A Study Of The Call Of The Wild And White Fang From The Perspective Of Existentialism

Jack London is a famous critical realist writer in the20thcentury in the United States,and he is also one of the most popular foreign writhers for Chinese readers. As a great writerand explorer, his strong unyielding fighting spirit, and the bold and rich connotation in theworks have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the readers. He is a prolific writer and his mostfamous novels include Martin Eden, The Call of the Wild, White Fang, Love of Life, The SeaWolf and so on. Among his works, the most widespread and affected were the novella TheCall of the Wild and the short story Love of Life set in the North America gold rush in the late19thcentury early20thcentury. As is known to all, White Fang is another animal adventurenovel which was published three years later after the publication of The Call of the Wild, andis a companion novel to the latter, with the contrast on the novel’s theme. But so far, mostresearches of the two novels are on the Ecological consciousness, Symbolism and Naturalism.This thesis attempts to compare and analysis the two novels from the view of Existentialismto reveal the deeper connotation in the novels.Existentialism is one of the main philosophical trends in20thcentury, and then itspreads to the literary field. The article introduces the origin and development ofexistentialism, from the most representative Sartre’s work and thoughts to interpret the twoanimal novels. This thesis analyzes two of Sartre’s existential theories: alienation and freedom.Alienation is one of the most points of Sartre, and he emphasizes on alienation from theperspective of "scarcity ". He considers that under the conditions of scarcity, people meet eachother, it will be a threat to everyone’s freedom, and there is inherent alienation risk. Freedomis also an important view of Sartre, which points that it is the basis of human’s behavior,responsibility and all nature. He thinks that freedom only exists in the choice; people are freebecause their choices are always free. However, as the creators, they must be responsible fortheir behavior, choice and value system.The paper is mainly composed of five parts. The first part introduces the author’s life,works, and especially focuses on these two novels and the domestic researches about them.The second part expresses Sartre’s existentialism theory viewpoint from the concepts ofalienation and freedom. The third and the forth parts compares and analyzes the novels fromthe two important perspectives. And finally, the thesis summarizes and concludes that bothBuck and White Fang are alienated and transcended from the proactive and negative freechoices, and meanwhile both realize their value in the world.