The Five Deaths of Wolf Larsen

What if we were to pitch the plot of The Sea-Wolf to a trade publisher today? "So, how does it end?" the acquisitions editor asks us. "Well," we say, "once the tension between the hero and villain reaches a climax—because they both yearn for the same woman—the physically weaker hero abandons the ship with the woman and they play house for a while on a deserted island. The villain eventually shows up on the island, but he dies shortly thereafter because of some weird, unexplained brain disorder." When do the inevitable fisticuffs take place between the hero and villain? "They never fight," we tell the editor; "they really don't even have much to do with one another on the island. The villain is blind before he shows up on the island, so he's never really a threat, and he just fades away over time and dies. But here's the kicker: he's angry about it and defiant to the last."

Not surprisingly, we might have a tough time selling this story. Who among us, when reading The Sea-Wolf for the first time, naturally assumed it would end differently than it did? Shouldn't there be some kind of climactic showdown between Hump and Wolf?

A quick survey of the criticism devoted to London's The Sea-Wolf (1904) from the past few decades indicates that London's novel continues to be the object of considerable critical speculation, with some several dozen articles and book chapters devoted to analysis of the novel during the past few decades, not to mention the numerous brief and incidental treatments of the novel sprinkled throughout books on late nineteenth-century American literature. Indeed, The Sea-Wolf stands alongside The Iron Heel, Martin Eden, and Call of the Wild as one of the most critically examined of London's novels during the past century. Nevertheless, despite this ongoing interest in the novel, an issue rarely taken up by critics is the curious nature of Wolf Larsen's death. Relatively few critics spend much time on the specific details of Larsen's death, which is surprising because it is one of the more unusual deaths in all of American literature. Indeed, it defies all conventional expectations. What readers expect is for an eventual show-down between Larsen and Van Weyden, with Van Weyden (having attained his sea legs) winning the fight and, of course, the girl. Van Weyden does get the girl, but not as a result of a climactic confrontation with the villainous Larsen. Instead, London defies reader expectations by having Larsen undergo a protracted deterioration that eventually leads to complete sensory deprivation, the severing of human consciousness from the body, and a death which becomes little more than a blinking out of some interior spark of life rooted in mental awareness.

This essay will examine two simple and related questions: why does Larsen die the way he does and what does it mean in terms of understanding London's novel? No simple answer can explain the details of Wolf Larsen's death satisfactorily. In fact, one finds that London has created a tale in which there are at least five different frameworks established in the novel for understanding the physical details and interpretive significance of Larsen's deterioration and death. These "five deaths" of Wolf Larsen are not mutually exclusive. Instead, taken together, they tend to complement each other, and they highlight the fact that The Sea-Wolf is a complex novel rich in ideas and speculation about the nature of humankind. Thematically, these five deaths converge in a view of human nature rooted in the evolutionary theories of Darwin, Spencer, and, most prominently in The Sea-Wolf, Ernst Haeckel, in which those best suited for survival are not ego-driven supermen, such as Wolf Larsen, but those who can temper their self-interest with altruism and who can find balance in their lives between physical and moral courage.

Before surveying each of the "five deaths," it may prove beneficial to recap quickly what is revealed to readers about Larsen's deterioration and death. Wolf...