“The Preacher Thought as I Think”: Wolf Larsen, Humphrey Van Weyden, and Jack London’s Ecclesiastes

The Preacher who was king over Israel in Jerusalem thought as I think. You call me a pessimist. Is not this pessimism of the blackest?—“All is vanity and vexation of spirit,’ ‘There is no profit under the sun,” “There is one event unto all,” to the fool and the wise, the clean and the unclean, the sinner and the saint, and that event is death, and an evil thing, he says. For the Preacher loved life, and did not want to die, saying, “For a living dog is better than a dead lion.” He preferred the vanity and vexation to the silence and unmovableness of the grave. And so I. . . . Life itself is unsatisfaction, but to look ahead to death is greater unsatisfaction.

—Wolf Larsen, The Sea-Wolf, 563–64

In Jack London’s 1904 novel The Sea-Wolf, Wolf Larsen reads extensively from chapters two and nine of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes before proclaiming that its author, the Preacher, thought as he, Larsen, thinks. In Jack and Charmian London’s living room, London himself—like his fictional captain—also used to read extensively from the book of Ecclesiastes. Charmian, whom Anita Duneer sees as the inspiration for The Sea-Wolf’s female protagonist Maud Brewster, recounts in her 1921 biography evenings when London “would be inclined to read aloud, poetry, or perhaps his own stories. And I know there were listeners, captured and enchained by his charm, in whose ears still rings his rich and solemn voice in the stately numbers of Ecclesiastes” (367). The explicit association of Larsen with Ecclesiastes, paired with London’s personal interest in the biblical book, encourages considering The Sea-Wolf through an Ecclesiastes lens. Alongside its engagement with Ecclesiastes, the novel tells the story of a genteel, shipwreck-survivor Humphrey Van Weyden, who narrates the action, and Larsen, the brutish philosopher-captain of his rescuing ship. Rather than taking the stranded Van Weyden ashore, Larsen conscripts him on his seal-hunting ship the Ghost and later collects Brewster, another genteel sea-survivor. Brewster and Van Weyden fall in love, escape from the Ghost, and eventually survive together while Larsen dies alone.

Although London presents Van Weyden as his story’s protagonist, it was its villain Larsen who captured audiences. A 1904 Argonaut review calls Larsen the novel’s hero: “And who is the hero of the book? Larsen!—Larsen, undoubtedly” (qtd. in Nuernberg 103). Likewise, in a 1905 letter, Ambrose Bierce describes Larsen as a first-rate achievement, and Bert Bender confirms Bierce’s lasting impression: “most readers can agree with Ambrose Bierce’s remark that the novel’s ‘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 a life-time’” (“Jack London” 115). By substantially featuring Ecclesiastes in The Sea-Wolf—both in terms of the number of references to the text and the length of discussion between Larsen and Van Weyden—London establishes a significant portion of Larsen’s charm through his interest in the biblical book. Like many readers of the Bible, Larsen chooses passages from Ecclesiastes most attuned to his own philosophy; nonetheless, his skeptical interpretation is consistent with many twentieth-century biblical commentaries. Like Larsen, the primary speaker of Ecclesiastes—the Preacher or Qoheleth¹—challenges traditional wisdom, laments the finality of death, and tries to live as well as he can in a world where “all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1: 2).²

Along with many of the novel’s readers, Larsen charms Van Weyden as well. Although he is variously afraid of, repulsed by, and attracted to Larsen, Van Weyden learns significant lessons from Larsen and ultimately acknowledges his debt to him: “I had much for which to thank Wolf Larsen” (711). Critics including Bender, Kathleen B. Hindman, and Sam S. Baskett have accordingly attributed Van Weyden’s physical and spiritual growth to his relationship with Larsen and his journey on the Ghost. Baskett goes so far...