Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Children's Book Week:White Fang



White Fang

White Fang is a novel by American author Jack London (1876–1916) — and the name of the book's eponymous character, a wild wolfdog. First serialized in Outing magazine, it was published in 1906. The story details White Fang's journey to domestication in Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush. It is a companion novel (and a thematic mirror) to London's best-known work, The Call of the Wild (1903), which is about a kidnapped, domesticated dog embracing his wild ancestry to survive and thrive in the wild.
Much of White Fang is written from the viewpoint of the titular canine character, enabling London to explore how animals view their world and how they view humans. White Fang examines the violent world of wild animals and the equally violent world of humans. The book also explores complex themes including morality and redemption.
As early as 1925, the story was adapted to film, and it has since seen several more cinematic adaptations, including a 1991 film starring Ethan Hawke and a 2018 original film for Netflix.
Plot summary
The story begins before the wolf-dog hybrid is born, with two men and their sled dog team on a journey to deliver the coffin of Lord Alfred to a remote town named Fort McGurry in the higher area of the Yukon Territory. The men, Bill and Henry, are stalked by a large pack of starving wolves over the course of several days. Finally, after all of their dogs and Bill have been eaten, four more teams find Henry escaping from the wolves; the wolf pack scatters when they hear the large group of people coming.
The story then follows the pack, which has been robbed of its last prey. When the pack finally brings down a moose, the famine is ended; they eventually split up, and the story now follows a she-wolf and her mate, One Eye. The she-wolf gives birth to a litter of five cubs by the Mackenzie River, and all but one die from hunger. One Eye is killed by a lynx while trying to rob her den for food for the she-wolf and her cub; his mate later discovers his remains near the lynx's den. The surviving cub and the she-wolf are left to fend for themselves. Shortly afterward, the she-wolf kills all the lynx's kittens to feed her cub, prompting the lynx to track her down, and a vicious fight breaks out. The she-wolf eventually kills the lynx but suffers severe injury; the lynx carcass is devoured over a period of seven days as the she-wolf recovers from her injuries.
One day, the cub comes across five Aboriginal people, and the she-wolf comes to his rescue. One man, Grey Beaver, recognizes the she-wolf as his brother's wolfdog, Kiche, who left during a famine. Grey Beaver's brother is dead, and so he takes Kiche and her cub and christens the cub White Fang. White Fang has a harsh life in the Indian camp; the current puppy pack, seeing him as a wolf, immediately attacks him. The Indians save him, but the pups never accept him, and the leader, Lip-Lip, singles him out for persecution. White Fang grows to become a savage, callous, morose, solitary, and deadly fighter, "the enemy of his kind".
It is at this time that White Fang is separated from his mother, who is sold off to another Indian Camp by Three Eagles. He realizes how hard life in the wild is when he runs away from camp, and earns the respect of Grey Beaver when he saves his son Mit-Sah from a group of boys seeking revenge. When a famine occurs, he runs away into the woods and encounters his mother Kiche, only for her to chase him away, for she has a new litter of cubs. He also encounters Lip-Lip, whom he fights and kills before returning to the camp.
When White Fang is five years old, he is taken to Fort Yukon, so that Grey Beaver can trade with the gold-hunters. There, when Grey Beaver is drunk, White Fang is bought by an evil dog-fighter named Beauty Smith. White Fang defeats all opponents pitted against him, including several wolves and a lynx, until a bulldog called Cherokee is brought in to fight him. Cherokee has the upper hand in the fight when he grips the skin and fur of White Fang's neck and begins to throttle him. White Fang nearly suffocates, but is rescued when a rich, young gold hunter, Weedon Scott, stops the fight, and forcefully buys White Fang from Beauty Smith.
Scott attempts to tame White Fang, and after a long, patient effort, he succeeds. When Scott attempts to return to California alone, White Fang pursues him, and Scott decides to take the dog with him back home. In Sierra Vista, White Fang must adjust to the laws of the estate. At the end of the book, an escaped convict, Jim Hall, tries to kill Scott's father, Judge Scott, for sentencing him to prison for a crime he did not commit, not knowing that Hall was "railroaded". White Fang kills Hall and is nearly killed himself, but survives. As a result, the women of Scott's estate name him "The Blessed Wolf". The story ends with White Fang relaxing in the sun with the puppies he has fathered with the sheep-dog Collie.
Main characters
Major animal characters:
  • White Fang, the novel's protagonist; a wolfdog who was born wild but becomes more dog-like after Gray Beaver domesticates him. He gets bullied by Lip-lip and was forced to become a fighting dog when he was bought by Beauty Smith. However, his life changed when a loving master named Weedon Scott buys him and takes him to his home in Santa Clara Valley in California. He eventually becomes a part of the family after saving Judge Scott from Jim Hall.
  • Kiche, White Fang's mother, a sled dog owned by Gray Beaver, known at the beginning of the novel as the "she-wolf".
  • Lip-lip, a canine pup who also lives in the Native American village and bullies White Fang.
  • One-Eye, White Fang's father, a true wolf, who was killed by the lynx.
  • Cherokee, a bulldog who was the only dog to defeat White Fang.
  • Collie, a sheepdog, mother of White Fang's whelps.
  • The Lynx, an aggressive feline who was responsible for killing One-Eye, but later gets killed by Kiche in retaliation.
Major human characters:
  • Gray Beaver, a Native American chief who is White Fang's first master. He is a neutral master, neither as cruel as Beauty Smith, nor as kind as Weedon Scott.
  • Beauty Smith, the main antagonist of the novel and White Fang's second master; a dogfighter.
  • Weedon Scott, a wealthy gold hunter who is White Fang's third master and the first one to truly show affection towards him.
  • Matt, Weedon Scott's assistant who helps tame White Fang.
  • Judge Scott, Weedon Scott's father who accepts White Fang as a member of the family after he saves him from Jim Hall.
  • Jim Hall, a violent fugitive who tries to get revenge on Judge Scott, but gets killed by White Fang.
  • Henry, a character appeared in the introduction of the novel, carrying the coffin of Lord Alfred with Bill.
  • Bill, a character appeared in the introduction of the novel alongside Henry and was killed by the wolves led by Kiche.
  • Three Eagles, an Indian who buys Kiche from Gray Beaver.
Major themes
Critics have identified many underlying themes in the novel. Tom Feller describes the story as "an allegory of humanity's progression from nature to civilization".[1] He also expresses that "the [story's] implication is that the metamorphosis of both the individual and society will require violence at some point."[1] Paul Deane states that "[in the novel] society demands a conformity that undermines individualism."[2] London himself took influence from Herbert Spencer's words: "survival of the fittest", as well as Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of a "superman" (or "superdog", in this instance) and of "the worship of power".[1]
Background
The novel is partly an autobiographical allegory based on London's conversion from teenage hoodlum to married, middle-class writer.[1] In writing it, he was influenced by the ideas of Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche.[1] Conditions in the US also influenced the story.[1]
Publication history
Since the novel has been published it has been translated into over 89 different languages and released as a three-volume Braille edition.[3]
Reception
Upon its release, White Fang was an immediate success worldwide,[4] and became especially popular among younger readers.[5] Robert Greenwood called White Fang "one of London's most interesting and ambitious works."[3] Virginia Crane claims that the novel is "generally regarded as artistically inferior to its companion piece [The Call of the Wild], but [that it] helped establish London as a popular American literary figure".[5]
Shortly after the book's publication, London became a target in what would later be called the nature fakers controversy, a literary debate highlighting the conflict between science and sentiment in popular nature writing. President Theodore Roosevelt, who first spoke out against the "sham naturalists" in 1907, specifically named London as one of the so-called "nature fakers". Citing an example from White Fang, Roosevelt referred to the fight between the bulldog and the wolfdog "the very sublimity of absurdity."[6] London only responded to the criticism after the controversy had ended. In a 1908 essay entitled "The Other Animals", he wrote:
I have been guilty of writing two books about dogs. The writing of these two stories, on my part, was in truth a protest against the "humanizing" of animals, of which it seemed to me several "animal writers" had been profoundly guilty. Time and again, and many times, in my narratives, I wrote, speaking of my dog-heroes: "He did not think these things; he merely did them," etc. And I did this repeatedly, to the clogging of my narrative and in violation of my artistic canons; and I did it in order to hammer into the average human understanding that these dog-heroes of mine were not directed by abstract reasoning, but by instinct, sensation and emotion, and by simple reasoning. Also, I endeavored to make my stories in line with the facts of evolution; I hewed them to the mark set by scientific research, and awoke, one day, to find myself bundled neck and crop into the camp of the nature-fakers.[7]
Adaptations
The novel has been adapted into numerous pictures and sequels, animated specials, as well as an audiobook format.[4] A television series, White Fang, was filmed in Arrowtown, New Zealand, in 1993.
Films
Television series
References
·  Feller, Tom (January 2000). Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition. 6. Salem Press. pp. 2, 975. ISBN 978-0-89356-871-9.
·  ·  Deane, Paul (1968). "Jack London: The Paradox of Individualism". The English Record. New York State. 19: 7. Retrieved March 18, 2012.
·  ·  Greenwood, Robert (March 1, 2011). "Jack London's White Fang Revisited". California State Library Foundation Bulletin. Sacramento California (99): 7–13. ISSN 0741-0344. Retrieved March 18, 2012.
·  ·  Wismer, Don (February 1, 1994). "Audio Reviews". Library Journal. Retrieved March 16, 2012.
·  Crane, Virginia (March 1997). Masterplots II: Juvenile & Young Adult Literature Series Supplement. Salem Press. ISBN 978-0-89356-916-7.
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Children's Book Week:The Wind in the Willows



The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows is a children's novel by Scottish novelist Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternatingly slow-moving and fast-paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animals: Mole, Rat (a European water vole), Toad, and Badger. They live in a pastoral version of Edwardian England. The novel is notable for its mixture of mysticism, adventure, morality, and camaraderie, and celebrated for its evocation of the nature of the Thames Valley.
In 1908, Grahame retired from his position as secretary of the Bank of England. He moved back to Berkshire, where he had lived as a child, and spent his time by the River Thames, doing much as the animal characters in his book do – to quote, "simply messing about in boats" – and expanding the bedtime stories he had earlier told his son Alastair into a manuscript for the book.
The novel was in its 31st printing when playwright A. A. Milne adapted part of it for the stage as Toad of Toad Hall in 1929. In 1949, the first film adaptation was produced by Walt Disney as one of two segments in the package film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.
In 2003, The Wind in the Willows was listed at #16 in the BBC's survey The Big Read.[1] More than a century after its original publication, it was adapted again for the stage, as a 2014 musical by Julian Fellowes.
Background
Main article: Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame was born on 8 March 1859 in Edinburgh. When he was 5, his mother died from puerperal fever, and his father, who had a drinking problem, gave the care of his four children over to their grandmother, who lived in Cookham Dean in Berkshire. There they lived in a spacious but dilapidated home, The Mount, in extensive grounds by the River Thames, and were introduced to the riverside and boating by their uncle, David Ingles, curate at Cookham Dean church.[2]
At Christmas 1865 the chimney of the house collapsed and the children moved to Fern Hill Cottage in Cranbourne, Berkshire. In 1866, their father tried to overcome his drinking problem and took the children back to live with him in Argyll, Scotland, but after a year they returned to their grandmother's house in Cranbourne, where Kenneth lived until he entered St Edward's School, Oxford in 1868.[3] During his early years at St. Edwards the boys were free to explore the old city with its quaint shops, historic buildings, and cobbled streets, St Giles' Fair, the idyllic upper reaches of the River Thames, and the nearby countryside.[4]
Grahame married Elspeth Thomson in 1899, when he was 40; the next year they had their only child, a boy named Alastair (whose nickname was "Mouse") born premature, blind in one eye, and plagued by health problems throughout his life.[5] When Alastair was about four years old, Grahame would tell him bedtime stories, some of which were about a toad, and on his frequent boating holidays without his family he would write further tales of Toad, Mole, Ratty, and Badger in letters to Alastair.[3]
In 1908 Grahame took early retirement from his job at the Bank of England and moved with his wife and son to an old farmhouse in Blewbury, where he used the bedtime stories he had told Alastair as a basis for the manuscript of The Wind in the Willows.[3]
Plot summary
Mole meets Rat
With the arrival of spring and fine weather outside, the good-natured Mole loses patience with spring cleaning. He has fled his underground home, emerging to take in the air and ends up at the river, which he has never seen before. Here he meets Rat (a water vole), who at this time of year spends all his days in, on and close by the river. Rat takes Mole for a ride in his rowing boat. They get along well and spend many more days boating, with “Ratty” teaching Mole the ways of the river, with the two friends living together in Ratty's riverside home.
Toad
One summer day, Rat and Mole disembark near the grand Toad Hall and pay a visit to Toad. Toad is rich, jovial, friendly and kind-hearted, but aimless and conceited; he regularly becomes obsessed with current fads, only to abandon them abruptly. Having recently given up boating, Toad's current craze is his horse-drawn caravan. He persuades the reluctant Rat and willing Mole to join him on a trip. Toad soon tires of the realities of camp life, and sleeps in the following day to avoid chores. Later that day, a passing motorcar scares the horse, causing the caravan to overturn into a ditch. Rat threatens to have the law on the car driver, while Mole calms the horse, but Toad's craze for caravan travel is immediately replaced by an obsession with motorcars.
The Wild Wood and Badger
Mole wants to meet the respected but elusive Badger, who lives deep in the Wild Wood, but Rat – knowing that Badger does not appreciate visits – tells Mole to be patient and wait for Badger to pay them a visit himself. Nevertheless, on a snowy winter's day, while the seasonally somnolent Rat dozes, Mole impulsively goes to the Wild Wood to explore, hoping to meet Badger. He gets lost in the woods, sees many "evil faces" among the wood's less-welcoming denizens, succumbs to fright and panic and hides, trying to stay warm, among the sheltering roots of a tree.
Rat wakes to find Mole gone. Guessing his mission from the direction of Mole's tracks and equipping himself with two pistols and a stout cudgel, Rat goes in search, finding him as snow begins to fall in earnest. Attempting to find their way home, Rat and Mole quite literally stumble across Badger's home – Mole barks his shin on the boot scraper on Badger's doorstep. Badger – en route to bed in his dressing-gown and slippers – nonetheless warmly welcomes Rat and Mole to his large and cosy underground home, providing them with hot food, dry clothes, and reassuring conversation: "It takes all sorts to make a world."
Toad and motorcars
Badger learns from his visitors that Toad has crashed seven cars, has been in hospital three times, and has spent a fortune on fines. Though nothing can be done at the moment (it being winter), they resolve that when the time is right they will make a plan to protect Toad from himself; they are, after all, his friends, and are worried about his well-being.
With the arrival of spring, Badger visits Mole and Rat to take action over Toad's self-destructive obsession. The three of them go to Toad Hall, and Badger tries talking Toad out of his behavior, to no avail. They put Toad under house arrest, with themselves as the guards, until Toad changes his mind. Feigning illness, Toad bamboozles Rat (who is on guard duty at the time) and escapes.
Badger and Mole are cross with Rat for his gullibility, but draw comfort because they need no longer waste their summer guarding Toad. However, Badger and Mole continue to live in Toad Hall in the hope that Toad may return. Meanwhile, Toad orders lunch at The Red Lion Inn, and then sees a motorcar pull into the courtyard. Taking the car, he drives it recklessly and is caught by the police. He is sent to prison for 20 years.
Toad escapes from prison
In prison, Toad gains the sympathy of the gaoler's daughter, who helps him to escape disguised as a washerwoman. Though free again, Toad is without money or possessions other than the clothes upon his back. He manages to board a railway engine manned by a sympathetic driver, which is then pursued by a special train loaded with policemen, detectives and prison warders. Toad jumps from the train and, still disguised as a washerwoman, comes across a horse-drawn barge. The barge's female owner offers him a lift in exchange for Toad's services as a washerwoman. After he botches the wash, Toad gets into a fight with the barge-woman, who tosses him into the canal. In revenge, Toad makes off with the barge horse, which he then sells to a gypsy.
Toad subsequently flags down a passing car, which happens to be the very one he stole earlier. The car owners, not recognising Toad in his disguise, permit him to drive their car. Once behind the wheel, he is repossessed by his former exuberance and drives furiously, declaring his true identity to the passengers who try to seize him. This leads to the car landing in a horse-pond, after which Toad flees once more. Pursued by police, he runs accidentally into a river, which carries him by sheer chance to the house of Rat.
Recapture of Toad Hall
Toad now hears from Rat that Toad Hall has been taken over by weasels and stoats from the Wild Wood, who have driven out Mole and Badger. Although upset at the loss of his house, Toad realizes what good friends he has and how badly he has behaved. Badger then arrives and announces that he knows of a secret tunnel into Toad Hall through which the enemies may be attacked. Armed to the teeth, Badger, Rat, Mole and Toad enter through the tunnel and pounce upon the unsuspecting Wild-Wooders who are holding a celebratory party. Having driven away the intruders, Toad holds a banquet to mark his return, during which (for a change) he behaves both quietly and humbly. He makes up for his earlier excesses by seeking out and compensating those he has wronged, and the four friends live out their lives happily ever after.
Short stories
In addition to the main narrative, the book contains several independent short stories featuring Rat and Mole. These appear for the most part between the chapters chronicling Toad's adventures, and are often omitted from abridgements and dramatisations. The chapter "Dulce Domum" describes Mole's return to his home with Rat where he rediscovers, with Rat's help, a familiar comfort, despite finding it in a terrible mess after his abortive spring clean. "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" tells how Mole and Rat search for Otter's missing son Portly, whom they find in the care of the god Pan. (Pan removes their memories of this meeting "lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure".) Finally, in "Wayfarers All", Ratty shows a restless side to his character when he is sorely tempted to join a Sea Rat on his travelling adventures.
Main characters
  • Mole: known as "Moly" to his friends. An altruistic, humble, loyal, polite, home-loving animal, and the first character introduced in the story. Fed up with spring cleaning in his secluded home, he ventures into the outside world. Initially overawed by the hustle and bustle of the riverbank, he eventually adapts. He proves intelligent as shown with his trickery against the Wild Wooders before the assault to retake Toad Hall.
  • Rat: known as "Ratty" to his friends (though actually a water vole), he is cultured, relaxed and friendly, and enjoys a life of leisure; when not spending time on the river, he composes doggerel. Ratty loves the river and takes charge of Mole. He can be stubborn when it comes to doing things outside his riverside lifestyle, but can do which must be done as shown when he risks his safety to help Mole in the Wild Wood and to help free Toad Hall from the weasels.
  • Mr. Toad: known as "Toady" to his friends, the wealthy scion of Toad Hall who inherited his wealth from his late father. Although good-hearted and optimistic, he is also arrogant, conceited, and impulsive. He is prone to obsessions and crazes (such as punting, houseboats, and horse-drawn caravans). Having a short-attention-span, he gets bored with each of these activities in turn and drops them, finally settling on motorcars. His motoring craze degenerates into a sort-of addiction that lands him in the hospital a few times, subjects him to stiff fines for his unlawfully reckless driving, and eventually gets him imprisoned for theft, dangerous-driving, and gross impertinence to the police. Two chapters of the book chronicle his daring escape from prison and subsequent adventures before meeting up with the Water Rat.
  • Mr. Badger: a gruff-but-benevolent soul, Badger embodies the "wise hermit" figure. A friend of Toad's deceased father, he is uncompromising with the irresponsible Toad, yet hopes that his good qualities will prevail. He lives in a vast underground sett, part of which incorporates the remains of a buried Roman settlement. A brave and a skilled fighter, Badger helps clear the Wild-Wooders from Toad Hall with his large stick.
Supporting characters
  • Otter and Portly: a friend of Ratty with a stereotypical "Cockney costermonger" character. The extrovert Otter is tough and self-sufficient. Portly is his young son.
  • The weasels, ferrets, and stoats: the story's main antagonists. They plot to take over Toad Hall. Although they are unnamed, the leader is referred to as "Chief Weasel".
  • Pan: a benevolent and wise god of the wild who makes a single, anomalous appearance in Chapter 7, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" when he helps Portly and looks after him until Ratty and Mole come.
  • The Gaoler's Daughter: the only major human character; a "good, kind, clever girl", she helps Toad escape from prison.
  • The Wayfarer: a vagabond seafaring rat, who also makes a single appearance. Ratty briefly considers following his example, before Mole persuades him otherwise.
  • Squirrels and rabbits, who are generally good (although rabbits are described as "a mixed lot").
  • Inhabitants of the Wild Wood: weasels, stoats, and foxes who are described by Ratty as: "All-right in a way but well, you can't really trust them".
Editions
The original publication of the book was plain text, with a frontispiece illustrated by Graham Robertson, but many illustrated, comic, and annotated versions have been published over the years. Notable illustrators include Paul Bransom (1913), Nancy Barnhart (1922), Wyndham Payne (1927), Ernest H. Shepard (1931), Arthur Rackham (1940), Richard Cuffari (1966), Tasha Tudor (1966), Michael Hague (1980), Scott McKowen (2005), and Robert Ingpen (2007).
  • The most popular illustrations are probably by E. H. Shepard, originally published in 1931, and believed to be authorised as Grahame was pleased with the initial sketches, though he did not live to see the completed work.[6]
  • The Wind in the Willows was the last work illustrated by Arthur Rackham. The book with his illustrations was issued posthumously in a limited edition by the Folio Society with 16 colour plates in 1940 in the US. It was not issued with the Rackham illustrations in the UK until 1950.
  • The Folio Society 2006 edition featured 85 illustrations, 35 in colour, by Charles van Sandwyk. A fancier centenary edition was produced two years later.
  • Michel Plessix created a Wind in the Willows watercolour comic album series, which helped to introduce the stories to France. They have been translated into English by Cinebook Ltd.
  • Patrick Benson re-illustrated the story in 1994 and HarperCollins published it in 1994 together with the William Horwood sequels The Willows in Winter, Toad Triumphant and The Willows and Beyond. It was published in the US in 1995 by St. Martin's Press.
  • Inga Moore's edition, abridged and illustrated by her, is arranged so that a featured line of the text also serves as a caption to a picture.
  • Barnes & Noble Classics featured an introduction by Gardner McFall in 2007. New York, ISBN 978-1-59308-265-9
  • Egmont Press produced a 100th Anniversary paperback edition, with Shepard's illustrations, in 2008. ISBN 978-1-4052-3730-7
  • Belknap Press, a division of Harvard University Press, published Seth Lerer's annotated edition in 2009.[7]
  • W. W. Norton published Annie Gauger's and Brian Jacques's annotated edition in 2009.[7]
  • Jamie Hendry Productions published a special edition of the novel in 2015 and donated it to schools in Plymouth and Salford to celebrate the World Premiere of the musical version of The Wind in the Willows by Julian Fellowes, George Stiles, and Anthony Drewe.[8]
  • IDW Publishing published an illustrated edition of the novel in 2016.[9] The hardcover novel features illustrations from Eisner Award-winning artist David Petersen, who is best known for creating and drawing the comic series Mouse Guard.
Reception
A number of publishers rejected the manuscript. It was published in the UK by Methuen and Co., and later in the US by Scribner. The critics, who were hoping for a third volume in the style of Grahame's earlier works; The Golden Age and Dream Days, generally gave negative reviews.[3] The public loved it, however, and within a few years it sold in such numbers that many reprints were required. In 1909, then sitting US President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Grahame to tell him that he had "read it and reread it, and have come to accept the characters as old friends".[10]
In The Enchanted Places, Christopher Robin Milne wrote of The Wind in the Willows:
A book that we all greatly loved and admired and read aloud or alone, over and over and over: The Wind in the Willows. This book is, in a way, two separate books put into one. There are, on the one hand, those chapters concerned with the adventures of Toad; and on the other hand there are those chapters that explore human emotions – the emotions of fear, nostalgia, awe, wanderlust. My mother was drawn to the second group, of which "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" was her favourite, read to me again and again with always, towards the end, the catch in the voice and the long pause to find her handkerchief and blow her nose. My father, on his side, was so captivated by the first group that he turned these chapters into the children's play, Toad of Toad Hall. In this play one emotion only is allowed to creep in: nostalgia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_in_the_Willows
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