"Over and beyond was his love of all the other things that go to make up a South Seas rover's life -- the smell of the reef; the infinite exquisiteness of the shoals of living coral in the mirror-surfaced lagoons; the crashing sunrises of raw colors spread with lawless cunning; the palm-tufted islets set in turquoise deeps; the tonic wine of the trade-winds; the heave and send of the orderly, crested seas; the moving deck beneath his feet, the straining canvas overhead; the flower-garlanded, golden-glowing men and maids of Polynesia, half-children and half-gods; and even the howling savages of Melanesia, head hunters and man-eaters, half-devil and all beast."

These words, spoken of David Grief (the main character of Jack London's A Son of the Sun) may also be said to reflect the author's own fascination and love for the South Pacific. Many readers are aware of the books and short stories Jack London wrote about the frozen Northland, but fewer know that a substantial portion of his work is set in this other remote place very dear to his heart, the islands of the South Pacific. Though less frequently read, discussed or analyzed, London's South Seas stories -- and perhaps to a lesser extent, his South Seas novels -- are always entertaining, sometimes horrifying, magnificently colorful and usually bitingly satirical. All of them repay close reading.

Earle Labor, in his important essay "Jack London's Symbolic Wilderness: Four Versions," notes the dualistic tensions of Polynesia and Melanesia in London's stories. If Polynesia seems paradise, where a hero or heroine might find adventure, romance, humor, and tragedy, Melanesia seems and infernal "heart of darkness" in which all human values and virtues are bitterly assaulted. Though comparatively little scholarly material has been published on these tales, King Hendricks encouraged a reexamination when he identified "The Chinago" as an even finer work than the perennially reprinted "To Build a Fire." In the last two decades interest among scholars has arisen over the profound "The Red One," a grim but exotic horror story that is both a South Sea tale and a work of science fiction that prefigures by decades Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Most of London's fiction set in the South Seas exemplifies themes the author found important: race, culture, justice, and heroism. The large magazine readership of London's day was used to the simple idea of the "noble savage" who lived in exotic lands, an idea which only served to distance them from the read people who lived on these remote islands. London's stories, however, accurately and consistently showed the islanders as individuals who had to deal, in one way or another, with white intrusions: capitalist brutality, inhumane legal systems, foreign diseases, and racist social practices. Throughout these tales stab, with an irony born of conviction, at the comfortable paternalism of whites toward people of color.

Many of these tales await scholarly attention, now that they have recently reappeared in Stanford University's landmark publication of The Complete Short Stories of Jack London (1993). Already scholars have approached the Pacific stories from several critical perspectives: several note strong Freudian conflicts within characters, others find racial tensions worthy of analysis, some note the importance of the author's discovery of Jungian philosophy and preoccupation with Nietzschean philosophy, while still others find it impossible to ignore the implications of Marxist, feminist, or post-structuralist critical theory. Certainly other approaches will continue to open up waiting depths within these stories which display London's ability to fascinate and move his readers.

London's works set in the South Seas include three novels, several collections of short stories, and a personal memoir of his travels across the Pacific on board his yacht, "The Snark."

Suggested Works

Memoir: The Cruise of the Snark (1911)

Novels: Adventure (1911), Jerry of the Islands (1917), and Michael, Brother of Jerry (1917)

Short Story Collections: South Sea Tales (1911), The House of Pride and Other Tales of Hawaii (1912), A Son of the Sun (1912), The Turtles of Tasman (1916), On the Makaloa Mat (1919).

Short Stories (a brief list): "The Chinago," "Chun Ah Chun," "The Feathers of the Sun," "The Heathen," "The House of Pride," "Koolau the Leper," "Mauki," "On the Makaloa Mat," "The Pearls of Parlay," "The Red One," "The Seed of McCoy," "The Terrible Solomons," "The Water Baby," "The Whale Tooth."

Contemporary works about London's adventures as a traveler in the South Seas include Martin Johnson's Through the South Seas with Jack London (1913); and two books by Charmian London, The Log of the Snark (1915) and Our Hawaii (1917). Portions of Charmian's The Book of Jack London (1921) also recount the couple's adventures in the Pacific.

Selected Critical Works

Berkove, Lawrence I. "The Myth of Hope in Jack London's The Red One'." In Rereading Jack London, L. Cassuto and J. Reesman, eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Brown, Ellen. "A Perfect Sphere: Jack London's 'The Red One'." Jack London Newsletter 11 (1978): 81-85.

Campbell, Jeanne. "Falling Stars: Myth in 'The Red One'." Jack London Newsletter 11 (1978): 86-96.

Collins, Billy G. "Jack London's 'The Red One': Journey to a Lost Heart." Jack London Newsletter 10 (1977): 1-6

Jorgenson, Jens Peter. "Jack London's 'The Red One': A Freudian Approach." Jack London Newsletter 8 (1975): 101-103.

Kirsch, James. "Jack London's Quest: 'The Red One'." Psychological Perspectives 11 (1980): 137-54

Labor, Earle. "Jack London's Pacific World." In Critical Essays on Jack London. Ed. Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin. Boston: Prentice Hall, 1983, 205-22.

__________. "Jack London's Symbolic Wilderness: Four Versions." In
Jack London: Essays in Criticism. Ed. R.W. Ownbey. Santa Barbara: Peregrine Smith, 1978, 31-42.

Lachtman, Howard. "Man and Superwoman in Jack London's 'The Kanaka Surf'." Western American Literature 7 (1972): 101-10.

Moreland, David A. "The Author as Hero: Jack London's The Cruise of the Snark." Jack London Newsletter, 15 (1982): 57-75.

__________. "The Quest that Failed: Jack London's Last Tales of the South Seas." Pacific Studies 8 (1984): 48-70.

Reesman, Jeanne C. "Jack London -- Kama 'aina." Jack London Newsletter 18 (1985): 71-76

__________. "The Problem of Knowledge in Jack London's 'The Water Baby'."
Western American Literature 23 (1988): 201-15.

Riber, Jorgen. "Archetypal Patterns in 'The Red One'." Jack London Newsletter 8 (1975): 104-106.

Slagle, James. "Political Leprosy: Jack London and the Kama'aina and Koolau the Hawaiian." In Rereading Jack London, L. Caputo and J. Reesman, eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Stasz, Clarice. "Social Darwinism, Gender, and Humor in Adventure." In Rereading Jack London, L. Caputo and J. Reesman, eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Tietze, Thomas R. and Gary Riedl. "'Saints in Slime': The Ironic Use of Racism in Jack London's South Seas Tales." Thalia: Studies in Literary Humor 12 (1992): 59-66.

Whalen-Bridge, John. "Eyes Toward Asia: Thoughts on London and The Yellow Peril'." The Call: Journal of the Jack London Society III (1993): 6-8.