The Limits of the Superman: Jack London's Wolf Larsen

One of Jack London's principal themes was the falsity of the myth of ultra-individualism so dear to the conventionally-minded in America--the individual who, even if beginning in the most unpromising circumstances, through will and prowess, wanting and needing no one and nothing else, becomes a mighty, all-conquering force (with Nietzsche and his superman particularly in London's sights, but I think the implications extending beyond that one thinker's work).

London handled this one way in Martin Eden. He handled it another in the surprisingly complementary The Sea-Wolf, where Wolf Larsen, in his intellect and strength and will (and ruthlessness), appears a superman--but "at the top of my life . . . when" he is "beginning to diminish and die," merely "master and owner of a ship." Indeed, Larsen is too thoughtful and intelligent to not be aware of this, speaking the words quoted here to the narrator Humphrey van Weyden and even remarking himself, "Paltry, isn't it?" Humphrey, up until his time aboard Larsen's ship a sheltered figure of far more conventional mind, answers that "history tells of slaves who rose to the purple," but Larsen answers back that "history tells of opportunities that came to the slaves who rose to the purple. No man makes opportunity," and all those who became what the world calls great "ever did was to know it when [opportunity] came to them." Napoleon knew, and Larsen says, he "dreamed as greatly as the Corsican. I should have known the opportunity, but it never came."

London seems to think Larsen wrong in and about a great many things, but on this point he seems to regard him as speaking the truth--very reasonably.