Book Review

I am feeling nostalgia for simpler days. So, I purchased a used copy of White Fang by Jack London at the local bookstore. I found it while I was browsing books for fun. It’s one of the books my 4th-grade teacher read to us. At the time, I couldn’t appreciate it like every other coming-of-age book. I remember thinking why is our teacher reading this boring book to us? Most of us fell asleep at our desk. Me? I was staring outside the window. Now that I am around her age, I think I understand why she picked this book. She was trying to civilize us wild schoolchildren and it worked like magic!

Anyway, the book is so good. It fell apart midway through as I was reading it. Okay, I confess, that’s half the truth. The book was already in poor condition when I bought it. On the back of the book, there is a coffee stain! But for $1.50, I cannot resist. I also like the book’s cover. It looks old-fashioned. The large print is also appealing. After all, a book is less valuable if it’s just on the bookshelf as decor. Books are meant to be explored and read.

White Fang on top of other books and pink pen next to it

Synoposis

White Fang is a wolf, but is also a quarter dog. This makes him a special creature. He is wild but also domesticated. Thus he has an advantage over purebred dogs and wolves. His hybrid breeding enables him to navigate the harsh Yukon environment, and the brutality of the man-gods (humans) he encounters. As he goes through different man-gods, White Fang comes to civilization once he meets the rightful one. The rightful one is just, fair, compassionate, and strong.

Writing Style

I was instantly captivated by the writing style. The prose is so poetic. The first paragraph of the book throws me into the cold wilderness. I feel it:

The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness.

I also like how the author describes the wild as a frozen-hearted savage. It’s the perfect stage where dog eats dog to survive. The writing is so intense that I felt as if I were in the book!

There were a few things, however, I did not enjoy about the book. It was more of a personal thing, though. After all, the book was published in 1906. Time has changed. Perhaps, not always for the better for some folks, but regardless, time has changed. I don’t know how I’d feel living inside a white picket fence governed by a self-righteous man-god. I would find it difficult, especially when he is unfairly transactional.

Final Thoughts

Overall, it’s a great book, but one that feels foreign to me now, and yet familiar. It’s a weird feeling that I cannot describe. It’s comforting; at the same time, alienating. I guess being an adult means learning how to think for oneself. We are all shaped by our environment.

All of the characters except for Master Pierre Gringoire met their tragic end because of love. Quasimodo died from a broken heart when he failed to protect La Esmeralda who was the only person who showed him genuine kindness when he needed most; La Esmeralda died for loving the false savior, the King’s Archer Phoebus de Châteaupers who could care less if she died in captivity for being framed as his murderer; Captain Phoebus died (mentally) when he got married because that means no more night out at the brothel; the recluse from the rat-hole died from trying to protect her daughter from being captured by the King’s guards; and lastly, the Archdeacon Claude Frollo died under God’s will for he was a priest who can never pursue La Esmeralda like a normal man. Only Gringoire, the poet, escaped death because he found love in stones:

First, I love women, then animals. Now I love stones. They are quite as amusing as women and animals and less treacherous.

-Gringoire (p.477)

I find that quote quite amusing because there is some truth to it, although I would have crossed out the ‘women’ part in the quote and inserted ‘men’ instead. Joke aside. In literature, we call characters like Gringoire, a comic relief because the subject of this story is quite serious. I don’t think I would like the book as much if Gringoire had not made me laugh. He was the only character I felt safe around La Esmeralda, because he wasn’t interested in deflowering her. But why is this important? No pun intended, because no one wants to get screwed! Indeed, she did get trapped in a web like a fly:

“A bewildered fly, which was seeking the March sun, flung itself through the net and became entangled there. On the agitation of his web, the enormous spider made an abrupt move from his central cell, then one bound rushed upon the fly, which he folded together with his fore antennae, while his hideous proboscis dug into the victim’s head (p.338)”

This passage is about La Esmeralda. She was like the bewildered fly trapped in a big spider web (Notre-Dame) and was later sentenced to death by the King (the big spider) because he is the protector of Notre-Dame. The King under God’s absolute authority was too deaf and blind to grant clemency to La Esmeralda, who was accused of murdering Captain Phoebus (he wasn’t even dead, btw). And Archdeacon Frollo allowed fate to take its course by not saving La Esmeralda when she rejected his love. If he cannot have her, then no one can. That was his logic (p.574). Do you see why I said jokingly that men are treacherous? How could she love an assassin who forces her to follow him and make him her master, her savior? We cannot force people to be with us. That’s imprisonment.

Minus the love drama, the book is about how human thoughts and beliefs change the structure of society over time. The invention of the printing press killed the architecture because each book is each person’s thoughts and when you add them all up together, it’s bigger than one architecture that represented millions of people (p.227). That is how the architecture loses its authoritative voice in the society. That is why Victor Hugo the author, introduces the reader to the Feast of Fools in the first chapter to forewarn the reader on what is yet to come by making a mockery out of the elected Pope by having him switch places with Quasimodo, the hunchback, one-eyed, deaf bellringer of Notre-Dame. He may be a “one-eyed man [but he] is far less complete than a blind man. He knows what he lacks (p.66), unlike the Pope, the King, and the rest of the aristocrats. Because “[without clemency,] they are but blind men groping after God in the dark (p.540).” It made sense to me why La Esmeralda and her goat were mocking the captain of the city’s pistoleers and the king’s procurator in the ecclesiastical court during their street performance in the earlier part of the book. These high officials don’t provide justice; they are just aristocratic clowns on public display. Not only did she captivate the crowd, but she also bewitched the Archdeacon to the point that he attempted to kidnap her with Quasimodo so that she would stop polluting his mind with impure thoughts with the little pout she always made. The truth is something within her has awakened his soul. Was it love, or was it the eternal life he was searching for that he couldn’t find it in science or alchemy? In the end, it was the vagabonds and Quasimodo who tried to save Esmeralda from the power grip of evil men. They were the real savior. The introduction of the Feast of Fools was indeed a mockery of the failed belief system in Paris during 1482.

For my final thoughts, out of all the characters, I pitied Archdeacon Frollo the most even though Quasimodo is just as unfortunate. Being a learned man had turned him into a rigid priest and a very sad one (p.194). When you are always seeking knowledge, you leave yourself with no room to connect with other humans. It’s a lonely place to feel like you are above everyone. Lastly, I find the passage about writers are the new masons (p.230) quite interesting. What would Victor Hugo think about the internet?! He would say the programmers are the new writers! You see, the “Architecture is the great book of humanity, the principal expression of man in his different stages of development, either as a force or as an intelligence (p.216).” When the printing press came into existence in the mid-1400s, humans transferred their beliefs from stones to books, and so the architectures no longer have the tyrannical authority over society’s beliefs; it became art or a symbol of the past, just like Notre-Dame of Paris. Now books are becoming a symbol of the past as digital contents are more popular among the mass. The human mind is indeed the architecture of humanity. So yeah, “All civilization begins in theocracy and ends in democracy (p.218).”

Note: I read the unabridged version published by Fingerprint. Also, the featured image for the blog post is by AI. Pardon me if it looks kind of odd. I believe it’s because it lacks a human soul.