Jack London intended White Fang to be an optimistic sequel to his more famous book, The Call of the Wild. White Fang shows the power of human kindness to transform a savage beast into a devoted pet. White Fang offers more than an animal story about the taming of a wild wolf-dog, named White Fang. It attempts to show how the dramatic changes in White Fang's character are produced by the changes in his social and natural environment. The book explores sociological questions about human behavior—what causes individuals to act either savagely or civilly?

In White Fang, London shows that civilization is as potent a force as nature in shaping individual behavior. The theme that environment determines character, prominent in much of London's fiction, applies here to humans as well as to animals.

The Call of the Wild has been described as a fable of an...