the hostile elements of the environment” (Foner, p. 419). Labor equals survival, and labor is a collective effort. It does not matter if the laborer is human or animal, if he toils in a factory in California, delivers mail in the frozen Arctic, or stalks food on the “trail of meat.”

The “struggle for existence” that characterizes these efforts to survive and reproduce takes many forms—animal (human and nonhuman alike) versus animal, plant versus plant, and all against the forces in the environment that seek their destruction. London agrees with Darwin, who argues that the long-term survival of the species, not the survival of an individual, is the focus of this struggle. Darwin cautions his readers “to constantly bear in mind” that “heavy destruction inevitably falls” on every single organic being “at some period in life” and consequently “to never forget that every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers” before that destruction occurs (Darwin, Origin, p.119).

The chilling opening of White Fang demonstrates both the absolute compunction to reproduce despite the threat of destruction and the “solidarity of effort” among laborers necessary to mitigate the effects of a hostile environment. Two communities are pitted against each other in this opening scene: one formed by Henry, Bill, and their sled dogs; the other composed of the ever-present Arctic wolf pack. Henry and Bill attempt to keep their group together—lit—erally to maintain a critical mass sufficient to ward off predation by the pack. The wolf pack possesses a logic and a system of its own: Divide and conquer. The she-wolf, the “decoy for the pack” as London calls her, plays her part well in this drama. She lures each sled dog, one by one, away from the safety of the camp and fire by the promise of the chance to mate with her. Since the propagation of the species is a drive that inexorably compels animals to act, each dog responds to this primal urge and answers the she-wolf’s call, only to meet death at the teeth of the ravening wolf pack (p. 101). The wolf pack kills Bill and is about to turn on Henry before chance, in the form of another party, steps in and saves him.

Unlike the human community, reliant upon its nonnative dogs and burdened by the accoutrements of culture, the wolf pack has successfully adapted to its environment. Its social structure is defined yet malleable. In times of famine, the pack travels together to give it the advantage over any other animals it may find. In times of plenty, the pack splits up: Male and female pair up and bear a new generation. All work performed by the wolves ensures the survival of the pack. In contrast, the work performed by Bill and Henry, who labor to bring the body of a rich man back for a “long-distance” funeral, satisfy no such essential function. These characters are weighed down and very nearly destroyed by a class structure that demands the fruit of labor not for the self, but for another. The system is absurd, unnatural, and ultimately deadly; the body in the coffin, which should, perhaps, be the first to go to the dogs, is preserved from harm while the bodies of the laborers—both human and canine—who support that body are destroyed.

At the same time, however, something more is at stake than just a “pitiless” battle for brute survival.