The Key Factors of Survival in Jack London's Selected Northland Stories

This paper demonstrates Jack London's biological insight into matters of survival by analyzing six of his Northland stories, The Love of Life, To Build a Fire, The Sun-Dog Trail, , In a Far Country, The White Silence and The Law of Life. It will be shown that the ability to adapt to the rules and requirements of this region is crucial in survival, and there are various factors that may contribute to it. These factors, rationality, primal instincts, certain social skills and mental factors, are not represented in equal proportions in the survivors — thus there is no single survivor type that could be characterized as the "blond beast" or "superman" type, as some critics argue — but the more one lacks of these, the greater are his chances of loosing his battle against the forces of Nature.