22 pages • 44 minutes read
Jack LondonThe Law of Life
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1901A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Wolves
The wolves that stalk first the bull moose and then Koskoosh are not simply a means of death, but a symbol of it. As London describes it, death is a kind of predator: It is “hungry” (Paragraph 2), and it relentlessly pursues all living things. This depiction echoes the hunting behavior of wolves; London, for instance, describes them peeling off the oldest and sickest of the moose and then methodically tracking it until it can no longer fight back. Similarly, the wolves claim the life of Koskoosh, who, like the bull moose, has grown old and weak. In surrendering to them, Koskoosh is therefore bowing to the inevitability of his own death and to that of death in general.
Fire
There is a long-standing figurative association between fire and life in literature; the heat and motion of a flame evoke the warmth and activity of a living body, while its intensity (or lack thereof) can speak to the strength of a person’s will to live. In “The Law of Life,” fire’s symbolism is paired with a more literal relationship to life. Koskoosh’s tribe leaves him with a small bundle of firewood, but the expectation is that Koskoosh will freeze to death once these logs have burned. Fire also (at least initially) keeps predators like the wolves at bay. As a result, Koskoosh’s lifespan correlates directly with that of the fire: “When the last stick had surrendered up its heat, the frost would begin to gather strength. First his feet would yield, then his hands; and the numbness would travel, slowly, from the extremities to the body” (Paragraph 10).
Hunger and Predation
Hunger is a fact of life to Koskoosh’s people: hunter-gatherers who live near the Arctic Circle. Their existence is structured around procuring enough food to survive; the migration the story depicts is a seasonal one, with the tribe following caribou herds in the winter, and then fishing for salmon in the summer. Even then, the threat of starvation is a constant. Koskoosh, for example, recalls a “Great Famine” that lasted for years and decimated the tribe: “[T]he caribou did not come, and it was the seventh year, and the rabbits had not replenished, and the dogs were naught but bundles of bones” (Paragraph 13).
As a motif, then, hunger is closely associated with both the individual and the community’s struggle to survive. This struggle, however, is inextricably linked to death even for those who do manage to eke out a living; resources are so scarce in northern Canada that Koskoosh’s tribe relies heavily on hunting and eating other animals. Humans themselves also fall prey to predation, not just by the wolves that kill Koskoosh, but even by the scavenging dogs that “nose[] the stones away and [fight] over [the] bones” of a dead missionary (Paragraph 12). The motif underscores London’s broader point about mortality as a “law” of nature; he suggests that life can only sustain itself by destroying other life.
The Bull Moose
The old bull moose Koskoosh vividly remembers is a symbol of Koskoosh. Once powerful, the moose is now too weak even to “keep up with the herd” (Paragraph 15)—a clear parallel to Koskoosh’s circumstances. Also like Koskoosh, it continues to instinctively struggle against its impending death, fighting off the wolves attacking it multiple times. However, Koskoosh’s story diverges from that of the moose, as he chooses to surrender to the wolves that have gathered around him, while the moose fights until it’s physically no longer able to. This points to what is perhaps one of the few differences between humans and other animals in London’s story; although both are subject to death, only humans can consciously accept their own mortality.
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