A young wolf-dog hybrid grows up under several human owners. From the distant Gray Beaver to the downright abusive Beauty Smith, who uses his fighting skills and wolf genes to his advantage by making him participate in dog fights. Finally, White Fang gets rescued by the kind Weedon Scott, who wonders if he'll ever be able to convince the hardened wolfdog that there is such a thing as human love.
This has been one of my favorite books for years, and on the surface, it still is. This is one of my favorite xenofictions, together with Call of the Wild, as well as one of the first ones I ever read where the animals do not talk. So massive nostalgia for me. I also grew up being really attached to this one bad animated adaptation by Goodtimes Entertainment.
However, there's also an issue that needs to be addressed: the racism. Call of the Wild wasn't perfect, but I don't recall there being that much racism in it aside from the final villains being a fictional Native American tribe that is portrayed as savage for defending their land against Thornton.
In White Fang, however, Native Americans feature much more heavily, and not in a good way. Sure, there's times where they're portrayed as decent or at the very least neutral, but there's always this coolness surrounding them in how they treat their animals. They let White Fang be constantly terrorized by the local dogs and are sometimes cruel towards him. And even when they're not, they are just very cold towards them, giving them no love most of the time.
Then there's also the way they are described, which is as "savage" (several instances) and "lesser gods". Since the book is written from White Fang's perspective, humans are often referred to as "gods". White Fang sees the Native tribe he grows up in as his gods, but when he arrives at Fort Yukon and catches his first glimpse of white men, he instantly decides that they are "superior gods". Fucking yikes, man.
Also, there's some ableism regarding Beauty Smith, one of the main villains. He's our only disabled character and he is portrayed as 100% evil. Not good.
I know that this mostly is kept very brief, but it's still present and thus needs to be addressed. I know the book is over 100 years old and that things were different back then, but that doesn't make it fucking okay.
That aside, the rest of the book is actually very good. The character development for the main character is thorough and I really do like how this hardened wolfdog slowly learns to open up to humans after having been treated badly by them all his life. I also liked some of the characters, such as Kiche and One Eye, White Fang's parents.
The humans are usually pretty standard, and, like with Call of the Wild, often fall into one of two categories: nice to our protagonist or not. So I don't feel particularly attached to any of them because they're pretty one-dimensional. Weedon Scott the "love god" is just a generic "non-savage" white guy who treats White Fang well, but personality-wise there's nothing much going on with him. Beauty Smith is an outright villain, and while I wouldn't shove Gray Beaver into that category, he still doesn't treat our protagonist good, either.
I also do like how this is pretty much a reverse Call of the Wild. Whereas that story has a pampered California dog become a sled dog and eventually leader of a wolf pack, White Fang follows a wolf pup that is born in the wild, grows up among humans and eventually ends up as a pet at an estate in California.
So how do I rate this book? Honestly, kind of difficult to say. Enjoyment-wise, I still like this book just as much as when I first picked it up all these years ago. However, moral-wise? Yeah, this isn't the greatest. So, like with Clan of the Cave Bear, I'll give this two ratings.
Rating:
5/5 (personal score)
2/5 (critical score)
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