The Sea-Wolf

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1904

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Character Analysis

Humphrey Van Weyden

Humphrey is the first-person protagonist in Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf. Prior to the start of the novel, 35-year-old Humphrey was known as the Dean of American Letters, the Second, a prominent literary critic and intellectual. He lived with his mother and sister but was largely solitary in his habits, preferring to view the world through the discursive lens of literature. At the start of the narrative, Humphrey is book-learned, a gentleman, and ignorant of the realities of life outside his middle class society.

The development of Humphrey’s independence and sense of self are the driving factors behind plot development. Larsen keeps Humphrey aboard the Ghost instead of bringing him to San Francisco precisely because of Humphrey’s bookish character; Larsen desires to show Humphrey what it means to work, earn his own money, and stand on his own feet without parental support. Though Humphrey is briefly in danger of falling completely to Larsen’s brutal influence, Maud’s introduction allows Humphrey to reconcile the new halves of his identity: that of an educated gentleman and that of a hard-working mate of the Ghost. Humphrey discovers his independence and escapes the Ghost with Maud, demonstrating his newly established self-reliance and self-confidence.

Humphrey’s character entails a merging of identities to create a more productive and well-balanced man, a process best seen in his successful repair of the Ghost. Not only was he able to employ remembered book learning as well as the physical labor he learned from the crew of the Ghost, but his vocabulary expanded greatly to include numerous seafaring and sailing terms. At the conclusion of his narrative, Humphrey’s character incorporates both gentlemanly and working-class attributes, a strong sense of capability and independence, and the confidence to confess his love for Maud.

Wolf Larsen

As captain of the sealing ship the Ghost and the narrative’s main antagonist, Larsen’s reputation at the start of the narrative is largely violent, belligerent, and devoid of compassion. Murders and betrayals are the norm for him, and many of the crew aboard the Ghost act as guinea pigs for his philosophical ideas on brutality, willpower, and command. He is a self-taught intellectual in possession of a keen mind but unrefined sentiments—a heartless genius, from Humphrey’s point of view. Little is given of Larsen’s background beyond a brief description of a hard Scandinavian childhood and the beginning of his seafaring career when he was only 10 years old.

Larsen’s personal philosophy regards spirituality with contempt, life with skepticism, and willpower as paramount to living a purposeful life. Though he is an avid intellectual and enjoys debating with Humphrey and Maud, he often expresses frustration that he ever started a course of learning in the first place. He is aware that the life available to him in his social and financial position does not coincide with the pursuit of knowledge. The life that he could’ve had—with better access to money and education—continually frustrates him. He wishes he lacked the reasoning power required to recognize this discrepancy.

Larsen’s character remains static throughout Humphrey’s narrative. Though Humphrey himself is obviously influenced by Larsen, the effect is unreciprocated. Up until his death, Larsen remains as stubborn and willfully brutal as he was at the beginning of the narrative.

Maud Brewster

A respected and well-educated literary critic, 27-year-old Maud Brewster enters The Sea-Wolf as the romantic interest for Humphrey (and, briefly, for Larsen). She is the only female in the novel. From a wealthy middle class-background, Maud epitomizes Humphrey’s ideal of genteel femininity: frail yet compassionate, submissive yet witty, artistic, moral. As her character is described through Humphrey’s eyes, she appears to perfectly accord with the expectations he has for a society woman. Humphrey says of Maud that “she had a way of looking one in the eyes and demanding the truth” (203), of holding Humphrey morally accountable for his actions. Maud’s purpose in the plot is to instigate Humphrey’s character development, remaining relatively static herself through the narrative.

The nature of Maud’s character is immediately hinted at in her first appearance, wherein Humphrey describes her: “She seemed to me like a being from another world. I was aware of a hungry out-reaching for her, as of a starving man for bread” (139). This description is enormously telling in its figurative language; to Humphrey, Maud is a figure of salvation. Likened to a “being from another world,” she is almost divine, and the idea of starvation for “bread” is a direct allusion to Christ. These connotations are part of the novel’s spiritual (and ultimately religious) tenor, and the symbolic comparison of the feminine with salvation—or the chief salvific quality of the Christian god, grace—is part of the Western literary tradition.

It is equivocal whether Humphrey’s privileged literary education informs his perception of Maud—but from his ruminations on fictional female characters in the literature he’s read, it is clear that Humphrey’s vision of women in general has a significant and romanticized literary basis. Nevertheless, even beyond Humphrey’s subjective descriptions, Maud is a source of transformation and, in some ways, salvation; through his relationship with Maud, Humphrey redeems the aspects of himself he feared were lost to the Ghost’s cruel culture, and he discovers an unprecedented self-sacrificial love within himself (and is thus figuratively reborn) as he decides to protect her. On a more literal level, Maud helps Humphrey return to land, which is a basic physical salvation.

The Crew: Johnson, Leach, and Thomas Mugridge

An idealistic sailor, Johnson is a “heavy Scandinavian type” (10) who greatly admires the ocean and the mechanics of sailing. He often looks out at the sea, idolizing the beauty of his natural surroundings and the ship’s place in it. This idealism is reflected in his relationship with the rest of the Ghost’s crew. He is made something of a rebellious hero in Humphrey’s discourse, emulating the decorum of a gentleman while still being working class. Though he and his partner, Leach, stage several coup and escape attempts, their will is no match for Larsen’s own.

Similar to Johnson, George Leach is a working-class sailor with idealistic dreams of overthrowing Larsen as captain of the Ghost. He actively and aggressively pursues mutiny out of disgust for Larsen’s brutality. Leach succeeds in convincing the other sailors to look to him for leadership, despite this being his first time contracted to a hunting ship. He has a rough sort of gallantry, being more outspoken and prone to violence than Johnson, but he is nevertheless unable to fully distance himself from Larsen’s command. He dies with Johnson, abandoned on the sea during an escape attempt.

Mugridge runs the kitchens aboard the Ghost. From an extremely poor and uneducated background, Mugridge’s history is a long list of mishaps, beatings, and disappointments that he frequently complains about. He is a second antagonist to Humphrey and hates him from the beginning because of Humphrey’s social class. He sees Humphrey as born with luck, in contrast to himself, whom he believes to have been created by God offhandedly; he feels completely luckless and unprotected from the evils of the world. Humphrey describes his personality as oily: “this oiliness, or greasiness, as I was later to learn, was probably the most salient expression of his personality” (11). He is fearful, vindictive, and self-defeating.