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cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2027-chapters/act_4_chapters_1_to_2.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Tartuffe/section_10_part_0.txt

Tartuffe.act 4.scenes 1-2

scenes 1-2

{"name": "Scenes 1-2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101135737/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tartuffe/summary-and-analysis/act-v-scenes-12", "summary": "Orgon explains that the strongbox contains some papers which were left in his keeping by a friend. If the papers were made public, both Orgon and his friend would be in serious trouble. Earlier, Tartuffe had persuaded Orgon to allow him to keep the entire strongbox and now Tartuffe has taken the secret papers and left. Orgon cannot understand how anyone could be so base and wicked as Tartuffe; he vows to hate the entire race of men. Cleante advises him to learn to practice restraint. At this point, Orgon's son, Damis, rushes in and tells his father that he will be only too glad to put an end to Tartuffe's life. Again, Cleante has to recommend restraint and moderation.", "analysis": "These opening scenes are devoted to pushing the plot forward and explaining the amount of difficulty Orgon has gotten himself into as a result of his devotion to Tartuffe. It is ironic that earlier Orgon was not concerned about money -- said to be the root of all evil -- but, having now been enlightened he is suddenly very much concerned about worldly things. And, in the same way that Orgon was a fanatic about his devotion to Tartuffe and his religious feelings, now he is seen as being equally fanatic about his hatred of all pious men. Cleante, who, as noted previously, represents the voice of reason in an age devoted to reason, offers the advice which everyone in the audience in Moliere's day would recognize as the ideal of the century. The point of Moliere's comedies was to ridicule any type of extravagant emotion and to emphasize the rational middle course. The person who goes to absurd extremes is to be ridiculed and Cleante explains this to Orgon. He advises him to learn to distinguish between the true man of worth and the charlatan, and to be cautious in bestowing his admiration. As Cleante speaks of the need for a reasoned view of life, Damis runs in, impetuous and hot-tempered, determined to kill Tartuffe. Again, Cleante has to calm him, with words which were obviously spoken to flatter the King of France and the aristocracy in the audience. Cl6ante maintains that murder is not the proper way of handling things in this enlightened age, and that in a just kingdom such as France, one does not resort to violence. If we remember that Moliere was under the protection of the king and often had to appeal directly to him in order to get his plays produced, then it is understandable why he included such blatant flattery as this."}

ACT IV SCENE I CLEANTE, TARTUFFE CLEANTE Yes, it's become the talk of all the town, And make a stir that's scarcely to your credit; And I have met you, sir, most opportunely, To tell you in a word my frank opinion. Not to sift out this scandal to the bottom, Suppose the worst for us--suppose Damis Acted the traitor, and accused you falsely; Should not a Christian pardon this offence, And stifle in his heart all wish for vengeance? Should you permit that, for your petty quarrel, A son be driven from his father's house? I tell you yet again, and tell you frankly, Everyone, high or low, is scandalised; If you'll take my advice, you'll make it up, And not push matters to extremities. Make sacrifice to God of your resentment; Restore the son to favour with his father. TARTUFFE Alas! So far as I'm concerned, how gladly Would I do so! I bear him no ill will; I pardon all, lay nothing to his charge, And wish with all my heart that I might serve him; But Heaven's interests cannot allow it; If he returns, then I must leave the house. After his conduct, quite unparalleled, All intercourse between us would bring scandal; God knows what everyone's first thought would be! They would attribute it to merest scheming On my part--say that conscious of my guilt I feigned a Christian love for my accuser, But feared him in my heart, and hoped to win him And underhandedly secure his silence. CLEANTE You try to put us off with specious phrases; But all your arguments are too far-fetched. Why take upon yourself the cause of Heaven? Does Heaven need our help to punish sinners? Leave to itself the care of its own vengeance, And keep in mind the pardon it commands us; Besides, think somewhat less of men's opinions, When you are following the will of Heaven. Shall petty fear of what the world may think Prevent the doing of a noble deed? No!--let us always do as Heaven commands, And not perplex our brains with further questions. TARTUFFE Already I have told you I forgive him; And that is doing, sir, as Heaven commands. But after this day's scandal and affront Heaven does not order me to live with him. CLEANTE And does it order you to lend your ear To what mere whim suggested to his father, And to accept gift of his estates, On which, in justice, you can make no claim? TARTUFFE No one who knows me, sir, can have the thought That I am acting from a selfish motive. The goods of this world have no charms for me; I am not dazzled by their treacherous glamour; And if I bring myself to take the gift Which he insists on giving me, I do so, To tell the truth, only because I fear This whole estate may fall into bad hands, And those to whom it comes may use it ill And not employ it, as is my design, For Heaven's glory and my neighbours' good. CLEANTE Eh, sir, give up these conscientious scruples That well may cause a rightful heir's complaints. Don't take so much upon yourself, but let him Possess what's his, at his own risk and peril; Consider, it were better he misused it, Than you should be accused of robbing him. I am astounded that unblushingly You could allow such offers to be made! Tell me--has true religion any maxim That teaches us to rob the lawful heir? If Heaven has made it quite impossible Damis and you should live together here, Were it not better you should quietly And honourably withdraw, than let the son Be driven out for your sake, dead against All reason? 'Twould be giving, sir, believe me, Such an example of your probity ... TARTUFFE Sir, it is half-past three; certain devotions Recall me to my closet; you'll forgive me For leaving you so soon. CLEANTE (alone) Ah! SCENE II ELMIRE, MARIANE, CLEANTE, DORINE DORINE (to Cleante) Sir, we beg you To help us all you can in her behalf; She's suffering almost more than heart can bear; This match her father means to make to-night Drives her each moment to despair. He's coming. Let us unite our efforts now, we beg you, And try by strength or skill to change his purpose.

Scenes 1-2

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101135737/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tartuffe/summary-and-analysis/act-v-scenes-12

Orgon explains that the strongbox contains some papers which were left in his keeping by a friend. If the papers were made public, both Orgon and his friend would be in serious trouble. Earlier, Tartuffe had persuaded Orgon to allow him to keep the entire strongbox and now Tartuffe has taken the secret papers and left. Orgon cannot understand how anyone could be so base and wicked as Tartuffe; he vows to hate the entire race of men. Cleante advises him to learn to practice restraint. At this point, Orgon's son, Damis, rushes in and tells his father that he will be only too glad to put an end to Tartuffe's life. Again, Cleante has to recommend restraint and moderation.

These opening scenes are devoted to pushing the plot forward and explaining the amount of difficulty Orgon has gotten himself into as a result of his devotion to Tartuffe. It is ironic that earlier Orgon was not concerned about money -- said to be the root of all evil -- but, having now been enlightened he is suddenly very much concerned about worldly things. And, in the same way that Orgon was a fanatic about his devotion to Tartuffe and his religious feelings, now he is seen as being equally fanatic about his hatred of all pious men. Cleante, who, as noted previously, represents the voice of reason in an age devoted to reason, offers the advice which everyone in the audience in Moliere's day would recognize as the ideal of the century. The point of Moliere's comedies was to ridicule any type of extravagant emotion and to emphasize the rational middle course. The person who goes to absurd extremes is to be ridiculed and Cleante explains this to Orgon. He advises him to learn to distinguish between the true man of worth and the charlatan, and to be cautious in bestowing his admiration. As Cleante speaks of the need for a reasoned view of life, Damis runs in, impetuous and hot-tempered, determined to kill Tartuffe. Again, Cleante has to calm him, with words which were obviously spoken to flatter the King of France and the aristocracy in the audience. Cl6ante maintains that murder is not the proper way of handling things in this enlightened age, and that in a just kingdom such as France, one does not resort to violence. If we remember that Moliere was under the protection of the king and often had to appeal directly to him in order to get his plays produced, then it is understandable why he included such blatant flattery as this.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2027-chapters/act_4_chapters_3_to_5.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Tartuffe/section_11_part_0.txt

Tartuffe.act 4.scenes 3-5

scenes 3-5

{"name": "Scenes 3-5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101135737/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tartuffe/summary-and-analysis/act-v-scenes-35", "summary": "Madame Pernelle, Orgon's mother, arrives and hears her son explain that he has been the victim of the hypocrite Tartuffe. Madame Pernelle reminds her son that the righteous are always maligned and that the people of the house have been slandering the dear, pious Tartuffe. Orgon tries to explain that he was present and saw everything, but Madame Pernelle refuses to believe anything unfavorable about a man so pious and worthy as Tartuffe. Orgon is at his wits' end when suddenly there appears an officer at the door. The officer, M. Loyal, announces that he comes with news about Tartuffe. He says that he served Orgon's father and he regrets having to give Orgon an order of eviction. But he explains further that, since everything in the house now belongs to Tartuffe, surely Orgon will honor the law and leave immediately with his family; he hopes that Orgon will honor justice and leave peacefully. He will allow him until tomorrow morning, but he and ten men must stay in the house until then. When M. Loyal leaves for a moment, Orgon confronts his mother with Tartuffe's treachery, but Dorine reminds Orgon of what he had just said earlier in the day -- that material things enslave the spirit and that one's salvation can be endangered by money and property. In a state of confusion, each person maintains that some desperate course of action must be undertaken.", "analysis": "The comedy of Scene 3 relies upon a subtle reversal. Earlier, Orgon had refused to believe anything evil about Tartuffe. Now the entire position is reversed and he cannot convince his own mother of Tartuffe's hypocrisy. The utter exasperation which he feels delights the audience because he had earlier so exasperated everyone else by his stubbornness. Note also that the cliches that Madame Pernelle recites about Tartuffe and all righteous men in general are almost exactly the same cliches that Orgon used earlier. The entire episode is summed up for us when Dorine says, \"You wouldn't trust us earlier; now it's your turn not to be trusted.\" M. Loyal, both by his name and his deportment, is highly comic. He arrives thinking naively that he brings good news because any subject is anxious to obey the law, even if the law is dispossessing him of his house. He is also proud to have been a loyal servant to Orgon's father and he is continuing his loyalty by evicting Orgon. It is indeed comic that every time Orgon starts to object, M. Loyal reminds him that a man so esteemed as Orgon would never think of trying to obstruct justice and a man so upright as Orgon must be pleased to help the law function without difficulty. Again, Dorine makes Orgon the butt of her sarcasm when she explains that Tartuffe is doing him a favor because only yesterday Orgon said that material things enslave the soul and for salvation one should look to Heaven and not the possessions of this world. She stands as a constant reminder to Orgon of his own stupidity and gullibility."}

SCENE III ORGON, ELMIRE, MARIANE, CLEANTE, DORINE ORGON So ho! I'm glad to find you all together. (To Mariane) Here is the contract that shall make you happy, My dear. You know already what it means. MARIANE (on her knees before Orgon) Father, I beg you, in the name of Heaven That knows my grief, and by whate'er can move you, Relax a little your paternal rights, And free my love from this obedience! Oh, do not make me, by your harsh command, Complain to Heaven you ever were my father; Do not make wretched this poor life you gave me. If, crossing that fond hope which I had formed, You'll not permit me to belong to one Whom I have dared to love, at least, I beg you Upon my knees, oh, save me from the torment Of being possessed by one whom I abhor! And do not drive me to some desperate act By exercising all your rights upon me. ORGON (a little touched) Come, come, my heart, be firm! no human weakness! MARIANE I am not jealous of your love for him; Display it freely; give him your estate, And if that's not enough, add all of mine; I willingly agree, and give it up, If only you'll not give him me, your daughter; Oh, rather let a convent's rigid rule Wear out the wretched days that Heaven allots me. ORGON These girls are ninnies!--always turning nuns When fathers thwart their silly love-affairs. Get on your feet! The more you hate to have him, The more 'twill help you earn your soul's salvation. So, mortify your senses by this marriage, And don't vex me about it any more. DORINE But what ... ? ORGON You hold your tongue, before your betters. Don't dare to say a single word, I tell you. CLEANTE If you will let me answer, and advise ... ORGON Brother, I value your advice most highly; 'Tis well thought out; no better can be had; But you'll allow me--not to follow it. ELMIRE (to her husband) I can't find words to cope with such a case; Your blindness makes me quite astounded at you. You are bewitched with him, to disbelieve The things we tell you happened here to-day. ORGON I am your humble servant, and can see Things, when they're plain as noses on folks' faces, I know you're partial to my rascal son, And didn't dare to disavow the trick He tried to play on this poor man; besides, You were too calm, to be believed; if that Had happened, you'd have been far more disturbed. ELMIRE And must our honour always rush to arms At the mere mention of illicit love? Or can we answer no attack upon it Except with blazing eyes and lips of scorn? For my part, I just laugh away such nonsense; I've no desire to make a loud to-do. Our virtue should, I think, be gentle-natured; Nor can I quite approve those savage prudes Whose honour arms itself with teeth and claws To tear men's eyes out at the slightest word. Heaven preserve me from that kind of honour! I like my virtue not to be a vixen, And I believe a quiet cold rebuff No less effective to repulse a lover. ORGON I know ... and you can't throw me off the scent. ELMIRE Once more, I am astounded at your weakness; I wonder what your unbelief would answer, If I should let you see we've told the truth? ORGON See it? ELMIRE Yes. ORGON Nonsense. ELMIRE Come! If I should find A way to make you see it clear as day? ORGON All rubbish. ELMIRE What a man! But answer me. I'm not proposing now that you believe us; But let's suppose that here, from proper hiding, You should be made to see and hear all plainly; What would you say then, to your man of virtue? ORGON Why, then, I'd say ... say nothing. It can't be. ELMIRE Your error has endured too long already, And quite too long you've branded me a liar. I must at once, for my own satisfaction, Make you a witness of the things we've told you. ORGON Amen! I take you at your word. We'll see What tricks you have, and how you'll keep your promise. ELMIRE (to Dorine) Send him to me. DORINE (to Elmire) The man's a crafty codger, Perhaps you'll find it difficult to catch him. ELMIRE (to Dorine) Oh no! A lover's never hard to cheat, And self-conceit leads straight to self-deceit. Bid him come down to me. (To Cleante and Mariane) And you, withdraw. SCENE IV ELMIRE, ORGON ELMIRE Bring up this table, and get under it. ORGON What? ELMIRE One essential is to hide you well. ORGON Why under there? ELMIRE Oh, dear! Do as I say; I know what I'm about, as you shall see. Get under, now, I tell you; and once there Be careful no one either sees or hears you. ORGON I'm going a long way to humour you, I must say; but I'll see you through your scheme. ELMIRE And then you'll have, I think, no more to say. (To her husband, who is now under the table.) But mind, I'm going to meddle with strange matters; Prepare yourself to be in no wise shocked. Whatever I may say must pass, because 'Tis only to convince you, as I promised. By wheedling speeches, since I'm forced to do it, I'll make this hypocrite put off his mask, Flatter the longings of his shameless passion, And give free play to all his impudence. But, since 'tis for your sake, to prove to you His guilt, that I shall feign to share his love, I can leave off as soon as you're convinced, And things shall go no farther than you choose. So, when you think they've gone quite far enough, It is for you to stop his mad pursuit, To spare your wife, and not expose me farther Than you shall need, yourself, to undeceive you. It is your own affair, and you must end it When ... Here he comes. Keep still, don't show yourself. SCENE V TARTUFFE, ELMIRE; ORGON (under the table) TARTUFFE They told me that you wished to see me here. ELMIRE Yes. I have secrets for your ear alone. But shut the door first, and look everywhere For fear of spies. (Tartuffe goes and closes the door, and comes back.) We surely can't afford Another scene like that we had just now; Was ever anyone so caught before! Damis did frighten me most terribly On your account; you saw I did my best To baffle his design, and calm his anger. But I was so confused, I never thought To contradict his story; still, thank Heaven, Things turned out all the better, as it happened, And now we're on an even safer footing. The high esteem you're held in, laid the storm; My husband can have no suspicion of you, And even insists, to spite the scandal-mongers, That we shall be together constantly; So that is how, without the risk of blame, I can be here locked up with you alone, And can reveal to you my heart, perhaps Only too ready to allow your passion. TARTUFFE Your words are somewhat hard to understand, Madam; just now you used a different style. ELMIRE If that refusal has offended you, How little do you know a woman's heart! How ill you guess what it would have you know, When it presents so feeble a defence! Always, at first, our modesty resists The tender feelings you inspire us with. Whatever cause we find to justify The love that masters us, we still must feel Some little shame in owning it; and strive To make as though we would not, when we would. But from the very way we go about it We let a lover know our heart surrenders, The while our lips, for honour's sake, oppose Our heart's desire, and in refusing promise. I'm telling you my secret all too freely And with too little heed to modesty. But--now that I've made bold to speak--pray tell me. Should I have tried to keep Damis from speaking, Should I have heard the offer of your heart So quietly, and suffered all your pleading, And taken it just as I did--remember-- If such a declaration had not pleased me, And, when I tried my utmost to persuade you Not to accept the marriage that was talked of, What should my earnestness have hinted to you If not the interest that you've inspired, And my chagrin, should such a match compel me To share a heart I want all to myself? TARTUFFE 'Tis, past a doubt, the height of happiness, To hear such words from lips we dote upon; Their honeyed sweetness pours through all my senses Long draughts of suavity ineffable. My heart employs its utmost zeal to please you, And counts your love its one beatitude; And yet that heart must beg that you allow it To doubt a little its felicity. I well might think these words an honest trick To make me break off this approaching marriage; And if I may express myself quite plainly, I cannot trust these too enchanting words Until the granting of some little favour I sigh for, shall assure me of their truth And build within my soul, on firm foundations, A lasting faith in your sweet charity. ELMIRE (coughing to draw her husband's attention) What! Must you go so fast?--and all at once Exhaust the whole love of a woman's heart? She does herself the violence to make This dear confession of her love, and you Are not yet satisfied, and will not be Without the granting of her utmost favours? TARTUFFE The less a blessing is deserved, the less We dare to hope for it; and words alone Can ill assuage our love's desires. A fate Too full of happiness, seems doubtful still; We must enjoy it ere we can believe it. And I, who know how little I deserve Your goodness, doubt the fortunes of my daring; So I shall trust to nothing, madam, till You have convinced my love by something real. ELMIRE Ah! How your love enacts the tyrant's role, And throws my mind into a strange confusion! With what fierce sway it rules a conquered heart, And violently will have its wishes granted! What! Is there no escape from your pursuit? No respite even?--not a breathing space? Nay, is it decent to be so exacting, And so abuse by urgency the weakness You may discover in a woman's heart? TARTUFFE But if my worship wins your gracious favour, Then why refuse me some sure proof thereof? ELMIRE But how can I consent to what you wish, Without offending Heaven you talk so much of? TARTUFFE If Heaven is all that stands now in my way, I'll easily remove that little hindrance; Your heart need not hold back for such a trifle. ELMIRE But they affright us so with Heaven's commands! TARTUFFE I can dispel these foolish fears, dear madam; I know the art of pacifying scruples Heaven forbids, 'tis true, some satisfactions; But we find means to make things right with Heaven. ('Tis a scoundrel speaking.) [5] [Footnote 5: Moliere's note, in the original edition.] There is a science, madam, that instructs us How to enlarge the limits of our conscience According to our various occasions, And rectify the evil of the deed According to our purity of motive. I'll duly teach you all these secrets, madam; You only need to let yourself be guided. Content my wishes, have no fear at all; I answer for't, and take the sin upon me. (Elmire coughs still louder.) Your cough is very bad. ELMIRE Yes, I'm in torture. TARTUFFE Would you accept this bit of licorice? ELMIRE The case is obstinate, I find; and all The licorice in the world will do no good. TARTUFFE 'Tis very trying. ELMIRE More than words can say. TARTUFFE In any case, your scruple's easily Removed. With me you're sure of secrecy, And there's no harm unless a thing is known. The public scandal is what brings offence, And secret sinning is not sin at all. ELMIRE (after coughing again) So then, I see I must resolve to yield; I must consent to grant you everything, And cannot hope to give full satisfaction Or win full confidence, at lesser cost. No doubt 'tis very hard to come to this; 'Tis quite against my will I go so far; But since I must be forced to it, since nothing That can be said suffices for belief, Since more convincing proof is still demanded, I must make up my mind to humour people. If my consent give reason for offence, So much the worse for him who forced me to it; The fault can surely not be counted mine. TARTUFFE It need not, madam; and the thing itself ... ELMIRE Open the door, I pray you, and just see Whether my husband's not there, in the hall. TARTUFFE Why take such care for him? Between ourselves, He is a man to lead round by the nose. He's capable of glorying in our meetings; I've fooled him so, he'd see all, and deny it. ELMIRE No matter; go, I beg you, look about, And carefully examine every corner.

Scenes 3-5

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101135737/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tartuffe/summary-and-analysis/act-v-scenes-35

Madame Pernelle, Orgon's mother, arrives and hears her son explain that he has been the victim of the hypocrite Tartuffe. Madame Pernelle reminds her son that the righteous are always maligned and that the people of the house have been slandering the dear, pious Tartuffe. Orgon tries to explain that he was present and saw everything, but Madame Pernelle refuses to believe anything unfavorable about a man so pious and worthy as Tartuffe. Orgon is at his wits' end when suddenly there appears an officer at the door. The officer, M. Loyal, announces that he comes with news about Tartuffe. He says that he served Orgon's father and he regrets having to give Orgon an order of eviction. But he explains further that, since everything in the house now belongs to Tartuffe, surely Orgon will honor the law and leave immediately with his family; he hopes that Orgon will honor justice and leave peacefully. He will allow him until tomorrow morning, but he and ten men must stay in the house until then. When M. Loyal leaves for a moment, Orgon confronts his mother with Tartuffe's treachery, but Dorine reminds Orgon of what he had just said earlier in the day -- that material things enslave the spirit and that one's salvation can be endangered by money and property. In a state of confusion, each person maintains that some desperate course of action must be undertaken.

The comedy of Scene 3 relies upon a subtle reversal. Earlier, Orgon had refused to believe anything evil about Tartuffe. Now the entire position is reversed and he cannot convince his own mother of Tartuffe's hypocrisy. The utter exasperation which he feels delights the audience because he had earlier so exasperated everyone else by his stubbornness. Note also that the cliches that Madame Pernelle recites about Tartuffe and all righteous men in general are almost exactly the same cliches that Orgon used earlier. The entire episode is summed up for us when Dorine says, "You wouldn't trust us earlier; now it's your turn not to be trusted." M. Loyal, both by his name and his deportment, is highly comic. He arrives thinking naively that he brings good news because any subject is anxious to obey the law, even if the law is dispossessing him of his house. He is also proud to have been a loyal servant to Orgon's father and he is continuing his loyalty by evicting Orgon. It is indeed comic that every time Orgon starts to object, M. Loyal reminds him that a man so esteemed as Orgon would never think of trying to obstruct justice and a man so upright as Orgon must be pleased to help the law function without difficulty. Again, Dorine makes Orgon the butt of her sarcasm when she explains that Tartuffe is doing him a favor because only yesterday Orgon said that material things enslave the soul and for salvation one should look to Heaven and not the possessions of this world. She stands as a constant reminder to Orgon of his own stupidity and gullibility.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2027-chapters/act_4_chapters_6_to_8.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Tartuffe/section_12_part_0.txt

Tartuffe.act 4.scenes 6-8

scenes 6-8

{"name": "Scenes 6-8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101135737/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tartuffe/summary-and-analysis/act-v-scenes-68", "summary": "Mariane's fiance, Valere, arrives and explains that he has heard in confidence that Orgon is in dire trouble concerning some secret documents which Tartuffe turned over to the king. Tartuffe, he says, has denounced Orgon as a traitor to the king and, since there is a warrant out for Orgon's arrest, Valere has brought money and a carriage and will help Orgon take refuge in the country. As they are about to leave, officers, accompanied by Tartuffe, arrive. Tartuffe announces that Orgon is now under arrest and the only journey he is going to take is to prison. When Orgon reminds Tartuffe of his indebtedness, Tartuffe merely replies that his first duty is to serve the king and to do that he would sacrifice anything. Cleante tries to use logic against Tartuffe, but Tartuffe only tells the officers to carry out their duty. The officers, however, perform their duty by arresting Tartuffe and then explain to the rest of the company that the king, who sees into the hearts of all his subjects, knew that Tartuffe was a hypocrite and a liar. The wise and judicious king could never be deluded by such an imposter. Furthermore, the king has invalidated the deed and has pardoned Orgon for keeping the documents of an exile. The wise king thinks much more of a man's virtues than he does of a man's mistakes; Orgon's past loyalty to the king is rewarded, and his mistakes are now forgiven. As Orgon is about to say something to Tartuffe, Cleante advises him to forget the poor wretch and turn his attention to better things. Orgon then gives his daughter Mariane to Valere to be his wife.", "analysis": "The arrival of Valere with the news that Tartuffe is closing in thickens the plot and brings everything to a climax. Orgon is suddenly the recipient of a kindness from Valere which he does not deserve in view of the way he has previously treated Valere. Tartuffe's last chance to be hypocritical occurs when he is faced with his devious ways and he can only respond that his first duty is to his king. In order to serve his king, he would sacrifice anyone. These are almost the same words which Orgon used earlier in the play concerning his newfound religion. Thus, the repetition of these same ideas give a final ironic twist to the situation. The final scene in the drama has been severely objected to on occasion by critics as being extraneous to the plot. In other words, there is nothing in the earlier parts of the play to indicate that the king will play any role in the play. The ending of a drama should arise out of the parts of the drama which have preceded it and should never be imposed upon the drama in such an artificial manner. One of the purposes of this ending, however, was to flatter the king, who was Moliere's patron. In view of the fact that this particular play was banned several times, it seems necessary that Moliere try to offer some type of flattering ending. The flattery is quite blatant when we realize that the qualities attributed to the king are in direct contrast to those exhibited by Orgon. While Orgon was hasty, domineering, and tyrannical over his family, the king is reported to be judicious and forgiving. And whereas Orgon was completely duped by Tartuffe, the king sees through Tartuffe's hypocrisy immediately. In other words, all of the qualities attributed to the king in the speech by the officer are qualities which were missing in Orgon."}

SCENE VI ORGON, ELMIRE ORGON (crawling out from under the table) That is, I own, a man ... abominable! I can't get over it; the whole thing floors me. ELMIRE What? You come out so soon? You cannot mean it! Get back under the table; 'tis not time yet; Wait till the end, to see, and make quite certain, And don't believe a thing on mere conjecture. ORGON Nothing more wicked e'er came out of Hell. ELMIRE Dear me! Don't go and credit things too lightly. No, let yourself be thoroughly convinced; Don't yield too soon, for fear you'll be mistaken. (As Tartuffe enters, she makes her husband stand behind her.) SCENE VII TARTUFFE, ELMIRE, ORGON TARTUFFE (not seeing Orgon) All things conspire toward my satisfaction, Madam, I've searched the whole apartment through. There's no one here; and now my ravished soul ... ORGON (stopping him) Softly! You are too eager in your amours; You needn't be so passionate. Ah ha! My holy man! You want to put it on me! How is your soul abandoned to temptation! Marry my daughter, eh?--and want my wife, too? I doubted long enough if this was earnest, Expecting all the time the tone would change; But now the proof's been carried far enough; I'm satisfied, and ask no more, for my part. ELMIRE (to Tartuffe) 'Twas quite against my character to play This part; but I was forced to treat you so. TARTUFFE What? You believe ... ? ORGON Come, now, no protestations. Get out from here, and make no fuss about it. TARTUFFE But my intent ... ORGON That talk is out of season. You leave my house this instant. TARTUFFE You're the one To leave it, you who play the master here! This house belongs to me, I'll have you know, And show you plainly it's no use to turn To these low tricks, to pick a quarrel with me, And that you can't insult me at your pleasure, For I have wherewith to confound your lies, Avenge offended Heaven, and compel Those to repent who talk to me of leaving. SCENE VIII ELMIRE, ORGON ELMIRE What sort of speech is this? What can it mean? ORGON My faith, I'm dazed. This is no laughing matter. ELMIRE What? ORGON From his words I see my great mistake; The deed of gift is one thing troubles me. ELMIRE The deed of gift ... ORGON Yes, that is past recall. But I've another thing to make me anxious. ELMIRE What's that? ORGON You shall know all. Let's see at once Whether a certain box is still upstairs.

Scenes 6-8

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101135737/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/tartuffe/summary-and-analysis/act-v-scenes-68

Mariane's fiance, Valere, arrives and explains that he has heard in confidence that Orgon is in dire trouble concerning some secret documents which Tartuffe turned over to the king. Tartuffe, he says, has denounced Orgon as a traitor to the king and, since there is a warrant out for Orgon's arrest, Valere has brought money and a carriage and will help Orgon take refuge in the country. As they are about to leave, officers, accompanied by Tartuffe, arrive. Tartuffe announces that Orgon is now under arrest and the only journey he is going to take is to prison. When Orgon reminds Tartuffe of his indebtedness, Tartuffe merely replies that his first duty is to serve the king and to do that he would sacrifice anything. Cleante tries to use logic against Tartuffe, but Tartuffe only tells the officers to carry out their duty. The officers, however, perform their duty by arresting Tartuffe and then explain to the rest of the company that the king, who sees into the hearts of all his subjects, knew that Tartuffe was a hypocrite and a liar. The wise and judicious king could never be deluded by such an imposter. Furthermore, the king has invalidated the deed and has pardoned Orgon for keeping the documents of an exile. The wise king thinks much more of a man's virtues than he does of a man's mistakes; Orgon's past loyalty to the king is rewarded, and his mistakes are now forgiven. As Orgon is about to say something to Tartuffe, Cleante advises him to forget the poor wretch and turn his attention to better things. Orgon then gives his daughter Mariane to Valere to be his wife.

The arrival of Valere with the news that Tartuffe is closing in thickens the plot and brings everything to a climax. Orgon is suddenly the recipient of a kindness from Valere which he does not deserve in view of the way he has previously treated Valere. Tartuffe's last chance to be hypocritical occurs when he is faced with his devious ways and he can only respond that his first duty is to his king. In order to serve his king, he would sacrifice anyone. These are almost the same words which Orgon used earlier in the play concerning his newfound religion. Thus, the repetition of these same ideas give a final ironic twist to the situation. The final scene in the drama has been severely objected to on occasion by critics as being extraneous to the plot. In other words, there is nothing in the earlier parts of the play to indicate that the king will play any role in the play. The ending of a drama should arise out of the parts of the drama which have preceded it and should never be imposed upon the drama in such an artificial manner. One of the purposes of this ending, however, was to flatter the king, who was Moliere's patron. In view of the fact that this particular play was banned several times, it seems necessary that Moliere try to offer some type of flattering ending. The flattery is quite blatant when we realize that the qualities attributed to the king are in direct contrast to those exhibited by Orgon. While Orgon was hasty, domineering, and tyrannical over his family, the king is reported to be judicious and forgiving. And whereas Orgon was completely duped by Tartuffe, the king sees through Tartuffe's hypocrisy immediately. In other words, all of the qualities attributed to the king in the speech by the officer are qualities which were missing in Orgon.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/23045-chapters/act_1.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Measure for Measure/section_0_part_0.txt

Measure for Measure.act 1.scene 1-scene 4

act 1

{"name": "Act 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210418122130/https://www.gradesaver.com/measure-for-measure/study-guide/summary-act-1", "summary": "The Duke of Vienna laments that his city is spoiled and its people too indulgent. However, he must leave the city, and names Angelo to be his replacement while he is away. Escalus, one of the Duke's advisors, believes Angelo worthy of the task; the Duke also says he is confident of Angelo's abilities. Angelo is somewhat humbled to receive this commission from the Duke, but accepts it all the same; the Duke declares that he must be off immediately on his errand, and wishes Angelo luck in bringing lawfulness and discipline back to the citizens of the city.", "analysis": "The Duke speaks with formal, somewhat legalistic language, exactly what we might expect of a ruling, noble figure. Note his use of the royal \"we\"; he calls the citizens of Vienna \"our people,\" the city is \"our city\"; he seems quite confident in his use of these pronouns, meaning he is secure in his position. His diction is quite elegant in some places; he makes use of alliteration, stating that with his \"special soul\" he has chosen Angelo. The Duke also uses paradoxical terms that convey the duties of a ruler; he says he will lend Angelo both his \"terror\" and his \"love\" to rule with, showing how a ruler must be authoritarian, yet caring for his subjects. However, the Duke's support of Angelo is misguided, perhaps even deliberately so; it is ironic that Escalus backs him, and that the Duke makes great statements supporting Angelo, when even he might know Angelo's flaws. He claims to know Angelo thoroughly enough to know that he will be a good ruler; yet, this whole scenario takes the appearance of a test, with the Duke's departure contrived, and his observation of Angelo's rulership in disguise. The Duke introduces one of the first themes/ issues of importance in the play, and that is actions vs. words. Although the Duke insists he must hasten away from the town, he actually stays in secret; and although he claims to be leaving Angelo in temporary control of the city, we see by the end of the play that this is some kind of test of his character. Why is the Duke proclaiming his intent to do one thing, and then deliberately doing something else? Why the divide between what he says he will do, and what he actually does? The Duke's motivations are shady, and completely unexplained by the play: why must he test Angelo? Why does he bother to conceive of this scenario? Why does he announce that the laws need to be better enforced, and then run away at the crucial moment? The Duke claims not to like the people's \"loud applause and aves vehement\"; yet, considering his immaculately timed appearance at the end of the play, he is probably setting himself up for this purpose, to gain more acclaim. Indeed, the Duke gains in stature through Angelo's rule, as many wish to have him back, and recognize how good they had it; once the Duke is back, people have finally learned to appreciate his permissiveness, which they had not before. Lucio, an indulgent man of Vienna, is jesting with two gentlemen of the city; they speak of their vices and transgressions, especially of frequenting whorehouses. Mistress Overdone, who runs one of these whorehouses, enters; then the men discuss what kind of venereal diseases they might have, making references to syphilis and the like. Mistress Overdone tells them that Claudio, a good man, has been taken to prison for getting his fiancee pregnant. In addition, all the brothels outside the city are to be shut down, though the ones inside are allowed to stay. Claudio is led in by officers, and says that he is being punished for taking too many liberties, although the woman he got pregnant, Juliet, was his wife in all but the legal sense. He asks Lucio to go to Claudio's sister, Isabella, who is in a convent, and let her know of what has befallen him. He hopes that she will be able to use her wit and influence with Angelo, so that he can be released. This scene introduces us to the kind of indulgent, sinful people that make up much of Vienna. Lucio speaks of one of the gentleman's bones, which he says \"sound as things that are hollow\"; this metaphor can be applied to Vienna as a whole, as the town might appear to be sound and orderly, but corruption lies beneath the surface. This is a theme reappearing in the work; some things might appear to be good or bad, but these appearances belie the true essence of the thing. Of course, the town is not wicked, by any stretch; it is just that \"impiety has made a feast\" of it, and the people have had too much indulgence in their vices. The city itself is a symbol of sin and lack of moderation, and as the Duke will find, the city cannot easily be separated from its inherent vices. The entrance of Mistress Overdone introduces another theme of the work, which is vice vs. piety. Many figures in the play are subject to excesses of either one or the other; Lucio and Mistress Overdone are symbols of excess, and Isabella and Angelo are symbols of restraint. The play makes it clear by the end that those who fall to either pole are unnatural, as human nature is a balance of both excess and restraint, and everyone is subject to temptation. Claudio's offense seems slight from a modern prospective, but it was not uncommon for couples who conceived out of wedlock to be punished during Shakespeare's era. The punishment was, of course, more moderate than the death sentence that Claudio has been condemned to; but the offense is one that was relevant to the time, and surely many other young men found themselves in Claudio's unenviable position. Claudio says that his \"restraint,\" or arrest, comes \"from too much liberty.\" This is a paradox in terms, but shows that \"restraint\" and \"liberty\" should be kept in some kind of balance. Claudio knows, though, that \"our natures do pursue, like rats that ravin down their proper bane, a thirsty evil, and when we drink we die.\" What he means by this simile is that people naturally fall into temptation, but that it can overwhelm a person. Temptation and the resistance of it is a theme which will come up again in the play. Of course, there is a great irony at work in Claudio's situation. He is being punished for a consensual liaison with a woman who he was contracted to marry; of all the vices going on in Vienna, this is surely a lesser crime than most, yet it is Claudio who stands to be made an example of. He is well aware of this, as \"the body public be a horse whereon the governor may ride,\" and he \"lets it straight feel the spur.\" This metaphor conveys how much power Angelo actually has, and that although his power is not being fairly used in this case, he still has the power to enforce these laws or not. The Duke asks a friar in the town, Friar Thomas, to give him refuge; the Duke does not intend to leave town, but rather he intends to stay and observe Angelo at work. He says that he gave Angelo power because he knew the city had to be cleaned up, but thought that he would be a bad man to do that job, and the friar agrees with this assessment. But then, he adds that Angelo appears to be a man invulnerable to temptation, and almost inhuman in this regard; he doubts that Angelo is actually as steely as he seems, and intends to see if this appearance is indeed false. In this scene, the Duke voices one of the main themes of the play: \"for terror, not to use, in time the rod becomes more mocked than feared.\" This, he claims, is the reason that he is leaving Angelo in charge. He is tired of seeing the city become \"like an o'ergrown lion in a cage,\" as his simile states, and thinks somehow that Angelo will return the city to order. He no longer wants \"the baby to beat the nurse\"; the baby symbolizes the people of the city, who know no better than they do, and the nurse symbolizes the governing powers, which are needed to teach the people and keep them from going astray. The theme of disguise is introduced, as the Duke will remain in hidden in the city, and is about to take on the guise of a friar to conceal himself. He posits that although Angelo \"scarce confesses that his blood flows,\" he believes that there might be more behind this strict appearance. The Duke is indeed testing Angelo, though he didn't say so in the first scene; his motivations are still a bit hazy though they are very much rationalized by this point. Lucio comes to see Isabella in the convent, and tells her of Angelo taking over rule of Vienna, and his strictness compared to the Duke's indulgence. He tells her that her brother Claudio got Juliet pregnant, and has been sentenced to death for his crime. Isabella is surprised, but doubts that she can do any good in this case; however, Lucio prevails with her, and she agrees to go see Angelo and beg for her brother's life. Here we are introduced to Isabella, who is a representative of restraint in the text. She actually goes overboard in her desire for strictness, as shown when she asks one of the nuns if she could not have more strict restraint as one of the sisters there. This recalls the theme of indulgence and restraint, but since Isabella is too much drawn to one of the poles, she will have to become more moderate in order to become truly human. Lucio's diction, when he addresses Isabella, also tells of her being separate from humanity. He calls her \"a thing eskied,\" \"an immortal spirit,\" and \"a saint\" in her pious restraint and devotion; however, these descriptions show how removed Isabella is from reality, and how ill-adapted she is to the world because of it. However, she seems to have stubbornness and sense enough to be able to prevail with Angelo, and hopefully her unworldliness will not hinder her too much. Lucio repeats the Duke's descriptions of Angelo's seeming invulnerability; his \"blood is very snow broth,\" and he \"never feels the wanton stings and motions of the sense.\" It will be very ironic, then, when this man who appears to be so very strict and pure falls to temptation as all people tend to do."}

ACT I. SCENE I. _An apartment in the DUKE'S palace._ _Enter DUKE, ESCALUS, _Lords_ and _Attendants_._ _Duke._ Escalus. _Escal._ My lord. _Duke._ Of government the properties to unfold, Would seem in me to affect speech and discourse; Since I am put to know that your own science 5 Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice My strength can give you: then no more remains, But that to your sufficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . as your worth is able, And let them work. The nature of our people, 10 Our city's institutions, and the terms For common justice, you're as pregnant in As art and practice hath enriched any That we remember. There is our commission, From which we would not have you warp. Call hither, 15 I say, bid come before us Angelo. [_Exit an Attendant._ What figure of us think you he will bear? For you must know, we have with special soul Elected him our absence to supply; Lent him our terror, dress'd him with our love, 20 And given his deputation all the organs Of our own power: what think you of it? _Escal._ If any in Vienna be of worth To undergo such ample grace and honour, It is Lord Angelo. _Duke._ Look where he comes. 25 _Enter ANGELO._ _Ang._ Always obedient to your Grace's will, I come to know your pleasure. _Duke._ Angelo, There is a kind of character in thy life, That to th' observer doth thy history Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings 30 Are not thine own so proper, as to waste Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike 35 As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd But to fine issues; nor Nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence, But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Herself the glory of a creditor, 40 Both thanks and use. But I do bend my speech To one that can my part in him advertise; Hold therefore, Angelo:-- In our remove be thou at full ourself; Mortality and mercy in Vienna 45 Live in thy tongue and heart: old Escalus, Though first in question, is thy secondary. Take thy commission. _Ang._ Now, good my lord, Let there be some more test made of my metal, Before so noble and so great a figure 50 Be stamp'd upon it. _Duke._ No more evasion: We have with a leaven'd and prepared choice Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours. Our haste from hence is of so quick condition, That it prefers itself, and leaves unquestion'd 55 Matters of needful value. We shall write to you, As time and our concernings shall importune, How it goes with us; and do look to know What doth befall you here. So, fare you well: To the hopeful execution do I leave you 60 Of your commissions. _Ang._ Yet, give leave, my lord, That we may bring you something on the way. _Duke._ My haste may not admit it; Nor need you, on mine honour, have to do With any scruple; your scope is as mine own, 65 So to enforce or qualify the laws As to your soul seems good. Give me your hand: I'll privily away. I love the people, But do not like to stage me to their eyes: Though it do well, I do not relish well 70 Their loud applause and Aves vehement; Nor do I think the man of safe discretion That does affect it. Once more, fare you well. _Ang._ The heavens give safety to your purposes! _Escal._ Lead forth and bring you back in happiness! 75 _Duke._ I thank you. Fare you well. [_Exit._ _Escal._ I shall desire you, sir, to give me leave To have free speech with you; and it concerns me To look into the bottom of my place: A power I have, but of what strength and nature 80 I am not yet instructed. _Ang._ 'Tis so with me. Let us withdraw together, And we may soon our satisfaction have Touching that point. _Escal._ I'll wait upon your honour. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: I, 1. SCENE I. Lords and Attendants.] Singer. Lords. Ff. and Attendants. Capell. 5: _put_] _not_ Pope. _apt_ Collier MS. 7, 8: _remains, But that_] _remains; Put that_ Rowe. 8, 9: _But that to your sufficiency ..._] _But that to your sufficiency you add Due diligency ..._ Theobald conj. _But that to your sufficiency you joyn A will to serve us ..._ Hanmer. _But that to your sufficiency you put A zeal as willing ..._ Tyrwhitt conj. _But that to your sufficiencies your worth is abled_ Johnson conj. _But your sufficiency as worth is able_ Farmer conj. _Your sufficiency ... able_ Steevens conj. _But that your sufficiency be as your worth is stable_ Becket conj. _But state to your sufficiency ..._ Jackson conj. _But thereto your sufficiency ..._ Singer. _But add to your sufficiency your worth_ Collier MS. _But that_ [tendering his commission] _to your sufficiency. And, as your worth is able, let them work_ Staunton conj. _But that to your sufficiency I add Commission ample_ Spedding conj. See note (I). 11: _city's_] _cities_ Ff. 16: [Exit an Attendant.] Capell. 18: _soul_] _roll_ Warburton. _seal_ Johnson conj. 22: _what_] _say, what_ Pope. 25: SCENE II. Pope. 27: _your pleasure_] F1. _your Graces pleasure_ F2 F3 F4. 28: _life_] _look_ Johnson conj. 28, 29: _character ... history_] _history ... character_ Monck Mason conj. 32: _they_] _them_ Hanmer. 35, 36: _all alike As if we_] _all as if We_ Hanmer. 37: _nor_] om. Pope. 42: _my part in him_] _in my part me_ Hanmer. _my part to him_ Johnson conj. _in him, my part_ Becket conj. 43: _Hold therefore, Angelo:--_] _Hold therefore, Angelo:_ [Giving him his commission] Hanmer. _Hold therefore. Angelo,_ Tyrwhitt conj. _Hold therefore, Angelo, our place and power:_ Grant White. 45: _Mortality_] _Morality_ Pope. 51: _upon it_] _upon 't_ Capell. _No more_] _Come, no more_ Pope. 52: _leaven'd and prepared_] Ff. _leven'd and prepar'd_ Rowe. _prepar'd and leaven'd_ Pope. _prepar'd and level'd_ Warburton. _prepar'd unleaven'd_ Heath conj. 56: _to you_] om. Hanmer. 61: _your commissions_] F1. _your commission_ F2 F3 F4. _our commission_ Pope. 66: _laws_] _law_ Pope. 76: [Exit.] F2. [Exit. (after line 75) F1. 84: _your_] _you_ F2. SCENE II. _A street._ _Enter LUCIO and two _Gentlemen_._ _Lucio._ If the duke, with the other dukes, come not to composition with the King of Hungary, why then all the dukes fall upon the king. _First Gent._ Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of Hungary's! 5 _Sec. Gent._ Amen. _Lucio._ Thou concludest like the sanctimonious pirate, that went to sea with the Ten Commandments, but scraped one out of the table. _Sec. Gent._ 'Thou shalt not steal'? 10 _Lucio._ Ay, that he razed. _First Gent._ Why, 'twas a commandment to command the captain and all the rest from their functions: they put forth to steal. There's not a soldier of us all, that, in the thanksgiving before meat, do relish the petition well that 15 prays for peace. _Sec. Gent._ I never heard any soldier dislike it. _Lucio._ I believe thee; for I think thou never wast where grace was said. _Sec. Gent._ No? a dozen times at least. 20 _First Gent._ What, in metre? _Lucio._ In any proportion or in any language. _First Gent._ I think, or in any religion. _Lucio._ Ay, why not? Grace is grace, despite of all controversy: as, for example, thou thyself art a wicked 25 villain, despite of all grace. _First Gent._ Well, there went but a pair of shears between us. _Lucio._ I grant; as there may between the lists and the velvet. Thou art the list. 30 _First Gent._ And thou the velvet: thou art good velvet; thou'rt a three-piled piece, I warrant thee: I had as lief be a list of an English kersey, as be piled, as thou art piled, for a French velvet. Do I speak feelingly now? _Lucio._ I think thou dost; and, indeed, with most painful 35 feeling of thy speech: I will, out of thine own confession, learn to begin thy health; but, whilst I live, forget to drink after thee. _First Gent._ I think I have done myself wrong, have I not? 40 _Sec. Gent._ Yes, that thou hast, whether thou art tainted or free. _Lucio._ Behold, behold, where Madam Mitigation comes! I have purchased as many diseases under her roof as come to-- 45 _Sec. Gent._ To what, I pray? _Lucio._ Judge. _Sec. Gent._ To three thousand dolours a year. _First Gent._ Ay, and more. _Lucio._ A French crown more. 50 _First Gent._ Thou art always figuring diseases in me; but thou art full of error; I am sound. _Lucio._ Nay, not as one would say, healthy; but so sound as things that are hollow: thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a feast of thee. 55 _Enter MISTRESS OVERDONE._ _First Gent._ How now! which of your hips has the most profound sciatica? _Mrs Ov._ Well, well; there's one yonder arrested and carried to prison was worth five thousand of you all. _Sec. Gent._ Who's that, I pray thee? 60 _Mrs Ov._ Marry, sir, that's Claudio, Signior Claudio. _First Gent._ Claudio to prison? 'tis not so. _Mrs Ov._ Nay, but I know 'tis so: I saw him arrested; saw him carried away; and, which is more, within these three days his head to be chopped off. 65 _Lucio._ But, after all this fooling, I would not have it so. Art thou sure of this? _Mrs Ov._ I am too sure of it: and it is for getting Madam Julietta with child. _Lucio._ Believe me, this may be: he promised to meet 70 me two hours since, and he was ever precise in promise-keeping. _Sec. Gent._ Besides, you know, it draws something near to the speech we had to such a purpose. _First Gent._ But, most of all, agreeing with the proclamation. 75 _Lucio._ Away! let's go learn the truth of it. [_Exeunt Lucio and Gentlemen._ _Mrs Ov._ Thus, what with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows, and what with poverty, I am custom-shrunk. 80 _Enter POMPEY._ How now! what's the news with you? _Pom._ Yonder man is carried to prison. _Mrs Ov._ Well; what has he done? _Pom._ A woman. _Mrs Ov._ But what's his offence? 85 _Pom._ Groping for trouts in a peculiar river. _Mrs Ov._ What, is there a maid with child by him? _Pom._ No, but there's a woman with maid by him. You have not heard of the proclamation, have you? _Mrs Ov._ What proclamation, man? 90 _Pom._ All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be plucked down. _Mrs Ov._ And what shall become of those in the city? _Pom._ They shall stand for seed: they had gone down too, but that a wise burgher put in for them. 95 _Mrs Ov._ But shall all our houses of resort in the suburbs be pulled down? _Pom._ To the ground, mistress. _Mrs Ov._ Why, here's a change indeed in the commonwealth! What shall become of me? 100 _Pom._ Come; fear not you: good counsellors lack no clients: though you change your place, you need not change your trade; I'll be your tapster still. Courage! there will be pity taken on you: you that have worn your eyes almost out in the service, you will be considered. 105 _Mrs Ov._ What's to do here, Thomas tapster? let's withdraw. _Pom._ Here comes Signior Claudio, led by the provost to prison; and there's Madam Juliet. [_Exeunt._ _Enter PROVOST, CLAUDIO, JULIET, and _Officers_._ _Claud._ Fellow, why dost thou show me thus to the world? 110 Bear me to prison, where I am committed. _Prov._ I do it not in evil disposition, But from Lord Angelo by special charge. _Claud._ Thus can the demigod Authority Make us pay down for our offence by weight 115 The words of heaven;--on whom it will, it will; On whom it will not, so; yet still 'tis just. _Re-enter LUCIO and two _Gentlemen_._ _Lucio._ Why, how now, Claudio! whence comes this restraint? _Claud._ From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty: As surfeit is the father of much fast, 120 So every scope by the immoderate use Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue, Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die. _Lucio._ If I could speak so wisely under an arrest, I 125 would send for certain of my creditors: and yet, to say the truth, I had as lief have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment. What's thy offence, Claudio? _Claud._ What but to speak of would offend again. _Lucio._ What, is't murder? 130 _Claud._ No. _Lucio._ Lechery? _Claud._ Call it so. _Prov._ Away, sir! you must go. _Claud._ One word, good friend. Lucio, a word with you. 135 _Lucio._ A hundred, if they'll do you any good. Is lechery so look'd after? _Claud._ Thus stands it with me:--upon a true contract I got possession of Julietta's bed: You know the lady; she is fast my wife, 140 Save that we do the denunciation lack Of outward order: this we came not to, Only for propagation of a dower Remaining in the coffer of her friends; From whom we thought it meet to hide our love 145 Till time had made them for us. But it chances The stealth of our most mutual entertainment With character too gross is writ on Juliet. _Lucio._ With child, perhaps? _Claud._ Unhappily, even so. And the new Deputy now for the Duke,-- 150 Whether it be the fault and glimpse of newness, Or whether that the body public be A horse whereon the governor doth ride, Who, newly in the seat, that it may know He can command, lets it straight feel the spur; 155 Whether the tyranny be in his place, Or in his eminence that fills it up. I stagger in:--but this new governor Awakes me all the enrolled penalties Which have, like unscour'd armour, hung by the wall So long, that nineteen zodiacs have gone round, And none of them been worn; and, for a name, Now puts the drowsy and neglected act Freshly on me: 'tis surely for a name. _Lucio._ I warrant it is: and thy head stands so tickle 165 on thy shoulders, that a milkmaid, if she be in love, may sigh it off. Send after the duke, and appeal to him. _Claud._ I have done so, but he's not to be found. I prithee, Lucio, do me this kind service: This day my sister should the cloister enter 170 And there receive her approbation: Acquaint her with the danger of my state; Implore her, in my voice, that she make friends To the strict deputy; bid herself assay him: I have great hope in that; for in her youth 175 There is a prone and speechless dialect, Such as move men; beside, she hath prosperous art When she will play with reason and discourse, And well she can persuade. _Lucio._ I pray she may; as well for the encouragement 180 of the like, which else would stand under grievous imposition, as for the enjoying of thy life, who I would be sorry should be thus foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack. I'll to her. _Claud._ I thank you, good friend Lucio. 185 _Lucio._ Within two hours. _Claud._ Come, officer, away! [_Exeunt._ NOTES: I, 2. SCENE II.] SCENE III. Pope. 12: First Gent. _Why, 'twas_] 1. Gent. _Why? 'twas_ Ff. First Gent. _Why?_ Luc. _'Twas_ Singer. 15: _before_] _after_ Hanmer. See note (II). _do_] _doth_ Hanmer. _does_ Warburton. 22-26: Lucio. _In any proportion ... language._ First Gent. _I think ... religion._ Lucio. _Ay, why not?... all grace._] Lucio. _Not in any profession ... language, I ... religion._ 2. Gent. _And why not?... controversy._ Lucio. _As for ... all grace._ Hanmer. See note (III). 29: _lists_] _list_ Anon. conj. 42: Here Ff have _Enter Bawde_, transferred by Theobald to line 56. 43: SCENE IV. Pope. Bawd coming at a distance. Hanmer. 44: _I have_] 1. Gent. _I have_ Pope (ed. 2). _He has_ Halliwell. 48: _dolours_] Rowe. _dollours_ Ff. _dollars_ Pope. 56: SCENE IV. Johnson. 65: _head_] _head is_ Rowe. _head's_ Capell. 81: SCENE V. Pope. 88: _with maid_] _with-made_ Seymour conj. 91: _houses_] _bawdy houses_ Tyrwhitt conj. 96: _all_] om. Pope. 110: SCAENA TERTIA. Ff. Juliet] Ff. Gaoler. Halliwell. om. Collier MS. See note (IV). [Transcriber's Note: Pope's Scene I.VI is not mentioned, but presumably begins here.] 113: _Lord_] om. F2 F3 F4. 115: _offence_] _offence'_ (for _offences_) S. Walker conj. 115, 116: _by weight The words_] Ff. _by weight; I' th' words_ Hanmer. _by weight. The words_ Warburton (after Davenant). _by weight--The sword_ Roberts conj. _by weight The word_ Halliwell. _by weight.--The word's_ Becket conj. _by weight--The works_ Jackson conj. See note (V). 117: _yet still 'tis just_] _yet 'tis just still_ S. Walker conj. 121: _every scope_] _liberty_ Wheeler MS. 124: _A thirsty evil_] _An evil thirst_ Davenant's version. _A thirsted evil_ Spedding conj. 128: _morality_] Rowe (after Davenant). _mortality_ Ff. 141: _denunciation_] _pronunciation_ Collier MS. 143: _propagation_] F2 F3 F4. _propogation_ F1. _prorogation_ Malone conj. _procuration_ Jackson conj. _preservation_ Grant White. 147: _most_] om. Hanmer. 148: _on_] F1. _in_ F2 F3 F4. 151: _fault and_] _flash and_ Johnson conj. _foult or_ Id. conj. _foil and_ Anon. conj. _fault and_] _flash and_ Johnson conj. _fault or_ Id. conj. _foil and_ Anon. conj. _glimpse_] _guise_ Anon. conj. 161: _nineteen_] _fourteen_ Whalley conj. 165: _it is_] _so it is_ Hanmer (who prints line 165-167 as four verses ending _stands, milkmaid, off, him._ 166: _she be_] _she be but_ Hanmer. 173: _voice_] _name_ Wheler MS. 175: _youth_] _zenith_ Johnson conj. 176: _prone_] _prompt_ Johnson conj. _pow'r_ Id. conj. _proue_ Becket conj. 177: _move_] Ff. _moves_ Rowe. _beside_] _besides_ Capell. 181: _under_] F1. _upon_ F2 F3 F4. _on_ Hanmer, who prints 179-185 as six verses ending _may, like, imposition, be, tick-tack, Lucio._ _imposition_] _inquisition_ Johnson conj. (withdrawn). 182: _the enjoying of_] om. Hanmer. _who I would_] _which I'd_ Hanmer. 184: _her_] _her strait_ Hanmer. SCENE III. _A monastery._ _Enter _Duke_ and FRIAR THOMAS._ _Duke._ No, holy father; throw away that thought; Believe not that the dribbling dart of love Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee To give me secret harbour, hath a purpose More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends 5 Of burning youth. _Fri. T._ May your grace speak of it? _Duke._ My holy sir, none better knows than you How I have ever loved the life removed, And held in idle price to haunt assemblies Where youth, and cost, and witless bravery keeps. 10 I have deliver'd to Lord Angelo, A man of stricture and firm abstinence, My absolute power and place here in Vienna, And he supposes me travell'd to Poland; For so I have strew'd it in the common ear, 15 And so it is received. Now, pious sir, You will demand of me why I do this? _Fri. T._ Gladly, my lord. _Duke._ We have strict statutes and most biting laws, The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds, 20 Which for this fourteen years we have let slip; Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave, That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers, Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch, Only to stick it in their children's sight 25 For terror, not to use, in time the rod Becomes more mock'd than fear'd; so our decrees. Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead; And liberty plucks justice by the nose; The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart 30 Goes all decorum. _Fri. T._ It rested in your Grace To unloose this tied-up justice when you pleased: And it in you more dreadful would have seem'd Than in Lord Angelo. _Duke._ I do fear, too dreadful: Sith 'twas my fault to give the people scope, 35 'Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them For what I bid them do: for we bid this be done, When evil deeds have their permissive pass, And not the punishment. Therefore, indeed, my father, I have on Angelo imposed the office; 40 Who may, in the ambush of my name, strike home, And yet my nature never in the fight To do in slander. And to behold his sway, I will, as 'twere a brother of your order, Visit both prince and people: therefore, I prithee, 45 Supply me with the habit, and instruct me How I may formally in person bear me Like a true friar. More reasons for this action At our more leisure shall I render you; Only, this one: Lord Angelo is precise; 50 Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses That his blood flows, or that his appetite Is more to bread than stone: hence shall we see, If power change purpose, what our seemers be. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: I, 3. SCENE III.] SCENA QUARTA Ff. SCENE VII. Pope. 3: _bosom_] _breast_ Pope. 10: _and witless_] F2 F3 F4. _witless_ F1. _with witless_ Edd. conj. _keeps_] _keep_ Hammer. 12: _stricture_] _strictness_ Davenant's version. _strict ure_ Warburton. 15: _For_] _Far_ F2. 20: _to_] F1. _for_ F2 F3 F4. _weeds_] Ff. _steeds_ Theobald. _wills_ S. Walker conj. 21: _this_] _these_ Theobald. _fourteen_] _nineteen_ Theobald. _slip_] Ff. _sleep_ Theobald (after Davenant). 25: _to_] _do_ Dent. MS. 26: _terror_] F1. _errour_ F2 F3 F4. 26, 27: _the rod Becomes more ... decrees_] Pope (after Davenant). _the rod More ... decrees_ Ff. _the rod's More ... most just decrees_ Collier MS. 27: _mock'd_] _markt_ Davenant's version. 34: _do_] om. Pope. 37: _be done_] om. Pope. 39: _the_] _their_ Dyce conj. _indeed_] om. Pope. 42, 43: _fight To do in slander_] _sight To do in slander_ Pope. _fight So do in slander_ Theobald. _sight To do it slander_ Hanmer. _sight, So doing slander'd_ Johnson conj. _sight To draw on slander_ Collier MS. _right To do him slander_ Singer conj. _light To do it slander_ Dyce conj. _fight To do me slander_ Halliwell. _win the fight To die in slander_ Staunton conj. _never ... slander_] _ever in the fight To dole in slander_ Jackson conj. 43: _And_] om. Pope. 45: _I_] om. Pope. 47: _in person bear me_] Capell. _in person beare_ Ff. _my person bear_ Pope. 49: _our_] F1. _your_ F2 F3 F4. SCENE IV. _A nunnery._ _Enter ISABELLA and FRANCISCA._ _Isab._ And have you nuns no farther privileges? _Fran._ Are not these large enough? _Isab._ Yes, truly: I speak not as desiring more; But rather wishing a more strict restraint Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare. 5 _Lucio_ [_within_]. Ho! Peace be in this place! _Isab._ Who's that which calls? _Fran._ It is a man's voice. Gentle Isabella, Turn you the key, and know his business of him; You may, I may not; you are yet unsworn. When you have vow'd, you must not speak with men 10 But in the presence of the prioress: Then, if you speak, you must not show your face; Or, if you show your face, you must not speak. He calls again; I pray you, answer him. [_Exit._ _Isab._ Peace and prosperity! Who is't that calls? 15 _Enter LUCIO._ _Lucio._ Hail, virgin, if you be, as those cheek-roses Proclaim you are no less! Can you so stead me As bring me to the sight of Isabella, A novice of this place, and the fair sister To her unhappy brother Claudio? 20 _Isab._ Why, 'her unhappy brother'? let me ask The rather, for I now must make you know I am that Isabella and his sister. _Lucio._ Gentle and fair, your brother kindly greets you: Not to be weary with you, he's in prison. 25 _Isab._ Woe me! for what? _Lucio._ For that which, if myself might be his judge, He should receive his punishment in thanks: He hath got his friend with child. _Isab._ Sir, make me not your story. _Lucio._ It is true. 30 I would not--though 'tis my familiar sin With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest, Tongue far from heart--play with all virgins so: I hold you as a thing ensky'd and sainted; By your renouncement, an immortal spirit; 35 And to be talk'd with in sincerity, As with a saint. _Isab._ You do blaspheme the good in mocking me. _Lucio._ Do not believe it. Fewness and truth, 'tis thus:-- Your brother and his lover have embraced: 40 As those that feed grow full,--as blossoming time, That from the seedness the bare fallow brings To teeming foison,--even so her plenteous womb Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry. _Isab._ Some one with child by him?--My cousin Juliet? 45 _Lucio._ Is she your cousin? _Isab._ Adoptedly; as school-maids change their names By vain, though apt, affection. _Lucio._ She it is. _Isab._ O, let him marry her. _Lucio._ This is the point. The duke is very strangely gone from hence; 50 Bore many gentlemen, myself being one, In hand, and hope of action: but we do learn By those that know the very nerves of state, His givings-out were of an infinite distance From his true-meant design. Upon his place, 55 And with full line of his authority, Governs Lord Angelo; a man whose blood Is very snow-broth; one who never feels The wanton stings and motions of the sense, But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge 60 With profits of the mind, study and fast. He--to give fear to use and liberty, Which have for long run by the hideous law, As mice by lions--hath pick'd out an act, Under whose heavy sense your brother's life 65 Falls into forfeit: he arrests him on it; And follows close the rigour of the statute, To make him an example. All hope is gone, Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer To soften Angelo: and that's my pith of business 70 'Twixt you and your poor brother. _Isab._ Doth he so seek his life? _Lucio._ Has censured him Already; and, as I hear, the provost hath A warrant for his execution. _Isab._ Alas! what poor ability's in me 75 To do him good? _Lucio._ Assay the power you have. _Isab._ My power? Alas, I doubt,-- _Lucio._ Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt. Go to Lord Angelo, And let him learn to know, when maidens sue, 80 Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel, All their petitions are as freely theirs As they themselves would owe them. _Isab._ I'll see what I can do. _Lucio._ But speedily. _Isab._ I will about it straight; 85 No longer staying but to give the Mother Notice of my affair. I humbly thank you: Commend me to my brother: soon at night I'll send him certain word of my success. _Lucio._ I take my leave of you. _Isab._ Good sir, adieu. 90 [_Exeunt._ NOTES: I, 4. SCENE IV.] SCENA QUINTA Ff. SCENE VIII. Pope. 5: _sisterhood, the votarists_] _sister votarists_ Pope. 27: _For that which_] _That for which_ Malone conj. 30: _make me not your story_] _mock me not:--your story_ Malone. _make me not your scorn_ Collier MS. (after Davenant). _make ... sport_ Singer. _It is true_] Steevens. _'Tis true_ Ff. om. Pope. _Nay, tis true_ Capell. 31: _I would not_] Malone puts a full stop here. 40: _have_] _having_ Rowe. 42: _That ... brings_] _Doth ... bring_ Hanmer. _seedness_] _seeding_ Collier MS. 44: _his_] _its_ Hanmer. 49: _O, let him_] F1. _Let him_ F2 F3 F4. _Let him then_ Pope. 50: _is_] _who's_ Collier MS. 52: _and_] _with_ Johnson conj. _do_] om. Pope. 54: _givings-out_] Rowe. _giving-out_ Ff. 60: _his_] _it's_ Capell. 63: _for long_] _long time_ Pope. 68: _hope is_] _hope's_ Pope. 70: _pith of business 'Twixt_] _pith Of business betwixt_ Hanmer. See note (VI). _pith of_] om. Pope. 72: _so seek_] _so, Seeke_ Ff. _so? seek_ Edd. conj. _Has_] _H'as_ Theobald. 71-75: Ff end the lines thus:-- _so,--already--warrant--poor--good._ Capell first gave the arrangement in the text. 73: _as_] om. Hanmer. 74: _A warrant for his_] _a warrant For's_ Ff. 78: _make_] Pope. _makes_ Ff. 82: _freely_] F1. _truely_ F2 F3 F4. Enter _Provost_ inserted by Capell.

Act 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210418122130/https://www.gradesaver.com/measure-for-measure/study-guide/summary-act-1

The Duke of Vienna laments that his city is spoiled and its people too indulgent. However, he must leave the city, and names Angelo to be his replacement while he is away. Escalus, one of the Duke's advisors, believes Angelo worthy of the task; the Duke also says he is confident of Angelo's abilities. Angelo is somewhat humbled to receive this commission from the Duke, but accepts it all the same; the Duke declares that he must be off immediately on his errand, and wishes Angelo luck in bringing lawfulness and discipline back to the citizens of the city.

The Duke speaks with formal, somewhat legalistic language, exactly what we might expect of a ruling, noble figure. Note his use of the royal "we"; he calls the citizens of Vienna "our people," the city is "our city"; he seems quite confident in his use of these pronouns, meaning he is secure in his position. His diction is quite elegant in some places; he makes use of alliteration, stating that with his "special soul" he has chosen Angelo. The Duke also uses paradoxical terms that convey the duties of a ruler; he says he will lend Angelo both his "terror" and his "love" to rule with, showing how a ruler must be authoritarian, yet caring for his subjects. However, the Duke's support of Angelo is misguided, perhaps even deliberately so; it is ironic that Escalus backs him, and that the Duke makes great statements supporting Angelo, when even he might know Angelo's flaws. He claims to know Angelo thoroughly enough to know that he will be a good ruler; yet, this whole scenario takes the appearance of a test, with the Duke's departure contrived, and his observation of Angelo's rulership in disguise. The Duke introduces one of the first themes/ issues of importance in the play, and that is actions vs. words. Although the Duke insists he must hasten away from the town, he actually stays in secret; and although he claims to be leaving Angelo in temporary control of the city, we see by the end of the play that this is some kind of test of his character. Why is the Duke proclaiming his intent to do one thing, and then deliberately doing something else? Why the divide between what he says he will do, and what he actually does? The Duke's motivations are shady, and completely unexplained by the play: why must he test Angelo? Why does he bother to conceive of this scenario? Why does he announce that the laws need to be better enforced, and then run away at the crucial moment? The Duke claims not to like the people's "loud applause and aves vehement"; yet, considering his immaculately timed appearance at the end of the play, he is probably setting himself up for this purpose, to gain more acclaim. Indeed, the Duke gains in stature through Angelo's rule, as many wish to have him back, and recognize how good they had it; once the Duke is back, people have finally learned to appreciate his permissiveness, which they had not before. Lucio, an indulgent man of Vienna, is jesting with two gentlemen of the city; they speak of their vices and transgressions, especially of frequenting whorehouses. Mistress Overdone, who runs one of these whorehouses, enters; then the men discuss what kind of venereal diseases they might have, making references to syphilis and the like. Mistress Overdone tells them that Claudio, a good man, has been taken to prison for getting his fiancee pregnant. In addition, all the brothels outside the city are to be shut down, though the ones inside are allowed to stay. Claudio is led in by officers, and says that he is being punished for taking too many liberties, although the woman he got pregnant, Juliet, was his wife in all but the legal sense. He asks Lucio to go to Claudio's sister, Isabella, who is in a convent, and let her know of what has befallen him. He hopes that she will be able to use her wit and influence with Angelo, so that he can be released. This scene introduces us to the kind of indulgent, sinful people that make up much of Vienna. Lucio speaks of one of the gentleman's bones, which he says "sound as things that are hollow"; this metaphor can be applied to Vienna as a whole, as the town might appear to be sound and orderly, but corruption lies beneath the surface. This is a theme reappearing in the work; some things might appear to be good or bad, but these appearances belie the true essence of the thing. Of course, the town is not wicked, by any stretch; it is just that "impiety has made a feast" of it, and the people have had too much indulgence in their vices. The city itself is a symbol of sin and lack of moderation, and as the Duke will find, the city cannot easily be separated from its inherent vices. The entrance of Mistress Overdone introduces another theme of the work, which is vice vs. piety. Many figures in the play are subject to excesses of either one or the other; Lucio and Mistress Overdone are symbols of excess, and Isabella and Angelo are symbols of restraint. The play makes it clear by the end that those who fall to either pole are unnatural, as human nature is a balance of both excess and restraint, and everyone is subject to temptation. Claudio's offense seems slight from a modern prospective, but it was not uncommon for couples who conceived out of wedlock to be punished during Shakespeare's era. The punishment was, of course, more moderate than the death sentence that Claudio has been condemned to; but the offense is one that was relevant to the time, and surely many other young men found themselves in Claudio's unenviable position. Claudio says that his "restraint," or arrest, comes "from too much liberty." This is a paradox in terms, but shows that "restraint" and "liberty" should be kept in some kind of balance. Claudio knows, though, that "our natures do pursue, like rats that ravin down their proper bane, a thirsty evil, and when we drink we die." What he means by this simile is that people naturally fall into temptation, but that it can overwhelm a person. Temptation and the resistance of it is a theme which will come up again in the play. Of course, there is a great irony at work in Claudio's situation. He is being punished for a consensual liaison with a woman who he was contracted to marry; of all the vices going on in Vienna, this is surely a lesser crime than most, yet it is Claudio who stands to be made an example of. He is well aware of this, as "the body public be a horse whereon the governor may ride," and he "lets it straight feel the spur." This metaphor conveys how much power Angelo actually has, and that although his power is not being fairly used in this case, he still has the power to enforce these laws or not. The Duke asks a friar in the town, Friar Thomas, to give him refuge; the Duke does not intend to leave town, but rather he intends to stay and observe Angelo at work. He says that he gave Angelo power because he knew the city had to be cleaned up, but thought that he would be a bad man to do that job, and the friar agrees with this assessment. But then, he adds that Angelo appears to be a man invulnerable to temptation, and almost inhuman in this regard; he doubts that Angelo is actually as steely as he seems, and intends to see if this appearance is indeed false. In this scene, the Duke voices one of the main themes of the play: "for terror, not to use, in time the rod becomes more mocked than feared." This, he claims, is the reason that he is leaving Angelo in charge. He is tired of seeing the city become "like an o'ergrown lion in a cage," as his simile states, and thinks somehow that Angelo will return the city to order. He no longer wants "the baby to beat the nurse"; the baby symbolizes the people of the city, who know no better than they do, and the nurse symbolizes the governing powers, which are needed to teach the people and keep them from going astray. The theme of disguise is introduced, as the Duke will remain in hidden in the city, and is about to take on the guise of a friar to conceal himself. He posits that although Angelo "scarce confesses that his blood flows," he believes that there might be more behind this strict appearance. The Duke is indeed testing Angelo, though he didn't say so in the first scene; his motivations are still a bit hazy though they are very much rationalized by this point. Lucio comes to see Isabella in the convent, and tells her of Angelo taking over rule of Vienna, and his strictness compared to the Duke's indulgence. He tells her that her brother Claudio got Juliet pregnant, and has been sentenced to death for his crime. Isabella is surprised, but doubts that she can do any good in this case; however, Lucio prevails with her, and she agrees to go see Angelo and beg for her brother's life. Here we are introduced to Isabella, who is a representative of restraint in the text. She actually goes overboard in her desire for strictness, as shown when she asks one of the nuns if she could not have more strict restraint as one of the sisters there. This recalls the theme of indulgence and restraint, but since Isabella is too much drawn to one of the poles, she will have to become more moderate in order to become truly human. Lucio's diction, when he addresses Isabella, also tells of her being separate from humanity. He calls her "a thing eskied," "an immortal spirit," and "a saint" in her pious restraint and devotion; however, these descriptions show how removed Isabella is from reality, and how ill-adapted she is to the world because of it. However, she seems to have stubbornness and sense enough to be able to prevail with Angelo, and hopefully her unworldliness will not hinder her too much. Lucio repeats the Duke's descriptions of Angelo's seeming invulnerability; his "blood is very snow broth," and he "never feels the wanton stings and motions of the sense." It will be very ironic, then, when this man who appears to be so very strict and pure falls to temptation as all people tend to do.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/23045-chapters/act_2.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Measure for Measure/section_1_part_0.txt

Measure for Measure.act 2.scene 1-scene 4

act 2

{"name": "Act 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210418122130/https://www.gradesaver.com/measure-for-measure/study-guide/summary-act-2", "summary": "Angelo states that he is determined to make people wary of the law again; Escalus thinks that some enforcement of the law is necessary, but warns Angelo against being far too strict and showing no mercy. Escalus laments to see \"some contemned by a fault alone,\" but he doesn't want to struggle against the stubborn Angelo either. Then, a comic scene involving Elbow, the silly constable, Froth, and Pompey the bawd follows. Elbow accuses Froth of being insolent to his good wife; the whole set-up is rather ridiculous, and seems contrived in order to gain a few good laughs. Pompey defends Froth, who is accused of the insult; but Pompey is revealed to be a bawd, in the employ of Mistress Overdone at her brothel. Escalus is exasperated at constable Elbow's show of incompetence, and asks for him to bring a list of able replacements to Escalus at his home. Escalus has decided to aid Angelo now in his pursuit to enforce the law; he still wishes that something could be done about Claudio's situation, but fears that to relent would be to make the law weak again.", "analysis": "Angelo compares the law to a scarecrow, that is useless if it cannot frighten and deter; this metaphor echoes the Duke's appraisal of the law from Act I, in which he said the same thing, about the law being useless if it didn't actually keep people from transgressing. A scarecrow is actually a fitting symbol for the law in Vienna, for if the people are used to ignoring it as they have been doing, it can hardly be of real practical use. Escalus introduces the theme of moderation and mercy, both of which are necessary in a ruler with as much power as Angelo holds. \"Let us be keen and rather cut a little, than fall and bruise to death,\" he tells Angelo. However, the value of mercy is something which Angelo will have to learn; he has no compassion whatever for people's failings, since he acknowledges no failings in himself. \"'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, another thing to fall\"; Angelo's moralizing is strict and unmerciful, but will later be shown up when he falls to temptation. Then follows the necessary comic relief section, with Elbow's repeated malapropisms providing entertainment. This following section does not relate to the plot at all, but is a break for wordplay and comic, sometimes sexually charged, insinuations. This tangent is informative, however, because it shows Angelo's crackdown on those who deal in prostitution, and how those who deal in this trade, like Pompey, are regarded as being lowly. It also shows Escalus's complicity in Angelo's strictness; for although he believes that Angelo is doing wrong to be so harsh on Claudio, among others, he too is beginning to believe that to let Claudio off would be to condone sin and overindulgence. The Provost goes to talk to Angelo, to plead for Claudio's life since his sin is hardly something unknown to Vienna. Angelo still refuses to relent, and says that Juliet, who is in labor, should go to a more fitting place, away from everything that is going on. Isabella comes to see Angelo, and begins to plead with him for Claudio's life. Angelo seems to be unrelenting, but Lucio urges her to persist. She does, and calls upon Angelo's pity, mercy, and moderation; she recognizes that Angelo has the power to enforce the law in full, but impresses upon him that one must use power with moderation. Angelo calls Juliet a \"fornicatress,\" and this harsh name again recalls the theme of appearance vs. reality. Although Juliet appears from Angelo's quick appraisal to be just a sinful person, her reality is far more complex; she is much better than most women, and her only fault was not securing a marriage contract before she slept with her fiancee. She is actually a woman of strength and principle, not the simple sinner that Angelo reduces her to. Isabella's strategy is a keen one, trying to persuade Angelo to have the same mercy for her brother that she has. Once again, the issue of mercy is urged upon Angelo, as is the theme of human weakness, which all, Isabella stresses, fall victim to. She is very canny, when she has to be; her argument is strong and persuasive, although it is not her argument that causes Angelo to relent, but his attraction to her. Isabella also touches upon the theme of use of power; \"it is excellent to have a giant's strength,\" she tells Angelo, \"but it is tyrannous to use it as a giant.\" Isabella makes an allusion to \"Jove\" to demonstrate her pointthat even the gods, with tremendous power, know how best to use their awesome abilities. This is another lesson that Angelo must learn; for although he can use the law to its full extent if he wishes, he has to learn how to temper his power with mercy and heed moderation. It is with great irony that Isabella's call to Angelo to mark the weaknesses in his own heart is answered by Angelo's acknowledgement that he is tempted by Isabella. It is this temptation that brings from Angelo his first statement of mercy toward Claudio: \"O, let her brother live! Thieves for their robbery have authority when judges steal themselves!\" Angelo realizes here that with experience of one's own weakness comes mercy for others' failings; however, he soon ignores this lesson, and falls into hypocrisy. The Duke, disguised as a friar, visits the prison; he asks the provost to show him to the prisoners that he might minister to their sorrows. The Provost mentions Claudio's case, and the Duke inquires of her whether she repents her sin. She says that she does, and the Duke, as the friar, says he will help her heal her shame if she is indeed sorry for her sin. He finds out that Juliet and Claudio are indeed in love, and their decision to sleep with each other was mutual. He tries to soothe her, since Claudio is to die tomorrow, and leaves. Juliet laments that she is about to give birth, but this possibly happy time has turned terrible because of Claudio's impending execution. This brief scene basically allows the Duke to appraise the guilt and the crime of Claudio and Juliet; having learned that they are in love, and that their sin was mutual, might temper his view of their wrongs. Although Claudio and Juliet's crime is actually slight, still they have to repent of whatever sin they did commit. The theme of repentance is presented here, for although it is human to fall and be tempted, one must still recognize one's wrongs and learn from them. Angelo recognizes his lust for Isabella, and the fact that he does have weaknesses just like everyone else. Isabella comes to plead again for her brother's life, as Angelo is taken over by his lust while in her presence. He asks whether Isabella would consider a sin to be good, if it were to help someone else; soon, he asks her hypothetically whether she would give up her virginity in order to save her brother. Isabella vehemently insists that she would not, and that she prizes her virginity over even her brother's life. Angelo is angered, and tells her that either she relents, or her brother dies; Isabella grieves that Angelo's good appearance belies the corruption that seems to have taken him over, but is still resolute that she will not sleep with Angelo to save her brother. Angelo admits that he is being taken over by temptation, another theme of the play, as he considers Isabella and his feelings for her. He is being corrupted by \"strong and swelling evil,\" and will fall even lower as he takes what he initially called feelings of love for Isabella and turns them into something lustful and impure. He has come full circle, in a sense, because he declares \"blood, thou art blood\"; blood was used as a symbol of temptation and human nature by the Duke, who said that Angelo scarcely admitted that he was flesh and blood, although here, Angelo is clearly seeing otherwise. Angelo's tone, as he recognizes his lust, is almost forlorn and repentant; recognizing his own weakness seems to cause him pain, as he still desires to stay good and resist temptation. He also recognizes the disparity between his flawless reputation and his flawed self: \"let's write 'good Angel' on the Devil's horn,\" he says, as he sees that he too is prone to sin. The paradox tells of Angelo's guilt, and again of his reluctance to indulge it. However, by the end of this scene, he is resolute in his insistence that either Isabella sleep with him, or her brother dies. While at the beginning of this scene he is merely considering his temptation, by the end he has completely given into it; the temptation that Isabella symbolizes to him ensures his swift fall from grace, and into hypocrisy. Angelo introduces the proposition of Isabella sleeping with him in return for her brother's life in an almost abstract manner; but, as he grows more bold, he repeats this offer a few times, in increasingly lucid terms. Angelo tries to argue that doing a sin that helps someone is tantamount to \"charity\"; this is a viable issue, and perhaps it is true, but not in this blackmail situation. Isabella reveals the extent of her piety and her pride in this encounter; she says she would rather \"th' impression of keen whips wear as rubies\" than give up her chastity. Then, she shows just how stubborn and unrealistically chaste she is. In response to Angelo's hypothetically posed question about whether it would be better for her to give up her chastity or for her brother to die, she answers, \"better it were a brother died at once, than that a sister, by redeeming him, should die forever.\" The fact that Isabella prizes her virginity over her brother's life shows how selfish she is, and how overly pious she is too. Isabella definitely needs to reappraise her ridiculous overvaluing of her virginity, although Angelo's insistence that she \" on the destined livery\" of sexual submissiveness is also off the mark. The theme of gender roles comes into question, as women in the play have less power than men, and are expected to be subservient in some sense. Here, Angelo is using his power to try and force Isabella into an inferior position, which Isabella, with her strength and intellect, will have to try and avoid. Isabella notes the divide between appearance and reality, as Angelo seemed to be a good man but is clearly very corrupt by this point."}

ACT II. SCENE I. _A hall in ANGELO'S house._ _Enter ANGELO, ESCALUS, and a _Justice, Provost, Officers_, and other _Attendants_, behind._ _Ang._ We must not make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape, till custom make it Their perch, and not their terror. _Escal._ Ay, but yet Let us be keen, and rather cut a little, 5 Than fall, and bruise to death. Alas, this gentleman, Whom I would save, had a most noble father! Let but your honour know, Whom I believe to be most strait in virtue, That, in the working of your own affections, 10 Had time cohered with place or place with wishing, Or that the resolute acting of your blood Could have attain'd the effect of your own purpose, Whether you had not sometime in your life Err'd in this point which now you censure him, 15 And pull'd the law upon you. _Ang._ 'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, Another thing to fall. I not deny, The jury, passing on the prisoner's life, May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two 20 Guiltier than him they try. What's open made to justice, That justice seizes: what know the laws That theives do pass on thieves? 'Tis very pregnant, The jewel that we find, we stoop and take't, Because we see it; but what we do not see 25 We tread upon, and never think of it. You may not so extenuate his offence For I have had such faults; but rather tell me, When I, that censure him, do so offend, Let mine own judgement pattern out my death, 30 And nothing come in partial. Sir, he must die. _Escal._ Be it as your wisdom will. _Ang._ Where is the provost? _Prov._ Here, if it like your honour. _Ang._ See that Claudio Be executed by nine to-morrow morning: Bring him his confessor, let him be prepared; 35 For that's the utmost of his pilgrimage. [_Exit Provost._ _Escal._ [_Aside_] Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all! Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall: Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none; And some condemned for a fault alone. 40 _Enter ELBOW, and _Officers_ with FROTH and POMPEY._ _Elb._ Come, bring them away: if these be good people in a commonweal that do nothing but use their abuses in common houses, I know no law: bring them away. _Ang._ How now, sir! What's your name? and what's the matter? 45 _Elb._ If it please your honour, I am the poor Duke's constable, and my name is Elbow: I do lean upon justice, sir, and do bring in here before your good honour two notorious benefactors. _Ang._ Benefactors? Well; what benefactors are they? 50 are they not malefactors? _Elb._ If it please your honour, I know not well what they are: but precise villains they are, that I am sure of; and void of all profanation in the world that good Christians ought to have. 55 _Escal._ This comes off well; here's a wise officer. _Ang._ Go to: what quality are they of? Elbow is your name? why dost thou not speak, Elbow? _Pom._ He cannot, sir; he's out at elbow. _Ang._ What are you, sir? 60 _Elb._ He, sir! a tapster, sir; parcel-bawd; one that serves a bad woman; whose house, sir, was, as they say, plucked down in the suburbs; and now she professes a hot-house, which, I think, is a very ill house too. _Escal._ How know you that? 65 _Elb._ My wife, sir, whom I detest before heaven and your honour,-- _Escal._ How? thy wife? _Elb._ Ay, sir;--whom, I thank heaven, is an honest woman,-- 70 _Escal._ Dost thou detest her therefore? _Elb._ I say, sir, I will detest myself also, as well as she, that this house, if it be not a bawd's house, it is pity of her life, for it is a naughty house. _Escal._ How dost thou know that, constable? 75 _Elb._ Marry, sir, by my wife; who, if she had been a woman cardinally given, might have been accused in fornication, adultery, and all uncleanliness there. _Escal._ By the woman's means? _Elb._ Ay, sir, by Mistress Overdone's means: but as she 80 spit in his face, so she defied him. _Pom._ Sir, if it please your honour, this is not so. _Elb._ Prove it before these varlets here, thou honourable man; prove it. _Escal._ Do you hear how he misplaces? 85 _Pom._ Sir, she came in great with child; and longing, saving your honour's reverence, for stewed prunes; sir, we had but two in the house, which at that very distant time stood, as it were, in a fruit-dish, a dish of some three-pence; your honours have seen such dishes; they are not China 90 dishes, but very good dishes,-- _Escal._ Go to, go to: no matter for the dish, sir. _Pom._ No, indeed, sir, not of a pin; you are therein in the right: but to the point. As I say, this Mistress Elbow, being, as I say, with child, and being great-bellied, and 95 longing, as I said, for prunes; and having but two in the dish, as I said, Master Froth here, this very man, having eaten the rest, as I said, and, as I say, paying for them very honestly; for, as you know, Master Froth, I could not give you three-pence again. 100 _Froth._ No, indeed. _Pom._ Very well;--you being then, if you be remembered, cracking the stones of the foresaid prunes,-- _Froth._ Ay, so I did indeed. _Pom._ Why, very well; I telling you then, if you be remembered, 105 that such a one and such a one were past cure of the thing you wot of, unless they kept very good diet, as I told you,-- _Froth._ All this is true. _Pom._ Why, very well, then,-- 110 _Escal._ Come, you are a tedious fool: to the purpose. What was done to Elbow's wife, that he hath cause to complain of? Come me to what was done to her. _Pom._ Sir, your honour cannot come to that yet. _Escal._ No, sir, nor I mean it not. 115 _Pom._ Sir, but you shall come to it, by your honour's leave. And, I beseech you, look into Master Froth here, sir; a man of fourscore pound a year; whose father died at Hallowmas:--was't not at Hallowmas, Master Froth?-- _Froth._ All-hallond eve. 120 _Pom._ Why, very well; I hope here be truths. He, sir, sitting, as I say, in a lower chair, sir; 'twas in the Bunch of Grapes, where, indeed, you have a delight to sit, have you not? _Froth._ I have so; because it is an open room, and 125 good for winter. _Pom._ Why, very well, then; I hope here be truths. _Ang._ This will last out a night in Russia, When nights are longest there: I'll take my leave, And leave you to the hearing of the cause; 130 Hoping you'll find good cause to whip them all. _Escal._ I think no less. Good morrow to your lordship. [_Exit Angelo._ Now, sir, come on: what was done to Elbow's wife, once more? _Pom._ Once, sir? there was nothing done to her once. 135 _Elb._ I beseech you, sir, ask him what this man did to my wife. _Pom._ I beseech your honour, ask me. _Escal._ Well, sir; what did this gentleman to her? _Pom._ I beseech you, sir, look in this gentleman's face. 140 Good Master Froth, look upon his honour; 'tis for a good purpose. Doth your honour mark his face? _Escal._ Ay, sir, very well. _Pom._ Nay, I beseech you, mark it well. _Escal._ Well, I do so. 145 _Pom._ Doth your honour see any harm in his face? _Escal._ Why, no. _Pom._ I'll be supposed upon a book, his face is the worst thing about him. Good, then; if his face be the worst thing about him, how could Master Froth do the constable's 150 wife any harm? I would know that of your honour. _Escal._ He's in the right. Constable, what say you to it? _Elb._ First, an it like you, the house is a respected house; next, this is a respected fellow; and his mistress is a respected woman. 155 _Pom._ By this hand, sir, his wife is a more respected person than any of us all. _Elb._ Varlet, thou liest; thou liest, wicked varlet! the time is yet to come that she was ever respected with man, woman, or child. 160 _Pom._ Sir, she was respected with him before he married with her. _Escal._ Which is the wiser here? Justice or Iniquity? Is this true? _Elb._ O thou caitiff! O thou varlet! O thou wicked 165 Hannibal! I respected with her before I was married to her! If ever I was respected with her, or she with me, let not your worship think me the poor duke's officer. Prove this, thou wicked Hannibal, or I'll have mine action of battery on thee. 170 _Escal._ If he took you a box o' th' ear, you might have your action of slander too. _Elb._ Marry, I thank your good worship for it. What is't your worship's pleasure I shall do with this wicked caitiff? 175 _Escal._ Truly, officer, because he hath some offences in him that thou wouldst discover if thou couldst, let him continue in his courses till thou knowest what they are. _Elb._ Marry, I thank your worship for it. Thou seest, thou wicked varlet, now, what's come upon thee: thou art 180 to continue now, thou varlet; thou art to continue. _Escal._ Where were you born, friend? _Froth._ Here in Vienna, sir. _Escal._ Are you of fourscore pounds a year? _Froth._ Yes, an't please you, sir. 185 _Escal._ So. What trade are you of, sir? _Pom._ A tapster; a poor widow's tapster. _Escal._ Your mistress' name? _Pom._ Mistress Overdone. _Escal._ Hath she had any more than one husband? 190 _Pom._ Nine, sir; Overdone by the last. _Escal._ Nine! Come hither to me, Master Froth. Master Froth, I would not have you acquainted with tapsters: they will draw you, Master Froth, and you will hang them. Get you gone, and let me hear no more of you. 195 _Froth._ I thank your worship. For mine own part, I never come into any room in a taphouse, but I am drawn in. _Escal._ Well, no more of it, Master Froth: farewell. [_Exit Froth._] Come you hither to me, Master tapster. What's your name, Master tapster? 200 _Pom._ Pompey. _Escal._ What else? _Pom._ Bum, sir. _Escal._ Troth, and your bum is the greatest thing about you; so that, in the beastliest sense, you are Pompey the 205 Great. Pompey, you are partly a bawd, Pompey, howsoever you colour it in being a tapster, are you not? come, tell me true: it shall be the better for you. _Pom._ Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live. _Escal._ How would you live, Pompey? by being a 210 bawd? What do you think of the trade, Pompey? is it a lawful trade? _Pom._ If the law would allow it, sir. _Escal._ But the law will not allow it, Pompey; nor it shall not be allowed in Vienna. 215 _Pom._ Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of the city? _Escal._ No, Pompey. _Pom._ Truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to't, then. If your worship will take order for the drabs and 220 the knaves, you need not to fear the bawds. _Escal._ There are pretty orders beginning, I can tell you: it is but heading and hanging. _Pom._ If you head and hang all that offend that way but for ten year together, you'll be glad to give out a commission 225 for more heads: if this law hold in Vienna ten year, I'll rent the fairest house in it after three-pence a bay: if you live to see this come to pass, say Pompey told you so. _Escal._ Thank you, good Pompey; and, in requital of your prophecy, hark you: I advise you, let me not find 230 you before me again upon any complaint whatsoever; no, not for dwelling where you do: if I do, Pompey, I shall beat you to your tent, and prove a shrewd Caesar to you; in plain dealing, Pompey, I shall have you whipt: so, for this time, Pompey, fare you well. 235 _Pom._ I thank your worship for your good counsel: [_Aside_] but I shall follow it as the flesh and fortune shall better determine. Whip me? No, no; let carman whip his jade: The valiant heart is not whipt out of his trade. [_Exit._ 240 _Escal._ Come hither to me, Master Elbow; come hither, Master constable. How long have you been in this place of constable? _Elb._ Seven year and a half, sir. _Escal._ I thought, by your readiness in the office, you had 245 continued in it some time. You say, seven years together? _Elb._ And a half, sir. _Escal._ Alas, it hath been great pains to you. They do you wrong to put you so oft upon't: are there not men in your ward sufficient to serve it? 250 _Elb._ Faith, sir, few of any wit in such matters: as they are chosen, they are glad to choose me for them; I do it for some piece of money, and go through with all. _Escal._ Look you bring me in the names of some six or seven, the most sufficient of your parish. 255 _Elb._ To your worship's house, sir? _Escal._ To my house. Fare you well. [_Exit Elbow._ What's o'clock, think you? _Just._ Eleven, sir. _Escal._ I pray you home to dinner with me. 260 _Just._ I humbly thank you. _Escal._ It grieves me for the death of Claudio; But there's no remedy. _Just._ Lord Angelo is severe. _Escal._ It is but needful: Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so; 265 Pardon is still the nurse of second woe: But yet,--poor Claudio! There is no remedy. Come, sir. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: II, 1. 6: _fall_] _fell_ Warburton conj. 8, 9, 10: _Let ... That, in the_] _Let ... whom I believe To ... whether in The_ Hanmer. _Let ... whom I believe To ... virtue, and consider This, in the_ Capell. 12: _your_] Rowe (after Davenant) _our_ Ff. 15: _which now you censure him_] _you censure now in him_ Hanmer. _which now you censure him for_ Capell. _where now you censure him_ Grant White. 19: _the_] _a_ Collier MS. 22: _justice seizes_] _justice ceizes_ Ff. _justice seizes on_ Pope. _it seizes on_ Hanmer. _know_] Pope. _knowes_ F1 F2. _knows_ F3 F4. 23: _very_] om. Hanmer, ending lines 21, 22, 23 at _made-- seizes on-- pregnant._ 31: _Sir_] om. Pope. 31: After this line Ff have 'Enter Provost.' 36: [Exit Provost] Rowe. om. Ff. 37: [Aside] S. Walker conj. 38: This line is printed by Ff in italics. 39: _from brakes of ice, and_] _through brakes of vice and_ Rowe. _from brakes of vice, and_ Malone. _from brakes of justice,_ Capell. _from breaks of ice, and_ Collier. _from brakes, off ice and_ Knight conj. 41: SCENE II. Pope. 57: _they_] _you_ Rowe. 78: _uncleanliness_] F1. _uncleanness_ F2 F3 F4. 79: _the_] _that_ Hanmer. 85: [To Ange. Capell. 87: _sir_] om. F4. 88: _distant_] F1. _instant_ F2 F3 F4. 96: _but two_] F1. _no more_ F2 F3 F4. 107: _very_] om. Pope. 113: _me_] om. Pope. _we_ Grant White. 115: _nor_] om. Pope. 117: _into_] _unto_ Collier MS. 120: _All-hallond_] _All-holland_ Pope. 122: _chair, sir_] _chamber, sir_ Capell conj. _chamber_ Anon. conj. 126: _winter_] _windows_ Collier MS. 132: SCENE III. Pope. 186: _you_] _ye_ F4. 194: _hang_] _hang on_ Heath conj. 198: SCENE IV. Pope. 207: _in_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4. 214: _nor_] _and_ Pope. 216: _splay_] _spay_ Steevens. 221: _the knaves_] F1. _knaves_ F2 F3 F4. 222: _are_ F2 F3 F4. _is_ F1. 225: _year_] Ff. _years_ Rowe. 226: _year_] F1 _years_ F2 F3 F4. 227: _bay_] _day_ Pope. 234: _Pompey_] om. F4. 237: [Aside] Staunton. 241: SCENE V. Pope. 245: _your_] Pope. _the_ Ff. 260: _home_] F1. _go home_ F2 F3 F4. 267: _There is_] _There's_ Pope. SCENE II. _Another room in the same._ _Enter PROVOST and a _Servant_._ _Serv._ He's hearing of a cause; he will come straight: I'll tell him of you. _Prov._ Pray you, do. [_Exit Servant._] I'll know His pleasure; may be he will relent. Alas, He hath but as offended in a dream! All sects, all ages smack of this vice; and he 5 To die for 't! _Enter ANGELO._ _Ang._ Now, what's the matter, provost? _Prov._ Is it your will Claudio shall die to-morrow? _Ang._ Did not I tell thee yea? hadst thou not order? Why dost thou ask again? _Prov._ Lest I might be too rash: Under your good correction, I have seen, 10 When, after execution, Judgement hath Repented o'er his doom. _Ang._ Go to; let that be mine: Do you your office, or give up your place, And you shall well be spared. _Prov._ I crave your honour's pardon. What shall be done, sir, with the groaning Juliet? 15 She's very near her hour. _Ang._ Dispose of her To some more fitter place, and that with speed. _Re-enter _Servant_._ _Serv._ Here is the sister of the man condemn'd Desires access to you. _Ang._ Hath he a sister? _Prov._ Ay, my good lord; a very virtuous maid, 20 And to be shortly of a sisterhood, If not already. _Ang._ Well, let her be admitted. [_Exit Servant._ See you the fornicatress be removed: Let her have needful, but not lavish, means; There shall be order for 't. _Enter ISABELLA and LUCIO._ _Prov._ God save your honour! 25 _Ang._ Stay a little while. [_To Isab._] You're welcome: what's your will? _Isab._ I am a woeful suitor to your honour, Please but your honour hear me. _Ang._ Well; what's your suit? _Isab._ There is a vice that most I do abhor, And most desire should meet the blow of justice; 30 For which I would not plead, but that I must; For which I must not plead, but that I am At war 'twixt will and will not. _Ang._ Well; the matter? _Isab._ I have a brother is condemn'd to die: I do beseech you, let it be his fault, 35 And not my brother. _Prov._ [_Aside_] Heaven give thee moving graces! _Ang._ Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it? Why, every fault's condemn'd ere it be done: Mine were the very cipher of a function, To fine the faults whose fine stands in record, 40 And let go by the actor. _Isab._ O just but severe law! I had a brother, then.--Heaven keep your honour! _Lucio._ [_Aside to Isab._] Give't not o'er so: to him again, entreat him; Kneel down before him, hang upon his gown: You are too cold; if you should need a pin, 45 You could not with more tame a tongue desire it: To him, I say! _Isab._ Must he needs die? _Ang._ Maiden, no remedy. _Isab._ Yes; I do think that you might pardon him, And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy. 50 _Ang._ I will not do't. _Isab._ But can you, if you would? _Ang._ Look, what I will not, that I cannot do. _Isab._ But might you do't, and do the world no wrong, If so your heart were touch'd with that remorse As mine is to him. _Ang._ He's sentenced; 'tis too late. 55 _Lucio._ [_Aside to Isab._] You are too cold. _Isab._ Too late? why, no; I, that do speak a word, May call it back again. Well, believe this, No ceremony that to great ones 'longs, Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, 60 The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe, Become them with one half so good a grace As mercy does. If he had been as you, and you as he, You would have slipt like him; but he, like you, 65 Would not have been so stern. _Ang._ Pray you, be gone. _Isab._ I would to heaven I had your potency, And you were Isabel! should it then be thus? No; I would tell what 'twere to be a judge, And what a prisoner. _Lucio._ [_Aside to Isab._] Ay, touch him; there's the vein. 70 _Ang._ Your brother is a forfeit of the law, And you but waste your words. _Isab._ Alas, alas! Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once; And He that might the vantage best have took Found out the remedy. How would you be, 75 If He, which is the top of judgement, should But judge you as you are? O, think on that; And mercy then will breathe within your lips, Like man new made. _Ang._ Be you content, fair maid; It is the law, not I condemn your brother: 80 Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son, It should be thus with him: he must die to-morrow. _Isab._ To-morrow! O, that's sudden! Spare him, spare him! He's not prepared for death. Even for our kitchens We kill the fowl of season: shall we serve heaven 85 With less respect than we do minister To our gross selves? Good, good my lord, bethink you; Who is it that hath died for this offence? There's many have committed it. _Lucio._ [_Aside to Isab._] Ay, well said. _Ang._ The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept: 90 Those many had not dared to do that evil, If the first that did the edict infringe Had answer'd for his deed: now 'tis awake, Takes note of what is done; and, like a prophet, Looks in a glass, that shows what future evils, 95 Either now, or by remissness new-conceived, And so in progress to be hatch'd and born, Are now to have no successive degrees, But, ere they live, to end. _Isab._ Yet show some pity. _Ang._ I show it most of all when I show justice; 100 For then I pity those I do not know, Which a dismiss'd offence would after gall; And do him right that, answering one foul wrong. Lives not to act another. Be satisfied; Your brother dies to-morrow; be content. 105 _Isab._ So you must be the first that gives this sentence. And he, that suffers. O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant. _Lucio._ [_Aside to Isab._] That's well said. _Isab._ Could great men thunder 110 As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet, For every pelting, petty officer Would use his heaven for thunder. Nothing but thunder! Merciful Heaven, Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt 115 Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, 120 Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens, Would all themselves laugh mortal. _Lucio._ [_Aside to Isab._] O, to him, to him, wench! he will relent; He's coming; I perceive't. _Prov._ [_Aside_] Pray heaven she win him! 125 _Isab._ We cannot weigh our brother with ourself: Great men may jest with saints; 'tis wit in them. But in the less foul profanation. _Lucio._ Thou'rt i' the right, girl; more o' that. _Isab._ That in the captain's but a choleric word, 130 Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy. _Lucio._ [_Aside to Isab._] Art avised o' that? more on't. _Ang._ Why do you put these sayings upon me? _Isab._ Because authority, though it err like others. Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself, 135 That skins the vice o' the top. Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know That's like my brother's fault: if it confess A natural guiltiness such as is his, Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue 140 Against my brother's life. _Ang._ [_Aside_] She speaks, and 'tis Such sense, that my sense breeds with it. Fare you well. _Isab._ Gentle my lord, turn back. _Ang._ I will bethink me: come again to-morrow. _Isab._ Hark how I'll bribe you: good my lord, turn back. 145 _Ang._ How? bribe me? _Isab._ Ay, with such gifts that heaven shall share with you. _Lucio._ [_Aside to Isab._] Yon had marr'd all else. _Isab._ Not with fond shekels of the tested gold, Or stones whose rates are either rich or poor 150 As fancy values them; but with true prayers That shall be up at heaven and enter there Ere sun-rise, prayers from preserved souls, From fasting maids whose minds are dedicate To nothing temporal. _Ang._ Well; come to me to-morrow. 155 _Lucio._ [_Aside to Isab._] Go to; 'tis well; away! _Isab._ Heaven keep your honour safe! _Ang._ [_Aside_] Amen: For I am that way going to temptation, Where prayers cross. _Isab._ At what hour to-morrow Shall I attend your lordship? _Ang._ At any time 'fore noon. 160 _Isab._ 'Save your honour! [_Exeunt Isabella, Lucio, and Provost._ _Ang._ From thee,--even from thy virtue! What's this, what's this? Is this her fault or mine? The tempter or the tempted, who sins most? Ha! Not she; nor doth she tempt: but it is I 165 That, lying by the violet in the sun, Do as the carrion does, not as the flower, Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be That modesty may more betray our sense Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough, 170 Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary, And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie! What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo? Dost thou desire her foully for those things That make her good? O, let her brother live: 175 Thieves for their robbery have authority When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her, That I desire to hear her speak again, And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on? O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint, 180 With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous Is that temptation that doth goad us on To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet, With all her double vigour, art and nature, Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid 185 Subdues me quite. Ever till now, When men were fond, I smiled, and wonder'd how. [_Exit._ NOTES: II, 2. SCENE II.] SCENE VI. Pope. [Transcriber's Note: Pope's Scene VII is not identified. Scene VIII begins at line 161.] 1: _he will_] _he'll_ Pope. 4: _but as offended_] _offended but as_ Grant White. 5: _sects_] _sorts_ S. Walker conj. _of this_] _o' th'_ Hanmer. 9: _dost thou_] om. Hanmer. 12: _Go to_] om. Hanmer. 14: _honour's_] om. Pope. 17: _fitter_] _fitting_ Pope. 22: _Well_] om. Pope. 25: _for't_] _for it_ Pope. _God save_] _'Save_ Ff. 26: _a little_] _yet a_ Pope. 28: _Please_] _'Please_ Ff. _Well_] om. Pope. 30: _And most_] _And more_ Rowe. 32: _must not plead, but that_] _must plead, albeit_ Hanmer. _must now plead, but yet_ Johnson conj. 40: _To fine_] _to find_ Theobald. _faults_] _fault_ Dyce. 46: _more tame a_] _a more tame_ Rowe. 53: _might you_] _you might_ S. Walker conj. 55: _him._] _him?_ Ff. 56: _You are_] _Yo art_ F2. _Thou art_ Collier MS. 58: _back_] F2 F3 F4. om. F1. _Well,_] _and_ Hanmer. _Well, believe_] _Well believe_ Knight. 59: _'longs_] Theobald, _longs_ Ff. _belongs_ Pope. 73: _that were_] _that are_ Warburton. 76: _top_] _God_ Collier MS. 80: _condemn_] _condemns_ Rowe. 82: _must die_] _dies_ Pope. 83: Printed as two lines in Ff, the first ending _sudden_. 85: _shall we serve_] _serve we_ Pope. 92: _the first_] Ff. _the first man_ Pope. _he, the first_ Capell (Tyrwhitt conj.). _the first one_ Collier MS. _but the first_ Grant White. _the first he_ Spedding conj. _the first that_] _he who first_ Davenant's version. _did the edict_] _the edict did_ Keightley conj. 95: _that shows what_] _which shews that_ Hanmer. 96: _Either now_] _Or new_ Pope. _Either new_ Dyce. 99: _ere_] Hanmer. _here_ Ff. _where_ Malone. 104: _Be_] _Then be_ Pope. 107: _it is_] _'tis_ Pope. 108: _it is_] om. Hanmer. 111: _ne'er_] _never_ F1. 113: _Would_] _Incessantly would_ Hanmer. 114: _Heaven_] _sweet Heaven_ Hanmer. 116: _Split'st_] _splits_ F1. 117: _but_] F1. _O but_ F2 F3 F4. _proud_] _weak, proud_ Malone conj. 120: _glassy_] _grassy_ Lloyd conj. 126: _We_] _You_ Collier MS. _cannot_] _can but_ Anon. conj. _ourself_] _yourself_ Theobald (Warburton). 127: _saints_] _sins_ Anon. conj. 129: _i' the right_] _i' th right_ F1 F2. _i' right_ F3 F4. _right_ Pope. _in the right_ Steevens. 132: _avised_] _avis'd_ F1 F2. _advis'd_ F3 F4. _thou advis'd_ Hanmer. _more on't_] _more on't, yet more_ Hanmer. 140: _your_] _you_ F2. 142: _breeds_] _bleeds_ Pope. 149: _shekels_] Pope. _sickles_ Ff. _cycles_ Collier conj. _circles_ Collier MS. See note (VII). 150: _rates are_] Johnson. _rate are_ Ff. _rate is_ Hanmer. 157: _Amen_] _Amen! I say_ Hanmer. See note (VIII). 159: _Where_] _Which your_ Johnson conj. 160: _your lordship_] _you lordship_ F2. _you_ Hanmer. 161: _'Save_] _God save_ Edd. conj. 161: SCENE VIII. Pope. 163: _Ha!_] om. Pope. 166: _by_] _with_ Capell. 172: _evils_] _offals_ Collier MS. 183: _never_] _ne'er_ Pope. 186: _Ever till now_] F1. _Even till now_ F2 F3 F4. _Even till this very now_ Pope. _Ever till this very now_ Theobald. _Even from youth till now_ Collier MS. SCENE III. _A room in a prison._ _Enter, severally, DUKE disguised as a friar, and PROVOST._ _Duke._ Hail to you, provost!--so I think you are. _Prov._ I am the provost. What's your will, good friar? _Duke._ Bound by my charity and my blest order, I come to visit the afflicted spirits Here in the prison. Do me the common right 5 To let me see them, and to make me know The nature of their crimes, that I may minister To them accordingly. _Prov._ I would do more than that, if more were needful. _Enter JULIET._ Look, here comes one: a gentlewoman of mine, 10 Who, falling in the flaws of her own youth, Hath blister'd her report: she is with child; And he that got it, sentenced; a young man More fit to do another such offence Than die for this. 15 _Duke._ When must he die? _Prov._ As I do think, to-morrow. I have provided for you: stay awhile, [_To Juliet._ And you shall be conducted. _Duke._ Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry? _Jul._ I do; and bear the shame most patiently. 20 _Duke._ I'll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience, And try your penitence, if it be sound, Or hollowly put on. _Jul._ I'll gladly learn. _Duke._ Love you the man that wrong'd you? _Jul._ Yes, as I love the woman that wrong'd him. 25 _Duke._ So, then, it seems your most offenceful act Was mutually committed? _Jul._ Mutually. _Duke._ Then was your sin of heavier kind than his. _Jul._ I do confess it, and repent it, father. _Duke._ 'Tis meet so, daughter: but lest you do repent, 30 As that the sin hath brought you to this shame, Which sorrow is always towards ourselves, not heaven, Showing we would not spare heaven as we love it, But as we stand in fear,-- _Jul._ I do repent me, as it is an evil, 35 And take the shame with joy. _Duke._ There rest. Your partner, as I hear, must die to-morrow, And I am going with instruction to him. Grace go with you, _Benedicite!_ [_Exit._ _Jul._ Must die to-morrow! O injurious love, 40 That respites me a life, whose very comfort Is still a dying horror! _Prov._ 'Tis pity of him. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: II, 3. SCENE III.] SCENE IX. Pope. Act III. SCENE I. Johnson conj. 7: _crimes that I may_] _several crimes that I May_ Seymour conj. 9: Enter JULIET] Transferred by Dyce to line 15. 11: _flaws_] F3 F4. _flawes_ F1 F2. _flames_ Warburton (after Davenant). 26: _offenceful_] _offence full_ F1. 30: _lest you do repent_] F4. _least you do repent_ F1 F2 F3. _repent you not_ Pope. 33: _we would not spare_] Ff. _we'd not seek_ Pope. _we'd not spare_ Malone. _we would not serve_ Collier MS. _we'd not appease_ Singer conj. 36: _There rest_] _Tis well; there rest_ Hammer. 39: _Grace_] _So grace_ Pope. _May grace_ Steevens conj. _All grace_ Seymour conj. _Grace go with you_ is assigned to Juliet by Dyce (Ritson conj.). 40: _love_] _law_ Hanmer. SCENE IV. _A room in ANGELO'S house._ _Enter ANGELO._ _Ang._ When I would pray and think, I think and pray To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words; Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue, Anchors on Isabel: Heaven in my mouth, As if I did but only chew his name; 5 And in my heart the strong and swelling evil Of my conception. The state, whereon I studied, Is like a good thing, being often read, Grown fear'd and tedious; yea, my gravity, Wherein--let no man hear me--I take pride, 10 Could I with boot change for an idle plume, Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form, How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit, Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood: 15 Let's write good angel on the devil's horn; 'Tis not the devil's crest. _Enter a _Servant_._ How now! who's there? _Serv._ One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you. _Ang._ Teach her the way. O heavens! Why does my blood thus muster to my heart, 20 Making both it unable for itself, And dispossessing all my other parts Of necessary fitness? So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons: Come all to help him, and so stop the air 25 By which he should revive: and even so The general, subject to a well-wish'd king, Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love Must needs appear offence. _Enter ISABELLA._ How now, fair maid? 30 _Isab._ I am come to know your pleasure. _Ang._ That you might know it, would much better please me Than to demand what 'tis. Your brother cannot live. _Isab._ Even so.--Heaven keep your honour! _Ang._ Yet may he live awhile; and, it may be, 35 As long as you or I: yet he must die. _Isab._ Under your sentence? _Ang._ Yea. _Isab._ When, I beseech you? that in his reprieve, Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted 40 That his soul sicken not. _Ang._ Ha! fie, these filthy vices! It were as good To pardon him that hath from nature stolen A man already made, as to remit Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven's image 45 In stamps that are forbid: 'tis all as easy Falsely to take away a life true made, As to put metal in restrained means To make a false one. _Isab._ 'Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth. 50 _Ang._ Say you so? then I shall pose you quickly. Which had you rather,--that the most just law Now took your brother's life; or, to redeem him, Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness As she that he hath stain'd? _Isab._ Sir, believe this, 55 I had rather give my body than my soul. _Ang._ I talk not of your soul: our compell'd sins Stand more for number than for accompt. _Isab._ How say you? _Ang._ Nay, I'll not warrant that; for I can speak Against the thing I say. Answer to this:-- 60 I, now the voice of the recorded law, Pronounce a sentence on your brother's life: Might there not be a charity in sin To save this brother's life? _Isab._ Please you to do't, I'll take it as a peril to my soul, 65 It is no sin at all, but charity. _Ang._ Pleased you to do't at peril of your soul, Were equal poise of sin and charity. _Isab._ That I do beg his life, if it be sin, Heaven let me bear it! you granting of my suit, 70 If that be sin, I'll make it my morn prayer To have it added to the faults of mine, And nothing of your answer. _Ang._ Nay, but hear me. Your sense pursues not mine: either you are ignorant, Or seem so, craftily; and that's not good. 75 _Isab._ Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good, But graciously to know I am no better. _Ang._ Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright When it doth tax itself; as these black masks Proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder 80 Than beauty could, display'd. But mark me; To be received plain, I'll speak more gross: Your brother is to die. _Isab._ So. _Ang._ And his offence is so, as it appears, 85 Accountant to the law upon that pain. _Isab._ True. _Ang._ Admit no other way to save his life,-- As I subscribe not that, nor any other, But in the loss of question,--that you, his sister, 90 Finding yourself desired of such a person, Whose credit with the judge, or own great place, Could fetch your brother from the manacles Of the all-building law; and that there were No earthly mean to save him, but that either 95 You must lay down the treasures of your body To this supposed, or else to let him suffer; What would you do? _Isab._ As much for my poor brother as myself: That is, were I under the terms of death, 100 The impression of keen whips I'ld wear as rubies, And strip myself to death, as to a bed That longing have been sick for, ere I'ld yield My body up to shame. _Ang._ Then must your brother die. _Isab._ And 'twere the cheaper way: 105 Better it were a brother died at once, Than that a sister, by redeeming him, Should die for ever. _Ang._ Were not you, then, as cruel as the sentence That you have slander'd so? 110 _Isab._ Ignomy in ransom and free pardon Are of two houses: lawful mercy Is nothing kin to foul redemption. _Ang._ You seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant; And rather proved the sliding of your brother 115 A merriment than a vice. _Isab._ O, pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out, To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean: I something do excuse the thing I hate, For his advantage that I dearly love. 120 _Ang._ We are all frail. _Isab._ Else let my brother die, If not a feodary, but only he Owe and succeed thy weakness. _Ang._ Nay, women are frail too. _Isab._ Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves; 125 Which are as easy broke as they make forms. Women!--Help Heaven! men their creation mar In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail; For we are soft as our complexions are, And credulous to false prints. _Ang._ I think it well: 130 And from this testimony of your own sex,-- Since, I suppose, we are made to be no stronger Than faults may shake our frames,--let me be bold;-- I do arrest your words. Be that you are, That is, a woman; if you be more, you're none; 135 If you be one,--as you are well express'd By all external warrants,--show it now, By putting on the destined livery. _Isab._ I have no tongue but one: gentle my lord, Let me entreat you speak the former language. 140 _Ang._ Plainly conceive, I love you. _Isab._ My brother did love Juliet, And you tell me that he shall die for it. _Ang._ He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love. _Isab._ I know your virtue hath a license in't, 145 Which seems a little fouler than it is, To pluck on others. _Ang._ Believe me, on mine honour, My words express my purpose. _Isab._ Ha! little honour to be much believed, And most pernicious purpose!--Seeming, seeming!-- 150 I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for't: Sign me a present pardon for my brother, Or with an outstretch'd throat I'll tell the world aloud What man thou art. _Ang._ Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoil'd name, the austereness of my life, 155 My vouch against you, and my place i' the state, Will so your accusation overweigh, That you shall stifle in your own report, And smell of calumny. I have begun; And now I give my sensual race the rein: 160 Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite; Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes, That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother By yielding up thy body to my will; Or else he must not only die the death, 165 But thy unkindness shall his death draw out To lingering sufferance. Answer me to-morrow. Or, by the affection that now guides me most, I'll prove a tyrant to him. As for you, Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true. [_Exit._ 170 _Isab._ To whom should I complain? Did I tell this, Who would believe me? O perilous mouths, That bear in them one and the self-same tongue, Either of condemnation or approof; Bidding the law make court'sy to their will; 175 Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite, To follow as it draws! I'll to my brother: Though he hath fall'n by prompture of the blood, Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour, That, had he twenty heads to tender down 180 On twenty bloody blocks, he'ld yield them up, Before his sister should her body stoop To such abhorr'd pollution. Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die: More than our brother is our chastity. 185 I'll tell him yet of Angelo's request, And fit his mind to death, for his soul's rest. [_Exit._ NOTES: II, 4. SCENE IV.] SCENE X. Pope. 2: _empty_] om. Seymour conj. 3: _invention_] _intention_ Pope. 4: _Heaven_] _Heaven's_ Rowe. _Heaven is_ Capell. 5: _his_] _its_ Pope. 9: _fear'd_] _scar'd_ Hanmer. _sear_ Heath conj. _stale_ Anon. conj. See note (IX). 10: _take_] _took_ Seymour conj. 12: _for vain. O place,_] F4. _for vaine. O place,_ F1 F2 F3. _for vane. O place,_ or _for vane o' the place._ Manlone conj. 15: _thou art blood_] _thou art but blood_ Pope. _thou still art blood_ Malone. 17: _'Tis not_] _Is't not_ Hanmer. _'Tis yet_ Johnson conj. 18: _desires_] _asks_ Pope. 21: _both it_] _both that_ Pope. _it both_ Collier MS. 22: _all_] om. Hanmer, who makes lines 19-23 end at _blood, both that, dispossessing, fitness._ 27: _subject_] F1 F2 F3. _subjects_ F4. 28: _part_] _path_ Collier MS. 31: SCENE XI. Pope. 33: _demand_] _declare_ Hanmer. _Your brother_] _He_ Hanmer. 34: _your honour_] _you_ Hanmer. 45: _sweetness_] _lewdness_ Hanmer. 46: _easy_] _just_ Hanmer. 48: _metal_] Theobald. _mettle_ Ff. _means_] _mints_ Steevens conj. _moulds_ Malone conj. 50: _'Tis ... earth_] _'Tis so set down in earth but not in heaven_ Johnson conj. 51: _Say_] _And say_ Pope. _Yea, say_ S. Walker conj. ending lines 50, 51 at _heaven, then I._ 53: _or_] Rowe (after Davenant), _and_ Ff. 58: _for accompt_] _accompt_ Pope. 68: _Were ... charity._] _Were't ... charity?_ Hanmer. _'Twere ... charity._ Seymour conj. 70: _of_] om. Pope. 71: _make it my morn prayer_] _make't my morning prayer_ Hanmer. 73: _your_] _yours_ Johnson conj. 75: _craftily_] Rowe (after Davenant). _crafty_ Ff. 76: _me_] om. F1. 80: _enshield_] _in-shell'd_ Tyrwhitt conj. 81: _mark me_] _mark me well_ Hanmer. 90: _loss_] _loose_ Singer MS. _toss_ Johnson conj. _list_ Heath conj. _force_ Collier MS. 94: _all-building_] Ff. _all-holding_ Rowe. _all-binding_ Johnson. See note (X). 97: _to let_] _let_ Hanmer. 103: _have_] _I've_ Rowe. _I have_ Capell. _had_ Knight. See note (XI). _sick_] _seek_ Johnson (a misprint). 104, 105: Capell (conj.) and Collier end the first line at _must_. 106: _at_] _for_ Johnson conj. 111: _Ignomy in_] _Ignomie in_ F1. _Ignominy in_ F2 F3 F4. _An ignominious_ Pope. 112, 113: _mercy Is nothing kin_] Ff. _mercy sure Is nothing kin_ Pope. _mercy is Nothing akin_ Steevens. See note (XII). 117: _oft_] _very oft_ Hanmer, who ends lines 116, 117 at _me ... have_. 118: _we would_] _we'd_ Steevens. This line printed as two in Ff. 122: _feodary_] F2 F3 F4. _fedarie_ F1. 123: _thy weakness_] _by weakness_ Rowe. _to weakness_ Capell. _this weakness_ Harness (Malone conj.). 126: _make_] _take_ Johnson conj. 127: _their_] _thy_ Edd. conj. 135: _you be_] _you're_ Pope. 140: _former_] _formal_ Warburton. 143: _for it_] Pope. _for't_ Ff. 153: Pope ends the line at _world_. 163: _redeem_] _save_ Pope. 171: _should_] _shall_ Steevens. 172: _perilous_] _most perilous_ Theobald. _these perilous_ Seymour conj. _pernicious_ S. Walker conj. 175: _court'sy_] _curtsie_ Ff. 179: _mind_] _mine_ Jackson conj. 185: Inverted commas prefixed to this line in Ff.

Act 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210418122130/https://www.gradesaver.com/measure-for-measure/study-guide/summary-act-2

Angelo states that he is determined to make people wary of the law again; Escalus thinks that some enforcement of the law is necessary, but warns Angelo against being far too strict and showing no mercy. Escalus laments to see "some contemned by a fault alone," but he doesn't want to struggle against the stubborn Angelo either. Then, a comic scene involving Elbow, the silly constable, Froth, and Pompey the bawd follows. Elbow accuses Froth of being insolent to his good wife; the whole set-up is rather ridiculous, and seems contrived in order to gain a few good laughs. Pompey defends Froth, who is accused of the insult; but Pompey is revealed to be a bawd, in the employ of Mistress Overdone at her brothel. Escalus is exasperated at constable Elbow's show of incompetence, and asks for him to bring a list of able replacements to Escalus at his home. Escalus has decided to aid Angelo now in his pursuit to enforce the law; he still wishes that something could be done about Claudio's situation, but fears that to relent would be to make the law weak again.

Angelo compares the law to a scarecrow, that is useless if it cannot frighten and deter; this metaphor echoes the Duke's appraisal of the law from Act I, in which he said the same thing, about the law being useless if it didn't actually keep people from transgressing. A scarecrow is actually a fitting symbol for the law in Vienna, for if the people are used to ignoring it as they have been doing, it can hardly be of real practical use. Escalus introduces the theme of moderation and mercy, both of which are necessary in a ruler with as much power as Angelo holds. "Let us be keen and rather cut a little, than fall and bruise to death," he tells Angelo. However, the value of mercy is something which Angelo will have to learn; he has no compassion whatever for people's failings, since he acknowledges no failings in himself. "'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, another thing to fall"; Angelo's moralizing is strict and unmerciful, but will later be shown up when he falls to temptation. Then follows the necessary comic relief section, with Elbow's repeated malapropisms providing entertainment. This following section does not relate to the plot at all, but is a break for wordplay and comic, sometimes sexually charged, insinuations. This tangent is informative, however, because it shows Angelo's crackdown on those who deal in prostitution, and how those who deal in this trade, like Pompey, are regarded as being lowly. It also shows Escalus's complicity in Angelo's strictness; for although he believes that Angelo is doing wrong to be so harsh on Claudio, among others, he too is beginning to believe that to let Claudio off would be to condone sin and overindulgence. The Provost goes to talk to Angelo, to plead for Claudio's life since his sin is hardly something unknown to Vienna. Angelo still refuses to relent, and says that Juliet, who is in labor, should go to a more fitting place, away from everything that is going on. Isabella comes to see Angelo, and begins to plead with him for Claudio's life. Angelo seems to be unrelenting, but Lucio urges her to persist. She does, and calls upon Angelo's pity, mercy, and moderation; she recognizes that Angelo has the power to enforce the law in full, but impresses upon him that one must use power with moderation. Angelo calls Juliet a "fornicatress," and this harsh name again recalls the theme of appearance vs. reality. Although Juliet appears from Angelo's quick appraisal to be just a sinful person, her reality is far more complex; she is much better than most women, and her only fault was not securing a marriage contract before she slept with her fiancee. She is actually a woman of strength and principle, not the simple sinner that Angelo reduces her to. Isabella's strategy is a keen one, trying to persuade Angelo to have the same mercy for her brother that she has. Once again, the issue of mercy is urged upon Angelo, as is the theme of human weakness, which all, Isabella stresses, fall victim to. She is very canny, when she has to be; her argument is strong and persuasive, although it is not her argument that causes Angelo to relent, but his attraction to her. Isabella also touches upon the theme of use of power; "it is excellent to have a giant's strength," she tells Angelo, "but it is tyrannous to use it as a giant." Isabella makes an allusion to "Jove" to demonstrate her pointthat even the gods, with tremendous power, know how best to use their awesome abilities. This is another lesson that Angelo must learn; for although he can use the law to its full extent if he wishes, he has to learn how to temper his power with mercy and heed moderation. It is with great irony that Isabella's call to Angelo to mark the weaknesses in his own heart is answered by Angelo's acknowledgement that he is tempted by Isabella. It is this temptation that brings from Angelo his first statement of mercy toward Claudio: "O, let her brother live! Thieves for their robbery have authority when judges steal themselves!" Angelo realizes here that with experience of one's own weakness comes mercy for others' failings; however, he soon ignores this lesson, and falls into hypocrisy. The Duke, disguised as a friar, visits the prison; he asks the provost to show him to the prisoners that he might minister to their sorrows. The Provost mentions Claudio's case, and the Duke inquires of her whether she repents her sin. She says that she does, and the Duke, as the friar, says he will help her heal her shame if she is indeed sorry for her sin. He finds out that Juliet and Claudio are indeed in love, and their decision to sleep with each other was mutual. He tries to soothe her, since Claudio is to die tomorrow, and leaves. Juliet laments that she is about to give birth, but this possibly happy time has turned terrible because of Claudio's impending execution. This brief scene basically allows the Duke to appraise the guilt and the crime of Claudio and Juliet; having learned that they are in love, and that their sin was mutual, might temper his view of their wrongs. Although Claudio and Juliet's crime is actually slight, still they have to repent of whatever sin they did commit. The theme of repentance is presented here, for although it is human to fall and be tempted, one must still recognize one's wrongs and learn from them. Angelo recognizes his lust for Isabella, and the fact that he does have weaknesses just like everyone else. Isabella comes to plead again for her brother's life, as Angelo is taken over by his lust while in her presence. He asks whether Isabella would consider a sin to be good, if it were to help someone else; soon, he asks her hypothetically whether she would give up her virginity in order to save her brother. Isabella vehemently insists that she would not, and that she prizes her virginity over even her brother's life. Angelo is angered, and tells her that either she relents, or her brother dies; Isabella grieves that Angelo's good appearance belies the corruption that seems to have taken him over, but is still resolute that she will not sleep with Angelo to save her brother. Angelo admits that he is being taken over by temptation, another theme of the play, as he considers Isabella and his feelings for her. He is being corrupted by "strong and swelling evil," and will fall even lower as he takes what he initially called feelings of love for Isabella and turns them into something lustful and impure. He has come full circle, in a sense, because he declares "blood, thou art blood"; blood was used as a symbol of temptation and human nature by the Duke, who said that Angelo scarcely admitted that he was flesh and blood, although here, Angelo is clearly seeing otherwise. Angelo's tone, as he recognizes his lust, is almost forlorn and repentant; recognizing his own weakness seems to cause him pain, as he still desires to stay good and resist temptation. He also recognizes the disparity between his flawless reputation and his flawed self: "let's write 'good Angel' on the Devil's horn," he says, as he sees that he too is prone to sin. The paradox tells of Angelo's guilt, and again of his reluctance to indulge it. However, by the end of this scene, he is resolute in his insistence that either Isabella sleep with him, or her brother dies. While at the beginning of this scene he is merely considering his temptation, by the end he has completely given into it; the temptation that Isabella symbolizes to him ensures his swift fall from grace, and into hypocrisy. Angelo introduces the proposition of Isabella sleeping with him in return for her brother's life in an almost abstract manner; but, as he grows more bold, he repeats this offer a few times, in increasingly lucid terms. Angelo tries to argue that doing a sin that helps someone is tantamount to "charity"; this is a viable issue, and perhaps it is true, but not in this blackmail situation. Isabella reveals the extent of her piety and her pride in this encounter; she says she would rather "th' impression of keen whips wear as rubies" than give up her chastity. Then, she shows just how stubborn and unrealistically chaste she is. In response to Angelo's hypothetically posed question about whether it would be better for her to give up her chastity or for her brother to die, she answers, "better it were a brother died at once, than that a sister, by redeeming him, should die forever." The fact that Isabella prizes her virginity over her brother's life shows how selfish she is, and how overly pious she is too. Isabella definitely needs to reappraise her ridiculous overvaluing of her virginity, although Angelo's insistence that she " on the destined livery" of sexual submissiveness is also off the mark. The theme of gender roles comes into question, as women in the play have less power than men, and are expected to be subservient in some sense. Here, Angelo is using his power to try and force Isabella into an inferior position, which Isabella, with her strength and intellect, will have to try and avoid. Isabella notes the divide between appearance and reality, as Angelo seemed to be a good man but is clearly very corrupt by this point.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/23045-chapters/act_4.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Measure for Measure/section_3_part_0.txt

Measure for Measure.act 4.scene 1-scene 6

act 4

{"name": "Act 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210418122130/https://www.gradesaver.com/measure-for-measure/study-guide/summary-act-4", "summary": "The Duke finds Mariana, and exchanges a few cursory words with her. Isabella enters as Mariana leaves, to tell the Duke that she has agreed to Angelo's plan, and describes the place of meeting. Isabella said that she told Angelo she could only stay briefly, and that she would be bringing a servant with her, which means she can bring Mariana without suspicion. Isabella has a word with Mariana, and Mariana agrees to go with the plan, provided the \"friar\" agrees, which he does. The Duke still has to assure her that she is doing no sin, because she is only fulfilling the contract she had with Angelo some time ago.", "analysis": "Isabella's description of the place where she is to meet Angelo shows that she is resigned to this plan that the Duke has made, and that the significance of this exchange is completely clear to her. She tells of the place she is to meet Angelo: \"he has a garden circummured with brick, whose western side is with a vineyard backed\". The images are heavy with darkness and concealment, of concern to Isabella since they will hide this plan and her visit from others. She speaks with sadness almost about the \"heavy middle of the night,\" as if she actually had to sleep with Angelo; her pride has obviously been wounded by agreeing to this exchange, even if she does not have to act upon it. The Duke's words also betray feelings of solemnity about this plan; his description of \"millions of false eyes\" convey his nervousness at this risky plan, and that if it does not work and is exposed, it will certainly cause him grief. He wishes there were some other way, as he knows that this plan will have heavy consequences, and if it backfires, his reputation and Claudio's life, among other things, will be at risk. When he reassures Mariana about the plan not being sinful, it seems that he is convincing himself as well; the Duke is a conscientious man, and could not in good faith trick a woman into committing an unpalatable act even if that meant saving a life. The Provost asks Pompey whether he could cut off a man's head, and of course Pompey, being a clown, answers humorously. The Provost needs an assistant for the executioner since both Barnardine and Claudio are to die the next day; if Pompey agrees to do the service, the Provost says that Pompey's crimes will be forgiven. Pompey agrees, and is introduced to Abhorson, the resident executioner. Abhorson doesn't want to take him as an assistant since Pompey is a bawd, but has little choice. A comic scene follows, as all scenes involving Pompey the clown must turn comic somehow. The Provost goes to Claudio, showing him the warrant for his death. Claudio's cellmate, Barnardine, who is also to be executed, is lazy and sleeping, Claudio tells him. The Duke enters, still dressed as a friar, and says there is some hope for Claudio yet. A message comes from Angelo, and the Duke is convinced that it is a pardon; but it is an order to go ahead with Claudio's execution, despite whatever orders to the contrary from other sources. All is not resolved as Angelo promised or as the Duke hoped; they will still have to struggle to get Claudio freed and pardoned. The Duke asks the Provost to help him with Angelo; he wants the Provost to send Angelo the head of Barnardine, and say it is Claudio's, so that the Duke can have a few more days to try and save Claudio. The Provost is unwilling to deceive Angelo so plainly, but the Duke conveniently produces a letter from the absent Duke, and tells the Provost that his help will secure justice for Claudio. The Duke's defense of Angelo might seem out of place since the Duke already knows otherwise of Angelo, but it shows that the Duke is not yet prepared to expose Angelo and his sins. It is ironic that the Duke would declare, in the guise of an honest friar, that Angelo is \"just,\" when he and others know this to be falsehood. Just as the Duke was incorrect in his initial appraisal of Angelo's ability to rule, here he is similarly wrong in his belief that \"when vice makes mercy, mercy's so extended\". The Duke tends to appraise Angelo's character too kindly, and believe that Angelo actually knows mercy, which he has not shown to this point. However, the Duke is clearly a very canny character; he has no intention of giving in while Angelo has not delivered on his promise, and wants to teach Angelo something about mercy, a theme running through the entire play. Again, the Duke uses his canny logic and persuasive skills to gain complicity for his plots. He is able to extract mercy from the Provost, though Angelo unfortunately cannot be similarly moved. Also, he uses the Provost's loyalty to the Duke to justify this deception. Hopefully, the Duke's well-intentioned plans will come to good use, and not backfire on him. Pompey the clown enters, to provide a bit of running commentary on things in the prison. He finds that many that used to frequent Mistress Overdone's brothel are locked up in jail, so he almost feels at home with all the people of poor morals and such. Barnardine is called forward to be executed, and tries to shrug the officers off by saying that he is tired. Abhorson and Pompey fetch him out, and the Duke tries to counsel him. Barnardine insists he will not die that day, since he is too tired and too drunk to want to. The Duke says that to execute Barnardine then, with his soul completely unprepared, would be a terrible thing; luckily, a man in the prison died the night before, so they can use his head to send to Angelo rather than Barnardine's. Isabella comes to the jail, to see if her brother's pardon came through as it was supposed to. The Duke tells her that her brother was executed, so that she will be happier when she finds out the truth later. Now, he is willfully keeping her in ignorance, a move that will keep him in control of the game, but seems more self-serving than beneficial. The Duke tells Isabella not to be sad, since the Duke will be back tomorrow, to take power back from Angelo; he says that the Duke will make things right and ensure that justice happens, and Isabella says she will try to suppress her grief. Lucio enters, and expresses his condolences; he says that if the Duke were presiding over Claudio's case, Claudio certainly would have been allowed to live. Lucio then offers to tell more about the Duke, and offers up that he once got away with getting a woman pregnant when the Duke was there. They exit together. Again, the Duke is forced to do even more improvisation, as plans go awry; but, fate is obviously on his side, since the man who died looks like Claudio, so his head given to Angelo will seem more convincing. The Duke here seems like he means to be the manipulator of the action, and is doing things with a plain purpose in mind; the fact that he decides to tell Isabella that her brother is dead, so that she can be happier later, serves no purposes but the Duke's hidden ones. Rather than trying to make things right, here he is deciding what outcome he wants, and is manipulating what people find out in order to produce these results. Through these self-serving machinations, the Duke appears less benevolent, and more like a control addict. The Duke tells Isabella \"trust not my holy order if I pervert your course\"; this is meant to comfort Isabella, but represents a big license on the Duke's part. Throughout the play, he has used his disguise as a friar to gain people's trust and complicity in his plans; here, he plays on Isabella's trust in the clergy to get her to go along with his plan. It is all well and good that the Duke is doing most of this for the benefit of Claudio, but he is assuming liberties and roles that are not his and that he knows nothing of. It seems almost like an abuse of the priesthood for a man in a friar's disguise to be allowed to assume the duties, status, and respect that go along with the office merely for wearing the clothes. The Duke, in his pretending to be an actual friar and assuming all the rights and responsibilities that go along with it, might be going too far in his do-gooding. Lucio's confession that he once denied getting a woman pregnant means that he probably does not know he is talking to the Dukeotherwise, why would he risk being caught and tried for the same offense again? It is about time that the Duke revealed himself, and abandoned the many privileges he has enjoyed by being disguised. Escalus and Angelo receive notice of the Duke's return; they also note how each letter the Duke has sent them has contradicted any other, which makes them fear that he is somehow mad. Angelo thinks it would be a good idea to announce that any who have grievances can meet at the place where they are to receive the Duke back into the city; Angelo thinks this will protect him from any legal actions, in case there are any issues that have not yet been dealt with. However, Angelo also knows that this might give Isabella a forum in which to tell of Angelo's wickedness and her deal with him. He believes that she will not accuse him, because she would be shamed by saying that Angelo took her virginity. Angelo also says that he should have let Claudio live, since his offense was not that bad after all, but that sometimes he has to do what he would rather not do. Escalus and Angelo's suspicion about the Duke's ruse shows that the Duke's time is running short; from his notes, they can already see that either he is not being honest, or he is being flagrantly contradictory in his letters. Angelo's use of the Duke's entrance to have an airing of grievances shows that he is very canny; he would not take responsibility himself for things he can easily weasel out of. Angelo is finally realizing what the potential consequences of his deeds might be; at last, he is showing remorse. He also sees the irony of his situation, that he is supposed to enforce the law, yet it was he who broke it with his treatment of Isabella. But, he still believes in the power of his reputation to shield him from accusation, another theme of the play. Angelo is overconfident, however; he may think that he is too highly regarded to be exposed, but he is also widely disliked, which works against him. Angelo repents here of giving Claudio a death sentence, showing that he is not merciful in deed, but that he does have better judgment than he has shown throughout the play. Angelo excuses himself, however, by saying that having power means that he has to do things that he would rather not do. He has still not learned how to govern with moderation, even if he is closer to understanding the need for mercy in a ruler. The Duke is telling Friar Peter to keep the letters he is giving him, and to follow the plans that the Duke has laid out; the Duke also says that the Provost will play along, and knows what he is to do as well. He has the Friar call a few men of the city together for his return, and then continues his preparations. Here, we get a glimpse of the Duke as a kind of director of the play; he tells people what parts to do and how, has orchestrated a complicated set-up to achieve the end results that he desires. The theme of manipulation comes to the fore, as we begin to realize how much of the action of the play has been driven or made by the Duke. The Duke, although he seems benevolent and fair when compared with Angelo, is actually not quite as good as he seems; he is secretive, conniving, and manipulates people shamelessly, even if it is toward good ends. Isabella and Mariana are getting ready to play their part in the Duke's plan. Isabella has to accuse Angelo with Mariana by her, though she would rather not be so bold; she also says that the Duke warned her that he might not take her side at the beginning, which worries her. Friar Peter enters, and bids them come to the gates since the Duke is about to come in. Many citizens are gathered, and it is time to play their parts in this thing that the Duke has constructed for them. \"'Tis a physic that's bitter to sweet end\": this seems to be the Duke's philosophy regarding how he is handling this entire situation, and also it tells of the overall course of the play. So far, this play has not been a comedy; many of the characters, like Claudio and Isabella, have been put in very trying situations, and subjected to a great deal of unfairness. People have died, nearly escaped execution, and had to evade blackmail; yet, the play will work its way to a supposedly neat, happy ending, as is the convention of Elizabethan comedies."}

ACT IV. SCENE I. _The moated grange at ST LUKE'S._ _Enter MARIANA and a BOY._ _BOY sings._ Take, O, take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn; And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn: But my kisses bring again, bring again; 5 Seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in vain. _Mari._ Break off thy song, and haste thee quick away: Here comes a man of comfort, whose advice Hath often still'd my brawling discontent. [_Exit Boy._ _Enter DUKE disguised as before._ I cry you mercy, sir; and well could wish 10 You had not found me here so musical: Let me excuse me, and believe me so, My mirth it much displeased, but pleased my woe. _Duke._ 'Tis good; though music oft hath such a charm To make bad good, and good provoke to harm. 15 I pray you, tell me, hath any body inquired for me here to-day? much upon this time have I promised here to meet. _Mari._ You have not been inquired after: I have sat here all day. _Enter ISABELLA._ _Duke._ I do constantly believe you. The time is come 20 even now. I shall crave your forbearance a little: may be I will call upon you anon, for some advantage to yourself. _Mari._ I am always bound to you. [_Exit._ _Duke._ Very well met, and well come. What is the news from this good Deputy? 25 _Isab._ He hath a garden circummured with brick, Whose western side is with a vineyard back'd; And to that vineyard is a planched gate, That makes his opening with this bigger key: This other doth command a little door 30 Which from the vineyard to the garden leads; There have I made my promise Upon the heavy middle of the night To call upon him. _Duke._ But shall you on your knowledge find this way? 35 _Isab._ I have ta'en a due and wary note upon't: With whispering and most guilty diligence, In action all of precept, he did show me The way twice o'er. _Duke._ Are there no other tokens Between you 'greed concerning her observance? 40 _Isab._ No, none, but only a repair i' the dark; And that I have possess'd him my most stay Can be but brief; for I have made him know I have a servant comes with me along, That stays upon me, whose persuasion is 45 I come about my brother. _Duke._ 'Tis well borne up. I have not yet made known to Mariana A word of this. What, ho! within! come forth! _Re-enter MARIANA._ I pray you, be acquainted with this maid; She comes to do you good. _Isab._ I do desire the like. 50 _Duke._ Do you persuade yourself that I respect you? _Mari._ Good friar, I know you do, and have found it. _Duke._ Take, then, this your companion by the hand, Who hath a story ready for your ear. I shall attend your leisure: but make haste; 55 The vaporous night approaches. _Mari._ Will't please you walk aside? [_Exeunt Mariana and Isabella._ _Duke._ O place and greatness, millions of false eyes Are stuck upon thee! volumes of report Run with these false and most contrarious quests 60 Upon thy doings! thousand escapes of wit Make thee the father of their idle dreams, And rack thee in their fancies! _Re-enter MARIANA and ISABELLA._ Welcome, how agreed? _Isab._ She'll take the enterprise upon her, father, If you advise it. _Duke._ It is not my consent, 65 But my entreaty too. _Isab._ Little have you to say When you depart from him, but, soft and low, 'Remember now my brother.' _Mari._ Fear me not. _Duke._ Nor, gentle daughter, fear you not at all. He is your husband on a pre-contract: 70 To bring you thus together, 'tis no sin, Sith that the justice of your title to him Doth flourish the deceit. Come, let us go: Our corn's to reap, for yet our tithe's to sow. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: IV, 1. SCENE I. Enter M.] Ff. M. discovered sitting. Steevens. 5, 6: F4 omits the refrain in l. 6. Rowe omits it in both lines. 6: _but_] _though_ Fletcher's version. 13: _it_] _is_ Warburton. 17: _meet_] _meet one_ Hanmer. 19: Enter I.] Transferred by Singer to line 23. 24: SCENE II. Pope. _well come_] Ff. _welcome_ Warburton. 32, 33, 34: _There have I made my promise Upon the heavy middle of the night To call upon him._] S. Walker conj. _There have I made my promise, upon the Heavy middle of the night to call upon him._ Ff. _There on the heavy middle of the night Have I my promise made to call upon him._ Pope. _There have I made my promise to call on him Upon the heavy middle of the night._ Capell. _There have I made my promise in the heavy Middle...._ Singer. _There have I made my promise on the heavy Middle...._ Dyce. Delius and Staunton read with Ff. but print as prose. 38: _action all of precept_] _precept of all action_ Johnson conj. 49: SCENE III. Pope. 52: _have_] _I have_ Pope. 58-63: _O place ... fancies_] These lines to precede III. 2. 178. Warburton conj. 60: _these_] _their_ Hanmer. _base_ Collier MS. _quests_] _quest_ F1. 61: _escapes_] _'scapes_ Pope. 62: _their idle dreams_] Pope. _their idle dreame_ Ff. _an idle dream_ Rowe. 63: _Welcome, how agreed?_] _Well! agreed?_ Hanmer. SCENE IV. Pope. 65: _It is_] _'Tis_ Pope. 74: _tithe's_] _Tithes_ F1 F2 F3. _Tythes_ F4. _tilth's_ Hanmer (Warburton). _Our ... sow_] _Our tythe's to reap, for yet our corn's to sow_ Capell conj. MS. SCENE II. _A room in the prison._ _Enter PROVOST and POMPEY._ _Prov._ Come hither, sirrah. Can you cut off a man's head? _Pom._ If the man be a bachelor, sir, I can; but if he be a married man, he's his wife's head, and I can never cut off a woman's head. _Prov._ Come, sir, leave me your snatches, and yield me 5 a direct answer. To-morrow morning are to die Claudio and Barnardine. Here is in our prison a common executioner, who in his office lacks a helper: if you will take it on you to assist him, it shall redeem you from your gyves; if not, you shall have your full time of imprisonment, and 10 your deliverance with an unpitied whipping, for you have been a notorious bawd. _Pom._ Sir, I have been an unlawful bawd time out of mind; but yet I will be content to be a lawful hangman. I would be glad to receive some instruction from my fellow 15 partner. _Prov._ What, ho! Abhorson! Where's Abhorson, there? _Enter ABHORSON._ _Abhor._ Do you call, sir? _Prov._ Sirrah, here's a fellow will help you to-morrow in your execution. If you think it meet, compound with 20 him by the year, and let him abide here with you; if not, use him for the present, and dismiss him. He cannot plead his estimation with you; he hath been a bawd. _Abhor._ A bawd, sir? fie upon him! he will discredit our mystery. 25 _Prov._ Go to, sir; you weigh equally; a feather will turn the scale. [_Exit._ _Pom._ Pray, sir, by your good favour,--for surely, sir, a good favour you have, but that you have a hanging look,-- do you call, sir, your occupation a mystery? 30 _Abhor._ Ay, sir; a mystery. _Pom._ Painting, sir, I have heard say, is a mystery; and your whores, sir, being members of my occupation, using painting, do prove my occupation a mystery: but what mystery there should be in hanging, if I should be 35 hanged, I cannot imagine. _Abhor._ Sir, it is a mystery. _Pom._ Proof? _Abhor._ Every true man's apparel fits your thief: if it be too little for your thief, your true man thinks it big 40 enough; if it be too big for your thief, your thief thinks it little enough: so every true man's apparel fits your thief. _Re-enter PROVOST._ _Prov._ Are you agreed? _Pom._ Sir, I will serve him; for I do find your hangman is a more penitent trade than your bawd; he doth 45 oftener ask forgiveness. _Prov._ You, sirrah, provide your block and your axe to-morrow four o'clock. _Abhor._ Come on, bawd; I will instruct thee in my trade; follow. 50 _Pom._ I do desire to learn, sir: and I hope, if you have occasion to use me for your own turn, you shall find me yare; for, truly, sir, for your kindness I owe you a good turn. _Prov._ Call hither Barnardine and Claudio: [_Exeunt Pompey and Abhorson._ 55 The one has my pity; not a jot the other, Being a murderer, though he were my brother. _Enter CLAUDIO._ Look, here's the warrant, Claudio, for thy death: 'Tis now dead midnight, and by eight to-morrow Thou must be made immortal. Where's Barnardine? 60 _Claud._ As fast lock'd up in sleep as guiltless labour When it lies starkly in the traveller's bones: He will not wake. _Prov._ Who can do good on him? Well, go, prepare yourself. [_Knocking within._] But, hark, what noise?-- Heaven give your spirits comfort! [_Exit Clandio._] By and by.-- 65 I hope it is some pardon or reprieve For the most gentle Claudio. _Enter DUKE disguised as before._ Welcome, father. _Duke._ The best and wholesomest spirits of the night Envelop you, good Provost! Who call'd here of late? _Prov._ None, since the curfew rung. 70 _Duke._ Not Isabel? _Prov._ No. _Duke._ They will, then, ere't be long. _Prov._ What comfort is for Claudio? _Duke._ There's some in hope. _Prov._ It is a bitter Deputy. _Duke._ Not so, not so; his life is parallel'd 75 Even with the stroke and line of his great justice: He doth with holy abstinence subdue That in himself which he spurs on his power To qualify in others: were he meal'd with that Which he corrects, then were he tyrannous; 80 But this being so, he's just. [_Knocking within._ Now are they come. [_Exit Provost._ This is a gentle provost: seldom when The steeled gaoler is the friend of men. [_Knocking within._ How now! what noise? That spirit's possessed with haste That wounds the unsisting postern with these strokes. 85 _Re-enter PROVOST._ _Prov._ There he must stay until the officer Arise to let him in: he is call'd up. _Duke._ Have you no countermand for Claudio yet, But he must die to-morrow? _Prov._ None, sir, none. _Duke._ As near the dawning, provost, as it is, 90 You shall hear more ere morning. _Prov._ Happily You something know; yet I believe there comes No countermand; no such example have we: Besides, upon the very siege of justice Lord Angelo hath to the public ear 95 Profess'd the contrary. _Enter a MESSENGER._ This is his lordship's man. _Duke._ And here comes Claudio's pardon. _Mes._ [_Giving a paper_] My lord hath sent you this note; and by me this further charge, that you swerve not from the smallest article of it, neither in time, matter, or other circumstance. 100 Good morrow; for, as I take it, it is almost day. _Prov._ I shall obey him. [_Exit Messenger._ _Duke._ [_Aside_] This is his pardon, purchased by such sin For which the pardoner himself is in. Hence hath offence his quick celerity, 105 When it is borne in high authority: When vice makes mercy, mercy's so extended, That for the fault's love is the offender friended. Now, sir, what news? _Prov._ I told you. Lord Angelo, belike thinking me remiss 110 in mine office, awakens me with this unwonted putting-on; methinks strangely, for he hath not used it before. _Duke._ Pray you, let's hear. [Transcriber's Note: In order to preserve the marked line breaks without losing readability, each line of the quoted message has been split into two equal halves.] _Prov._ [_Reads_] Whatsoever you may hear to the contrary, let Claudio be executed by four of the clock; and in the afternoon Barnardine: for my 115 better satisfaction, let me have Claudio's head sent me by five. Let this be duly performed; with a thought that more depends on it than we must yet deliver. Thus fail not to do your office, as you will answer it at your peril. What say you to this, sir? 120 _Duke._ What is that Barnardine who is to be executed in the afternoon? _Prov._ A Bohemian born, but here nursed up and bred; one that is a prisoner nine years old. _Duke._ How came it that the absent Duke had not 125 either delivered him to his liberty or executed him? I have heard it was ever his manner to do so. _Prov._ His friends still wrought reprieves for him: and, indeed, his fact, till now in the government of Lord Angclo, came not to an undoubtful proof. 130 _Duke._ It is now apparent? _Prov._ Most manifest, and not denied by himself. _Duke._ Hath he borne himself penitently in prison? how seems he to be touched? _Prov._ A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully 135 but as a drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless of what's past, present, or to come; insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal. _Duke._ He wants advice. _Prov._ He will hear none: he hath evermore had the 140 liberty of the prison; give him leave to escape hence, he would not: drunk many times a day, if not many days entirely drunk. We have very oft awaked him, as if to carry him to execution, and showed him a seeming warrant for it: it hath not moved him at all. 145 _Duke._ More of him anon. There is written in your brow, provost, honesty and constancy: if I read it not truly, my ancient skill beguiles me; but, in the boldness of my cunning, I will lay my self in hazard. Claudio, whom here you have warrant to execute, is no greater forfeit to the 150 law than Angelo who hath sentenced him. To make you understand this in a manifested effect, I crave but four days' respite; for the which you are to do me both a present and a dangerous courtesy. _Prov._ Pray, sir, in what? 155 _Duke._ In the delaying death. _Prov._ Alack, how may I do it, having the hour limited, and an express command, under penalty, to deliver his head in the view of Angelo? I may make my case as Claudio's, to cross this in the smallest. 160 _Duke._ By the vow of mine order I warrant you, if my instructions may be your guide. Let this Barnardine be this morning executed, and his head borne to Angelo. _Prov._ Angelo hath seen them both, and will discover the favour. 165 _Duke._ O, death's a great disguiser; and you may add to it. Shave the head, and tie the beard; and say it was the desire of the penitent to be so bared before his death: you know the course is common. If any thing fall to you upon this, more than thanks and good fortune, by the Saint 170 whom I profess, I will plead against it with my life. _Prov._ Pardon me, good father; it is against my oath. _Duke._ Were you sworn to the Duke, or to the Deputy? _Prov._ To him, and to his substitutes. _Duke._ You will think you have made no offence, if the 175 Duke avouch the justice of your dealing? _Prov._ But what likelihood is in that? _Duke._ Not a resemblance, but a certainty. Yet since I see you fearful, that neither my coat, integrity, nor persuasion can with ease attempt you, I will go further than I 180 meant, to pluck all fears out of you. Look you, sir, here is the hand and seal of the Duke: you know the character, I doubt not; and the signet is not strange to you. _Prov._ I know them both. _Duke._ The contents of this is the return of the Duke: 185 you shall anon over-read it at your pleasure; where you shall find, within these two days he will be here. This is a thing that Angelo knows not; for he this very day receives letters of strange tenour; perchance of the Duke's death; perchance entering into some monastery; but, by 190 chance, nothing of what is writ. Look, the unfolding star calls up the shepherd. Put not yourself into amazement how these things should be: all difficulties are but easy when they are known. Call your executioner, and off with Barnardine's head: I will give him a present shrift and 195 advise him for a better place. Yet you are amazed; but this shall absolutely resolve you. Come away; it is almost clear dawn. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: IV, 2. SCENE II.] SCENE V. Pope. 2-4: Printed as verse in Ff. 37-42: Abhor. _Sir,.......thief_] Abhor. ***Clown.*** _Sir, it is a mystery._ Abhor. _Proof.--_ Clown. _Every ... thief_ (42) Hanmer. Pom. _Proof ... thief_ (42) Lloyd conj. 39-42: _Every......thief_] Capell. Abh. _Every....thief_ (39). Clo. _If it be ... thief_ (41) Ff. Abh. _Every ... thief, Clown: if it be......thief_ (42) Theobald. 45: _your_] _you_ F2. 53: _yare_] Theobald. _y'are_ Ff. _yours_ Rowe. 56: _The one_] _Th' one_ Ff. _One_ Hamner. 58: SCENE VI. Pope. 63: _He will not wake_] F1 F2. _He will not awake_ F3 F4. _He'll not awake_ Pope. 64: _yourself_] _yourself_ [Ex. Claudio.] Theobald. 65: _comfort!_ [Exit Claudio.] _By and by.--_] Capell. _comfort: by and by,_ Ff. 70: _None_] F1. _Now_ F2 F3 F4. 71: _They_] _She_ Hawkins conj. _There_ Collier MS. 85: _unsisting_] F1 F2 F3. _insisting_ F4. _unresisting_ Rowe. _unresting_ Hanmer. _unshifting_ Capell. _unlist'ning_ Steevens conj. _resisting_ Collier conj. _unlisting_ Mason conj. _unfeeling_ Johnson conj. _unwisting_ Singer. 86: ....Provost] ....Provost, speaking to one at the door, after which he comes forward. Capell. 91: _Happily_] _Happely_ F1 F2. _Happily_ F3 F4. See note (XVIII). 96: SCENE VII. Pope. _lordship's_] Pope. _lords_ Ff. om. Capell. 96, 97: _This ... man._ Duke. _And ... pardon_] Knight (Tyrwhitt conj.). Duke. _This ... man._ Pro. _And ... pardon_ Ff. 98-101: Printed as verse in Ff. 113: _you_] om. F4. 114: Prov. [Reads] Rowe. The letter. Ff. 117: _duly_] _truly_ Capell (a misprint). 131: _It is_] Ff. _Is it_ Pope. 136: _reckless_] Theobald. _wreaklesse_ F1 F2 F3. _wreakless_ F4. _rechless_ Pope. 138: _desperately mortal_] _mortally desperate_ Hanmer. 161-165: Printed as verse in Ff. Rowe. 167: _tie_] F1 F4. _tye_ F2 F3. _tire_ Theobald conj. _dye_ Simpson conj. 168: _bared_] Malone. _bar'de_ F1 F2 F3. _barb'd_ F4. 179: _persuasion_] Ff. _my persuasion_ Rowe. 188: _that_] F1 F2 F3. _which_ F4. 191: _writ_] _here writ_ Hanmer. SCENE III. _Another room in the same._ _Enter POMPEY._ _Pom._ I am as well acquainted here as I was in our house of profession: one would think it were Mistress Overdone's own house, for here be many of her old customers. First, here's young Master Rash; he's in for a commodity of brown paper and old ginger, nine-score and seventeen 5 pounds; of which he made five marks, ready money: marry, then ginger was not much in request, for the old women were all dead. Then is there here one Master Caper, at the suit of Master Three-pile the mercer, for some four suits of peach-coloured satin, which now peaches him a 10 beggar. Then have we here young Dizy, and young Master Deep-vow, and Master Copper-spur, and Master Starve-lackey the rapier and dagger man, and young Drop-heir that killed lusty Pudding, and Master Forthlight the tilter, and brave Master Shooty the great traveller, and 15 wild Half-can that stabbed Pots, and, I think, forty more; all great doers in our trade, and are now 'for the Lord's sake.' _Enter ABHORSON._ _Abhor._ Sirrah, bring Barnardine hither. _Pom._ Master Barnardine! you must rise and be hanged, 20 Master Barnardine! _Abhor._ What, ho, Barnardine! _Bar._ [_Within_] A pox o' your throats! Who makes that noise there? What are you? _Pom._ Your friends, sir; the hangman. You must be 25 so good, sir, to rise and be put to death. _Bar._ [_Within_] Away, you rogue, away! I am sleepy. _Abhor._ Tell him he must awake, and that quickly too. _Pom._ Pray, Master Barnardine, awake till you are executed, and sleep afterwards. 30 _Abhor._ Go in to him, and fetch him out. _Pom._ He is coming, sir, he is coming; I hear his straw rustle. _Abhor._ Is the axe upon the block, sirrah? _Pom._ Very ready, sir. 35 _Enter BARNARDINE._ _Bar._ How now, Abhorson? what's the news with you? _Abhor._ Truly, sir, I would desire you to clap into your prayers; for, look you, the warrant's come. _Bar._ You rogue, I have been drinking all night; I am not fitted for 't. 40 _Pom._ O, the better, sir; for he that drinks all night, and is hanged betimes in the morning, may sleep the sounder all the next day. _Abhor._ Look you, sir; here comes your ghostly father: do we jest now, think you? 45 _Enter DUKE disguised as before._ _Duke._ Sir, induced by my charity, and hearing how hastily you are to depart, I am come to advise you, comfort you and pray with you. _Bar._ Friar, not I: I have been drinking hard all night, and I will have more time to prepare me, or they shall beat 50 out my brains with billets: I will not consent to die this day, that's certain. _Duke._ O, sir, you must: and therefore I beseech you Look forward on the journey you shall go. _Bar._ I swear I will not die to-day for any man's persuasion. 55 _Duke._ But hear you. _Bar._ Not a word: if you have any thing to say to me, come to my ward; for thence will not I to-day. [_Exit._ _Duke._ Unfit to live or die: O gravel heart! 60 After him, fellows; bring him to the block. [_Exeunt Abhorson and Pompey._ _Re-enter PROVOST._ _Prov._ Now, sir, how do you find the prisoner? _Duke._ A creature unprepared, unmeet for death; And to transport him in the mind he is Were damnable. _Prov._ Here in the prison, father, 65 There died this morning of a cruel fever One Ragozine, a most notorious pirate, A man of Claudio's years; his beard and head Just of his colour. What if we do omit This reprobate till he were well inclined; 70 And satisfy the Deputy with the visage Of Ragozine, more like to Claudio? _Duke._ O, 'tis an accident that heaven provides! Dispatch it presently; the hour draws on Prefix'd by Angelo: see this be done, 75 And sent according to command; whiles I Persuade this rude wretch willingly to die. _Prov._ This shall be done, good father, presently. But Barnardine must die this afternoon: And how shall we continue Claudio, 80 To save me from the danger that might come If he were known alive? _Duke._ Let this be done. Put them in secret holds, both Barnardine and Claudio: Ere twice the sun hath made his journal greeting To the under generation, you shall find 85 Your safety manifested. _Prov._ I am your free dependant. _Duke._ Quick, dispatch, and send the head to Angelo. [_Exit Provost._ Now will I write letters to Angelo,-- The provost, he shall bear them,--whose contents 90 Shall witness to him I am near at home, And that, by great injunctions, I am bound To enter publicly: him I'll desire To meet me at the consecrated fount, A league below the city; and from thence, 95 By cold gradation and well-balanced form, We shall proceed with Angelo. _Re-enter PROVOST._ _Prov._ Here is the head; I'll carry it myself. _Duke._ Convenient is it. Make a swift return; For I would commune with you of such things 100 That want no ear but yours. _Prov._ I'll make all speed. [_Exit._ _Isab._ [_Within_] Peace, ho, be here! _Duke._ The tongue of Isabel. She's come to know If yet her brother's pardon be come hither: But I will keep her ignorant of her good, 105 To make her heavenly comforts of despair, When it is least expected. _Enter ISABELLA._ _Isab._ Ho, by your leave! _Duke._ Good morning to you, fair and gracious daughter. _Isab._ The better, given me by so holy a man. Hath yet the Deputy sent my brother's pardon? 110 _Duke._ He hath released him, Isabel, from the world: His head is off, and sent to Angelo. _Isab._ Nay, but it is not so. _Duke._ It is no other: show your wisdom, daughter, In your close patience. 115 _Isab._ O, I will to him and pluck out his eyes! _Duke._ You shall not be admitted to his sight. _Isab._ Unhappy Claudio! wretched Isabel! Injurious world! most damned Angelo! _Duke._ This nor hurts him nor profits you a jot; 120 Forbear it therefore; give your cause to heaven. Mark what I say, which you shall find By every syllable a faithful verity: The Duke comes home to-morrow;--nay, dry your eyes; One of our covent, and his confessor, 125 Gives me this instance: already he hath carried Notice to Escalus and Angelo; Who do prepare to meet him at the gates, There to give up their power. If you can, pace your wisdom In that good path that I would wish it go; 130 And you shall have your bosom on this wretch, Grace of the Duke, revenges to your heart, And general honour. _Isab._ I am directed by you. _Duke._ This letter, then, to Friar Peter give; 'Tis that he sent me of the Duke's return: 135 Say, by this token, I desire his company At Mariana's house to-night. Her cause and yours I'll perfect him withal; and he shall bring you Before the Duke; and to the head of Angelo Accuse him home and home. For my poor self, 140 I am combined by a sacred vow, And shall be absent. Wend you with this letter: Command these fretting waters from your eyes With a light heart; trust not my holy order, If I pervert your course.--Who's here? 145 _Enter LUCIO._ _Lucio._ Good even. Friar, where's the provost? _Duke._ Not within, sir. _Lucio._ O pretty Isabella, I am pale at mine heart to see thine eyes so red: thou must be patient. I am fain to dine and sup with water and bran; I dare not for my 150 head fill my belly; one fruitful meal would set me to't. But they say the Duke will be here to-morrow. By my troth, Isabel, I loved thy brother: if the old fantastical Duke of dark corners had been at home, he had lived. [_Exit Isabella._ _Duke._ Sir, the Duke is marvellous little beholding to 155 your reports; but the best is, he lives not in them. _Lucio._ Friar, thou knowest not the Duke so well as I do: he's a better woodman than thou takest him for. _Duke._ Well, you'll answer this one day. Fare ye well. _Lucio._ Nay, tarry; I'll go along with thee: I can tell 160 thee pretty tales of the Duke. _Duke._ You have told me too many of him already, sir, if they be true; if not true, none were enough. _Lucio._ I was once before him for getting a wench with child. 165 _Duke._ Did you such a thing? _Lucio._ Yes, marry, did I: but I was fain to forswear it; they would else have married me to the rotten medlar. _Duke._ Sir, your company is fairer than honest. Rest you well. 170 _Lucio._ By my troth, I'll go with thee to the lane's end: if bawdy talk offend you, we'll have very little of it. Nay, friar, I am a kind of burr; I shall stick. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: IV, 3. SCENE III.] SCENE VIII. Pope. 5: _paper_] _pepper_ Rowe. 11: _Dizy_] F2 F3 F4. _Dizie_ F1. _Dizzy_ Pope. _Dicey_ Steevens conj. 14: _Forthlight_] Ff. _Forthright_ Warburton. 15: _Shooty_] F2 F3 F4. _Shootie_ F1. _Shooter_ Warburton. _Shoo-tye_ Capell. 17: _are_] _cry_ Anon. conj. See note (XIX). _now_] _now in_ Pope. 25: _friends_] F1 F2. _friend_ F3 F4. 32: _his_] _the_ Pope. 49: _I_] om. F4. [Transcriber's Note: The text does not specify which occurrence of "I" is meant. The speech begins "Not I: I have..."] 57: _hear_] _heave_ F2. 59: SCENE IX. Pope. 60: _gravel heart_] _grovelling beast_ Collier MS. 61: Given by Hanmer to _Prov._ 69: _his_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4. _do_] om. Pope. 76: _whiles_] _while_ Pope. 83: _both Barnardine and Claudio_] _Claudio and Barnardine_ Hanmer. See note (XX). 85: _the under_] Hanmer. _yond_ Ff. _yonder_ Pope. 86: _manifested_] _manifest_ Hanmer. 88: _Quick_] _Quick, then,_ Capell. 96: _well-_] Rowe. _weale-_ F1 F2 F3. _weal_ F4. 102: SCENE X. Pope. 103: _She's come_] _She comes_ Pope. 106: _comforts_] _comfort_ Hanmer. 107: _Ho,_] om. Pope. 113, 114, 115: Ff make two lines ending at _other ... patience._ Text as proposed by Spedding. 114, 115: _show ... patience_] _In your close patience, daughter, shew your wisdom_ Capell. 114: _your wisdom_] _wisdom_ Pope. 115: _close_] _closest_ Pope. 119: _Injurious_] _perjurious_ Collier MS. 120: _nor hurts_] _not hurts_ F4. _hurts not_ Rowe. 122: _say_] _say to you_ Collier MS. _find_] _surely find_ Pope. 124: _nay_] om. Pope. 125: _covent_] Ff. _convent_ Rowe. 126: _instance_] _news_ Pope. 129: _If you can, pace_] Rowe. _If you can pace_ Ff. _Pace_ Pope. S. Walker thinks a line is lost after 131. 129, 130: _If you can pace ... wish it, go,_ Edd. conj. 137: _to-night_] om. Pope. 141: _combined_] _confined_ Johnson conj. (withdrawn). 145: _Who's_] _whose_ F1. 146: SCENE XI. Pope. 154: [Exit ISABELLA] Theobald. om. Ff. 155: _beholding_] Ff. _beholden_ Rowe. 163: _not true_] _not_ Rowe. 172: _it_] om. F2. SCENE IV. _A room in ANGELO'S house._ _Enter ANGELO and ESCALUS._ _Escal._ Every letter he hath writ hath disvouched other. _Ang._ In most uneven and distracted manner. His actions show much like to madness: pray heaven his wisdom be not tainted! And why meet him at the gates, and redeliver our authorities there? 5 _Escal._ I guess not. _Ang._ And why should we proclaim it in an hour before his entering, that if any crave redress of injustice, they should exhibit their petitions in the street? _Escal._ He shows his reason for that: to have a dispatch 10 of complaints, and to deliver us from devices hereafter, which shall then have no power to stand against us. _Ang._ Well, I beseech you, let it be proclaimed betimes i' the morn; I'll call you at your house: give notice to such men of sort and suit as are to meet him. 15 _Escal._ I shall, sir. Fare you well. _Ang._ Good night. [_Exit Escalus._ This deed unshapes me quite, makes me unpregnant, And dull to all proceedings. A deflower'd maid! And by an eminent body that enforced 20 The law against it! But that her tender shame Will not proclaim against her maiden loss, How might she tongue me! Yet reason dares her no; For my authority bears of a credent bulk, That no particular scandal once can touch 25 But it confounds the breather. He should have lived, Save that his riotous youth, with dangerous sense, Might in the times to come have ta'en revenge, By so receiving a dishonour'd life With ransom of such shame. Would yet he had lived! 30 Alack, when once our grace we have forgot, Nothing goes right: we would, and we would not. [_Exit._ NOTES: IV, 4. SCENE IV.] SCENE XII. Pope. A room ... house.] Capell. The palace. Rowe. 2, sqq.: Angelo's speeches in this scene Collier prints as verse. 5: _redeliver_] Capell. _re-liver_] F1. _deliver_ F2 F3 F4. 13: A colon is put after _proclaim'd_ by Capell, who prints lines 13-16 as verse. 19: _And_] om. Hanmer. 23: _dares her no;_] Ff. _dares her:_ Pope. _dares her: no,_ Hanmer. _dares her No_ Warburton. _dares her? no:_ Capell. _dares her note_ Theobald conj. _dares her not_ Steevens conj. _dares her on_ Grant White (Becket conj.). _reason ... no_] _treason dares her?--No_ Jackson conj. 24: _bears of a credent bulk_] F1 F2 F3. _bears off a credent bulk_ F4. _bears off all credence_ Pope. _bears a credent bulk_ Theobald. _bears such a credent bulk_ Collier MS. _here's of a credent bulk_ Singer. _bears so credent bulk_ Dyce. _bears up a credent bulk_ Grant White. SCENE V. _Fields without the town._ _Enter DUKE in his own habit, and FRIAR PETER._ _Duke._ These letters at fit time deliver me: [_Giving letters._ The provost knows our purpose and our plot. The matter being afoot, keep your instruction, And hold you ever to our special drift; Though sometimes you do blench from this to that, 5 As cause doth minister. Go call at Flavius' house, And tell him where I stay: give the like notice To Valentius, Rowland, and to Crassus, And bid them bring the trumpets to the gate; But send me Flavius first. _Fri. P._ It shall be speeded well. [_Exit._ 10 _Enter VARRIUS._ _Duke._ I thank thee, Varrius; thou hast made good haste: Come, we will walk. There's other of our friends Will greet us here anon, my gentle Varrius. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: IV, 5. SCENE V.] SCENE XIII. Pope. FRIAR PETER] See note (XXI). 6: _Go_] om. Hanmer. _Flavius'_] Rowe. _Flavio's_ Ff. 8: _To Valentius_] _To Valencius_ Ff. _Unto Valentius_ Pope. _To Valentinus_ Capell. SCENE VI. _Street near the city-gate._ _Enter ISABELLA and MARIANA._ _Isab._ To speak so indirectly I am loath: I would say the truth; but to accuse him so, That is your part: yet I am advised to do it; He says, to veil full purpose. _Mari._ Be ruled by him. _Isab._ Besides, he tells me that, if peradventure 5 He speak against me on the adverse side, I should not think it strange; for 'tis a physic That's bitter to sweet end. _Mari._ I would Friar Peter-- _Isab._ O, peace! the friar is come. _Enter FRIAR PETER._ _Fri. P._ Come, I have found you out a stand most fit, 10 Where you may have such vantage on the Duke, He shall not pass you. Twice have the trumpets sounded; The generous and gravest citizens Have hent the gates, and very near upon The Duke is entering: therefore, hence, away! [_Exeunt._ 15 NOTES: IV, 6. SCENE VI.] SCENE XIV. Pope. 2: _I would_] _I'd_ Pope. 3: _I am_] _I'm_ Pope. 4: _to veil full_] Malone. _to vaile full_ F1 F2 F3. _to vail full_ F4. _t' availful_ Theobald. _to 'vailful_ Hanmer.

Act 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210418122130/https://www.gradesaver.com/measure-for-measure/study-guide/summary-act-4

The Duke finds Mariana, and exchanges a few cursory words with her. Isabella enters as Mariana leaves, to tell the Duke that she has agreed to Angelo's plan, and describes the place of meeting. Isabella said that she told Angelo she could only stay briefly, and that she would be bringing a servant with her, which means she can bring Mariana without suspicion. Isabella has a word with Mariana, and Mariana agrees to go with the plan, provided the "friar" agrees, which he does. The Duke still has to assure her that she is doing no sin, because she is only fulfilling the contract she had with Angelo some time ago.

Isabella's description of the place where she is to meet Angelo shows that she is resigned to this plan that the Duke has made, and that the significance of this exchange is completely clear to her. She tells of the place she is to meet Angelo: "he has a garden circummured with brick, whose western side is with a vineyard backed". The images are heavy with darkness and concealment, of concern to Isabella since they will hide this plan and her visit from others. She speaks with sadness almost about the "heavy middle of the night," as if she actually had to sleep with Angelo; her pride has obviously been wounded by agreeing to this exchange, even if she does not have to act upon it. The Duke's words also betray feelings of solemnity about this plan; his description of "millions of false eyes" convey his nervousness at this risky plan, and that if it does not work and is exposed, it will certainly cause him grief. He wishes there were some other way, as he knows that this plan will have heavy consequences, and if it backfires, his reputation and Claudio's life, among other things, will be at risk. When he reassures Mariana about the plan not being sinful, it seems that he is convincing himself as well; the Duke is a conscientious man, and could not in good faith trick a woman into committing an unpalatable act even if that meant saving a life. The Provost asks Pompey whether he could cut off a man's head, and of course Pompey, being a clown, answers humorously. The Provost needs an assistant for the executioner since both Barnardine and Claudio are to die the next day; if Pompey agrees to do the service, the Provost says that Pompey's crimes will be forgiven. Pompey agrees, and is introduced to Abhorson, the resident executioner. Abhorson doesn't want to take him as an assistant since Pompey is a bawd, but has little choice. A comic scene follows, as all scenes involving Pompey the clown must turn comic somehow. The Provost goes to Claudio, showing him the warrant for his death. Claudio's cellmate, Barnardine, who is also to be executed, is lazy and sleeping, Claudio tells him. The Duke enters, still dressed as a friar, and says there is some hope for Claudio yet. A message comes from Angelo, and the Duke is convinced that it is a pardon; but it is an order to go ahead with Claudio's execution, despite whatever orders to the contrary from other sources. All is not resolved as Angelo promised or as the Duke hoped; they will still have to struggle to get Claudio freed and pardoned. The Duke asks the Provost to help him with Angelo; he wants the Provost to send Angelo the head of Barnardine, and say it is Claudio's, so that the Duke can have a few more days to try and save Claudio. The Provost is unwilling to deceive Angelo so plainly, but the Duke conveniently produces a letter from the absent Duke, and tells the Provost that his help will secure justice for Claudio. The Duke's defense of Angelo might seem out of place since the Duke already knows otherwise of Angelo, but it shows that the Duke is not yet prepared to expose Angelo and his sins. It is ironic that the Duke would declare, in the guise of an honest friar, that Angelo is "just," when he and others know this to be falsehood. Just as the Duke was incorrect in his initial appraisal of Angelo's ability to rule, here he is similarly wrong in his belief that "when vice makes mercy, mercy's so extended". The Duke tends to appraise Angelo's character too kindly, and believe that Angelo actually knows mercy, which he has not shown to this point. However, the Duke is clearly a very canny character; he has no intention of giving in while Angelo has not delivered on his promise, and wants to teach Angelo something about mercy, a theme running through the entire play. Again, the Duke uses his canny logic and persuasive skills to gain complicity for his plots. He is able to extract mercy from the Provost, though Angelo unfortunately cannot be similarly moved. Also, he uses the Provost's loyalty to the Duke to justify this deception. Hopefully, the Duke's well-intentioned plans will come to good use, and not backfire on him. Pompey the clown enters, to provide a bit of running commentary on things in the prison. He finds that many that used to frequent Mistress Overdone's brothel are locked up in jail, so he almost feels at home with all the people of poor morals and such. Barnardine is called forward to be executed, and tries to shrug the officers off by saying that he is tired. Abhorson and Pompey fetch him out, and the Duke tries to counsel him. Barnardine insists he will not die that day, since he is too tired and too drunk to want to. The Duke says that to execute Barnardine then, with his soul completely unprepared, would be a terrible thing; luckily, a man in the prison died the night before, so they can use his head to send to Angelo rather than Barnardine's. Isabella comes to the jail, to see if her brother's pardon came through as it was supposed to. The Duke tells her that her brother was executed, so that she will be happier when she finds out the truth later. Now, he is willfully keeping her in ignorance, a move that will keep him in control of the game, but seems more self-serving than beneficial. The Duke tells Isabella not to be sad, since the Duke will be back tomorrow, to take power back from Angelo; he says that the Duke will make things right and ensure that justice happens, and Isabella says she will try to suppress her grief. Lucio enters, and expresses his condolences; he says that if the Duke were presiding over Claudio's case, Claudio certainly would have been allowed to live. Lucio then offers to tell more about the Duke, and offers up that he once got away with getting a woman pregnant when the Duke was there. They exit together. Again, the Duke is forced to do even more improvisation, as plans go awry; but, fate is obviously on his side, since the man who died looks like Claudio, so his head given to Angelo will seem more convincing. The Duke here seems like he means to be the manipulator of the action, and is doing things with a plain purpose in mind; the fact that he decides to tell Isabella that her brother is dead, so that she can be happier later, serves no purposes but the Duke's hidden ones. Rather than trying to make things right, here he is deciding what outcome he wants, and is manipulating what people find out in order to produce these results. Through these self-serving machinations, the Duke appears less benevolent, and more like a control addict. The Duke tells Isabella "trust not my holy order if I pervert your course"; this is meant to comfort Isabella, but represents a big license on the Duke's part. Throughout the play, he has used his disguise as a friar to gain people's trust and complicity in his plans; here, he plays on Isabella's trust in the clergy to get her to go along with his plan. It is all well and good that the Duke is doing most of this for the benefit of Claudio, but he is assuming liberties and roles that are not his and that he knows nothing of. It seems almost like an abuse of the priesthood for a man in a friar's disguise to be allowed to assume the duties, status, and respect that go along with the office merely for wearing the clothes. The Duke, in his pretending to be an actual friar and assuming all the rights and responsibilities that go along with it, might be going too far in his do-gooding. Lucio's confession that he once denied getting a woman pregnant means that he probably does not know he is talking to the Dukeotherwise, why would he risk being caught and tried for the same offense again? It is about time that the Duke revealed himself, and abandoned the many privileges he has enjoyed by being disguised. Escalus and Angelo receive notice of the Duke's return; they also note how each letter the Duke has sent them has contradicted any other, which makes them fear that he is somehow mad. Angelo thinks it would be a good idea to announce that any who have grievances can meet at the place where they are to receive the Duke back into the city; Angelo thinks this will protect him from any legal actions, in case there are any issues that have not yet been dealt with. However, Angelo also knows that this might give Isabella a forum in which to tell of Angelo's wickedness and her deal with him. He believes that she will not accuse him, because she would be shamed by saying that Angelo took her virginity. Angelo also says that he should have let Claudio live, since his offense was not that bad after all, but that sometimes he has to do what he would rather not do. Escalus and Angelo's suspicion about the Duke's ruse shows that the Duke's time is running short; from his notes, they can already see that either he is not being honest, or he is being flagrantly contradictory in his letters. Angelo's use of the Duke's entrance to have an airing of grievances shows that he is very canny; he would not take responsibility himself for things he can easily weasel out of. Angelo is finally realizing what the potential consequences of his deeds might be; at last, he is showing remorse. He also sees the irony of his situation, that he is supposed to enforce the law, yet it was he who broke it with his treatment of Isabella. But, he still believes in the power of his reputation to shield him from accusation, another theme of the play. Angelo is overconfident, however; he may think that he is too highly regarded to be exposed, but he is also widely disliked, which works against him. Angelo repents here of giving Claudio a death sentence, showing that he is not merciful in deed, but that he does have better judgment than he has shown throughout the play. Angelo excuses himself, however, by saying that having power means that he has to do things that he would rather not do. He has still not learned how to govern with moderation, even if he is closer to understanding the need for mercy in a ruler. The Duke is telling Friar Peter to keep the letters he is giving him, and to follow the plans that the Duke has laid out; the Duke also says that the Provost will play along, and knows what he is to do as well. He has the Friar call a few men of the city together for his return, and then continues his preparations. Here, we get a glimpse of the Duke as a kind of director of the play; he tells people what parts to do and how, has orchestrated a complicated set-up to achieve the end results that he desires. The theme of manipulation comes to the fore, as we begin to realize how much of the action of the play has been driven or made by the Duke. The Duke, although he seems benevolent and fair when compared with Angelo, is actually not quite as good as he seems; he is secretive, conniving, and manipulates people shamelessly, even if it is toward good ends. Isabella and Mariana are getting ready to play their part in the Duke's plan. Isabella has to accuse Angelo with Mariana by her, though she would rather not be so bold; she also says that the Duke warned her that he might not take her side at the beginning, which worries her. Friar Peter enters, and bids them come to the gates since the Duke is about to come in. Many citizens are gathered, and it is time to play their parts in this thing that the Duke has constructed for them. "'Tis a physic that's bitter to sweet end": this seems to be the Duke's philosophy regarding how he is handling this entire situation, and also it tells of the overall course of the play. So far, this play has not been a comedy; many of the characters, like Claudio and Isabella, have been put in very trying situations, and subjected to a great deal of unfairness. People have died, nearly escaped execution, and had to evade blackmail; yet, the play will work its way to a supposedly neat, happy ending, as is the convention of Elizabethan comedies.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/23045-chapters/1.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Measure for Measure/section_0_part_0.txt

Measure for Measure.act 1.scene 1

act 1, scene 1

{"name": "Act 1, Scene 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-1-scene-1", "summary": "At his palace in Vienna, Duke Vincentio makes a big speech about how a lord in his court, Escalus, is the wisest and most knowledgeable guy in Vienna--he knows more about Vienna's laws and people than anybody else. The Duke tells Escalus that he's going out of town. While he's away, Angelo will be in charge. Escalus thinks if anyone is up for representing the Duke in his absence, it's Angelo. When Angelo comes in, the Duke gives him the news. He also says that while he is gone, Angelo should make sure the people of Vienna don't step out of line. If they do, he has full authority to punish them according to the law . Escalus, an old lord, will be second in command because he's so wise and knows so much about Vienna's laws and its people. Angelo goes through an \"aw, shucks\" routine and says he hasn't demonstrated that he's worthy enough to fill in for the Duke. \"Nonsense,\" says the Duke, who announces rather cryptically that he has to go somewhere immediately and that he'll be in touch soon. Before he leaves, the Duke reminds Angelo that while he is away, Angelo is his substitute and has full authority to enforce the laws or to bend the rules of justice as he sees fit. Yeah, yeah. We heard you the first time. He also adds that, even though he loves his people, he's not big on public appearances, especially since people are always cheering for him like he's a rock star. History Snack: Some literary critics think the Duke's whole \"I really don't like the limelight\" speech is a reference to King James I, who, unlike his predecessor Queen Elizabeth I, wasn't a huge fan of being in the public spotlight all the time. The Duke exits and Escalus and Angelo make plans to talk so they can work out the details of their new jobs.", "analysis": ""}

ACT I. SCENE I. _An apartment in the DUKE'S palace._ _Enter DUKE, ESCALUS, _Lords_ and _Attendants_._ _Duke._ Escalus. _Escal._ My lord. _Duke._ Of government the properties to unfold, Would seem in me to affect speech and discourse; Since I am put to know that your own science 5 Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice My strength can give you: then no more remains, But that to your sufficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . as your worth is able, And let them work. The nature of our people, 10 Our city's institutions, and the terms For common justice, you're as pregnant in As art and practice hath enriched any That we remember. There is our commission, From which we would not have you warp. Call hither, 15 I say, bid come before us Angelo. [_Exit an Attendant._ What figure of us think you he will bear? For you must know, we have with special soul Elected him our absence to supply; Lent him our terror, dress'd him with our love, 20 And given his deputation all the organs Of our own power: what think you of it? _Escal._ If any in Vienna be of worth To undergo such ample grace and honour, It is Lord Angelo. _Duke._ Look where he comes. 25 _Enter ANGELO._ _Ang._ Always obedient to your Grace's will, I come to know your pleasure. _Duke._ Angelo, There is a kind of character in thy life, That to th' observer doth thy history Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings 30 Are not thine own so proper, as to waste Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike 35 As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd But to fine issues; nor Nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence, But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Herself the glory of a creditor, 40 Both thanks and use. But I do bend my speech To one that can my part in him advertise; Hold therefore, Angelo:-- In our remove be thou at full ourself; Mortality and mercy in Vienna 45 Live in thy tongue and heart: old Escalus, Though first in question, is thy secondary. Take thy commission. _Ang._ Now, good my lord, Let there be some more test made of my metal, Before so noble and so great a figure 50 Be stamp'd upon it. _Duke._ No more evasion: We have with a leaven'd and prepared choice Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours. Our haste from hence is of so quick condition, That it prefers itself, and leaves unquestion'd 55 Matters of needful value. We shall write to you, As time and our concernings shall importune, How it goes with us; and do look to know What doth befall you here. So, fare you well: To the hopeful execution do I leave you 60 Of your commissions. _Ang._ Yet, give leave, my lord, That we may bring you something on the way. _Duke._ My haste may not admit it; Nor need you, on mine honour, have to do With any scruple; your scope is as mine own, 65 So to enforce or qualify the laws As to your soul seems good. Give me your hand: I'll privily away. I love the people, But do not like to stage me to their eyes: Though it do well, I do not relish well 70 Their loud applause and Aves vehement; Nor do I think the man of safe discretion That does affect it. Once more, fare you well. _Ang._ The heavens give safety to your purposes! _Escal._ Lead forth and bring you back in happiness! 75 _Duke._ I thank you. Fare you well. [_Exit._ _Escal._ I shall desire you, sir, to give me leave To have free speech with you; and it concerns me To look into the bottom of my place: A power I have, but of what strength and nature 80 I am not yet instructed. _Ang._ 'Tis so with me. Let us withdraw together, And we may soon our satisfaction have Touching that point. _Escal._ I'll wait upon your honour. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: I, 1. SCENE I. Lords and Attendants.] Singer. Lords. Ff. and Attendants. Capell. 5: _put_] _not_ Pope. _apt_ Collier MS. 7, 8: _remains, But that_] _remains; Put that_ Rowe. 8, 9: _But that to your sufficiency ..._] _But that to your sufficiency you add Due diligency ..._ Theobald conj. _But that to your sufficiency you joyn A will to serve us ..._ Hanmer. _But that to your sufficiency you put A zeal as willing ..._ Tyrwhitt conj. _But that to your sufficiencies your worth is abled_ Johnson conj. _But your sufficiency as worth is able_ Farmer conj. _Your sufficiency ... able_ Steevens conj. _But that your sufficiency be as your worth is stable_ Becket conj. _But state to your sufficiency ..._ Jackson conj. _But thereto your sufficiency ..._ Singer. _But add to your sufficiency your worth_ Collier MS. _But that_ [tendering his commission] _to your sufficiency. And, as your worth is able, let them work_ Staunton conj. _But that to your sufficiency I add Commission ample_ Spedding conj. See note (I). 11: _city's_] _cities_ Ff. 16: [Exit an Attendant.] Capell. 18: _soul_] _roll_ Warburton. _seal_ Johnson conj. 22: _what_] _say, what_ Pope. 25: SCENE II. Pope. 27: _your pleasure_] F1. _your Graces pleasure_ F2 F3 F4. 28: _life_] _look_ Johnson conj. 28, 29: _character ... history_] _history ... character_ Monck Mason conj. 32: _they_] _them_ Hanmer. 35, 36: _all alike As if we_] _all as if We_ Hanmer. 37: _nor_] om. Pope. 42: _my part in him_] _in my part me_ Hanmer. _my part to him_ Johnson conj. _in him, my part_ Becket conj. 43: _Hold therefore, Angelo:--_] _Hold therefore, Angelo:_ [Giving him his commission] Hanmer. _Hold therefore. Angelo,_ Tyrwhitt conj. _Hold therefore, Angelo, our place and power:_ Grant White. 45: _Mortality_] _Morality_ Pope. 51: _upon it_] _upon 't_ Capell. _No more_] _Come, no more_ Pope. 52: _leaven'd and prepared_] Ff. _leven'd and prepar'd_ Rowe. _prepar'd and leaven'd_ Pope. _prepar'd and level'd_ Warburton. _prepar'd unleaven'd_ Heath conj. 56: _to you_] om. Hanmer. 61: _your commissions_] F1. _your commission_ F2 F3 F4. _our commission_ Pope. 66: _laws_] _law_ Pope. 76: [Exit.] F2. [Exit. (after line 75) F1. 84: _your_] _you_ F2.

Act 1, Scene 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-1-scene-1

At his palace in Vienna, Duke Vincentio makes a big speech about how a lord in his court, Escalus, is the wisest and most knowledgeable guy in Vienna--he knows more about Vienna's laws and people than anybody else. The Duke tells Escalus that he's going out of town. While he's away, Angelo will be in charge. Escalus thinks if anyone is up for representing the Duke in his absence, it's Angelo. When Angelo comes in, the Duke gives him the news. He also says that while he is gone, Angelo should make sure the people of Vienna don't step out of line. If they do, he has full authority to punish them according to the law . Escalus, an old lord, will be second in command because he's so wise and knows so much about Vienna's laws and its people. Angelo goes through an "aw, shucks" routine and says he hasn't demonstrated that he's worthy enough to fill in for the Duke. "Nonsense," says the Duke, who announces rather cryptically that he has to go somewhere immediately and that he'll be in touch soon. Before he leaves, the Duke reminds Angelo that while he is away, Angelo is his substitute and has full authority to enforce the laws or to bend the rules of justice as he sees fit. Yeah, yeah. We heard you the first time. He also adds that, even though he loves his people, he's not big on public appearances, especially since people are always cheering for him like he's a rock star. History Snack: Some literary critics think the Duke's whole "I really don't like the limelight" speech is a reference to King James I, who, unlike his predecessor Queen Elizabeth I, wasn't a huge fan of being in the public spotlight all the time. The Duke exits and Escalus and Angelo make plans to talk so they can work out the details of their new jobs.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/23045-chapters/3.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Measure for Measure/section_2_part_0.txt

Measure for Measure.act 1.scene 3

act 1, scene 3

{"name": "Act 1, Scene 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-1-scene-3", "summary": "Meanwhile, the Duke has gone to visit a Friar in his cell in Vienna. We catch the two men in mid-conversation. The Duke explains that he wants to hide out at the local monastery because he wants to spy on Angelo, who thinks the Duke has travelled to Poland. The Duke is adamant that he's NOT seeking refuge at the monastery as a heartbroken lover because love is for wimps. The Duke says something weird like \"I order you to ask me why I want to spy on Angelo.\" The Friar complies and says something like \"OK, explain yourself.\" Duke Vincentio admits that for the past fourteen years, he's been pretty lax about enforcing Vienna's laws. Naturally, the people are out of control, like \"headstrong horses\" that are never curbed. \"They're also like naughty children,\" says the Duke, who compares himself to a wimpy parent who only ever threatens to beat his kids with \"twigs of birch\" but never gives anyone a spanking. The Friar points out that the Duke has the authority to start enforcing Vienna's laws and would probably be a lot better at it than Angelo. But, the Duke doesn't want to be the bad guy--he'd rather let Angelo do the dirty work than look like a tyrant in the eyes of his people. Plus, reasons the Duke, he would look like a total hypocrite if he started enforcing rules out of the clear blue sky. Duke Vincentio admits that he's a little nervous about Angelo, who is pretty strict and also claims not to have any sexual desire, which makes the Duke suspicious enough to want to keep an eye on things.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE III. _A monastery._ _Enter _Duke_ and FRIAR THOMAS._ _Duke._ No, holy father; throw away that thought; Believe not that the dribbling dart of love Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee To give me secret harbour, hath a purpose More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends 5 Of burning youth. _Fri. T._ May your grace speak of it? _Duke._ My holy sir, none better knows than you How I have ever loved the life removed, And held in idle price to haunt assemblies Where youth, and cost, and witless bravery keeps. 10 I have deliver'd to Lord Angelo, A man of stricture and firm abstinence, My absolute power and place here in Vienna, And he supposes me travell'd to Poland; For so I have strew'd it in the common ear, 15 And so it is received. Now, pious sir, You will demand of me why I do this? _Fri. T._ Gladly, my lord. _Duke._ We have strict statutes and most biting laws, The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds, 20 Which for this fourteen years we have let slip; Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave, That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers, Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch, Only to stick it in their children's sight 25 For terror, not to use, in time the rod Becomes more mock'd than fear'd; so our decrees. Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead; And liberty plucks justice by the nose; The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart 30 Goes all decorum. _Fri. T._ It rested in your Grace To unloose this tied-up justice when you pleased: And it in you more dreadful would have seem'd Than in Lord Angelo. _Duke._ I do fear, too dreadful: Sith 'twas my fault to give the people scope, 35 'Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them For what I bid them do: for we bid this be done, When evil deeds have their permissive pass, And not the punishment. Therefore, indeed, my father, I have on Angelo imposed the office; 40 Who may, in the ambush of my name, strike home, And yet my nature never in the fight To do in slander. And to behold his sway, I will, as 'twere a brother of your order, Visit both prince and people: therefore, I prithee, 45 Supply me with the habit, and instruct me How I may formally in person bear me Like a true friar. More reasons for this action At our more leisure shall I render you; Only, this one: Lord Angelo is precise; 50 Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses That his blood flows, or that his appetite Is more to bread than stone: hence shall we see, If power change purpose, what our seemers be. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: I, 3. SCENE III.] SCENA QUARTA Ff. SCENE VII. Pope. 3: _bosom_] _breast_ Pope. 10: _and witless_] F2 F3 F4. _witless_ F1. _with witless_ Edd. conj. _keeps_] _keep_ Hammer. 12: _stricture_] _strictness_ Davenant's version. _strict ure_ Warburton. 15: _For_] _Far_ F2. 20: _to_] F1. _for_ F2 F3 F4. _weeds_] Ff. _steeds_ Theobald. _wills_ S. Walker conj. 21: _this_] _these_ Theobald. _fourteen_] _nineteen_ Theobald. _slip_] Ff. _sleep_ Theobald (after Davenant). 25: _to_] _do_ Dent. MS. 26: _terror_] F1. _errour_ F2 F3 F4. 26, 27: _the rod Becomes more ... decrees_] Pope (after Davenant). _the rod More ... decrees_ Ff. _the rod's More ... most just decrees_ Collier MS. 27: _mock'd_] _markt_ Davenant's version. 34: _do_] om. Pope. 37: _be done_] om. Pope. 39: _the_] _their_ Dyce conj. _indeed_] om. Pope. 42, 43: _fight To do in slander_] _sight To do in slander_ Pope. _fight So do in slander_ Theobald. _sight To do it slander_ Hanmer. _sight, So doing slander'd_ Johnson conj. _sight To draw on slander_ Collier MS. _right To do him slander_ Singer conj. _light To do it slander_ Dyce conj. _fight To do me slander_ Halliwell. _win the fight To die in slander_ Staunton conj. _never ... slander_] _ever in the fight To dole in slander_ Jackson conj. 43: _And_] om. Pope. 45: _I_] om. Pope. 47: _in person bear me_] Capell. _in person beare_ Ff. _my person bear_ Pope. 49: _our_] F1. _your_ F2 F3 F4.

Act 1, Scene 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-1-scene-3

Meanwhile, the Duke has gone to visit a Friar in his cell in Vienna. We catch the two men in mid-conversation. The Duke explains that he wants to hide out at the local monastery because he wants to spy on Angelo, who thinks the Duke has travelled to Poland. The Duke is adamant that he's NOT seeking refuge at the monastery as a heartbroken lover because love is for wimps. The Duke says something weird like "I order you to ask me why I want to spy on Angelo." The Friar complies and says something like "OK, explain yourself." Duke Vincentio admits that for the past fourteen years, he's been pretty lax about enforcing Vienna's laws. Naturally, the people are out of control, like "headstrong horses" that are never curbed. "They're also like naughty children," says the Duke, who compares himself to a wimpy parent who only ever threatens to beat his kids with "twigs of birch" but never gives anyone a spanking. The Friar points out that the Duke has the authority to start enforcing Vienna's laws and would probably be a lot better at it than Angelo. But, the Duke doesn't want to be the bad guy--he'd rather let Angelo do the dirty work than look like a tyrant in the eyes of his people. Plus, reasons the Duke, he would look like a total hypocrite if he started enforcing rules out of the clear blue sky. Duke Vincentio admits that he's a little nervous about Angelo, who is pretty strict and also claims not to have any sexual desire, which makes the Duke suspicious enough to want to keep an eye on things.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/23045-chapters/7.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Measure for Measure/section_6_part_0.txt

Measure for Measure.act 2.scene 3

act 2, scene 3

{"name": "Act 2, scene 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-2-scene-3", "summary": "Meanwhile, the Duke shows up at the prison disguised as a friar so he can \"minister\" to the inmates. Juliet enters and the Provost tells the Duke/Friar that Juliet is going to have a baby out of wedlock and her baby daddy is sentenced to die tomorrow. The Duke/Friar asks Juliet if she repents her sin. She does. The Duke wants to know if the sex was consensual. It was. Juliet says that her sin was bigger than Claudio's. The Duke/Friar tells Juliet he's off to see Claudio, who is set to die tomorrow. Juliet is shocked to hear of Claudio's punishment and says as much.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE III. _A room in a prison._ _Enter, severally, DUKE disguised as a friar, and PROVOST._ _Duke._ Hail to you, provost!--so I think you are. _Prov._ I am the provost. What's your will, good friar? _Duke._ Bound by my charity and my blest order, I come to visit the afflicted spirits Here in the prison. Do me the common right 5 To let me see them, and to make me know The nature of their crimes, that I may minister To them accordingly. _Prov._ I would do more than that, if more were needful. _Enter JULIET._ Look, here comes one: a gentlewoman of mine, 10 Who, falling in the flaws of her own youth, Hath blister'd her report: she is with child; And he that got it, sentenced; a young man More fit to do another such offence Than die for this. 15 _Duke._ When must he die? _Prov._ As I do think, to-morrow. I have provided for you: stay awhile, [_To Juliet._ And you shall be conducted. _Duke._ Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry? _Jul._ I do; and bear the shame most patiently. 20 _Duke._ I'll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience, And try your penitence, if it be sound, Or hollowly put on. _Jul._ I'll gladly learn. _Duke._ Love you the man that wrong'd you? _Jul._ Yes, as I love the woman that wrong'd him. 25 _Duke._ So, then, it seems your most offenceful act Was mutually committed? _Jul._ Mutually. _Duke._ Then was your sin of heavier kind than his. _Jul._ I do confess it, and repent it, father. _Duke._ 'Tis meet so, daughter: but lest you do repent, 30 As that the sin hath brought you to this shame, Which sorrow is always towards ourselves, not heaven, Showing we would not spare heaven as we love it, But as we stand in fear,-- _Jul._ I do repent me, as it is an evil, 35 And take the shame with joy. _Duke._ There rest. Your partner, as I hear, must die to-morrow, And I am going with instruction to him. Grace go with you, _Benedicite!_ [_Exit._ _Jul._ Must die to-morrow! O injurious love, 40 That respites me a life, whose very comfort Is still a dying horror! _Prov._ 'Tis pity of him. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: II, 3. SCENE III.] SCENE IX. Pope. Act III. SCENE I. Johnson conj. 7: _crimes that I may_] _several crimes that I May_ Seymour conj. 9: Enter JULIET] Transferred by Dyce to line 15. 11: _flaws_] F3 F4. _flawes_ F1 F2. _flames_ Warburton (after Davenant). 26: _offenceful_] _offence full_ F1. 30: _lest you do repent_] F4. _least you do repent_ F1 F2 F3. _repent you not_ Pope. 33: _we would not spare_] Ff. _we'd not seek_ Pope. _we'd not spare_ Malone. _we would not serve_ Collier MS. _we'd not appease_ Singer conj. 36: _There rest_] _Tis well; there rest_ Hammer. 39: _Grace_] _So grace_ Pope. _May grace_ Steevens conj. _All grace_ Seymour conj. _Grace go with you_ is assigned to Juliet by Dyce (Ritson conj.). 40: _love_] _law_ Hanmer.

Act 2, scene 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-2-scene-3

Meanwhile, the Duke shows up at the prison disguised as a friar so he can "minister" to the inmates. Juliet enters and the Provost tells the Duke/Friar that Juliet is going to have a baby out of wedlock and her baby daddy is sentenced to die tomorrow. The Duke/Friar asks Juliet if she repents her sin. She does. The Duke wants to know if the sex was consensual. It was. Juliet says that her sin was bigger than Claudio's. The Duke/Friar tells Juliet he's off to see Claudio, who is set to die tomorrow. Juliet is shocked to hear of Claudio's punishment and says as much.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/23045-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Measure for Measure/section_10_part_0.txt

Measure for Measure.act 4.scene 1

act 4, scene 1

{"name": "Act 4, Scene 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-4-scene-1", "summary": "The Duke and Isabella pay Mariana a little visit at her farm, which is surrounded by a moat. When they arrive, Mariana is listening to a Boy singing a sad song about a jilted lover. When Mariana sees the Duke she tells the kid to scram so she can talk in privacy. Apparently, the Duke has visited with Mariana before and listened to her confession. Isabella and the Duke confer about where and when her secret rendezvous with Angelo is supposed to go down - Isabella is supposed to meet Angelo in a secret garden. Isabella and Marianna take a walk together during which time Isabella fills in Marianna on the Duke's plot to trick Angelo. Marianna is all for the Duke's little bed trick. Brain Snack: \"Bed trick,\" by the way, is a common term for one of Shakespeare's favorite plot devices - it always involves one person who thinks he/she is going to bed with another person, but who is then tricked into sleeping with someone else. In Shakespeare, the duped party is usually a guy, like Bertram in All's Well That Ends Well. The Duke explains that Marianna's actions won't be counted as a sin or a crime because Angelo is her \"husband on a pre-contract,\" meaning, they were formally betrothed before Angelo backed out of the wedding at the last minute. Everybody runs off to put the sneaky plan into action.", "analysis": ""}

ACT IV. SCENE I. _The moated grange at ST LUKE'S._ _Enter MARIANA and a BOY._ _BOY sings._ Take, O, take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn; And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn: But my kisses bring again, bring again; 5 Seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in vain. _Mari._ Break off thy song, and haste thee quick away: Here comes a man of comfort, whose advice Hath often still'd my brawling discontent. [_Exit Boy._ _Enter DUKE disguised as before._ I cry you mercy, sir; and well could wish 10 You had not found me here so musical: Let me excuse me, and believe me so, My mirth it much displeased, but pleased my woe. _Duke._ 'Tis good; though music oft hath such a charm To make bad good, and good provoke to harm. 15 I pray you, tell me, hath any body inquired for me here to-day? much upon this time have I promised here to meet. _Mari._ You have not been inquired after: I have sat here all day. _Enter ISABELLA._ _Duke._ I do constantly believe you. The time is come 20 even now. I shall crave your forbearance a little: may be I will call upon you anon, for some advantage to yourself. _Mari._ I am always bound to you. [_Exit._ _Duke._ Very well met, and well come. What is the news from this good Deputy? 25 _Isab._ He hath a garden circummured with brick, Whose western side is with a vineyard back'd; And to that vineyard is a planched gate, That makes his opening with this bigger key: This other doth command a little door 30 Which from the vineyard to the garden leads; There have I made my promise Upon the heavy middle of the night To call upon him. _Duke._ But shall you on your knowledge find this way? 35 _Isab._ I have ta'en a due and wary note upon't: With whispering and most guilty diligence, In action all of precept, he did show me The way twice o'er. _Duke._ Are there no other tokens Between you 'greed concerning her observance? 40 _Isab._ No, none, but only a repair i' the dark; And that I have possess'd him my most stay Can be but brief; for I have made him know I have a servant comes with me along, That stays upon me, whose persuasion is 45 I come about my brother. _Duke._ 'Tis well borne up. I have not yet made known to Mariana A word of this. What, ho! within! come forth! _Re-enter MARIANA._ I pray you, be acquainted with this maid; She comes to do you good. _Isab._ I do desire the like. 50 _Duke._ Do you persuade yourself that I respect you? _Mari._ Good friar, I know you do, and have found it. _Duke._ Take, then, this your companion by the hand, Who hath a story ready for your ear. I shall attend your leisure: but make haste; 55 The vaporous night approaches. _Mari._ Will't please you walk aside? [_Exeunt Mariana and Isabella._ _Duke._ O place and greatness, millions of false eyes Are stuck upon thee! volumes of report Run with these false and most contrarious quests 60 Upon thy doings! thousand escapes of wit Make thee the father of their idle dreams, And rack thee in their fancies! _Re-enter MARIANA and ISABELLA._ Welcome, how agreed? _Isab._ She'll take the enterprise upon her, father, If you advise it. _Duke._ It is not my consent, 65 But my entreaty too. _Isab._ Little have you to say When you depart from him, but, soft and low, 'Remember now my brother.' _Mari._ Fear me not. _Duke._ Nor, gentle daughter, fear you not at all. He is your husband on a pre-contract: 70 To bring you thus together, 'tis no sin, Sith that the justice of your title to him Doth flourish the deceit. Come, let us go: Our corn's to reap, for yet our tithe's to sow. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: IV, 1. SCENE I. Enter M.] Ff. M. discovered sitting. Steevens. 5, 6: F4 omits the refrain in l. 6. Rowe omits it in both lines. 6: _but_] _though_ Fletcher's version. 13: _it_] _is_ Warburton. 17: _meet_] _meet one_ Hanmer. 19: Enter I.] Transferred by Singer to line 23. 24: SCENE II. Pope. _well come_] Ff. _welcome_ Warburton. 32, 33, 34: _There have I made my promise Upon the heavy middle of the night To call upon him._] S. Walker conj. _There have I made my promise, upon the Heavy middle of the night to call upon him._ Ff. _There on the heavy middle of the night Have I my promise made to call upon him._ Pope. _There have I made my promise to call on him Upon the heavy middle of the night._ Capell. _There have I made my promise in the heavy Middle...._ Singer. _There have I made my promise on the heavy Middle...._ Dyce. Delius and Staunton read with Ff. but print as prose. 38: _action all of precept_] _precept of all action_ Johnson conj. 49: SCENE III. Pope. 52: _have_] _I have_ Pope. 58-63: _O place ... fancies_] These lines to precede III. 2. 178. Warburton conj. 60: _these_] _their_ Hanmer. _base_ Collier MS. _quests_] _quest_ F1. 61: _escapes_] _'scapes_ Pope. 62: _their idle dreams_] Pope. _their idle dreame_ Ff. _an idle dream_ Rowe. 63: _Welcome, how agreed?_] _Well! agreed?_ Hanmer. SCENE IV. Pope. 65: _It is_] _'Tis_ Pope. 74: _tithe's_] _Tithes_ F1 F2 F3. _Tythes_ F4. _tilth's_ Hanmer (Warburton). _Our ... sow_] _Our tythe's to reap, for yet our corn's to sow_ Capell conj. MS.

Act 4, Scene 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-4-scene-1

The Duke and Isabella pay Mariana a little visit at her farm, which is surrounded by a moat. When they arrive, Mariana is listening to a Boy singing a sad song about a jilted lover. When Mariana sees the Duke she tells the kid to scram so she can talk in privacy. Apparently, the Duke has visited with Mariana before and listened to her confession. Isabella and the Duke confer about where and when her secret rendezvous with Angelo is supposed to go down - Isabella is supposed to meet Angelo in a secret garden. Isabella and Marianna take a walk together during which time Isabella fills in Marianna on the Duke's plot to trick Angelo. Marianna is all for the Duke's little bed trick. Brain Snack: "Bed trick," by the way, is a common term for one of Shakespeare's favorite plot devices - it always involves one person who thinks he/she is going to bed with another person, but who is then tricked into sleeping with someone else. In Shakespeare, the duped party is usually a guy, like Bertram in All's Well That Ends Well. The Duke explains that Marianna's actions won't be counted as a sin or a crime because Angelo is her "husband on a pre-contract," meaning, they were formally betrothed before Angelo backed out of the wedding at the last minute. Everybody runs off to put the sneaky plan into action.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/23045-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Measure for Measure/section_11_part_0.txt

Measure for Measure.act 4.scene 2

act 4, scene 2

{"name": "Act 4, Scene 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-4-scene-2", "summary": "At the prison, the Provost makes Pompey an offer he can't refuse. If Pompey agrees to be his assistant executioner, his prison sentence will be reduced and he'll get to go home. Pompey cracks a dirty joke about chopping off a man's head and cutting off a woman's \"maidenhead\" and then agrees to the deal. Pompey points out how strange it is that it's illegal for him to be a bawd, but it's completely legal for him to be an executioner. Abhorson enters and declares that Pompey's status as a pimp will bring shame to professional executioners everywhere. Pompey and Abhorson argue about whether or not pimps and hangmen can be considered professions that require specialized skills. Pompey and Abhorson run off to train Pompey for his new job. The Duke shows up at the prison and asks the Provost if Angelo still wants Claudio to be executed in the morning. He does. A Messenger arrives and the Duke is hopeful that he brings news that Claudio will be spared. Yet, the Messenger brings word from Angelo that Claudio's execution is still on for 4pm the next day. The Duke asks the Provost to delay Claudio's execution for four days while he hatches a plan, but the Provost says he can't do it without Angelo finding out because Angelo has requested proof of Claudio's death. The Duke convinces the Provost to execute another prisoner, Barnardine, in Claudio's place. If they shave Barnardine's head and trim his beard, nobody will know it's not Claudio because \"death's a great disguiser.\" The Provost is skeptical but the Duke convinces him that he won't get into trouble.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE II. _A room in the prison._ _Enter PROVOST and POMPEY._ _Prov._ Come hither, sirrah. Can you cut off a man's head? _Pom._ If the man be a bachelor, sir, I can; but if he be a married man, he's his wife's head, and I can never cut off a woman's head. _Prov._ Come, sir, leave me your snatches, and yield me 5 a direct answer. To-morrow morning are to die Claudio and Barnardine. Here is in our prison a common executioner, who in his office lacks a helper: if you will take it on you to assist him, it shall redeem you from your gyves; if not, you shall have your full time of imprisonment, and 10 your deliverance with an unpitied whipping, for you have been a notorious bawd. _Pom._ Sir, I have been an unlawful bawd time out of mind; but yet I will be content to be a lawful hangman. I would be glad to receive some instruction from my fellow 15 partner. _Prov._ What, ho! Abhorson! Where's Abhorson, there? _Enter ABHORSON._ _Abhor._ Do you call, sir? _Prov._ Sirrah, here's a fellow will help you to-morrow in your execution. If you think it meet, compound with 20 him by the year, and let him abide here with you; if not, use him for the present, and dismiss him. He cannot plead his estimation with you; he hath been a bawd. _Abhor._ A bawd, sir? fie upon him! he will discredit our mystery. 25 _Prov._ Go to, sir; you weigh equally; a feather will turn the scale. [_Exit._ _Pom._ Pray, sir, by your good favour,--for surely, sir, a good favour you have, but that you have a hanging look,-- do you call, sir, your occupation a mystery? 30 _Abhor._ Ay, sir; a mystery. _Pom._ Painting, sir, I have heard say, is a mystery; and your whores, sir, being members of my occupation, using painting, do prove my occupation a mystery: but what mystery there should be in hanging, if I should be 35 hanged, I cannot imagine. _Abhor._ Sir, it is a mystery. _Pom._ Proof? _Abhor._ Every true man's apparel fits your thief: if it be too little for your thief, your true man thinks it big 40 enough; if it be too big for your thief, your thief thinks it little enough: so every true man's apparel fits your thief. _Re-enter PROVOST._ _Prov._ Are you agreed? _Pom._ Sir, I will serve him; for I do find your hangman is a more penitent trade than your bawd; he doth 45 oftener ask forgiveness. _Prov._ You, sirrah, provide your block and your axe to-morrow four o'clock. _Abhor._ Come on, bawd; I will instruct thee in my trade; follow. 50 _Pom._ I do desire to learn, sir: and I hope, if you have occasion to use me for your own turn, you shall find me yare; for, truly, sir, for your kindness I owe you a good turn. _Prov._ Call hither Barnardine and Claudio: [_Exeunt Pompey and Abhorson._ 55 The one has my pity; not a jot the other, Being a murderer, though he were my brother. _Enter CLAUDIO._ Look, here's the warrant, Claudio, for thy death: 'Tis now dead midnight, and by eight to-morrow Thou must be made immortal. Where's Barnardine? 60 _Claud._ As fast lock'd up in sleep as guiltless labour When it lies starkly in the traveller's bones: He will not wake. _Prov._ Who can do good on him? Well, go, prepare yourself. [_Knocking within._] But, hark, what noise?-- Heaven give your spirits comfort! [_Exit Clandio._] By and by.-- 65 I hope it is some pardon or reprieve For the most gentle Claudio. _Enter DUKE disguised as before._ Welcome, father. _Duke._ The best and wholesomest spirits of the night Envelop you, good Provost! Who call'd here of late? _Prov._ None, since the curfew rung. 70 _Duke._ Not Isabel? _Prov._ No. _Duke._ They will, then, ere't be long. _Prov._ What comfort is for Claudio? _Duke._ There's some in hope. _Prov._ It is a bitter Deputy. _Duke._ Not so, not so; his life is parallel'd 75 Even with the stroke and line of his great justice: He doth with holy abstinence subdue That in himself which he spurs on his power To qualify in others: were he meal'd with that Which he corrects, then were he tyrannous; 80 But this being so, he's just. [_Knocking within._ Now are they come. [_Exit Provost._ This is a gentle provost: seldom when The steeled gaoler is the friend of men. [_Knocking within._ How now! what noise? That spirit's possessed with haste That wounds the unsisting postern with these strokes. 85 _Re-enter PROVOST._ _Prov._ There he must stay until the officer Arise to let him in: he is call'd up. _Duke._ Have you no countermand for Claudio yet, But he must die to-morrow? _Prov._ None, sir, none. _Duke._ As near the dawning, provost, as it is, 90 You shall hear more ere morning. _Prov._ Happily You something know; yet I believe there comes No countermand; no such example have we: Besides, upon the very siege of justice Lord Angelo hath to the public ear 95 Profess'd the contrary. _Enter a MESSENGER._ This is his lordship's man. _Duke._ And here comes Claudio's pardon. _Mes._ [_Giving a paper_] My lord hath sent you this note; and by me this further charge, that you swerve not from the smallest article of it, neither in time, matter, or other circumstance. 100 Good morrow; for, as I take it, it is almost day. _Prov._ I shall obey him. [_Exit Messenger._ _Duke._ [_Aside_] This is his pardon, purchased by such sin For which the pardoner himself is in. Hence hath offence his quick celerity, 105 When it is borne in high authority: When vice makes mercy, mercy's so extended, That for the fault's love is the offender friended. Now, sir, what news? _Prov._ I told you. Lord Angelo, belike thinking me remiss 110 in mine office, awakens me with this unwonted putting-on; methinks strangely, for he hath not used it before. _Duke._ Pray you, let's hear. [Transcriber's Note: In order to preserve the marked line breaks without losing readability, each line of the quoted message has been split into two equal halves.] _Prov._ [_Reads_] Whatsoever you may hear to the contrary, let Claudio be executed by four of the clock; and in the afternoon Barnardine: for my 115 better satisfaction, let me have Claudio's head sent me by five. Let this be duly performed; with a thought that more depends on it than we must yet deliver. Thus fail not to do your office, as you will answer it at your peril. What say you to this, sir? 120 _Duke._ What is that Barnardine who is to be executed in the afternoon? _Prov._ A Bohemian born, but here nursed up and bred; one that is a prisoner nine years old. _Duke._ How came it that the absent Duke had not 125 either delivered him to his liberty or executed him? I have heard it was ever his manner to do so. _Prov._ His friends still wrought reprieves for him: and, indeed, his fact, till now in the government of Lord Angclo, came not to an undoubtful proof. 130 _Duke._ It is now apparent? _Prov._ Most manifest, and not denied by himself. _Duke._ Hath he borne himself penitently in prison? how seems he to be touched? _Prov._ A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully 135 but as a drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless of what's past, present, or to come; insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal. _Duke._ He wants advice. _Prov._ He will hear none: he hath evermore had the 140 liberty of the prison; give him leave to escape hence, he would not: drunk many times a day, if not many days entirely drunk. We have very oft awaked him, as if to carry him to execution, and showed him a seeming warrant for it: it hath not moved him at all. 145 _Duke._ More of him anon. There is written in your brow, provost, honesty and constancy: if I read it not truly, my ancient skill beguiles me; but, in the boldness of my cunning, I will lay my self in hazard. Claudio, whom here you have warrant to execute, is no greater forfeit to the 150 law than Angelo who hath sentenced him. To make you understand this in a manifested effect, I crave but four days' respite; for the which you are to do me both a present and a dangerous courtesy. _Prov._ Pray, sir, in what? 155 _Duke._ In the delaying death. _Prov._ Alack, how may I do it, having the hour limited, and an express command, under penalty, to deliver his head in the view of Angelo? I may make my case as Claudio's, to cross this in the smallest. 160 _Duke._ By the vow of mine order I warrant you, if my instructions may be your guide. Let this Barnardine be this morning executed, and his head borne to Angelo. _Prov._ Angelo hath seen them both, and will discover the favour. 165 _Duke._ O, death's a great disguiser; and you may add to it. Shave the head, and tie the beard; and say it was the desire of the penitent to be so bared before his death: you know the course is common. If any thing fall to you upon this, more than thanks and good fortune, by the Saint 170 whom I profess, I will plead against it with my life. _Prov._ Pardon me, good father; it is against my oath. _Duke._ Were you sworn to the Duke, or to the Deputy? _Prov._ To him, and to his substitutes. _Duke._ You will think you have made no offence, if the 175 Duke avouch the justice of your dealing? _Prov._ But what likelihood is in that? _Duke._ Not a resemblance, but a certainty. Yet since I see you fearful, that neither my coat, integrity, nor persuasion can with ease attempt you, I will go further than I 180 meant, to pluck all fears out of you. Look you, sir, here is the hand and seal of the Duke: you know the character, I doubt not; and the signet is not strange to you. _Prov._ I know them both. _Duke._ The contents of this is the return of the Duke: 185 you shall anon over-read it at your pleasure; where you shall find, within these two days he will be here. This is a thing that Angelo knows not; for he this very day receives letters of strange tenour; perchance of the Duke's death; perchance entering into some monastery; but, by 190 chance, nothing of what is writ. Look, the unfolding star calls up the shepherd. Put not yourself into amazement how these things should be: all difficulties are but easy when they are known. Call your executioner, and off with Barnardine's head: I will give him a present shrift and 195 advise him for a better place. Yet you are amazed; but this shall absolutely resolve you. Come away; it is almost clear dawn. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: IV, 2. SCENE II.] SCENE V. Pope. 2-4: Printed as verse in Ff. 37-42: Abhor. _Sir,.......thief_] Abhor. ***Clown.*** _Sir, it is a mystery._ Abhor. _Proof.--_ Clown. _Every ... thief_ (42) Hanmer. Pom. _Proof ... thief_ (42) Lloyd conj. 39-42: _Every......thief_] Capell. Abh. _Every....thief_ (39). Clo. _If it be ... thief_ (41) Ff. Abh. _Every ... thief, Clown: if it be......thief_ (42) Theobald. 45: _your_] _you_ F2. 53: _yare_] Theobald. _y'are_ Ff. _yours_ Rowe. 56: _The one_] _Th' one_ Ff. _One_ Hamner. 58: SCENE VI. Pope. 63: _He will not wake_] F1 F2. _He will not awake_ F3 F4. _He'll not awake_ Pope. 64: _yourself_] _yourself_ [Ex. Claudio.] Theobald. 65: _comfort!_ [Exit Claudio.] _By and by.--_] Capell. _comfort: by and by,_ Ff. 70: _None_] F1. _Now_ F2 F3 F4. 71: _They_] _She_ Hawkins conj. _There_ Collier MS. 85: _unsisting_] F1 F2 F3. _insisting_ F4. _unresisting_ Rowe. _unresting_ Hanmer. _unshifting_ Capell. _unlist'ning_ Steevens conj. _resisting_ Collier conj. _unlisting_ Mason conj. _unfeeling_ Johnson conj. _unwisting_ Singer. 86: ....Provost] ....Provost, speaking to one at the door, after which he comes forward. Capell. 91: _Happily_] _Happely_ F1 F2. _Happily_ F3 F4. See note (XVIII). 96: SCENE VII. Pope. _lordship's_] Pope. _lords_ Ff. om. Capell. 96, 97: _This ... man._ Duke. _And ... pardon_] Knight (Tyrwhitt conj.). Duke. _This ... man._ Pro. _And ... pardon_ Ff. 98-101: Printed as verse in Ff. 113: _you_] om. F4. 114: Prov. [Reads] Rowe. The letter. Ff. 117: _duly_] _truly_ Capell (a misprint). 131: _It is_] Ff. _Is it_ Pope. 136: _reckless_] Theobald. _wreaklesse_ F1 F2 F3. _wreakless_ F4. _rechless_ Pope. 138: _desperately mortal_] _mortally desperate_ Hanmer. 161-165: Printed as verse in Ff. Rowe. 167: _tie_] F1 F4. _tye_ F2 F3. _tire_ Theobald conj. _dye_ Simpson conj. 168: _bared_] Malone. _bar'de_ F1 F2 F3. _barb'd_ F4. 179: _persuasion_] Ff. _my persuasion_ Rowe. 188: _that_] F1 F2 F3. _which_ F4. 191: _writ_] _here writ_ Hanmer.

Act 4, Scene 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-4-scene-2

At the prison, the Provost makes Pompey an offer he can't refuse. If Pompey agrees to be his assistant executioner, his prison sentence will be reduced and he'll get to go home. Pompey cracks a dirty joke about chopping off a man's head and cutting off a woman's "maidenhead" and then agrees to the deal. Pompey points out how strange it is that it's illegal for him to be a bawd, but it's completely legal for him to be an executioner. Abhorson enters and declares that Pompey's status as a pimp will bring shame to professional executioners everywhere. Pompey and Abhorson argue about whether or not pimps and hangmen can be considered professions that require specialized skills. Pompey and Abhorson run off to train Pompey for his new job. The Duke shows up at the prison and asks the Provost if Angelo still wants Claudio to be executed in the morning. He does. A Messenger arrives and the Duke is hopeful that he brings news that Claudio will be spared. Yet, the Messenger brings word from Angelo that Claudio's execution is still on for 4pm the next day. The Duke asks the Provost to delay Claudio's execution for four days while he hatches a plan, but the Provost says he can't do it without Angelo finding out because Angelo has requested proof of Claudio's death. The Duke convinces the Provost to execute another prisoner, Barnardine, in Claudio's place. If they shave Barnardine's head and trim his beard, nobody will know it's not Claudio because "death's a great disguiser." The Provost is skeptical but the Duke convinces him that he won't get into trouble.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/23045-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Measure for Measure/section_13_part_0.txt

Measure for Measure.act 4.scene 4

act 4, scene 4

{"name": "Act 4, Scene 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-4-scene-4", "summary": "At Angelo's house, Escalus and Angelo read a letter from the Duke and note that Vincentio's letters don't seem to make any sense. Has he gone mad, they wonder. Angelo also wonders why the Duke wants them to meet him at the city's gate and why the Duke wants them to make an announcement that anyone who's got a beef with Angelo's version of justice should make a public declaration. Escalus reasons, incorrectly, that the Duke just wants to make things easier for them. Escalus says so long to Angelo and heads home for the night. Alone on stage, Angelo tells us that he knows he's in deep, deep trouble. He hopes that Isabella will be too ashamed to accuse him of taking her virginity. Angelo also confesses that he didn't hold up his end of the bargain because he was afraid Claudio would want revenge.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE IV. _A room in ANGELO'S house._ _Enter ANGELO and ESCALUS._ _Escal._ Every letter he hath writ hath disvouched other. _Ang._ In most uneven and distracted manner. His actions show much like to madness: pray heaven his wisdom be not tainted! And why meet him at the gates, and redeliver our authorities there? 5 _Escal._ I guess not. _Ang._ And why should we proclaim it in an hour before his entering, that if any crave redress of injustice, they should exhibit their petitions in the street? _Escal._ He shows his reason for that: to have a dispatch 10 of complaints, and to deliver us from devices hereafter, which shall then have no power to stand against us. _Ang._ Well, I beseech you, let it be proclaimed betimes i' the morn; I'll call you at your house: give notice to such men of sort and suit as are to meet him. 15 _Escal._ I shall, sir. Fare you well. _Ang._ Good night. [_Exit Escalus._ This deed unshapes me quite, makes me unpregnant, And dull to all proceedings. A deflower'd maid! And by an eminent body that enforced 20 The law against it! But that her tender shame Will not proclaim against her maiden loss, How might she tongue me! Yet reason dares her no; For my authority bears of a credent bulk, That no particular scandal once can touch 25 But it confounds the breather. He should have lived, Save that his riotous youth, with dangerous sense, Might in the times to come have ta'en revenge, By so receiving a dishonour'd life With ransom of such shame. Would yet he had lived! 30 Alack, when once our grace we have forgot, Nothing goes right: we would, and we would not. [_Exit._ NOTES: IV, 4. SCENE IV.] SCENE XII. Pope. A room ... house.] Capell. The palace. Rowe. 2, sqq.: Angelo's speeches in this scene Collier prints as verse. 5: _redeliver_] Capell. _re-liver_] F1. _deliver_ F2 F3 F4. 13: A colon is put after _proclaim'd_ by Capell, who prints lines 13-16 as verse. 19: _And_] om. Hanmer. 23: _dares her no;_] Ff. _dares her:_ Pope. _dares her: no,_ Hanmer. _dares her No_ Warburton. _dares her? no:_ Capell. _dares her note_ Theobald conj. _dares her not_ Steevens conj. _dares her on_ Grant White (Becket conj.). _reason ... no_] _treason dares her?--No_ Jackson conj. 24: _bears of a credent bulk_] F1 F2 F3. _bears off a credent bulk_ F4. _bears off all credence_ Pope. _bears a credent bulk_ Theobald. _bears such a credent bulk_ Collier MS. _here's of a credent bulk_ Singer. _bears so credent bulk_ Dyce. _bears up a credent bulk_ Grant White.

Act 4, Scene 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-4-scene-4

At Angelo's house, Escalus and Angelo read a letter from the Duke and note that Vincentio's letters don't seem to make any sense. Has he gone mad, they wonder. Angelo also wonders why the Duke wants them to meet him at the city's gate and why the Duke wants them to make an announcement that anyone who's got a beef with Angelo's version of justice should make a public declaration. Escalus reasons, incorrectly, that the Duke just wants to make things easier for them. Escalus says so long to Angelo and heads home for the night. Alone on stage, Angelo tells us that he knows he's in deep, deep trouble. He hopes that Isabella will be too ashamed to accuse him of taking her virginity. Angelo also confesses that he didn't hold up his end of the bargain because he was afraid Claudio would want revenge.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/23045-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Measure for Measure/section_14_part_0.txt

Measure for Measure.act 4.scene 5

act 4, scene 5

{"name": "Act 4, Scene 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-4-scene-5", "summary": "The Duke meets with Friar Peter just outside the city and gives him....a bunch of letters. Duke Vincentio instructs Friar Peter to deliver the letters to him when the time is right. We learn that the Provost knows of the Duke's elaborate scheme to \"return\" to Vienna and fix the big mess Angelo has made. A guy named Varrius shows up and takes a walk with the Duke.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE V. _Fields without the town._ _Enter DUKE in his own habit, and FRIAR PETER._ _Duke._ These letters at fit time deliver me: [_Giving letters._ The provost knows our purpose and our plot. The matter being afoot, keep your instruction, And hold you ever to our special drift; Though sometimes you do blench from this to that, 5 As cause doth minister. Go call at Flavius' house, And tell him where I stay: give the like notice To Valentius, Rowland, and to Crassus, And bid them bring the trumpets to the gate; But send me Flavius first. _Fri. P._ It shall be speeded well. [_Exit._ 10 _Enter VARRIUS._ _Duke._ I thank thee, Varrius; thou hast made good haste: Come, we will walk. There's other of our friends Will greet us here anon, my gentle Varrius. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: IV, 5. SCENE V.] SCENE XIII. Pope. FRIAR PETER] See note (XXI). 6: _Go_] om. Hanmer. _Flavius'_] Rowe. _Flavio's_ Ff. 8: _To Valentius_] _To Valencius_ Ff. _Unto Valentius_ Pope. _To Valentinus_ Capell.

Act 4, Scene 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-4-scene-5

The Duke meets with Friar Peter just outside the city and gives him....a bunch of letters. Duke Vincentio instructs Friar Peter to deliver the letters to him when the time is right. We learn that the Provost knows of the Duke's elaborate scheme to "return" to Vienna and fix the big mess Angelo has made. A guy named Varrius shows up and takes a walk with the Duke.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/23045-chapters/16.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Measure for Measure/section_15_part_0.txt

Measure for Measure.act 4.scene 6

act 4, scene 6

{"name": "Act 4, Scene 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-4-scene-6", "summary": "On a street near the gate to Vienna, we catch Mariana and Isabella in mid-conversation about the plan to punk Angelo. Isabella reveals that the Friar has advised her to accuse Angelo of sleeping with her. Even though she knows it's a lie , she's willing to go along with the scheme. We also learn that Isabella has been told she shouldn't worry if the Friar pretends like he's not on her side. It's all part of the plan. Friar Peter announces that the women should get ready because the Duke is coming.", "analysis": ""}

SCENE VI. _Street near the city-gate._ _Enter ISABELLA and MARIANA._ _Isab._ To speak so indirectly I am loath: I would say the truth; but to accuse him so, That is your part: yet I am advised to do it; He says, to veil full purpose. _Mari._ Be ruled by him. _Isab._ Besides, he tells me that, if peradventure 5 He speak against me on the adverse side, I should not think it strange; for 'tis a physic That's bitter to sweet end. _Mari._ I would Friar Peter-- _Isab._ O, peace! the friar is come. _Enter FRIAR PETER._ _Fri. P._ Come, I have found you out a stand most fit, 10 Where you may have such vantage on the Duke, He shall not pass you. Twice have the trumpets sounded; The generous and gravest citizens Have hent the gates, and very near upon The Duke is entering: therefore, hence, away! [_Exeunt._ 15 NOTES: IV, 6. SCENE VI.] SCENE XIV. Pope. 2: _I would_] _I'd_ Pope. 3: _I am_] _I'm_ Pope. 4: _to veil full_] Malone. _to vaile full_ F1 F2 F3. _to vail full_ F4. _t' availful_ Theobald. _to 'vailful_ Hanmer.

Act 4, Scene 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210122135230/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/measure-for-measure/summary/act-4-scene-6

On a street near the gate to Vienna, we catch Mariana and Isabella in mid-conversation about the plan to punk Angelo. Isabella reveals that the Friar has advised her to accuse Angelo of sleeping with her. Even though she knows it's a lie , she's willing to go along with the scheme. We also learn that Isabella has been told she shouldn't worry if the Friar pretends like he's not on her side. It's all part of the plan. Friar Peter announces that the women should get ready because the Duke is coming.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/23045-chapters/act_1_chapters_3_to_4.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Measure for Measure/section_1_part_0.txt

Measure for Measure.act 1.scenes 3-4

act 1, scenes 3-4

{"name": "Act I, Scenes iii-iv", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210123014135/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/measure/section2/", "summary": "The Duke is at a monastery, asking Friar Thomas to hide him there. He tells the friar that he has good reasons for hiding, and that he has lied to Angelo about his destination. The Duke explains that for the past fourteen years the laws have been flagrantly disobeyed, with little reproach from the government. As the Duke explains it, when the law only serves to threaten, because the lawmakers do not carry out the punishments dictated, the government loses its authority and \"the baby beats the nurse\" . Since he gave the people liberties, he does not feel comfortable punishing them for them now, yet he worries about the state of affairs in Vienna. He asked Angelo to take over in order to act more strictly without reproach or hypocrisy. He wants to observe Angelo at work, and so he asks the Friar to provide him with a disguise which will make him look like a visiting Friar himself. Meanwhile, Isabella is being introduced to the ways of the nunnery which she has decided to join. A man approaches, and the sister asks Isabella to answer the door, since she is not sworn in yet and therefore still allowed to speak to men. Isabella obeys and finds Lucio at the door, asking for her by name. Isabella asks him to explain what has happened, and he tells her that Claudio has impregnated his \"friend.\" Isabella does not believe it at first and tells Lucio not to mock her. Lucio says that he is indeed telling the truth, and Isabella asks if the woman is her friend Juliet. When Lucio says yes, Isabella asks why they cannot simply marry. Lucio explains that the Duke is gone, and that the very logical and unemotional Angelo is serving as leader in his place. He also says that Angelo wants to make Claudio an example by executing him. Isabella asks how she can help, and Lucio says she should test whatever influence she has and visit Angelo, using her feminine charms and submissiveness to convince him to have mercy on her brother. Isabella says she will leave right away.", "analysis": "iv - Commentary The Duke and Isabella are both described in more detail. They are both shown to be good-intentioned, sometimes confused characters who seek to improve the situation around them. The Duke wants to bring more law and order to Vienna but does not know how to do it himself, so he has allowed Angelo to take his place. However, he does not wish Angelo to have free reign, knowing him to be very strict and possibly heartless, so he asks Friar Thomas to disguise him so that he might roam the city in secret. Isabella, similarly, seeks to retire from daily affairs. She joins a convent, thinking that she will find a safe, religious, pure environment in which she can worship. Her introduction to the life of a nun is interrupted by a plea from Lucio, and this is the first moment at which she must consider her choice. She is asked to leave the nunnery physically at this point; later she will be asked to give up her vow of chastity, and eventually she will be asked to marry instead of returning to the nunnery. Her physical departure is all the more important because she is asked to plead, on her brother's behalf, for forgiveness of what she and her religion consider to be a sin: fornication. At this point, she acts on familial loyalty rather than religious devotion, saying that she thinks the punishment for her brother's crime is warranted but too severe. This first introduction to Isabella's beliefs about sexual behavior is particularly important. She will be asked to make major decisions and question her beliefs about acceptability and propriety, and her brother's life hangs in the balance. At this point, we see only that Isabella is innocent, chaste, and devoted to her religion. She is looking for protection from the sins of the common people of Vienna; Lucio brings her away from this safe haven into a situation in which she is vulnerable to the sins of others."}

SCENE IV. _A nunnery._ _Enter ISABELLA and FRANCISCA._ _Isab._ And have you nuns no farther privileges? _Fran._ Are not these large enough? _Isab._ Yes, truly: I speak not as desiring more; But rather wishing a more strict restraint Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare. 5 _Lucio_ [_within_]. Ho! Peace be in this place! _Isab._ Who's that which calls? _Fran._ It is a man's voice. Gentle Isabella, Turn you the key, and know his business of him; You may, I may not; you are yet unsworn. When you have vow'd, you must not speak with men 10 But in the presence of the prioress: Then, if you speak, you must not show your face; Or, if you show your face, you must not speak. He calls again; I pray you, answer him. [_Exit._ _Isab._ Peace and prosperity! Who is't that calls? 15 _Enter LUCIO._ _Lucio._ Hail, virgin, if you be, as those cheek-roses Proclaim you are no less! Can you so stead me As bring me to the sight of Isabella, A novice of this place, and the fair sister To her unhappy brother Claudio? 20 _Isab._ Why, 'her unhappy brother'? let me ask The rather, for I now must make you know I am that Isabella and his sister. _Lucio._ Gentle and fair, your brother kindly greets you: Not to be weary with you, he's in prison. 25 _Isab._ Woe me! for what? _Lucio._ For that which, if myself might be his judge, He should receive his punishment in thanks: He hath got his friend with child. _Isab._ Sir, make me not your story. _Lucio._ It is true. 30 I would not--though 'tis my familiar sin With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest, Tongue far from heart--play with all virgins so: I hold you as a thing ensky'd and sainted; By your renouncement, an immortal spirit; 35 And to be talk'd with in sincerity, As with a saint. _Isab._ You do blaspheme the good in mocking me. _Lucio._ Do not believe it. Fewness and truth, 'tis thus:-- Your brother and his lover have embraced: 40 As those that feed grow full,--as blossoming time, That from the seedness the bare fallow brings To teeming foison,--even so her plenteous womb Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry. _Isab._ Some one with child by him?--My cousin Juliet? 45 _Lucio._ Is she your cousin? _Isab._ Adoptedly; as school-maids change their names By vain, though apt, affection. _Lucio._ She it is. _Isab._ O, let him marry her. _Lucio._ This is the point. The duke is very strangely gone from hence; 50 Bore many gentlemen, myself being one, In hand, and hope of action: but we do learn By those that know the very nerves of state, His givings-out were of an infinite distance From his true-meant design. Upon his place, 55 And with full line of his authority, Governs Lord Angelo; a man whose blood Is very snow-broth; one who never feels The wanton stings and motions of the sense, But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge 60 With profits of the mind, study and fast. He--to give fear to use and liberty, Which have for long run by the hideous law, As mice by lions--hath pick'd out an act, Under whose heavy sense your brother's life 65 Falls into forfeit: he arrests him on it; And follows close the rigour of the statute, To make him an example. All hope is gone, Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer To soften Angelo: and that's my pith of business 70 'Twixt you and your poor brother. _Isab._ Doth he so seek his life? _Lucio._ Has censured him Already; and, as I hear, the provost hath A warrant for his execution. _Isab._ Alas! what poor ability's in me 75 To do him good? _Lucio._ Assay the power you have. _Isab._ My power? Alas, I doubt,-- _Lucio._ Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt. Go to Lord Angelo, And let him learn to know, when maidens sue, 80 Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel, All their petitions are as freely theirs As they themselves would owe them. _Isab._ I'll see what I can do. _Lucio._ But speedily. _Isab._ I will about it straight; 85 No longer staying but to give the Mother Notice of my affair. I humbly thank you: Commend me to my brother: soon at night I'll send him certain word of my success. _Lucio._ I take my leave of you. _Isab._ Good sir, adieu. 90 [_Exeunt._ NOTES: I, 4. SCENE IV.] SCENA QUINTA Ff. SCENE VIII. Pope. 5: _sisterhood, the votarists_] _sister votarists_ Pope. 27: _For that which_] _That for which_ Malone conj. 30: _make me not your story_] _mock me not:--your story_ Malone. _make me not your scorn_ Collier MS. (after Davenant). _make ... sport_ Singer. _It is true_] Steevens. _'Tis true_ Ff. om. Pope. _Nay, tis true_ Capell. 31: _I would not_] Malone puts a full stop here. 40: _have_] _having_ Rowe. 42: _That ... brings_] _Doth ... bring_ Hanmer. _seedness_] _seeding_ Collier MS. 44: _his_] _its_ Hanmer. 49: _O, let him_] F1. _Let him_ F2 F3 F4. _Let him then_ Pope. 50: _is_] _who's_ Collier MS. 52: _and_] _with_ Johnson conj. _do_] om. Pope. 54: _givings-out_] Rowe. _giving-out_ Ff. 60: _his_] _it's_ Capell. 63: _for long_] _long time_ Pope. 68: _hope is_] _hope's_ Pope. 70: _pith of business 'Twixt_] _pith Of business betwixt_ Hanmer. See note (VI). _pith of_] om. Pope. 72: _so seek_] _so, Seeke_ Ff. _so? seek_ Edd. conj. _Has_] _H'as_ Theobald. 71-75: Ff end the lines thus:-- _so,--already--warrant--poor--good._ Capell first gave the arrangement in the text. 73: _as_] om. Hanmer. 74: _A warrant for his_] _a warrant For's_ Ff. 78: _make_] Pope. _makes_ Ff. 82: _freely_] F1. _truely_ F2 F3 F4. Enter _Provost_ inserted by Capell.

Act I, Scenes iii-iv

https://web.archive.org/web/20210123014135/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/measure/section2/

The Duke is at a monastery, asking Friar Thomas to hide him there. He tells the friar that he has good reasons for hiding, and that he has lied to Angelo about his destination. The Duke explains that for the past fourteen years the laws have been flagrantly disobeyed, with little reproach from the government. As the Duke explains it, when the law only serves to threaten, because the lawmakers do not carry out the punishments dictated, the government loses its authority and "the baby beats the nurse" . Since he gave the people liberties, he does not feel comfortable punishing them for them now, yet he worries about the state of affairs in Vienna. He asked Angelo to take over in order to act more strictly without reproach or hypocrisy. He wants to observe Angelo at work, and so he asks the Friar to provide him with a disguise which will make him look like a visiting Friar himself. Meanwhile, Isabella is being introduced to the ways of the nunnery which she has decided to join. A man approaches, and the sister asks Isabella to answer the door, since she is not sworn in yet and therefore still allowed to speak to men. Isabella obeys and finds Lucio at the door, asking for her by name. Isabella asks him to explain what has happened, and he tells her that Claudio has impregnated his "friend." Isabella does not believe it at first and tells Lucio not to mock her. Lucio says that he is indeed telling the truth, and Isabella asks if the woman is her friend Juliet. When Lucio says yes, Isabella asks why they cannot simply marry. Lucio explains that the Duke is gone, and that the very logical and unemotional Angelo is serving as leader in his place. He also says that Angelo wants to make Claudio an example by executing him. Isabella asks how she can help, and Lucio says she should test whatever influence she has and visit Angelo, using her feminine charms and submissiveness to convince him to have mercy on her brother. Isabella says she will leave right away.

iv - Commentary The Duke and Isabella are both described in more detail. They are both shown to be good-intentioned, sometimes confused characters who seek to improve the situation around them. The Duke wants to bring more law and order to Vienna but does not know how to do it himself, so he has allowed Angelo to take his place. However, he does not wish Angelo to have free reign, knowing him to be very strict and possibly heartless, so he asks Friar Thomas to disguise him so that he might roam the city in secret. Isabella, similarly, seeks to retire from daily affairs. She joins a convent, thinking that she will find a safe, religious, pure environment in which she can worship. Her introduction to the life of a nun is interrupted by a plea from Lucio, and this is the first moment at which she must consider her choice. She is asked to leave the nunnery physically at this point; later she will be asked to give up her vow of chastity, and eventually she will be asked to marry instead of returning to the nunnery. Her physical departure is all the more important because she is asked to plead, on her brother's behalf, for forgiveness of what she and her religion consider to be a sin: fornication. At this point, she acts on familial loyalty rather than religious devotion, saying that she thinks the punishment for her brother's crime is warranted but too severe. This first introduction to Isabella's beliefs about sexual behavior is particularly important. She will be asked to make major decisions and question her beliefs about acceptability and propriety, and her brother's life hangs in the balance. At this point, we see only that Isabella is innocent, chaste, and devoted to her religion. She is looking for protection from the sins of the common people of Vienna; Lucio brings her away from this safe haven into a situation in which she is vulnerable to the sins of others.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/23045-chapters/5.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/Measure for Measure/section_2_part_0.txt

Measure for Measure.act ii.scene i

act ii, scene i

{"name": "Act II, Scene i", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210123014135/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/measure/section3/", "summary": "Angelo tells Escalus that they \"must not make a scarecrow of the law\" , meaning that they must not waver in their decisions. Escalus argues that they should \"cut a little\" rather than \"fall, and bruise to death,\" comparing law enforcement to pruning a tree; it is better to trim the tree than to cut it down. He also brings up Claudio's specific case, asking Angelo to consider whether he could have erred in the same way at some point in his life. Angelo responds, \"Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, another thing to fall\" . He argues that, despite the ever-changing line between lawmaker and criminal, the law must still stand firm. He admits that he himself is capable of transgression, but adds that he hopes to be treated with the same strictness should he do wrong. Angelo calls in the provost and tells him to ensure that Claudio is executed before nine o'clock the next morning. Elbow enters, bringing Pompey and Froth with him. Angelo asks him what he is doing, and he replies that he is the Duke's constable, and that he has brought two \"notorious benefactors\" to Angelo. Angelo asks if they are not \"malefactors\" instead, and the constable replies that he does not know. Angelo asks Pompey what he is, and Elbow calls him a \"parcel-bawd,\" or a partial bawd. It becomes clear that Elbow confuses words a lot, and so Angelo has difficulty questioning him. He does say that he found Pompey and Froth at a brothel. Froth confesses to working for Mistress Overdone, and Escalus tells him that prostitution is an illegal and punishable occupation, warning him not to be seen at the brothel again. Escalus questions Elbow about other constables, telling him to bring the names of other worthy people. He then mourns the fate of Claudio, but says that there is no remedy for it.", "analysis": "Commentary This scene exists primarily for comic relief, distracting the audience momentarily from the issues at stake, particularly Claudio's imminent execution. Escalus is a noble character who acts as a straight-man to the dim-witted constable and the foolish clown. Elbow is a frivolous addition to the cast of characters, amusing because of his use of malapropisms, or misspoken phrases and words. He is sent to retrieve the criminals of Vienna, and he appears at various intervals performing this task and providing more pure comedy. At the end of the scene, the tone shifts back to seriousness, as Escalus expresses his pity for Claudio. It is important that Escalus, as well as the provost, does not approve of the punishment to be administered to Claudio, and yet sees no way to convince Angelo to be more merciful. Angelo appears to be narrow-minded and stern; the other characters seem to fear him. There is a sense of apathy among the characters generally; it takes the Duke's intervention to promote movement, discussion, and action in them."}

ACT II. SCENE I. _A hall in ANGELO'S house._ _Enter ANGELO, ESCALUS, and a _Justice, Provost, Officers_, and other _Attendants_, behind._ _Ang._ We must not make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape, till custom make it Their perch, and not their terror. _Escal._ Ay, but yet Let us be keen, and rather cut a little, 5 Than fall, and bruise to death. Alas, this gentleman, Whom I would save, had a most noble father! Let but your honour know, Whom I believe to be most strait in virtue, That, in the working of your own affections, 10 Had time cohered with place or place with wishing, Or that the resolute acting of your blood Could have attain'd the effect of your own purpose, Whether you had not sometime in your life Err'd in this point which now you censure him, 15 And pull'd the law upon you. _Ang._ 'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, Another thing to fall. I not deny, The jury, passing on the prisoner's life, May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two 20 Guiltier than him they try. What's open made to justice, That justice seizes: what know the laws That theives do pass on thieves? 'Tis very pregnant, The jewel that we find, we stoop and take't, Because we see it; but what we do not see 25 We tread upon, and never think of it. You may not so extenuate his offence For I have had such faults; but rather tell me, When I, that censure him, do so offend, Let mine own judgement pattern out my death, 30 And nothing come in partial. Sir, he must die. _Escal._ Be it as your wisdom will. _Ang._ Where is the provost? _Prov._ Here, if it like your honour. _Ang._ See that Claudio Be executed by nine to-morrow morning: Bring him his confessor, let him be prepared; 35 For that's the utmost of his pilgrimage. [_Exit Provost._ _Escal._ [_Aside_] Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all! Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall: Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none; And some condemned for a fault alone. 40 _Enter ELBOW, and _Officers_ with FROTH and POMPEY._ _Elb._ Come, bring them away: if these be good people in a commonweal that do nothing but use their abuses in common houses, I know no law: bring them away. _Ang._ How now, sir! What's your name? and what's the matter? 45 _Elb._ If it please your honour, I am the poor Duke's constable, and my name is Elbow: I do lean upon justice, sir, and do bring in here before your good honour two notorious benefactors. _Ang._ Benefactors? Well; what benefactors are they? 50 are they not malefactors? _Elb._ If it please your honour, I know not well what they are: but precise villains they are, that I am sure of; and void of all profanation in the world that good Christians ought to have. 55 _Escal._ This comes off well; here's a wise officer. _Ang._ Go to: what quality are they of? Elbow is your name? why dost thou not speak, Elbow? _Pom._ He cannot, sir; he's out at elbow. _Ang._ What are you, sir? 60 _Elb._ He, sir! a tapster, sir; parcel-bawd; one that serves a bad woman; whose house, sir, was, as they say, plucked down in the suburbs; and now she professes a hot-house, which, I think, is a very ill house too. _Escal._ How know you that? 65 _Elb._ My wife, sir, whom I detest before heaven and your honour,-- _Escal._ How? thy wife? _Elb._ Ay, sir;--whom, I thank heaven, is an honest woman,-- 70 _Escal._ Dost thou detest her therefore? _Elb._ I say, sir, I will detest myself also, as well as she, that this house, if it be not a bawd's house, it is pity of her life, for it is a naughty house. _Escal._ How dost thou know that, constable? 75 _Elb._ Marry, sir, by my wife; who, if she had been a woman cardinally given, might have been accused in fornication, adultery, and all uncleanliness there. _Escal._ By the woman's means? _Elb._ Ay, sir, by Mistress Overdone's means: but as she 80 spit in his face, so she defied him. _Pom._ Sir, if it please your honour, this is not so. _Elb._ Prove it before these varlets here, thou honourable man; prove it. _Escal._ Do you hear how he misplaces? 85 _Pom._ Sir, she came in great with child; and longing, saving your honour's reverence, for stewed prunes; sir, we had but two in the house, which at that very distant time stood, as it were, in a fruit-dish, a dish of some three-pence; your honours have seen such dishes; they are not China 90 dishes, but very good dishes,-- _Escal._ Go to, go to: no matter for the dish, sir. _Pom._ No, indeed, sir, not of a pin; you are therein in the right: but to the point. As I say, this Mistress Elbow, being, as I say, with child, and being great-bellied, and 95 longing, as I said, for prunes; and having but two in the dish, as I said, Master Froth here, this very man, having eaten the rest, as I said, and, as I say, paying for them very honestly; for, as you know, Master Froth, I could not give you three-pence again. 100 _Froth._ No, indeed. _Pom._ Very well;--you being then, if you be remembered, cracking the stones of the foresaid prunes,-- _Froth._ Ay, so I did indeed. _Pom._ Why, very well; I telling you then, if you be remembered, 105 that such a one and such a one were past cure of the thing you wot of, unless they kept very good diet, as I told you,-- _Froth._ All this is true. _Pom._ Why, very well, then,-- 110 _Escal._ Come, you are a tedious fool: to the purpose. What was done to Elbow's wife, that he hath cause to complain of? Come me to what was done to her. _Pom._ Sir, your honour cannot come to that yet. _Escal._ No, sir, nor I mean it not. 115 _Pom._ Sir, but you shall come to it, by your honour's leave. And, I beseech you, look into Master Froth here, sir; a man of fourscore pound a year; whose father died at Hallowmas:--was't not at Hallowmas, Master Froth?-- _Froth._ All-hallond eve. 120 _Pom._ Why, very well; I hope here be truths. He, sir, sitting, as I say, in a lower chair, sir; 'twas in the Bunch of Grapes, where, indeed, you have a delight to sit, have you not? _Froth._ I have so; because it is an open room, and 125 good for winter. _Pom._ Why, very well, then; I hope here be truths. _Ang._ This will last out a night in Russia, When nights are longest there: I'll take my leave, And leave you to the hearing of the cause; 130 Hoping you'll find good cause to whip them all. _Escal._ I think no less. Good morrow to your lordship. [_Exit Angelo._ Now, sir, come on: what was done to Elbow's wife, once more? _Pom._ Once, sir? there was nothing done to her once. 135 _Elb._ I beseech you, sir, ask him what this man did to my wife. _Pom._ I beseech your honour, ask me. _Escal._ Well, sir; what did this gentleman to her? _Pom._ I beseech you, sir, look in this gentleman's face. 140 Good Master Froth, look upon his honour; 'tis for a good purpose. Doth your honour mark his face? _Escal._ Ay, sir, very well. _Pom._ Nay, I beseech you, mark it well. _Escal._ Well, I do so. 145 _Pom._ Doth your honour see any harm in his face? _Escal._ Why, no. _Pom._ I'll be supposed upon a book, his face is the worst thing about him. Good, then; if his face be the worst thing about him, how could Master Froth do the constable's 150 wife any harm? I would know that of your honour. _Escal._ He's in the right. Constable, what say you to it? _Elb._ First, an it like you, the house is a respected house; next, this is a respected fellow; and his mistress is a respected woman. 155 _Pom._ By this hand, sir, his wife is a more respected person than any of us all. _Elb._ Varlet, thou liest; thou liest, wicked varlet! the time is yet to come that she was ever respected with man, woman, or child. 160 _Pom._ Sir, she was respected with him before he married with her. _Escal._ Which is the wiser here? Justice or Iniquity? Is this true? _Elb._ O thou caitiff! O thou varlet! O thou wicked 165 Hannibal! I respected with her before I was married to her! If ever I was respected with her, or she with me, let not your worship think me the poor duke's officer. Prove this, thou wicked Hannibal, or I'll have mine action of battery on thee. 170 _Escal._ If he took you a box o' th' ear, you might have your action of slander too. _Elb._ Marry, I thank your good worship for it. What is't your worship's pleasure I shall do with this wicked caitiff? 175 _Escal._ Truly, officer, because he hath some offences in him that thou wouldst discover if thou couldst, let him continue in his courses till thou knowest what they are. _Elb._ Marry, I thank your worship for it. Thou seest, thou wicked varlet, now, what's come upon thee: thou art 180 to continue now, thou varlet; thou art to continue. _Escal._ Where were you born, friend? _Froth._ Here in Vienna, sir. _Escal._ Are you of fourscore pounds a year? _Froth._ Yes, an't please you, sir. 185 _Escal._ So. What trade are you of, sir? _Pom._ A tapster; a poor widow's tapster. _Escal._ Your mistress' name? _Pom._ Mistress Overdone. _Escal._ Hath she had any more than one husband? 190 _Pom._ Nine, sir; Overdone by the last. _Escal._ Nine! Come hither to me, Master Froth. Master Froth, I would not have you acquainted with tapsters: they will draw you, Master Froth, and you will hang them. Get you gone, and let me hear no more of you. 195 _Froth._ I thank your worship. For mine own part, I never come into any room in a taphouse, but I am drawn in. _Escal._ Well, no more of it, Master Froth: farewell. [_Exit Froth._] Come you hither to me, Master tapster. What's your name, Master tapster? 200 _Pom._ Pompey. _Escal._ What else? _Pom._ Bum, sir. _Escal._ Troth, and your bum is the greatest thing about you; so that, in the beastliest sense, you are Pompey the 205 Great. Pompey, you are partly a bawd, Pompey, howsoever you colour it in being a tapster, are you not? come, tell me true: it shall be the better for you. _Pom._ Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live. _Escal._ How would you live, Pompey? by being a 210 bawd? What do you think of the trade, Pompey? is it a lawful trade? _Pom._ If the law would allow it, sir. _Escal._ But the law will not allow it, Pompey; nor it shall not be allowed in Vienna. 215 _Pom._ Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of the city? _Escal._ No, Pompey. _Pom._ Truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to't, then. If your worship will take order for the drabs and 220 the knaves, you need not to fear the bawds. _Escal._ There are pretty orders beginning, I can tell you: it is but heading and hanging. _Pom._ If you head and hang all that offend that way but for ten year together, you'll be glad to give out a commission 225 for more heads: if this law hold in Vienna ten year, I'll rent the fairest house in it after three-pence a bay: if you live to see this come to pass, say Pompey told you so. _Escal._ Thank you, good Pompey; and, in requital of your prophecy, hark you: I advise you, let me not find 230 you before me again upon any complaint whatsoever; no, not for dwelling where you do: if I do, Pompey, I shall beat you to your tent, and prove a shrewd Caesar to you; in plain dealing, Pompey, I shall have you whipt: so, for this time, Pompey, fare you well. 235 _Pom._ I thank your worship for your good counsel: [_Aside_] but I shall follow it as the flesh and fortune shall better determine. Whip me? No, no; let carman whip his jade: The valiant heart is not whipt out of his trade. [_Exit._ 240 _Escal._ Come hither to me, Master Elbow; come hither, Master constable. How long have you been in this place of constable? _Elb._ Seven year and a half, sir. _Escal._ I thought, by your readiness in the office, you had 245 continued in it some time. You say, seven years together? _Elb._ And a half, sir. _Escal._ Alas, it hath been great pains to you. They do you wrong to put you so oft upon't: are there not men in your ward sufficient to serve it? 250 _Elb._ Faith, sir, few of any wit in such matters: as they are chosen, they are glad to choose me for them; I do it for some piece of money, and go through with all. _Escal._ Look you bring me in the names of some six or seven, the most sufficient of your parish. 255 _Elb._ To your worship's house, sir? _Escal._ To my house. Fare you well. [_Exit Elbow._ What's o'clock, think you? _Just._ Eleven, sir. _Escal._ I pray you home to dinner with me. 260 _Just._ I humbly thank you. _Escal._ It grieves me for the death of Claudio; But there's no remedy. _Just._ Lord Angelo is severe. _Escal._ It is but needful: Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so; 265 Pardon is still the nurse of second woe: But yet,--poor Claudio! There is no remedy. Come, sir. [_Exeunt._ NOTES: II, 1. 6: _fall_] _fell_ Warburton conj. 8, 9, 10: _Let ... That, in the_] _Let ... whom I believe To ... whether in The_ Hanmer. _Let ... whom I believe To ... virtue, and consider This, in the_ Capell. 12: _your_] Rowe (after Davenant) _our_ Ff. 15: _which now you censure him_] _you censure now in him_ Hanmer. _which now you censure him for_ Capell. _where now you censure him_ Grant White. 19: _the_] _a_ Collier MS. 22: _justice seizes_] _justice ceizes_ Ff. _justice seizes on_ Pope. _it seizes on_ Hanmer. _know_] Pope. _knowes_ F1 F2. _knows_ F3 F4. 23: _very_] om. Hanmer, ending lines 21, 22, 23 at _made-- seizes on-- pregnant._ 31: _Sir_] om. Pope. 31: After this line Ff have 'Enter Provost.' 36: [Exit Provost] Rowe. om. Ff. 37: [Aside] S. Walker conj. 38: This line is printed by Ff in italics. 39: _from brakes of ice, and_] _through brakes of vice and_ Rowe. _from brakes of vice, and_ Malone. _from brakes of justice,_ Capell. _from breaks of ice, and_ Collier. _from brakes, off ice and_ Knight conj. 41: SCENE II. Pope. 57: _they_] _you_ Rowe. 78: _uncleanliness_] F1. _uncleanness_ F2 F3 F4. 79: _the_] _that_ Hanmer. 85: [To Ange. Capell. 87: _sir_] om. F4. 88: _distant_] F1. _instant_ F2 F3 F4. 96: _but two_] F1. _no more_ F2 F3 F4. 107: _very_] om. Pope. 113: _me_] om. Pope. _we_ Grant White. 115: _nor_] om. Pope. 117: _into_] _unto_ Collier MS. 120: _All-hallond_] _All-holland_ Pope. 122: _chair, sir_] _chamber, sir_ Capell conj. _chamber_ Anon. conj. 126: _winter_] _windows_ Collier MS. 132: SCENE III. Pope. 186: _you_] _ye_ F4. 194: _hang_] _hang on_ Heath conj. 198: SCENE IV. Pope. 207: _in_] F1. om. F2 F3 F4. 214: _nor_] _and_ Pope. 216: _splay_] _spay_ Steevens. 221: _the knaves_] F1. _knaves_ F2 F3 F4. 222: _are_ F2 F3 F4. _is_ F1. 225: _year_] Ff. _years_ Rowe. 226: _year_] F1 _years_ F2 F3 F4. 227: _bay_] _day_ Pope. 234: _Pompey_] om. F4. 237: [Aside] Staunton. 241: SCENE V. Pope. 245: _your_] Pope. _the_ Ff. 260: _home_] F1. _go home_ F2 F3 F4. 267: _There is_] _There's_ Pope.

Act II, Scene i

https://web.archive.org/web/20210123014135/https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/measure/section3/

Angelo tells Escalus that they "must not make a scarecrow of the law" , meaning that they must not waver in their decisions. Escalus argues that they should "cut a little" rather than "fall, and bruise to death," comparing law enforcement to pruning a tree; it is better to trim the tree than to cut it down. He also brings up Claudio's specific case, asking Angelo to consider whether he could have erred in the same way at some point in his life. Angelo responds, "Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, another thing to fall" . He argues that, despite the ever-changing line between lawmaker and criminal, the law must still stand firm. He admits that he himself is capable of transgression, but adds that he hopes to be treated with the same strictness should he do wrong. Angelo calls in the provost and tells him to ensure that Claudio is executed before nine o'clock the next morning. Elbow enters, bringing Pompey and Froth with him. Angelo asks him what he is doing, and he replies that he is the Duke's constable, and that he has brought two "notorious benefactors" to Angelo. Angelo asks if they are not "malefactors" instead, and the constable replies that he does not know. Angelo asks Pompey what he is, and Elbow calls him a "parcel-bawd," or a partial bawd. It becomes clear that Elbow confuses words a lot, and so Angelo has difficulty questioning him. He does say that he found Pompey and Froth at a brothel. Froth confesses to working for Mistress Overdone, and Escalus tells him that prostitution is an illegal and punishable occupation, warning him not to be seen at the brothel again. Escalus questions Elbow about other constables, telling him to bring the names of other worthy people. He then mourns the fate of Claudio, but says that there is no remedy for it.

Commentary This scene exists primarily for comic relief, distracting the audience momentarily from the issues at stake, particularly Claudio's imminent execution. Escalus is a noble character who acts as a straight-man to the dim-witted constable and the foolish clown. Elbow is a frivolous addition to the cast of characters, amusing because of his use of malapropisms, or misspoken phrases and words. He is sent to retrieve the criminals of Vienna, and he appears at various intervals performing this task and providing more pure comedy. At the end of the scene, the tone shifts back to seriousness, as Escalus expresses his pity for Claudio. It is important that Escalus, as well as the provost, does not approve of the punishment to be administered to Claudio, and yet sees no way to convince Angelo to be more merciful. Angelo appears to be narrow-minded and stern; the other characters seem to fear him. There is a sense of apathy among the characters generally; it takes the Duke's intervention to promote movement, discussion, and action in them.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1754-chapters/act_2.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Seagull/section_1_part_0.txt

The Seagull.act 2

act 2

{"name": "Act 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219185923/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-seagull/summary/act-2", "summary": "Some time has passed. We're still outside, but now on the side lawn, set up for croquet. It's the middle of the day. Dorn had been reading aloud when Arkadina initiates a competition between herself and Masha, with Dorn as the arbiter. Who looks younger, she asks? She gives Masha advice on looking her best. Masha is depressed and really couldn't care less. Arkadina takes up the reading when Sorin enters with Medvedenko and Nina. The group has a conversation about Maupassant, Konstantin's play, Sorin's health, and Dorn's experiences while traveling the world. Shamrayev and Paulina enter. Arkadina wanted to go into town, but Shamrayev won't let her have a horse to ride. She's furious. When they're alone, Paulina begs Dorn to take her away from the vulgar Shamrayev. Dorn clearly has no plans to do any such thing. Konstantin and Nina have a little tete-a-tete. He has killed a seagull in her honor. Nina's essentially, \"What? Gross.\" She has fallen out of love with him and he's in despair. Trigorin enters. Uh oh. Konstantin is insanely jealous of the older, successful writer . He leaves. Nina and Trigorin have a long conversation about writing. Nina is just enthralled by everything the man says. He explains that writing really doesn't give him pleasure, but that it's something he can't stop himself from doing. They are getting along very well. Arkadina comes in: Boris! Get back in here!", "analysis": ""}

ACT II _The lawn in front of SORIN'S house. The house stands in the background, on a broad terrace. The lake, brightly reflecting the rays of the sun, lies to the left. There are flower-beds here and there. It is noon; the day is hot. ARKADINA, DORN, and MASHA are sitting on a bench on the lawn, in the shade of an old linden. An open book is lying on DORN'S knees_. ARKADINA. [To MASHA] Come, get up. [They both get up] Stand beside me. You are twenty-two and I am almost twice your age. Tell me, Doctor, which of us is the younger looking? DORN. You are, of course. ARKADINA. You see! Now why is it? Because I work; my heart and mind are always busy, whereas you never move off the same spot. You don't live. It is a maxim of mine never to look into the future. I never admit the thought of old age or death, and just accept what comes to me. MASHA. I feel as if I had been in the world a thousand years, and I trail my life behind me like an endless scarf. Often I have no desire to live at all. Of course that is foolish. One ought to pull oneself together and shake off such nonsense. DORN. [Sings softly] "Tell her, oh flowers--" ARKADINA. And then I keep myself as correct-looking as an Englishman. I am always well-groomed, as the saying is, and carefully dressed, with my hair neatly arranged. Do you think I should ever permit myself to leave the house half-dressed, with untidy hair? Certainly not! I have kept my looks by never letting myself slump as some women do. [She puts her arms akimbo, and walks up and down on the lawn] See me, tripping on tiptoe like a fifteen-year-old girl. DORN. I see. Nevertheless, I shall continue my reading. [He takes up his book] Let me see, we had come to the grain-dealer and the rats. ARKADINA. And the rats. Go on. [She sits down] No, give me the book, it is my turn to read. [She takes the book and looks for the place] And the rats. Ah, here it is. [She reads] "It is as dangerous for society to attract and indulge authors as it is for grain-dealers to raise rats in their granaries. Yet society loves authors. And so, when a woman has found one whom she wishes to make her own, she lays siege to him by indulging and flattering him." That may be so in France, but it certainly is not so in Russia. We do not carry out a programme like that. With us, a woman is usually head over ears in love with an author before she attempts to lay siege to him. You have an example before your eyes, in me and Trigorin. SORIN comes in leaning on a cane, with NINA beside him. MEDVIEDENKO follows, pushing an arm-chair. SORIN. [In a caressing voice, as if speaking to a child] So we are happy now, eh? We are enjoying ourselves to-day, are we? Father and stepmother have gone away to Tver, and we are free for three whole days! NINA. [Sits down beside ARKADINA, and embraces her] I am so happy. I belong to you now. SORIN. [Sits down in his arm-chair] She looks lovely to-day. ARKADINA. Yes, she has put on her prettiest dress, and looks sweet. That was nice of you. [She kisses NINA] But we mustn't praise her too much; we shall spoil her. Where is Trigorin? NINA. He is fishing off the wharf. ARKADINA. I wonder he isn't bored. [She begins to read again.] NINA. What are you reading? ARKADINA. "On the Water," by Maupassant. [She reads a few lines to herself] But the rest is neither true nor interesting. [She lays down the book] I am uneasy about my son. Tell me, what is the matter with him? Why is he so dull and depressed lately? He spends all his days on the lake, and I scarcely ever see him any more. MASHA. His heart is heavy. [Timidly, to NINA] Please recite something from his play. NINA. [Shrugging her shoulders] Shall I? Is it so interesting? MASHA. [With suppressed rapture] When he recites, his eyes shine and his face grows pale. His voice is beautiful and sad, and he has the ways of a poet. SORIN begins to snore. DORN. Pleasant dreams! ARKADINA. Peter! SORIN. Eh? ARKADINA. Are you asleep? SORIN. Not a bit of it. [A pause.] ARKADINA. You don't do a thing for your health, brother, but you really ought to. DORN. The idea of doing anything for one's health at sixty-five! SORIN. One still wants to live at sixty-five. DORN. [Crossly] Ho! Take some camomile tea. ARKADINA. I think a journey to some watering-place would be good for him. DORN. Why, yes; he might go as well as not. ARKADINA. You don't understand. DORN. There is nothing to understand in this case; it is quite clear. MEDVIEDENKO. He ought to give up smoking. SORIN. What nonsense! [A pause.] DORN. No, that is not nonsense. Wine and tobacco destroy the individuality. After a cigar or a glass of vodka you are no longer Peter Sorin, but Peter Sorin plus somebody else. Your ego breaks in two: you begin to think of yourself in the third person. SORIN. It is easy for you to condemn smoking and drinking; you have known what life is, but what about me? I have served in the Department of Justice for twenty-eight years, but I have never lived, I have never had any experiences. You are satiated with life, and that is why you have an inclination for philosophy, but I want to live, and that is why I drink my wine for dinner and smoke cigars, and all. DORN. One must take life seriously, and to take a cure at sixty-five and regret that one did not have more pleasure in youth is, forgive my saying so, trifling. MASHA. It must be lunch-time. [She walks away languidly, with a dragging step] My foot has gone to sleep. DORN. She is going to have a couple of drinks before lunch. SORIN. The poor soul is unhappy. DORN. That is a trifle, your honour. SORIN. You judge her like a man who has obtained all he wants in life. ARKADINA. Oh, what could be duller than this dear tedium of the country? The air is hot and still, nobody does anything but sit and philosophise about life. It is pleasant, my friends, to sit and listen to you here, but I had rather a thousand times sit alone in the room of a hotel learning a role by heart. NINA. [With enthusiasm] You are quite right. I understand how you feel. SORIN. Of course it is pleasanter to live in town. One can sit in one's library with a telephone at one's elbow, no one comes in without being first announced by the footman, the streets are full of cabs, and all--- DORN. [Sings] "Tell her, oh flowers---" SHAMRAEFF comes in, followed by PAULINA. SHAMRAEFF. Here they are. How do you do? [He kisses ARKADINA'S hand and then NINA'S] I am delighted to see you looking so well. [To ARKADINA] My wife tells me that you mean to go to town with her to-day. Is that so? ARKADINA. Yes, that is what I had planned to do. SHAMRAEFF. Hm--that is splendid, but how do you intend to get there, madam? We are hauling rye to-day, and all the men are busy. What horses would you take? ARKADINA. What horses? How do I know what horses we shall have? SORIN. Why, we have the carriage horses. SHAMRAEFF. The carriage horses! And where am I to find the harness for them? This is astonishing! My dear madam, I have the greatest respect for your talents, and would gladly sacrifice ten years of my life for you, but I cannot let you have any horses to-day. ARKADINA. But if I must go to town? What an extraordinary state of affairs! SHAMRAEFF. You do not know, madam, what it is to run a farm. ARKADINA. [In a burst of anger] That is an old story! Under these circumstances I shall go back to Moscow this very day. Order a carriage for me from the village, or I shall go to the station on foot. SHAMRAEFF. [losing his temper] Under these circumstances I resign my position. You must find yourself another manager. [He goes out.] ARKADINA. It is like this every summer: every summer I am insulted here. I shall never set foot here again. She goes out to the left, in the direction of the wharf. In a few minutes she is seen entering the house, followed by TRIGORIN, who carries a bucket and fishing-rod. SORIN. [Losing his temper] What the deuce did he mean by his impudence? I want all the horses brought here at once! NINA. [To PAULINA] How could he refuse anything to Madame Arkadina, the famous actress? Is not every wish, every caprice even, of hers, more important than any farm work? This is incredible. PAULINA. [In despair] What can I do about it? Put yourself in my place and tell me what I can do. SORIN. [To NINA] Let us go and find my sister, and all beg her not to go. [He looks in the direction in which SHAMRAEFF went out] That man is insufferable; a regular tyrant. NINA. [Preventing him from getting up] Sit still, sit still, and let us wheel you. [She and MEDVIEDENKO push the chair before them] This is terrible! SORIN. Yes, yes, it is terrible; but he won't leave. I shall have a talk with him in a moment. [They go out. Only DORN and PAULINA are left.] DORN. How tiresome people are! Your husband deserves to be thrown out of here neck and crop, but it will all end by this old granny Sorin and his sister asking the man's pardon. See if it doesn't. PAULINA. He has sent the carriage horses into the fields too. These misunderstandings occur every day. If you only knew how they excite me! I am ill; see! I am trembling all over! I cannot endure his rough ways. [Imploringly] Eugene, my darling, my beloved, take me to you. Our time is short; we are no longer young; let us end deception and concealment, even though it is only at the end of our lives. [A pause.] DORN. I am fifty-five years old. It is too late now for me to change my ways of living. PAULINA. I know that you refuse me because there are other women who are near to you, and you cannot take everybody. I understand. Excuse me--I see I am only bothering you. NINA is seen near the house picking a bunch of flowers. DORN. No, it is all right. PAULINA. I am tortured by jealousy. Of course you are a doctor and cannot escape from women. I understand. DORN. [TO NINA, who comes toward him] How are things in there? NINA. Madame Arkadina is crying, and Sorin is having an attack of asthma. DORN. Let us go and give them both some camomile tea. NINA. [Hands him the bunch of flowers] Here are some flowers for you. DORN. Thank you. [He goes into the house.] PAULINA. [Following him] What pretty flowers! [As they reach the house she says in a low voice] Give me those flowers! Give them to me! DORN hands her the flowers; she tears them to pieces and flings them away. They both go into the house. NINA. [Alone] How strange to see a famous actress weeping, and for such a trifle! Is it not strange, too, that a famous author should sit fishing all day? He is the idol of the public, the papers are full of him, his photograph is for sale everywhere, his works have been translated into many foreign languages, and yet he is overjoyed if he catches a couple of minnows. I always thought famous people were distant and proud; I thought they despised the common crowd which exalts riches and birth, and avenged themselves on it by dazzling it with the inextinguishable honour and glory of their fame. But here I see them weeping and playing cards and flying into passions like everybody else. TREPLIEFF comes in without a hat on, carrying a gun and a dead seagull. TREPLIEFF. Are you alone here? NINA. Yes. TREPLIEFF lays the sea-gull at her feet. NINA. What do you mean by this? TREPLIEFF. I was base enough to-day to kill this gull. I lay it at your feet. NINA. What is happening to you? [She picks up the gull and stands looking at it.] TREPLIEFF. [After a pause] So shall I soon end my own life. NINA. You have changed so that I fail to recognise you. TREPLIEFF. Yes, I have changed since the time when I ceased to recognise you. You have failed me; your look is cold; you do not like to have me near you. NINA. You have grown so irritable lately, and you talk so darkly and symbolically that you must forgive me if I fail to follow you. I am too simple to understand you. TREPLIEFF. All this began when my play failed so dismally. A woman never can forgive failure. I have burnt the manuscript to the last page. Oh, if you could only fathom my unhappiness! Your estrangement is to me terrible, incredible; it is as if I had suddenly waked to find this lake dried up and sunk into the earth. You say you are too simple to understand me; but, oh, what is there to understand? You disliked my play, you have no faith in my powers, you already think of me as commonplace and worthless, as many are. [Stamping his foot] How well I can understand your feelings! And that understanding is to me like a dagger in the brain. May it be accursed, together with my stupidity, which sucks my life-blood like a snake! [He sees TRIGORIN, who approaches reading a book] There comes real genius, striding along like another Hamlet, and with a book, too. [Mockingly] "Words, words, words." You feel the warmth of that sun already, you smile, your eyes melt and glow liquid in its rays. I shall not disturb you. [He goes out.] TRIGORIN. [Making notes in his book] Takes snuff and drinks vodka; always wears black dresses; is loved by a schoolteacher-- NINA. How do you do? TRIGORIN. How are you, Miss Nina? Owing to an unforeseen development of circumstances, it seems that we are leaving here today. You and I shall probably never see each other again, and I am sorry for it. I seldom meet a young and pretty girl now; I can hardly remember how it feels to be nineteen, and the young girls in my books are seldom living characters. I should like to change places with you, if but for an hour, to look out at the world through your eyes, and so find out what sort of a little person you are. NINA. And I should like to change places with you. TRIGORIN. Why? NINA. To find out how a famous genius feels. What is it like to be famous? What sensations does it give you? TRIGORIN. What sensations? I don't believe it gives any. [Thoughtfully] Either you exaggerate my fame, or else, if it exists, all I can say is that one simply doesn't feel fame in any way. NINA. But when you read about yourself in the papers? TRIGORIN. If the critics praise me, I am happy; if they condemn me, I am out of sorts for the next two days. NINA. This is a wonderful world. If you only knew how I envy you! Men are born to different destinies. Some dully drag a weary, useless life behind them, lost in the crowd, unhappy, while to one out of a million, as to you, for instance, comes a bright destiny full of interest and meaning. You are lucky. TRIGORIN. I, lucky? [He shrugs his shoulders] H-m--I hear you talking about fame, and happiness, and bright destinies, and those fine words of yours mean as much to me--forgive my saying so--as sweetmeats do, which I never eat. You are very young, and very kind. NINA. Your life is beautiful. TRIGORIN. I see nothing especially lovely about it. [He looks at his watch] Excuse me, I must go at once, and begin writing again. I am in a hurry. [He laughs] You have stepped on my pet corn, as they say, and I am getting excited, and a little cross. Let us discuss this bright and beautiful life of mine, though. [After a few moments' thought] Violent obsessions sometimes lay hold of a man: he may, for instance, think day and night of nothing but the moon. I have such a moon. Day and night I am held in the grip of one besetting thought, to write, write, write! Hardly have I finished one book than something urges me to write another, and then a third, and then a fourth--I write ceaselessly. I am, as it were, on a treadmill. I hurry for ever from one story to another, and can't help myself. Do you see anything bright and beautiful in that? Oh, it is a wild life! Even now, thrilled as I am by talking to you, I do not forget for an instant that an unfinished story is awaiting me. My eye falls on that cloud there, which has the shape of a grand piano; I instantly make a mental note that I must remember to mention in my story a cloud floating by that looked like a grand piano. I smell heliotrope; I mutter to myself: a sickly smell, the colour worn by widows; I must remember that in writing my next description of a summer evening. I catch an idea in every sentence of yours or of my own, and hasten to lock all these treasures in my literary store-room, thinking that some day they may be useful to me. As soon as I stop working I rush off to the theatre or go fishing, in the hope that I may find oblivion there, but no! Some new subject for a story is sure to come rolling through my brain like an iron cannonball. I hear my desk calling, and have to go back to it and begin to write, write, write, once more. And so it goes for everlasting. I cannot escape myself, though I feel that I am consuming my life. To prepare the honey I feed to unknown crowds, I am doomed to brush the bloom from my dearest flowers, to tear them from their stems, and trample the roots that bore them under foot. Am I not a madman? Should I not be treated by those who know me as one mentally diseased? Yet it is always the same, same old story, till I begin to think that all this praise and admiration must be a deception, that I am being hoodwinked because they know I am crazy, and I sometimes tremble lest I should be grabbed from behind and whisked off to a lunatic asylum. The best years of my youth were made one continual agony for me by my writing. A young author, especially if at first he does not make a success, feels clumsy, ill-at-ease, and superfluous in the world. His nerves are all on edge and stretched to the point of breaking; he is irresistibly attracted to literary and artistic people, and hovers about them unknown and unnoticed, fearing to look them bravely in the eye, like a man with a passion for gambling, whose money is all gone. I did not know my readers, but for some reason I imagined they were distrustful and unfriendly; I was mortally afraid of the public, and when my first play appeared, it seemed to me as if all the dark eyes in the audience were looking at it with enmity, and all the blue ones with cold indifference. Oh, how terrible it was! What agony! NINA. But don't your inspiration and the act of creation give you moments of lofty happiness? TRIGORIN. Yes. Writing is a pleasure to me, and so is reading the proofs, but no sooner does a book leave the press than it becomes odious to me; it is not what I meant it to be; I made a mistake to write it at all; I am provoked and discouraged. Then the public reads it and says: "Yes, it is clever and pretty, but not nearly as good as Tolstoi," or "It is a lovely thing, but not as good as Turgenieff's 'Fathers and Sons,'" and so it will always be. To my dying day I shall hear people say: "Clever and pretty; clever and pretty," and nothing more; and when I am gone, those that knew me will say as they pass my grave: "Here lies Trigorin, a clever writer, but he was not as good as Turgenieff." NINA. You must excuse me, but I decline to understand what you are talking about. The fact is, you have been spoilt by your success. TRIGORIN. What success have I had? I have never pleased myself; as a writer, I do not like myself at all. The trouble is that I am made giddy, as it were, by the fumes of my brain, and often hardly know what I am writing. I love this lake, these trees, the blue heaven; nature's voice speaks to me and wakes a feeling of passion in my heart, and I am overcome by an uncontrollable desire to write. But I am not only a painter of landscapes, I am a man of the city besides. I love my country, too, and her people; I feel that, as a writer, it is my duty to speak of their sorrows, of their future, also of science, of the rights of man, and so forth. So I write on every subject, and the public hounds me on all sides, sometimes in anger, and I race and dodge like a fox with a pack of hounds on his trail. I see life and knowledge flitting away before me. I am left behind them like a peasant who has missed his train at a station, and finally I come back to the conclusion that all I am fit for is to describe landscapes, and that whatever else I attempt rings abominably false. NINA. You work too hard to realise the importance of your writings. What if you are discontented with yourself? To others you appear a great and splendid man. If I were a writer like you I should devote my whole life to the service of the Russian people, knowing at the same time that their welfare depended on their power to rise to the heights I had attained, and the people should send me before them in a chariot of triumph. TRIGORIN. In a chariot? Do you think I am Agamemnon? [They both smile.] NINA. For the bliss of being a writer or an actress I could endure want, and disillusionment, and the hatred of my friends, and the pangs of my own dissatisfaction with myself; but I should demand in return fame, real, resounding fame! [She covers her face with her hands] Whew! My head reels! THE VOICE OF ARKADINA. [From inside the house] Boris! Boris! TRIGORIN. She is calling me, probably to come and pack, but I don't want to leave this place. [His eyes rest on the lake] What a blessing such beauty is! NINA. Do you see that house there, on the far shore? TRIGORIN. Yes. NINA. That was my dead mother's home. I was born there, and have lived all my life beside this lake. I know every little island in it. TRIGORIN. This is a beautiful place to live. [He catches sight of the dead sea-gull] What is that? NINA. A gull. Constantine shot it. TRIGORIN. What a lovely bird! Really, I can't bear to go away. Can't you persuade Irina to stay? [He writes something in his note-book.] NINA. What are you writing? TRIGORIN. Nothing much, only an idea that occurred to me. [He puts the book back in his pocket] An idea for a short story. A young girl grows up on the shores of a lake, as you have. She loves the lake as the gulls do, and is as happy and free as they. But a man sees her who chances to come that way, and he destroys her out of idleness, as this gull here has been destroyed. [A pause. ARKADINA appears at one of the windows.] ARKADINA. Boris! Where are you? TRIGORIN. I am coming this minute. He goes toward the house, looking back at NINA. ARKADINA remains at the window. TRIGORIN. What do you want? ARKADINA. We are not going away, after all. TRIGORIN goes into the house. NINA comes forward and stands lost in thought. NINA. It is a dream! The curtain falls.

Act 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219185923/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-seagull/summary/act-2

Some time has passed. We're still outside, but now on the side lawn, set up for croquet. It's the middle of the day. Dorn had been reading aloud when Arkadina initiates a competition between herself and Masha, with Dorn as the arbiter. Who looks younger, she asks? She gives Masha advice on looking her best. Masha is depressed and really couldn't care less. Arkadina takes up the reading when Sorin enters with Medvedenko and Nina. The group has a conversation about Maupassant, Konstantin's play, Sorin's health, and Dorn's experiences while traveling the world. Shamrayev and Paulina enter. Arkadina wanted to go into town, but Shamrayev won't let her have a horse to ride. She's furious. When they're alone, Paulina begs Dorn to take her away from the vulgar Shamrayev. Dorn clearly has no plans to do any such thing. Konstantin and Nina have a little tete-a-tete. He has killed a seagull in her honor. Nina's essentially, "What? Gross." She has fallen out of love with him and he's in despair. Trigorin enters. Uh oh. Konstantin is insanely jealous of the older, successful writer . He leaves. Nina and Trigorin have a long conversation about writing. Nina is just enthralled by everything the man says. He explains that writing really doesn't give him pleasure, but that it's something he can't stop himself from doing. They are getting along very well. Arkadina comes in: Boris! Get back in here!

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1754-chapters/act_3.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Seagull/section_2_part_0.txt

The Seagull.act 3

act 3

{"name": "Act 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201219185923/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-seagull/summary/act-3", "summary": "We're in Sorin's dining room. Suitcases are piled up--someone's getting ready to leave. Trigorin and Masha are talking and drinking. Masha confesses that she still loves Konstantin but plans to marry Medvedenko. She thinks marriage will cure her hopeless love. Nina enters; a moment with Trigorin. She gives him a present: a medallion inscribed with his initials and some pertinent quote from one of his novels. Arkadina interrupts their sweet moment. She really can't stand when the two of them are alone together. Sorin wants to go to Moscow with Arkadina and Trigorin. Arkadina dissuades him. Trigorin exits, looking for the book Nina referenced. Sorin and Arkadina have a conversation about Konstantin. He's tried to kill himself. Perhaps if you gave him a little money, suggests Sorin. No way, replies the stingy actress. Medvedenko and Konstantin enter. Medvedenko takes Sorin out. Arkadina changes the bandage on Konstantin's head. It's a very tender mother-son exchange until the subject of Trigorin comes up. Konstantin calls the guy a hack; Arkadina says he's just jealous. It gets pretty ugly and Konstantin starts crying. He's depressed at losing Nina. Trigorin returns: he's found the quote. Nina has written to him, \"If you ever need my life, come take it.\" He wants to stay. He wants to be with Nina. He begs Arkadina. Furious and hurt, she nevertheless figures out how to keep him with her instead. She flatters him into submission . The carriage arrives to take them to the train station. Goodbyes are said; Arkadina tips the cook and servants a measly dollar; Paulina cries. Everyone goes out but then Trigorin reenters. He has forgotten his walking stick. And who is there but Nina! They arrange to meet in Moscow.", "analysis": ""}

ACT III _The dining-room of SORIN'S house. Doors open out of it to the right and left. A table stands in the centre of the room. Trunks and boxes encumber the floor, and preparations for departure are evident. TRIGORIN is sitting at a table eating his breakfast, and MASHA is standing beside him_. MASHA. I am telling you all these things because you write books and they may be useful to you. I tell you honestly, I should not have lived another day if he had wounded himself fatally. Yet I am courageous; I have decided to tear this love of mine out of my heart by the roots. TRIGORIN. How will you do it? MASHA. By marrying Medviedenko. TRIGORIN. The school-teacher? MASHA. Yes. TRIGORIN. I don't see the necessity for that. MASHA. Oh, if you knew what it is to love without hope for years and years, to wait for ever for something that will never come! I shall not marry for love, but marriage will at least be a change, and will bring new cares to deaden the memories of the past. Shall we have another drink? TRIGORIN. Haven't you had enough? MASHA. Fiddlesticks! [She fills a glass] Don't look at me with that expression on your face. Women drink oftener than you imagine, but most of them do it in secret, and not openly, as I do. They do indeed, and it is always either vodka or brandy. [They touch glasses] To your good health! You are so easy to get on with that I am sorry to see you go. [They drink.] TRIGORIN. And I am sorry to leave. MASHA. You should ask her to stay. TRIGORIN. She would not do that now. Her son has been behaving outrageously. First he attempted suicide, and now I hear he is going to challenge me to a duel, though what his provocation may be I can't imagine. He is always sulking and sneering and preaching about a new form of art, as if the field of art were not large enough to accommodate both old and new without the necessity of jostling. MASHA. It is jealousy. However, that is none of my business. [A pause. JACOB walks through the room carrying a trunk; NINA comes in and stands by the window] That schoolteacher of mine is none too clever, but he is very good, poor man, and he loves me dearly, and I am sorry for him. However, let me say good-bye and wish you a pleasant journey. Remember me kindly in your thoughts. [She shakes hands with him] Thanks for your goodwill. Send me your books, and be sure to write something in them; nothing formal, but simply this: "To Masha, who, forgetful of her origin, for some unknown reason is living in this world." Good-bye. [She goes out.] NINA. [Holding out her closed hand to TRIGORIN] Is it odd or even? TRIGORIN. Even. NINA. [With a sigh] No, it is odd. I had only one pea in my hand. I wanted to see whether I was to become an actress or not. If only some one would advise me what to do! TRIGORIN. One cannot give advice in a case like this. [A pause.] NINA. We shall soon part, perhaps never to meet again. I should like you to accept this little medallion as a remembrance of me. I have had your initials engraved on it, and on this side is the name of one of your books: "Days and Nights." TRIGORIN. How sweet of you! [He kisses the medallion] It is a lovely present. NINA. Think of me sometimes. TRIGORIN. I shall never forget you. I shall always remember you as I saw you that bright day--do you recall it?--a week ago, when you wore your light dress, and we talked together, and the white seagull lay on the bench beside us. NINA. [Lost in thought] Yes, the sea-gull. [A pause] I beg you to let me see you alone for two minutes before you go. She goes out to the left. At the same moment ARKADINA comes in from the right, followed by SORIN in a long coat, with his orders on his breast, and by JACOB, who is busy packing. ARKADINA. Stay here at home, you poor old man. How could you pay visits with that rheumatism of yours? [To TRIGORIN] Who left the room just now, was it Nina? TRIGORIN. Yes. ARKADINA. I beg your pardon; I am afraid we interrupted you. [She sits down] I think everything is packed. I am absolutely exhausted. TRIGORIN. [Reading the inscription on the medallion] "Days and Nights, page 121, lines 11 and 12." JACOB. [Clearing the table] Shall I pack your fishing-rods, too, sir? TRIGORIN. Yes, I shall need them, but you can give my books away. JACOB. Very well, sir. TRIGORIN. [To himself] Page 121, lines 11 and 12. [To ARKADINA] Have we my books here in the house? ARKADINA. Yes, they are in my brother's library, in the corner cupboard. TRIGORIN. Page 121--[He goes out.] SORIN. You are going away, and I shall be lonely without you. ARKADINA. What would you do in town? SORIN. Oh, nothing in particular, but somehow--[He laughs] They are soon to lay the corner-stone of the new court-house here. How I should like to leap out of this minnow-pond, if but for an hour or two! I am tired of lying here like an old cigarette stump. I have ordered the carriage for one o'clock. We can go away together. ARKADINA. [After a pause] No, you must stay here. Don't be lonely, and don't catch cold. Keep an eye on my boy. Take good care of him; guide him along the proper paths. [A pause] I am going away, and so shall never find out why Constantine shot himself, but I think the chief reason was jealousy, and the sooner I take Trigorin away, the better. SORIN. There were--how shall I explain it to you?--other reasons besides jealousy for his act. Here is a clever young chap living in the depths of the country, without money or position, with no future ahead of him, and with nothing to do. He is ashamed and afraid of being so idle. I am devoted to him and he is fond of me, but nevertheless he feels that he is useless here, that he is little more than a dependent in this house. It is the pride in him. ARKADINA. He is a misery to me! [Thoughtfully] He might possibly enter the army. SORIN. [Gives a whistle, and then speaks with hesitation] It seems to me that the best thing for him would be if you were to let him have a little money. For one thing, he ought to be allowed to dress like a human being. See how he looks! Wearing the same little old coat that he has had for three years, and he doesn't even possess an overcoat! [Laughing] And it wouldn't hurt the youngster to sow a few wild oats; let him go abroad, say, for a time. It wouldn't cost much. ARKADINA. Yes, but--However, I think I might manage about his clothes, but I couldn't let him go abroad. And no, I don't think I can let him have his clothes even, now. [Decidedly] I have no money at present. SORIN laughs. ARKADINA. I haven't indeed. SORIN. [Whistles] Very well. Forgive me, darling; don't be angry. You are a noble, generous woman! ARKADINA. [Weeping] I really haven't the money. SORIN. If I had any money of course I should let him have some myself, but I haven't even a penny. The farm manager takes my pension from me and puts it all into the farm or into cattle or bees, and in that way it is always lost for ever. The bees die, the cows die, they never let me have a horse. ARKADINA. Of course I have some money, but I am an actress and my expenses for dress alone are enough to bankrupt me. SORIN. You are a dear, and I am very fond of you, indeed I am. But something is the matter with me again. [He staggers] I feel giddy. [He leans against the table] I feel faint, and all. ARKADINA. [Frightened ] Peter! [She tries to support him] Peter! dearest! [She calls] Help! Help! TREPLIEFF and MEDVIEDENKO come in; TREPLIEFF has a bandage around his head. ARKADINA. He is fainting! SORIN. I am all right. [He smiles and drinks some water] It is all over now. TREPLIEFF. [To his mother] Don't be frightened, mother, these attacks are not dangerous; my uncle often has them now. [To his uncle] You must go and lie down, Uncle. SORIN. Yes, I think I shall, for a few minutes. I am going to Moscow all the same, but I shall lie down a bit before I start. [He goes out leaning on his cane.] MEDVIEDENKO. [Giving him his arm] Do you know this riddle? On four legs in the morning; on two legs at noon; and on three legs in the evening? SORIN. [Laughing] Yes, exactly, and on one's back at night. Thank you, I can walk alone. MEDVIEDENKO. Dear me, what formality! [He and SORIN go out.] ARKADINA. He gave me a dreadful fright. TREPLIEFF. It is not good for him to live in the country. Mother, if you would only untie your purse-strings for once, and lend him a thousand roubles! He could then spend a whole year in town. ARKADINA. I have no money. I am an actress and not a banker. [A pause.] TREPLIEFF. Please change my bandage for me, mother, you do it so gently. ARKADINA goes to the cupboard and takes out a box of bandages and a bottle of iodoform. ARKADINA. The doctor is late. TREPLIEFF. Yes, he promised to be here at nine, and now it is noon already. ARKADINA. Sit down. [She takes the bandage off his head] You look as if you had a turban on. A stranger that was in the kitchen yesterday asked to what nationality you belonged. Your wound is almost healed. [She kisses his head] You won't be up to any more of these silly tricks again, will you, when I am gone? TREPLIEFF. No, mother. I did that in a moment of insane despair, when I had lost all control over myself. It will never happen again. [He kisses her hand] Your touch is golden. I remember when you were still acting at the State Theatre, long ago, when I was still a little chap, there was a fight one day in our court, and a poor washerwoman was almost beaten to death. She was picked up unconscious, and you nursed her till she was well, and bathed her children in the washtubs. Have you forgotten it? ARKADINA. Yes, entirely. [She puts on a new bandage.] TREPLIEFF. Two ballet dancers lived in the same house, and they used to come and drink coffee with you. ARKADINA. I remember that. TREPLIEFF. They were very pious. [A pause] I love you again, these last few days, as tenderly and trustingly as I did as a child. I have no one left me now but you. Why, why do you let yourself be controlled by that man? ARKADINA. You don't understand him, Constantine. He has a wonderfully noble personality. TREPLIEFF. Nevertheless, when he has been told that I wish to challenge him to a duel his nobility does not prevent him from playing the coward. He is about to beat an ignominious retreat. ARKADINA. What nonsense! I have asked him myself to go. TREPLIEFF. A noble personality indeed! Here we are almost quarrelling over him, and he is probably in the garden laughing at us at this very moment, or else enlightening Nina's mind and trying to persuade her into thinking him a man of genius. ARKADINA. You enjoy saying unpleasant things to me. I have the greatest respect for that man, and I must ask you not to speak ill of him in my presence. TREPLIEFF. I have no respect for him at all. You want me to think him a genius, as you do, but I refuse to lie: his books make me sick. ARKADINA. You envy him. There is nothing left for people with no talent and mighty pretensions to do but to criticise those who are really gifted. I hope you enjoy the consolation it brings. TREPLIEFF. [With irony] Those who are really gifted, indeed! [Angrily] I am cleverer than any of you, if it comes to that! [He tears the bandage off his head] You are the slaves of convention, you have seized the upper hand and now lay down as law everything that you do; all else you strangle and trample on. I refuse to accept your point of view, yours and his, I refuse! ARKADINA. That is the talk of a decadent. TREPLIEFF. Go back to your beloved stage and act the miserable ditch-water plays you so much admire! ARKADINA. I never acted in a play like that in my life. You couldn't write even the trashiest music-hall farce, you idle good-for-nothing! TREPLIEFF. Miser! ARKADINA. Rag-bag! TREPLIEFF sits down and begins to cry softly. ARKADINA. [Walking up and down in great excitement] Don't cry! You mustn't cry! [She bursts into tears] You really mustn't. [She kisses his forehead, his cheeks, his head] My darling child, forgive me. Forgive your wicked mother. TREPLIEFF. [Embracing her] Oh, if you could only know what it is to have lost everything under heaven! She does not love me. I see I shall never be able to write. Every hope has deserted me. ARKADINA. Don't despair. This will all pass. He is going away to-day, and she will love you once more. [She wipes away his tears] Stop crying. We have made peace again. TREPLIEFF. [Kissing her hand] Yes, mother. ARKADINA. [Tenderly] Make your peace with him, too. Don't fight with him. You surely won't fight? TREPLIEFF. I won't, but you must not insist on my seeing him again, mother, I couldn't stand it. [TRIGORIN comes in] There he is; I am going. [He quickly puts the medicines away in the cupboard] The doctor will attend to my head. TRIGORIN. [Looking through the pages of a book] Page 121, lines 11 and 12; here it is. [He reads] "If at any time you should have need of my life, come and take it." TREPLIEFF picks up the bandage off the floor and goes out. ARKADINA. [Looking at her watch] The carriage will soon be here. TRIGORIN. [To himself] If at any time you should have need of my life, come and take it. ARKADINA. I hope your things are all packed. TRIGORIN. [Impatiently] Yes, yes. [In deep thought] Why do I hear a note of sadness that wrings my heart in this cry of a pure soul? If at any time you should have need of my life, come and take it. [To ARKADINA] Let us stay here one more day! ARKADINA shakes her head. TRIGORIN. Do let us stay! ARKADINA. I know, dearest, what keeps you here, but you must control yourself. Be sober; your emotions have intoxicated you a little. TRIGORIN. You must be sober, too. Be sensible; look upon what has happened as a true friend would. [Taking her hand] You are capable of self-sacrifice. Be a friend to me and release me! ARKADINA. [In deep excitement] Are you so much in love? TRIGORIN. I am irresistibly impelled toward her. It may be that this is just what I need. ARKADINA. What, the love of a country girl? Oh, how little you know yourself! TRIGORIN. People sometimes walk in their sleep, and so I feel as if I were asleep, and dreaming of her as I stand here talking to you. My imagination is shaken by the sweetest and most glorious visions. Release me! ARKADINA. [Shuddering] No, no! I am only an ordinary woman; you must not say such things to me. Do not torment me, Boris; you frighten me. TRIGORIN. You could be an extraordinary woman if you only would. Love alone can bring happiness on earth, love the enchanting, the poetical love of youth, that sweeps away the sorrows of the world. I had no time for it when I was young and struggling with want and laying siege to the literary fortress, but now at last this love has come to me. I see it beckoning; why should I fly? ARKADINA. [With anger] You are mad! TRIGORIN. Release me. ARKADINA. You have all conspired together to torture me to-day. [She weeps.] TRIGORIN. [Clutching his head desperately] She doesn't understand me! She won't understand me! ARKADINA. Am I then so old and ugly already that you can talk to me like this without any shame about another woman? [She embraces and kisses him] Oh, you have lost your senses! My splendid, my glorious friend, my love for you is the last chapter of my life. [She falls on her knees] You are my pride, my joy, my light. [She embraces his knees] I could never endure it should you desert me, if only for an hour; I should go mad. Oh, my wonder, my marvel, my king! TRIGORIN. Some one might come in. [He helps her to rise.] ARKADINA. Let them come! I am not ashamed of my love. [She kisses his hands] My jewel! My despair! You want to do a foolish thing, but I don't want you to do it. I shan't let you do it! [She laughs] You are mine, you are mine! This forehead is mine, these eyes are mine, this silky hair is mine. All your being is mine. You are so clever, so wise, the first of all living writers; you are the only hope of your country. You are so fresh, so simple, so deeply humourous. You can bring out every feature of a man or of a landscape in a single line, and your characters live and breathe. Do you think that these words are but the incense of flattery? Do you think I am not speaking the truth? Come, look into my eyes; look deep; do you find lies there? No, you see that I alone know how to treasure you. I alone tell you the truth. Oh, my very dear, you will go with me? You will? You will not forsake me? TRIGORIN. I have no will of my own; I never had. I am too indolent, too submissive, too phlegmatic, to have any. Is it possible that women like that? Take me. Take me away with you, but do not let me stir a step from your side. ARKADINA. [To herself] Now he is mine! [Carelessly, as if nothing unusual had happened] Of course you must stay here if you really want to. I shall go, and you can follow in a week's time. Yes, really, why should you hurry away? TRIGORIN. Let us go together. ARKADINA. As you like. Let us go together then. [A pause. TRIGORIN writes something in his note-book] What are you writing? TRIGORIN. A happy expression I heard this morning: "A grove of maiden pines." It may be useful. [He yawns] So we are really off again, condemned once more to railway carriages, to stations and restaurants, to Hamburger steaks and endless arguments! SHAMRAEFF comes in. SHAMRAEFF. I am sorry to have to inform you that your carriage is at the door. It is time to start, honoured madam, the train leaves at two-five. Would you be kind enough, madam, to remember to inquire for me where Suzdaltzeff the actor is now? Is he still alive, I wonder? Is he well? He and I have had many a jolly time together. He was inimitable in "The Stolen Mail." A tragedian called Izmailoff was in the same company, I remember, who was also quite remarkable. Don't hurry, madam, you still have five minutes. They were both of them conspirators once, in the same melodrama, and one night when in the course of the play they were suddenly discovered, instead of saying "We have been trapped!" Izmailoff cried out: "We have been rapped!" [He laughs] Rapped! While he has been talking JACOB has been busy with the trunks, and the maid has brought ARKADINA her hat, coat, parasol, and gloves. The cook looks hesitatingly through the door on the right, and finally comes into the room. PAULINA comes in. MEDVIEDENKO comes in. PAULINA. [Presenting ARKADINA with a little basket] Here are some plums for the journey. They are very sweet ones. You may want to nibble something good on the way. ARKADINA. You are very kind, Paulina. PAULINA. Good-bye, my dearie. If things have not been quite as you could have wished, please forgive us. [She weeps.] ARKADINA. It has been delightful, delightful. You mustn't cry. SORIN comes in through the door on the left, dressed in a long coat with a cape, and carrying his hat and cane. He crosses the room. SORIN. Come, sister, it is time to start, unless you want to miss the train. I am going to get into the carriage. [He goes out.] MEDVIEDENKO. I shall walk quickly to the station and see you off there. [He goes out.] ARKADINA. Good-bye, all! We shall meet again next summer if we live. [The maid servant, JACOB, and the cook kiss her hand] Don't forget me. [She gives the cook a rouble] There is a rouble for all three of you. THE COOK. Thank you, mistress; a pleasant journey to you. JACOB. God bless you, mistress. SHAMRAEFF. Send us a line to cheer us up. [TO TRIGORIN] Good-bye, sir. ARKADINA. Where is Constantine? Tell him I am starting. I must say good-bye to him. [To JACOB] I gave the cook a rouble for all three of you. All go out through the door on the right. The stage remains empty. Sounds of farewell are heard. The maid comes running back to fetch the basket of plums which has been forgotten. TRIGORIN comes back. TRIGORIN. I had forgotten my cane. I think I left it on the terrace. [He goes toward the door on the right and meets NINA, who comes in at that moment] Is that you? We are off. NINA. I knew we should meet again. [With emotion] I have come to an irrevocable decision, the die is cast: I am going on the stage. I am deserting my father and abandoning everything. I am beginning life anew. I am going, as you are, to Moscow. We shall meet there. TRIGORIN. [Glancing about him] Go to the Hotel Slavianski Bazar. Let me know as soon as you get there. I shall be at the Grosholski House in Moltchanofka Street. I must go now. [A pause.] NINA. Just one more minute! TRIGORIN. [In a low voice] You are so beautiful! What bliss to think that I shall see you again so soon! [She sinks on his breast] I shall see those glorious eyes again, that wonderful, ineffably tender smile, those gentle features with their expression of angelic purity! My darling! [A prolonged kiss.] The curtain falls. Two years elapse between the third and fourth acts.

Act 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219185923/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/the-seagull/summary/act-3

We're in Sorin's dining room. Suitcases are piled up--someone's getting ready to leave. Trigorin and Masha are talking and drinking. Masha confesses that she still loves Konstantin but plans to marry Medvedenko. She thinks marriage will cure her hopeless love. Nina enters; a moment with Trigorin. She gives him a present: a medallion inscribed with his initials and some pertinent quote from one of his novels. Arkadina interrupts their sweet moment. She really can't stand when the two of them are alone together. Sorin wants to go to Moscow with Arkadina and Trigorin. Arkadina dissuades him. Trigorin exits, looking for the book Nina referenced. Sorin and Arkadina have a conversation about Konstantin. He's tried to kill himself. Perhaps if you gave him a little money, suggests Sorin. No way, replies the stingy actress. Medvedenko and Konstantin enter. Medvedenko takes Sorin out. Arkadina changes the bandage on Konstantin's head. It's a very tender mother-son exchange until the subject of Trigorin comes up. Konstantin calls the guy a hack; Arkadina says he's just jealous. It gets pretty ugly and Konstantin starts crying. He's depressed at losing Nina. Trigorin returns: he's found the quote. Nina has written to him, "If you ever need my life, come take it." He wants to stay. He wants to be with Nina. He begs Arkadina. Furious and hurt, she nevertheless figures out how to keep him with her instead. She flatters him into submission . The carriage arrives to take them to the train station. Goodbyes are said; Arkadina tips the cook and servants a measly dollar; Paulina cries. Everyone goes out but then Trigorin reenters. He has forgotten his walking stick. And who is there but Nina! They arrange to meet in Moscow.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/610-chapters/1.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Idylls of the King/section_0_part_0.txt

Idylls of the King.chapter 1

dedication

{"name": "Dedication", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20211101025057/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/idylls-of-the-king/summary/dedication", "summary": "Now onto the business of summarizing. The author dedicates these idylls to the memory of someone who loved them, speculating that he may find an image of himself in them. This mystery man seems to him just like \"my king's ideal knight,\" especially because he followed his conscience above all else and was completely dedicated to one woman. He was faithful to a woman for whom his loss is particularly devastating. Ooh, a clue. Now that he's gone, everyone realizes how great he was. Even though his position on the throne made him especially vulnerable to criticism, he appears blameless. Who could wish for a better life for his only son, or hope for more for his son's sons than that they resemble such an excellent father--Albert the Good? Now the author addresses the widowed queen, telling her to be strong and endure in the memory of the light they two shared. He ends by saying something along the lines of, \"May Albert's love, the love of her children, and the love of her people surround her until God's love reunites her with her husband again.\"", "analysis": ""}

Dedication These to His Memory--since he held them dear, Perchance as finding there unconsciously Some image of himself--I dedicate, I dedicate, I consecrate with tears-- These Idylls. And indeed He seems to me Scarce other than my king's ideal knight, 'Who reverenced his conscience as his king; Whose glory was, redressing human wrong; Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it; Who loved one only and who clave to her--' Her--over all whose realms to their last isle, Commingled with the gloom of imminent war, The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse, Darkening the world. We have lost him: he is gone: We know him now: all narrow jealousies Are silent; and we see him as he moved, How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise, With what sublime repression of himself, And in what limits, and how tenderly; Not swaying to this faction or to that; Not making his high place the lawless perch Of winged ambitions, nor a vantage-ground For pleasure; but through all this tract of years Wearing the white flower of a blameless life, Before a thousand peering littlenesses, In that fierce light which beats upon a throne, And blackens every blot: for where is he, Who dares foreshadow for an only son A lovelier life, a more unstained, than his? Or how should England dreaming of his sons Hope more for these than some inheritance Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine, Thou noble Father of her Kings to be, Laborious for her people and her poor-- Voice in the rich dawn of an ampler day-- Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace-- Sweet nature gilded by the gracious gleam Of letters, dear to Science, dear to Art, Dear to thy land and ours, a Prince indeed, Beyond all titles, and a household name, Hereafter, through all times, Albert the Good. Break not, O woman's-heart, but still endure; Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure, Remembering all the beauty of that star Which shone so close beside Thee that ye made One light together, but has past and leaves The Crown a lonely splendour. May all love, His love, unseen but felt, o'ershadow Thee, The love of all Thy sons encompass Thee, The love of all Thy daughters cherish Thee, The love of all Thy people comfort Thee, Till God's love set Thee at his side again!

Dedication

https://web.archive.org/web/20211101025057/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/idylls-of-the-king/summary/dedication

Now onto the business of summarizing. The author dedicates these idylls to the memory of someone who loved them, speculating that he may find an image of himself in them. This mystery man seems to him just like "my king's ideal knight," especially because he followed his conscience above all else and was completely dedicated to one woman. He was faithful to a woman for whom his loss is particularly devastating. Ooh, a clue. Now that he's gone, everyone realizes how great he was. Even though his position on the throne made him especially vulnerable to criticism, he appears blameless. Who could wish for a better life for his only son, or hope for more for his son's sons than that they resemble such an excellent father--Albert the Good? Now the author addresses the widowed queen, telling her to be strong and endure in the memory of the light they two shared. He ends by saying something along the lines of, "May Albert's love, the love of her children, and the love of her people surround her until God's love reunites her with her husband again."

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/610-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Idylls of the King/section_13_part_0.txt

Idylls of the King.chapter 14

to the queen

{"name": "To the Queen", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20211101025057/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/idylls-of-the-king/summary/to-the-queen", "summary": "This Idyll addresses the queen herself, and goes a little something like this: O loyal queen to her land, remember the day when you and the prince passed through the joyful London crowd after he recovered from a serious illness. London greeted you then with a great big hullabaloo. And you can't forget the silent cry of all the people over whom the British Empire rules. From the \"true North\" came a shameful sentiment, telling the British to go home and leave them alone. Can this really be the voice and meaning of the mightiest people under heaven ? Or rather is it the voice of a feeble third-rate isle about to sink into the ocean? The true voice of Britain rang out when London greeted you and your prince. Those loyal to their crown love its empire for broadening England's territory. Accept this poem not for itself, but for the love of your prince, over whose grave I have consecrated it. Accept it for your departed prince rather than for the departed king who's its subject. Take this poet's blessing, and his trust that Heaven will blow back that brewing storm. Those who fear the signs of trouble to come have listened too closely to rumblings motivated by laziness, cowardice, and other anti-nationalist sentiments. Boo on them. The goal of this great world is not within our sight. Yet if the common sense that has saved Britain many times does not desert her now, these fears are nothing more than \"morning shadows.\" They exaggerate the true size of the thing that casts them.", "analysis": ""}

To the Queen O loyal to the royal in thyself, And loyal to thy land, as this to thee-- Bear witness, that rememberable day, When, pale as yet, and fever-worn, the Prince Who scarce had plucked his flickering life again From halfway down the shadow of the grave, Past with thee through thy people and their love, And London rolled one tide of joy through all Her trebled millions, and loud leagues of man And welcome! witness, too, the silent cry, The prayer of many a race and creed, and clime-- Thunderless lightnings striking under sea From sunset and sunrise of all thy realm, And that true North, whereof we lately heard A strain to shame us 'keep you to yourselves; So loyal is too costly! friends--your love Is but a burthen: loose the bond, and go.' Is this the tone of empire? here the faith That made us rulers? this, indeed, her voice And meaning, whom the roar of Hougoumont Left mightiest of all peoples under heaven? What shock has fooled her since, that she should speak So feebly? wealthier--wealthier--hour by hour! The voice of Britain, or a sinking land, Some third-rate isle half-lost among her seas? There rang her voice, when the full city pealed Thee and thy Prince! The loyal to their crown Are loyal to their own far sons, who love Our ocean-empire with her boundless homes For ever-broadening England, and her throne In our vast Orient, and one isle, one isle, That knows not her own greatness: if she knows And dreads it we are fallen. --But thou, my Queen, Not for itself, but through thy living love For one to whom I made it o'er his grave Sacred, accept this old imperfect tale, New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul, Ideal manhood closed in real man, Rather than that gray king, whose name, a ghost, Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak, And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's, one Touched by the adulterous finger of a time That hovered between war and wantonness, And crownings and dethronements: take withal Thy poet's blessing, and his trust that Heaven Will blow the tempest in the distance back From thine and ours: for some are scared, who mark, Or wisely or unwisely, signs of storm, Waverings of every vane with every wind, And wordy trucklings to the transient hour, And fierce or careless looseners of the faith, And Softness breeding scorn of simple life, Or Cowardice, the child of lust for gold, Or Labour, with a groan and not a voice, Or Art with poisonous honey stolen from France, And that which knows, but careful for itself, And that which knows not, ruling that which knows To its own harm: the goal of this great world Lies beyond sight: yet--if our slowly-grown And crowned Republic's crowning common-sense, That saved her many times, not fail--their fears Are morning shadows huger than the shapes That cast them, not those gloomier which forego The darkness of that battle in the West, Where all of high and holy dies away.

To the Queen

https://web.archive.org/web/20211101025057/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/idylls-of-the-king/summary/to-the-queen

This Idyll addresses the queen herself, and goes a little something like this: O loyal queen to her land, remember the day when you and the prince passed through the joyful London crowd after he recovered from a serious illness. London greeted you then with a great big hullabaloo. And you can't forget the silent cry of all the people over whom the British Empire rules. From the "true North" came a shameful sentiment, telling the British to go home and leave them alone. Can this really be the voice and meaning of the mightiest people under heaven ? Or rather is it the voice of a feeble third-rate isle about to sink into the ocean? The true voice of Britain rang out when London greeted you and your prince. Those loyal to their crown love its empire for broadening England's territory. Accept this poem not for itself, but for the love of your prince, over whose grave I have consecrated it. Accept it for your departed prince rather than for the departed king who's its subject. Take this poet's blessing, and his trust that Heaven will blow back that brewing storm. Those who fear the signs of trouble to come have listened too closely to rumblings motivated by laziness, cowardice, and other anti-nationalist sentiments. Boo on them. The goal of this great world is not within our sight. Yet if the common sense that has saved Britain many times does not desert her now, these fears are nothing more than "morning shadows." They exaggerate the true size of the thing that casts them.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/610-chapters/1.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Idylls of the King/section_0_part_0.txt

Idylls of the King.chapter 1

dedication

{"name": "Dedication", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210510030611/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/i/idylls-of-the-king/summary-and-analysis/dedication", "summary": "These Idylls are consecrated in tears and are dedicated to the memory of one who loved them as if he had seen his own image in them. He was a man who seemed in all his virtues and fine qualities to be none other than Arthur's ideal knight. Now he is gone, and England prays that his sons will be as noble as he was and will be worthy of their father, Albert the Good. The queen must reign alone, in splendor and in solitude, for he is gone, but she is royal and will endure. In his closing lines to the queen, the poet writes: . . . May all love,His love, unseen but felt, o'ershadow thee,The love of all thy sons encompass thee,The love of all thy daughters cherish thee,The love of all thy people comfort thee,Till God's love set thee at his side again!", "analysis": ""}

Dedication These to His Memory--since he held them dear, Perchance as finding there unconsciously Some image of himself--I dedicate, I dedicate, I consecrate with tears-- These Idylls. And indeed He seems to me Scarce other than my king's ideal knight, 'Who reverenced his conscience as his king; Whose glory was, redressing human wrong; Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it; Who loved one only and who clave to her--' Her--over all whose realms to their last isle, Commingled with the gloom of imminent war, The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse, Darkening the world. We have lost him: he is gone: We know him now: all narrow jealousies Are silent; and we see him as he moved, How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise, With what sublime repression of himself, And in what limits, and how tenderly; Not swaying to this faction or to that; Not making his high place the lawless perch Of winged ambitions, nor a vantage-ground For pleasure; but through all this tract of years Wearing the white flower of a blameless life, Before a thousand peering littlenesses, In that fierce light which beats upon a throne, And blackens every blot: for where is he, Who dares foreshadow for an only son A lovelier life, a more unstained, than his? Or how should England dreaming of his sons Hope more for these than some inheritance Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine, Thou noble Father of her Kings to be, Laborious for her people and her poor-- Voice in the rich dawn of an ampler day-- Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace-- Sweet nature gilded by the gracious gleam Of letters, dear to Science, dear to Art, Dear to thy land and ours, a Prince indeed, Beyond all titles, and a household name, Hereafter, through all times, Albert the Good. Break not, O woman's-heart, but still endure; Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure, Remembering all the beauty of that star Which shone so close beside Thee that ye made One light together, but has past and leaves The Crown a lonely splendour. May all love, His love, unseen but felt, o'ershadow Thee, The love of all Thy sons encompass Thee, The love of all Thy daughters cherish Thee, The love of all Thy people comfort Thee, Till God's love set Thee at his side again!

Dedication

https://web.archive.org/web/20210510030611/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/i/idylls-of-the-king/summary-and-analysis/dedication

These Idylls are consecrated in tears and are dedicated to the memory of one who loved them as if he had seen his own image in them. He was a man who seemed in all his virtues and fine qualities to be none other than Arthur's ideal knight. Now he is gone, and England prays that his sons will be as noble as he was and will be worthy of their father, Albert the Good. The queen must reign alone, in splendor and in solitude, for he is gone, but she is royal and will endure. In his closing lines to the queen, the poet writes: . . . May all love,His love, unseen but felt, o'ershadow thee,The love of all thy sons encompass thee,The love of all thy daughters cherish thee,The love of all thy people comfort thee,Till God's love set thee at his side again!

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/part_2_chapters_1_to_2.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/White Fang/section_2_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 2.chapters 1-2

part 2, chapters 1-2

{"name": "Part Two, Chapters 1-2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210301215611/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fang/section3/", "summary": "The she-wolf was the first to hear the other men coming and the first to make a retreat. She runs out over the snow, flanked on either side by two wolves. On her right side there is a gaunt, older wolf, with only one eye. On the left is one of the leaders of the pack. Both of them crowd her, and she fights them off with sharp slashes of teeth and growls. At times, a young three-year-old wolf also darts up, edging between her and the leader. If there hadn't been the famine, all the wolves would have broken up, turning to fighting and then to love-making. But with the lack of food, the wolves run together, searching. They come along a big bull moose, and take him down, feasting upon the eight hundred pounds of flesh. The famine is over. The wolf pack splits up and the she-wolf, with the young leader on her left, the older wolf on her right, leads half of the pack down to the Mackenzie River. Bit by bit the pack splits apart until it is just the three wolves and the three-year-old wolf. The three males fight with each other. The two older wolves kill the younger one, and, that finished, the older wolf kills the younger leader. Then the she-wolf and the one-eyed wolf run together. The she-wolf seems to be searching for something; she looks longingly at the human settlement and runs and runs, searching. After two days of lurking about the Indian camp and robbing rabbit snares, someone shoots a gun at them and they retreat. The she-wolf finds what she is looking for--a lair in the forest. She creeps in, and there she has a litter of pups. One Eye goes in search of food and brings home a porcupine that a lynx had half killed.", "analysis": "Commentary This is the first dog-only section of White Fang. Other than the shot from a rifle after the wolves rob the rabbit snares, there is no human action in these two chapters. Instead, they focus on One Eye and Kiche. London does not do what many animal writers do--personify the creature so much so that it has a human's stream-of- consciousness. No, he instead uses instinct to explain motivation, instinct and raw reasoning. London sometimes shows instinct without actually explaining it, for instance when Kiche is searching for the lair in chapter 2. The reader does not know that she is searching for the lair, and like Kiche's consciousness, the text is driven by unknown forces. Thus, London uses instinct to draw the experiences of the dogs and the reader closer together. We can identify with Kiche because we do not know what she is searching for, or can identify with that feeling of instinct. The battles in this section are also important to the theme of White Fang. The three-wolf battle is filled with savagery--against their own kind! There is never any pretense of a \"fair-fight\" or of \"honor.\" Instead, these are battles to win, just as the battle against the moose is a battle simply for food. Similarly, One-Eye waits for the lynx to kill the porcupine: it doesn't matter how one produces food, as long as it is produced. Battles are thus simply the way to survive in the wild, and London is careful to not tame the battles down, or moralize. The only instance of moralizing is when London says that One Eye did not have an \"unholy desire\" to eat his pups. It is moral to follow the instinctual laws of nature, those that help keep you and your offspring. That is the only law in the Wild, a law of simple survival."}

It was the she-wolf who had first caught the sound of men's voices and the whining of the sled-dogs; and it was the she-wolf who was first to spring away from the cornered man in his circle of dying flame. The pack had been loath to forego the kill it had hunted down, and it lingered for several minutes, making sure of the sounds, and then it, too, sprang away on the trail made by the she-wolf. Running at the forefront of the pack was a large grey wolf--one of its several leaders. It was he who directed the pack's course on the heels of the she-wolf. It was he who snarled warningly at the younger members of the pack or slashed at them with his fangs when they ambitiously tried to pass him. And it was he who increased the pace when he sighted the she-wolf, now trotting slowly across the snow. She dropped in alongside by him, as though it were her appointed position, and took the pace of the pack. He did not snarl at her, nor show his teeth, when any leap of hers chanced to put her in advance of him. On the contrary, he seemed kindly disposed toward her--too kindly to suit her, for he was prone to run near to her, and when he ran too near it was she who snarled and showed her teeth. Nor was she above slashing his shoulder sharply on occasion. At such times he betrayed no anger. He merely sprang to the side and ran stiffly ahead for several awkward leaps, in carriage and conduct resembling an abashed country swain. This was his one trouble in the running of the pack; but she had other troubles. On her other side ran a gaunt old wolf, grizzled and marked with the scars of many battles. He ran always on her right side. The fact that he had but one eye, and that the left eye, might account for this. He, also, was addicted to crowding her, to veering toward her till his scarred muzzle touched her body, or shoulder, or neck. As with the running mate on the left, she repelled these attentions with her teeth; but when both bestowed their attentions at the same time she was roughly jostled, being compelled, with quick snaps to either side, to drive both lovers away and at the same time to maintain her forward leap with the pack and see the way of her feet before her. At such times her running mates flashed their teeth and growled threateningly across at each other. They might have fought, but even wooing and its rivalry waited upon the more pressing hunger-need of the pack. After each repulse, when the old wolf sheered abruptly away from the sharp-toothed object of his desire, he shouldered against a young three- year-old that ran on his blind right side. This young wolf had attained his full size; and, considering the weak and famished condition of the pack, he possessed more than the average vigour and spirit. Nevertheless, he ran with his head even with the shoulder of his one-eyed elder. When he ventured to run abreast of the older wolf (which was seldom), a snarl and a snap sent him back even with the shoulder again. Sometimes, however, he dropped cautiously and slowly behind and edged in between the old leader and the she-wolf. This was doubly resented, even triply resented. When she snarled her displeasure, the old leader would whirl on the three-year-old. Sometimes she whirled with him. And sometimes the young leader on the left whirled, too. At such times, confronted by three sets of savage teeth, the young wolf stopped precipitately, throwing himself back on his haunches, with fore- legs stiff, mouth menacing, and mane bristling. This confusion in the front of the moving pack always caused confusion in the rear. The wolves behind collided with the young wolf and expressed their displeasure by administering sharp nips on his hind-legs and flanks. He was laying up trouble for himself, for lack of food and short tempers went together; but with the boundless faith of youth he persisted in repeating the manoeuvre every little while, though it never succeeded in gaining anything for him but discomfiture. Had there been food, love-making and fighting would have gone on apace, and the pack-formation would have been broken up. But the situation of the pack was desperate. It was lean with long-standing hunger. It ran below its ordinary speed. At the rear limped the weak members, the very young and the very old. At the front were the strongest. Yet all were more like skeletons than full-bodied wolves. Nevertheless, with the exception of the ones that limped, the movements of the animals were effortless and tireless. Their stringy muscles seemed founts of inexhaustible energy. Behind every steel-like contraction of a muscle, lay another steel-like contraction, and another, and another, apparently without end. They ran many miles that day. They ran through the night. And the next day found them still running. They were running over the surface of a world frozen and dead. No life stirred. They alone moved through the vast inertness. They alone were alive, and they sought for other things that were alive in order that they might devour them and continue to live. They crossed low divides and ranged a dozen small streams in a lower-lying country before their quest was rewarded. Then they came upon moose. It was a big bull they first found. Here was meat and life, and it was guarded by no mysterious fires nor flying missiles of flame. Splay hoofs and palmated antlers they knew, and they flung their customary patience and caution to the wind. It was a brief fight and fierce. The big bull was beset on every side. He ripped them open or split their skulls with shrewdly driven blows of his great hoofs. He crushed them and broke them on his large horns. He stamped them into the snow under him in the wallowing struggle. But he was foredoomed, and he went down with the she-wolf tearing savagely at his throat, and with other teeth fixed everywhere upon him, devouring him alive, before ever his last struggles ceased or his last damage had been wrought. There was food in plenty. The bull weighed over eight hundred pounds--fully twenty pounds of meat per mouth for the forty-odd wolves of the pack. But if they could fast prodigiously, they could feed prodigiously, and soon a few scattered bones were all that remained of the splendid live brute that had faced the pack a few hours before. There was now much resting and sleeping. With full stomachs, bickering and quarrelling began among the younger males, and this continued through the few days that followed before the breaking-up of the pack. The famine was over. The wolves were now in the country of game, and though they still hunted in pack, they hunted more cautiously, cutting out heavy cows or crippled old bulls from the small moose-herds they ran across. There came a day, in this land of plenty, when the wolf-pack split in half and went in different directions. The she-wolf, the young leader on her left, and the one-eyed elder on her right, led their half of the pack down to the Mackenzie River and across into the lake country to the east. Each day this remnant of the pack dwindled. Two by two, male and female, the wolves were deserting. Occasionally a solitary male was driven out by the sharp teeth of his rivals. In the end there remained only four: the she-wolf, the young leader, the one-eyed one, and the ambitious three- year-old. The she-wolf had by now developed a ferocious temper. Her three suitors all bore the marks of her teeth. Yet they never replied in kind, never defended themselves against her. They turned their shoulders to her most savage slashes, and with wagging tails and mincing steps strove to placate her wrath. But if they were all mildness toward her, they were all fierceness toward one another. The three-year-old grew too ambitious in his fierceness. He caught the one-eyed elder on his blind side and ripped his ear into ribbons. Though the grizzled old fellow could see only on one side, against the youth and vigour of the other he brought into play the wisdom of long years of experience. His lost eye and his scarred muzzle bore evidence to the nature of his experience. He had survived too many battles to be in doubt for a moment about what to do. The battle began fairly, but it did not end fairly. There was no telling what the outcome would have been, for the third wolf joined the elder, and together, old leader and young leader, they attacked the ambitious three-year-old and proceeded to destroy him. He was beset on either side by the merciless fangs of his erstwhile comrades. Forgotten were the days they had hunted together, the game they had pulled down, the famine they had suffered. That business was a thing of the past. The business of love was at hand--ever a sterner and crueller business than that of food-getting. And in the meanwhile, the she-wolf, the cause of it all, sat down contentedly on her haunches and watched. She was even pleased. This was her day--and it came not often--when manes bristled, and fang smote fang or ripped and tore the yielding flesh, all for the possession of her. And in the business of love the three-year-old, who had made this his first adventure upon it, yielded up his life. On either side of his body stood his two rivals. They were gazing at the she-wolf, who sat smiling in the snow. But the elder leader was wise, very wise, in love even as in battle. The younger leader turned his head to lick a wound on his shoulder. The curve of his neck was turned toward his rival. With his one eye the elder saw the opportunity. He darted in low and closed with his fangs. It was a long, ripping slash, and deep as well. His teeth, in passing, burst the wall of the great vein of the throat. Then he leaped clear. The young leader snarled terribly, but his snarl broke midmost into a tickling cough. Bleeding and coughing, already stricken, he sprang at the elder and fought while life faded from him, his legs going weak beneath him, the light of day dulling on his eyes, his blows and springs falling shorter and shorter. And all the while the she-wolf sat on her haunches and smiled. She was made glad in vague ways by the battle, for this was the love-making of the Wild, the sex-tragedy of the natural world that was tragedy only to those that died. To those that survived it was not tragedy, but realisation and achievement. When the young leader lay in the snow and moved no more, One Eye stalked over to the she-wolf. His carriage was one of mingled triumph and caution. He was plainly expectant of a rebuff, and he was just as plainly surprised when her teeth did not flash out at him in anger. For the first time she met him with a kindly manner. She sniffed noses with him, and even condescended to leap about and frisk and play with him in quite puppyish fashion. And he, for all his grey years and sage experience, behaved quite as puppyishly and even a little more foolishly. Forgotten already were the vanquished rivals and the love-tale red-written on the snow. Forgotten, save once, when old One Eye stopped for a moment to lick his stiffening wounds. Then it was that his lips half writhed into a snarl, and the hair of his neck and shoulders involuntarily bristled, while he half crouched for a spring, his claws spasmodically clutching into the snow-surface for firmer footing. But it was all forgotten the next moment, as he sprang after the she-wolf, who was coyly leading him a chase through the woods. After that they ran side by side, like good friends who have come to an understanding. The days passed by, and they kept together, hunting their meat and killing and eating it in common. After a time the she-wolf began to grow restless. She seemed to be searching for something that she could not find. The hollows under fallen trees seemed to attract her, and she spent much time nosing about among the larger snow-piled crevices in the rocks and in the caves of overhanging banks. Old One Eye was not interested at all, but he followed her good-naturedly in her quest, and when her investigations in particular places were unusually protracted, he would lie down and wait until she was ready to go on. They did not remain in one place, but travelled across country until they regained the Mackenzie River, down which they slowly went, leaving it often to hunt game along the small streams that entered it, but always returning to it again. Sometimes they chanced upon other wolves, usually in pairs; but there was no friendliness of intercourse displayed on either side, no gladness at meeting, no desire to return to the pack-formation. Several times they encountered solitary wolves. These were always males, and they were pressingly insistent on joining with One Eye and his mate. This he resented, and when she stood shoulder to shoulder with him, bristling and showing her teeth, the aspiring solitary ones would back off, turn-tail, and continue on their lonely way. One moonlight night, running through the quiet forest, One Eye suddenly halted. His muzzle went up, his tail stiffened, and his nostrils dilated as he scented the air. One foot also he held up, after the manner of a dog. He was not satisfied, and he continued to smell the air, striving to understand the message borne upon it to him. One careless sniff had satisfied his mate, and she trotted on to reassure him. Though he followed her, he was still dubious, and he could not forbear an occasional halt in order more carefully to study the warning. She crept out cautiously on the edge of a large open space in the midst of the trees. For some time she stood alone. Then One Eye, creeping and crawling, every sense on the alert, every hair radiating infinite suspicion, joined her. They stood side by side, watching and listening and smelling. To their ears came the sounds of dogs wrangling and scuffling, the guttural cries of men, the sharper voices of scolding women, and once the shrill and plaintive cry of a child. With the exception of the huge bulks of the skin-lodges, little could be seen save the flames of the fire, broken by the movements of intervening bodies, and the smoke rising slowly on the quiet air. But to their nostrils came the myriad smells of an Indian camp, carrying a story that was largely incomprehensible to One Eye, but every detail of which the she-wolf knew. She was strangely stirred, and sniffed and sniffed with an increasing delight. But old One Eye was doubtful. He betrayed his apprehension, and started tentatively to go. She turned and touched his neck with her muzzle in a reassuring way, then regarded the camp again. A new wistfulness was in her face, but it was not the wistfulness of hunger. She was thrilling to a desire that urged her to go forward, to be in closer to that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men. One Eye moved impatiently beside her; her unrest came back upon her, and she knew again her pressing need to find the thing for which she searched. She turned and trotted back into the forest, to the great relief of One Eye, who trotted a little to the fore until they were well within the shelter of the trees. As they slid along, noiseless as shadows, in the moonlight, they came upon a run-way. Both noses went down to the footprints in the snow. These footprints were very fresh. One Eye ran ahead cautiously, his mate at his heels. The broad pads of their feet were spread wide and in contact with the snow were like velvet. One Eye caught sight of a dim movement of white in the midst of the white. His sliding gait had been deceptively swift, but it was as nothing to the speed at which he now ran. Before him was bounding the faint patch of white he had discovered. They were running along a narrow alley flanked on either side by a growth of young spruce. Through the trees the mouth of the alley could be seen, opening out on a moonlit glade. Old One Eye was rapidly overhauling the fleeing shape of white. Bound by bound he gained. Now he was upon it. One leap more and his teeth would be sinking into it. But that leap was never made. High in the air, and straight up, soared the shape of white, now a struggling snowshoe rabbit that leaped and bounded, executing a fantastic dance there above him in the air and never once returning to earth. One Eye sprang back with a snort of sudden fright, then shrank down to the snow and crouched, snarling threats at this thing of fear he did not understand. But the she-wolf coolly thrust past him. She poised for a moment, then sprang for the dancing rabbit. She, too, soared high, but not so high as the quarry, and her teeth clipped emptily together with a metallic snap. She made another leap, and another. Her mate had slowly relaxed from his crouch and was watching her. He now evinced displeasure at her repeated failures, and himself made a mighty spring upward. His teeth closed upon the rabbit, and he bore it back to earth with him. But at the same time there was a suspicious crackling movement beside him, and his astonished eye saw a young spruce sapling bending down above him to strike him. His jaws let go their grip, and he leaped backward to escape this strange danger, his lips drawn back from his fangs, his throat snarling, every hair bristling with rage and fright. And in that moment the sapling reared its slender length upright and the rabbit soared dancing in the air again. The she-wolf was angry. She sank her fangs into her mate's shoulder in reproof; and he, frightened, unaware of what constituted this new onslaught, struck back ferociously and in still greater fright, ripping down the side of the she-wolf's muzzle. For him to resent such reproof was equally unexpected to her, and she sprang upon him in snarling indignation. Then he discovered his mistake and tried to placate her. But she proceeded to punish him roundly, until he gave over all attempts at placation, and whirled in a circle, his head away from her, his shoulders receiving the punishment of her teeth. In the meantime the rabbit danced above them in the air. The she-wolf sat down in the snow, and old One Eye, now more in fear of his mate than of the mysterious sapling, again sprang for the rabbit. As he sank back with it between his teeth, he kept his eye on the sapling. As before, it followed him back to earth. He crouched down under the impending blow, his hair bristling, but his teeth still keeping tight hold of the rabbit. But the blow did not fall. The sapling remained bent above him. When he moved it moved, and he growled at it through his clenched jaws; when he remained still, it remained still, and he concluded it was safer to continue remaining still. Yet the warm blood of the rabbit tasted good in his mouth. It was his mate who relieved him from the quandary in which he found himself. She took the rabbit from him, and while the sapling swayed and teetered threateningly above her she calmly gnawed off the rabbit's head. At once the sapling shot up, and after that gave no more trouble, remaining in the decorous and perpendicular position in which nature had intended it to grow. Then, between them, the she-wolf and One Eye devoured the game which the mysterious sapling had caught for them. There were other run-ways and alleys where rabbits were hanging in the air, and the wolf-pair prospected them all, the she-wolf leading the way, old One Eye following and observant, learning the method of robbing snares--a knowledge destined to stand him in good stead in the days to come. For two days the she-wolf and One Eye hung about the Indian camp. He was worried and apprehensive, yet the camp lured his mate and she was loath to depart. But when, one morning, the air was rent with the report of a rifle close at hand, and a bullet smashed against a tree trunk several inches from One Eye's head, they hesitated no more, but went off on a long, swinging lope that put quick miles between them and the danger. They did not go far--a couple of days' journey. The she-wolf's need to find the thing for which she searched had now become imperative. She was getting very heavy, and could run but slowly. Once, in the pursuit of a rabbit, which she ordinarily would have caught with ease, she gave over and lay down and rested. One Eye came to her; but when he touched her neck gently with his muzzle she snapped at him with such quick fierceness that he tumbled over backward and cut a ridiculous figure in his effort to escape her teeth. Her temper was now shorter than ever; but he had become more patient than ever and more solicitous. And then she found the thing for which she sought. It was a few miles up a small stream that in the summer time flowed into the Mackenzie, but that then was frozen over and frozen down to its rocky bottom--a dead stream of solid white from source to mouth. The she-wolf was trotting wearily along, her mate well in advance, when she came upon the overhanging, high clay-bank. She turned aside and trotted over to it. The wear and tear of spring storms and melting snows had underwashed the bank and in one place had made a small cave out of a narrow fissure. She paused at the mouth of the cave and looked the wall over carefully. Then, on one side and the other, she ran along the base of the wall to where its abrupt bulk merged from the softer-lined landscape. Returning to the cave, she entered its narrow mouth. For a short three feet she was compelled to crouch, then the walls widened and rose higher in a little round chamber nearly six feet in diameter. The roof barely cleared her head. It was dry and cosey. She inspected it with painstaking care, while One Eye, who had returned, stood in the entrance and patiently watched her. She dropped her head, with her nose to the ground and directed toward a point near to her closely bunched feet, and around this point she circled several times; then, with a tired sigh that was almost a grunt, she curled her body in, relaxed her legs, and dropped down, her head toward the entrance. One Eye, with pointed, interested ears, laughed at her, and beyond, outlined against the white light, she could see the brush of his tail waving good-naturedly. Her own ears, with a snuggling movement, laid their sharp points backward and down against the head for a moment, while her mouth opened and her tongue lolled peaceably out, and in this way she expressed that she was pleased and satisfied. One Eye was hungry. Though he lay down in the entrance and slept, his sleep was fitful. He kept awaking and cocking his ears at the bright world without, where the April sun was blazing across the snow. When he dozed, upon his ears would steal the faint whispers of hidden trickles of running water, and he would rouse and listen intently. The sun had come back, and all the awakening Northland world was calling to him. Life was stirring. The feel of spring was in the air, the feel of growing life under the snow, of sap ascending in the trees, of buds bursting the shackles of the frost. He cast anxious glances at his mate, but she showed no desire to get up. He looked outside, and half a dozen snow-birds fluttered across his field of vision. He started to get up, then looked back to his mate again, and settled down and dozed. A shrill and minute singing stole upon his hearing. Once, and twice, he sleepily brushed his nose with his paw. Then he woke up. There, buzzing in the air at the tip of his nose, was a lone mosquito. It was a full-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen in a dry log all winter and that had now been thawed out by the sun. He could resist the call of the world no longer. Besides, he was hungry. He crawled over to his mate and tried to persuade her to get up. But she only snarled at him, and he walked out alone into the bright sunshine to find the snow-surface soft under foot and the travelling difficult. He went up the frozen bed of the stream, where the snow, shaded by the trees, was yet hard and crystalline. He was gone eight hours, and he came back through the darkness hungrier than when he had started. He had found game, but he had not caught it. He had broken through the melting snow crust, and wallowed, while the snowshoe rabbits had skimmed along on top lightly as ever. He paused at the mouth of the cave with a sudden shock of suspicion. Faint, strange sounds came from within. They were sounds not made by his mate, and yet they were remotely familiar. He bellied cautiously inside and was met by a warning snarl from the she-wolf. This he received without perturbation, though he obeyed it by keeping his distance; but he remained interested in the other sounds--faint, muffled sobbings and slubberings. His mate warned him irritably away, and he curled up and slept in the entrance. When morning came and a dim light pervaded the lair, he again sought after the source of the remotely familiar sounds. There was a new note in his mate's warning snarl. It was a jealous note, and he was very careful in keeping a respectful distance. Nevertheless, he made out, sheltering between her legs against the length of her body, five strange little bundles of life, very feeble, very helpless, making tiny whimpering noises, with eyes that did not open to the light. He was surprised. It was not the first time in his long and successful life that this thing had happened. It had happened many times, yet each time it was as fresh a surprise as ever to him. His mate looked at him anxiously. Every little while she emitted a low growl, and at times, when it seemed to her he approached too near, the growl shot up in her throat to a sharp snarl. Of her own experience she had no memory of the thing happening; but in her instinct, which was the experience of all the mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers that had eaten their new-born and helpless progeny. It manifested itself as a fear strong within her, that made her prevent One Eye from more closely inspecting the cubs he had fathered. But there was no danger. Old One Eye was feeling the urge of an impulse, that was, in turn, an instinct that had come down to him from all the fathers of wolves. He did not question it, nor puzzle over it. It was there, in the fibre of his being; and it was the most natural thing in the world that he should obey it by turning his back on his new-born family and by trotting out and away on the meat-trail whereby he lived. Five or six miles from the lair, the stream divided, its forks going off among the mountains at a right angle. Here, leading up the left fork, he came upon a fresh track. He smelled it and found it so recent that he crouched swiftly, and looked in the direction in which it disappeared. Then he turned deliberately and took the right fork. The footprint was much larger than the one his own feet made, and he knew that in the wake of such a trail there was little meat for him. Half a mile up the right fork, his quick ears caught the sound of gnawing teeth. He stalked the quarry and found it to be a porcupine, standing upright against a tree and trying his teeth on the bark. One Eye approached carefully but hopelessly. He knew the breed, though he had never met it so far north before; and never in his long life had porcupine served him for a meal. But he had long since learned that there was such a thing as Chance, or Opportunity, and he continued to draw near. There was never any telling what might happen, for with live things events were somehow always happening differently. The porcupine rolled itself into a ball, radiating long, sharp needles in all directions that defied attack. In his youth One Eye had once sniffed too near a similar, apparently inert ball of quills, and had the tail flick out suddenly in his face. One quill he had carried away in his muzzle, where it had remained for weeks, a rankling flame, until it finally worked out. So he lay down, in a comfortable crouching position, his nose fully a foot away, and out of the line of the tail. Thus he waited, keeping perfectly quiet. There was no telling. Something might happen. The porcupine might unroll. There might be opportunity for a deft and ripping thrust of paw into the tender, unguarded belly. But at the end of half an hour he arose, growled wrathfully at the motionless ball, and trotted on. He had waited too often and futilely in the past for porcupines to unroll, to waste any more time. He continued up the right fork. The day wore along, and nothing rewarded his hunt. The urge of his awakened instinct of fatherhood was strong upon him. He must find meat. In the afternoon he blundered upon a ptarmigan. He came out of a thicket and found himself face to face with the slow-witted bird. It was sitting on a log, not a foot beyond the end of his nose. Each saw the other. The bird made a startled rise, but he struck it with his paw, and smashed it down to earth, then pounced upon it, and caught it in his teeth as it scuttled across the snow trying to rise in the air again. As his teeth crunched through the tender flesh and fragile bones, he began naturally to eat. Then he remembered, and, turning on the back- track, started for home, carrying the ptarmigan in his mouth. A mile above the forks, running velvet-footed as was his custom, a gliding shadow that cautiously prospected each new vista of the trail, he came upon later imprints of the large tracks he had discovered in the early morning. As the track led his way, he followed, prepared to meet the maker of it at every turn of the stream. He slid his head around a corner of rock, where began an unusually large bend in the stream, and his quick eyes made out something that sent him crouching swiftly down. It was the maker of the track, a large female lynx. She was crouching as he had crouched once that day, in front of her the tight-rolled ball of quills. If he had been a gliding shadow before, he now became the ghost of such a shadow, as he crept and circled around, and came up well to leeward of the silent, motionless pair. He lay down in the snow, depositing the ptarmigan beside him, and with eyes peering through the needles of a low-growing spruce he watched the play of life before him--the waiting lynx and the waiting porcupine, each intent on life; and, such was the curiousness of the game, the way of life for one lay in the eating of the other, and the way of life for the other lay in being not eaten. While old One Eye, the wolf crouching in the covert, played his part, too, in the game, waiting for some strange freak of Chance, that might help him on the meat-trail which was his way of life. Half an hour passed, an hour; and nothing happened. The ball of quills might have been a stone for all it moved; the lynx might have been frozen to marble; and old One Eye might have been dead. Yet all three animals were keyed to a tenseness of living that was almost painful, and scarcely ever would it come to them to be more alive than they were then in their seeming petrifaction. One Eye moved slightly and peered forth with increased eagerness. Something was happening. The porcupine had at last decided that its enemy had gone away. Slowly, cautiously, it was unrolling its ball of impregnable armour. It was agitated by no tremor of anticipation. Slowly, slowly, the bristling ball straightened out and lengthened. One Eye watching, felt a sudden moistness in his mouth and a drooling of saliva, involuntary, excited by the living meat that was spreading itself like a repast before him. Not quite entirely had the porcupine unrolled when it discovered its enemy. In that instant the lynx struck. The blow was like a flash of light. The paw, with rigid claws curving like talons, shot under the tender belly and came back with a swift ripping movement. Had the porcupine been entirely unrolled, or had it not discovered its enemy a fraction of a second before the blow was struck, the paw would have escaped unscathed; but a side-flick of the tail sank sharp quills into it as it was withdrawn. Everything had happened at once--the blow, the counter-blow, the squeal of agony from the porcupine, the big cat's squall of sudden hurt and astonishment. One Eye half arose in his excitement, his ears up, his tail straight out and quivering behind him. The lynx's bad temper got the best of her. She sprang savagely at the thing that had hurt her. But the porcupine, squealing and grunting, with disrupted anatomy trying feebly to roll up into its ball-protection, flicked out its tail again, and again the big cat squalled with hurt and astonishment. Then she fell to backing away and sneezing, her nose bristling with quills like a monstrous pin-cushion. She brushed her nose with her paws, trying to dislodge the fiery darts, thrust it into the snow, and rubbed it against twigs and branches, and all the time leaping about, ahead, sidewise, up and down, in a frenzy of pain and fright. She sneezed continually, and her stub of a tail was doing its best toward lashing about by giving quick, violent jerks. She quit her antics, and quieted down for a long minute. One Eye watched. And even he could not repress a start and an involuntary bristling of hair along his back when she suddenly leaped, without warning, straight up in the air, at the same time emitting a long and most terrible squall. Then she sprang away, up the trail, squalling with every leap she made. It was not until her racket had faded away in the distance and died out that One Eye ventured forth. He walked as delicately as though all the snow were carpeted with porcupine quills, erect and ready to pierce the soft pads of his feet. The porcupine met his approach with a furious squealing and a clashing of its long teeth. It had managed to roll up in a ball again, but it was not quite the old compact ball; its muscles were too much torn for that. It had been ripped almost in half, and was still bleeding profusely. One Eye scooped out mouthfuls of the blood-soaked snow, and chewed and tasted and swallowed. This served as a relish, and his hunger increased mightily; but he was too old in the world to forget his caution. He waited. He lay down and waited, while the porcupine grated its teeth and uttered grunts and sobs and occasional sharp little squeals. In a little while, One Eye noticed that the quills were drooping and that a great quivering had set up. The quivering came to an end suddenly. There was a final defiant clash of the long teeth. Then all the quills drooped quite down, and the body relaxed and moved no more. With a nervous, shrinking paw, One Eye stretched out the porcupine to its full length and turned it over on its back. Nothing had happened. It was surely dead. He studied it intently for a moment, then took a careful grip with his teeth and started off down the stream, partly carrying, partly dragging the porcupine, with head turned to the side so as to avoid stepping on the prickly mass. He recollected something, dropped the burden, and trotted back to where he had left the ptarmigan. He did not hesitate a moment. He knew clearly what was to be done, and this he did by promptly eating the ptarmigan. Then he returned and took up his burden. When he dragged the result of his day's hunt into the cave, the she-wolf inspected it, turned her muzzle to him, and lightly licked him on the neck. But the next instant she was warning him away from the cubs with a snarl that was less harsh than usual and that was more apologetic than menacing. Her instinctive fear of the father of her progeny was toning down. He was behaving as a wolf-father should, and manifesting no unholy desire to devour the young lives she had brought into the world.

Part Two, Chapters 1-2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210301215611/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fang/section3/

The she-wolf was the first to hear the other men coming and the first to make a retreat. She runs out over the snow, flanked on either side by two wolves. On her right side there is a gaunt, older wolf, with only one eye. On the left is one of the leaders of the pack. Both of them crowd her, and she fights them off with sharp slashes of teeth and growls. At times, a young three-year-old wolf also darts up, edging between her and the leader. If there hadn't been the famine, all the wolves would have broken up, turning to fighting and then to love-making. But with the lack of food, the wolves run together, searching. They come along a big bull moose, and take him down, feasting upon the eight hundred pounds of flesh. The famine is over. The wolf pack splits up and the she-wolf, with the young leader on her left, the older wolf on her right, leads half of the pack down to the Mackenzie River. Bit by bit the pack splits apart until it is just the three wolves and the three-year-old wolf. The three males fight with each other. The two older wolves kill the younger one, and, that finished, the older wolf kills the younger leader. Then the she-wolf and the one-eyed wolf run together. The she-wolf seems to be searching for something; she looks longingly at the human settlement and runs and runs, searching. After two days of lurking about the Indian camp and robbing rabbit snares, someone shoots a gun at them and they retreat. The she-wolf finds what she is looking for--a lair in the forest. She creeps in, and there she has a litter of pups. One Eye goes in search of food and brings home a porcupine that a lynx had half killed.

Commentary This is the first dog-only section of White Fang. Other than the shot from a rifle after the wolves rob the rabbit snares, there is no human action in these two chapters. Instead, they focus on One Eye and Kiche. London does not do what many animal writers do--personify the creature so much so that it has a human's stream-of- consciousness. No, he instead uses instinct to explain motivation, instinct and raw reasoning. London sometimes shows instinct without actually explaining it, for instance when Kiche is searching for the lair in chapter 2. The reader does not know that she is searching for the lair, and like Kiche's consciousness, the text is driven by unknown forces. Thus, London uses instinct to draw the experiences of the dogs and the reader closer together. We can identify with Kiche because we do not know what she is searching for, or can identify with that feeling of instinct. The battles in this section are also important to the theme of White Fang. The three-wolf battle is filled with savagery--against their own kind! There is never any pretense of a "fair-fight" or of "honor." Instead, these are battles to win, just as the battle against the moose is a battle simply for food. Similarly, One-Eye waits for the lynx to kill the porcupine: it doesn't matter how one produces food, as long as it is produced. Battles are thus simply the way to survive in the wild, and London is careful to not tame the battles down, or moralize. The only instance of moralizing is when London says that One Eye did not have an "unholy desire" to eat his pups. It is moral to follow the instinctual laws of nature, those that help keep you and your offspring. That is the only law in the Wild, a law of simple survival.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/part_4_chapters_1_to_3.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/White Fang/section_6_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 4.chapters 1-3

part 4, chapters 1-3

{"name": "Part Four, Chapters 1-3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210301215611/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fang/section7/", "summary": "White Fang is a bitter, vicious dog and is made worse when Mit-sah puts him at the front of the pack. But White Fang does not stay close to Mit-sah when they camp, so all the dogs attack him, and he returns their attacks. He becomes so vicious that Gray Beaver swears that there has never been a dog so vicious as White Fang. When White Fang is almost five, Gray Beaver takes him on a trip to the Yukon, and he attacks dogs all along the way. He never wastes his strength, judges time and distance well, and is an excellent fighter. That summer, they arrive at Fort Yukon. It is the summer of 1898, at the height of the gold rush. Gray Beaver has brought furs and mittens and moccasins and makes a thousand percent profit off his goods. He settles there for the winter to trade. White Fang sees his first white men and feels that they are far superior to the Indians, with larger houses and greater powers. Yet their dogs are not very strong, and White Fang fights and kills them. One man lives in Fort Yukon who was called Beauty Smith. He is as far from possessing good looks as any can be--nature was niggardly with his looks. Worse, Beauty is a cruel, evil beast of a man, which White Fang senses. Beauty wants to buy White Fang, but Gray Beaver refuses to sell. So Beauty brings Gray Beaver whiskey and gives it to him until all of his money is drunk away. Then Gray Beaver, entirely broke, sells White Fang to Beauty Smith. White Fang escapes and goes back to Gray Beaver, but Gray Beaver returns him to Beauty Smith, and White Fang is beaten. Finally, after several escapes and beatings, White Fang is secured with a chain, and Gray Beaver leaves the town. White Fang becomes a professional fighting dog. Men make bets on him and he takes his hatred of Beauty out on the dogs and becomes known as \"The Fighting Wolf. \" Even a lynx is pushed into his cage, but White Fang kills her; there are no fiercer animals to fight until the first bulldog in the Klondike and White Fang are brought together.", "analysis": "Commentary Beauty Smith is an example of the equation of ugliness with spiritual meanness that is often present in stories, especially simple tales like White Fang. He is an excellent comparison with Gray Beaver and with Weedon Scott. Beauty rules by hatred. He bought White Fang because he saw the hatred and fierceness that was already instilled in the dog. However, he uses hate to further White Fang's development. Gray Beaver is in the middle, ruling White Fang with mutual respect without love, but without hatred. Weedon Scott, as we will see in the next section, rules White Fang with love. When Beauty Smith is White Fang's master, this sort of hatred turns itself in on White Fang--his hatred for Beauty comes out in his fighting of their dogs. This section also illuminates the very real problem of alcohol, especially when introduced to the indigenous people. Trade happened just as Beauty Smith wanted it to--the bottle in exchange for whatever one wants. Some northern cities in Alaska have gone \"dry\" because of these problems. Gray Beaver might not be kind, but at least he is honorable; London shows how alcohol can change that."}

Had there been in White Fang's nature any possibility, no matter how remote, of his ever coming to fraternise with his kind, such possibility was irretrievably destroyed when he was made leader of the sled-team. For now the dogs hated him--hated him for the extra meat bestowed upon him by Mit-sah; hated him for all the real and fancied favours he received; hated him for that he fled always at the head of the team, his waving brush of a tail and his perpetually retreating hind-quarters for ever maddening their eyes. And White Fang just as bitterly hated them back. Being sled-leader was anything but gratifying to him. To be compelled to run away before the yelling pack, every dog of which, for three years, he had thrashed and mastered, was almost more than he could endure. But endure it he must, or perish, and the life that was in him had no desire to perish out. The moment Mit-sah gave his order for the start, that moment the whole team, with eager, savage cries, sprang forward at White Fang. There was no defence for him. If he turned upon them, Mit-sah would throw the stinging lash of the whip into his face. Only remained to him to run away. He could not encounter that howling horde with his tail and hind-quarters. These were scarcely fit weapons with which to meet the many merciless fangs. So run away he did, violating his own nature and pride with every leap he made, and leaping all day long. One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself. Such a recoil is like that of a hair, made to grow out from the body, turning unnaturally upon the direction of its growth and growing into the body--a rankling, festering thing of hurt. And so with White Fang. Every urge of his being impelled him to spring upon the pack that cried at his heels, but it was the will of the gods that this should not be; and behind the will, to enforce it, was the whip of cariboo-gut with its biting thirty-foot lash. So White Fang could only eat his heart in bitterness and develop a hatred and malice commensurate with the ferocity and indomitability of his nature. If ever a creature was the enemy of its kind, White Fang was that creature. He asked no quarter, gave none. He was continually marred and scarred by the teeth of the pack, and as continually he left his own marks upon the pack. Unlike most leaders, who, when camp was made and the dogs were unhitched, huddled near to the gods for protection, White Fang disdained such protection. He walked boldly about the camp, inflicting punishment in the night for what he had suffered in the day. In the time before he was made leader of the team, the pack had learned to get out of his way. But now it was different. Excited by the day- long pursuit of him, swayed subconsciously by the insistent iteration on their brains of the sight of him fleeing away, mastered by the feeling of mastery enjoyed all day, the dogs could not bring themselves to give way to him. When he appeared amongst them, there was always a squabble. His progress was marked by snarl and snap and growl. The very atmosphere he breathed was surcharged with hatred and malice, and this but served to increase the hatred and malice within him. When Mit-sah cried out his command for the team to stop, White Fang obeyed. At first this caused trouble for the other dogs. All of them would spring upon the hated leader only to find the tables turned. Behind him would be Mit-sah, the great whip singing in his hand. So the dogs came to understand that when the team stopped by order, White Fang was to be let alone. But when White Fang stopped without orders, then it was allowed them to spring upon him and destroy him if they could. After several experiences, White Fang never stopped without orders. He learned quickly. It was in the nature of things, that he must learn quickly if he were to survive the unusually severe conditions under which life was vouchsafed him. But the dogs could never learn the lesson to leave him alone in camp. Each day, pursuing him and crying defiance at him, the lesson of the previous night was erased, and that night would have to be learned over again, to be as immediately forgotten. Besides, there was a greater consistence in their dislike of him. They sensed between themselves and him a difference of kind--cause sufficient in itself for hostility. Like him, they were domesticated wolves. But they had been domesticated for generations. Much of the Wild had been lost, so that to them the Wild was the unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing and ever warring. But to him, in appearance and action and impulse, still clung the Wild. He symbolised it, was its personification: so that when they showed their teeth to him they were defending themselves against the powers of destruction that lurked in the shadows of the forest and in the dark beyond the camp-fire. But there was one lesson the dogs did learn, and that was to keep together. White Fang was too terrible for any of them to face single- handed. They met him with the mass-formation, otherwise he would have killed them, one by one, in a night. As it was, he never had a chance to kill them. He might roll a dog off its feet, but the pack would be upon him before he could follow up and deliver the deadly throat-stroke. At the first hint of conflict, the whole team drew together and faced him. The dogs had quarrels among themselves, but these were forgotten when trouble was brewing with White Fang. On the other hand, try as they would, they could not kill White Fang. He was too quick for them, too formidable, too wise. He avoided tight places and always backed out of it when they bade fair to surround him. While, as for getting him off his feet, there was no dog among them capable of doing the trick. His feet clung to the earth with the same tenacity that he clung to life. For that matter, life and footing were synonymous in this unending warfare with the pack, and none knew it better than White Fang. So he became the enemy of his kind, domesticated wolves that they were, softened by the fires of man, weakened in the sheltering shadow of man's strength. White Fang was bitter and implacable. The clay of him was so moulded. He declared a vendetta against all dogs. And so terribly did he live this vendetta that Grey Beaver, fierce savage himself, could not but marvel at White Fang's ferocity. Never, he swore, had there been the like of this animal; and the Indians in strange villages swore likewise when they considered the tale of his killings amongst their dogs. When White Fang was nearly five years old, Grey Beaver took him on another great journey, and long remembered was the havoc he worked amongst the dogs of the many villages along the Mackenzie, across the Rockies, and down the Porcupine to the Yukon. He revelled in the vengeance he wreaked upon his kind. They were ordinary, unsuspecting dogs. They were not prepared for his swiftness and directness, for his attack without warning. They did not know him for what he was, a lightning-flash of slaughter. They bristled up to him, stiff-legged and challenging, while he, wasting no time on elaborate preliminaries, snapping into action like a steel spring, was at their throats and destroying them before they knew what was happening and while they were yet in the throes of surprise. He became an adept at fighting. He economised. He never wasted his strength, never tussled. He was in too quickly for that, and, if he missed, was out again too quickly. The dislike of the wolf for close quarters was his to an unusual degree. He could not endure a prolonged contact with another body. It smacked of danger. It made him frantic. He must be away, free, on his own legs, touching no living thing. It was the Wild still clinging to him, asserting itself through him. This feeling had been accentuated by the Ishmaelite life he had led from his puppyhood. Danger lurked in contacts. It was the trap, ever the trap, the fear of it lurking deep in the life of him, woven into the fibre of him. In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered had no chance against him. He eluded their fangs. He got them, or got away, himself untouched in either event. In the natural course of things there were exceptions to this. There were times when several dogs, pitching on to him, punished him before he could get away; and there were times when a single dog scored deeply on him. But these were accidents. In the main, so efficient a fighter had he become, he went his way unscathed. Another advantage he possessed was that of correctly judging time and distance. Not that he did this consciously, however. He did not calculate such things. It was all automatic. His eyes saw correctly, and the nerves carried the vision correctly to his brain. The parts of him were better adjusted than those of the average dog. They worked together more smoothly and steadily. His was a better, far better, nervous, mental, and muscular co-ordination. When his eyes conveyed to his brain the moving image of an action, his brain without conscious effort, knew the space that limited that action and the time required for its completion. Thus, he could avoid the leap of another dog, or the drive of its fangs, and at the same moment could seize the infinitesimal fraction of time in which to deliver his own attack. Body and brain, his was a more perfected mechanism. Not that he was to be praised for it. Nature had been more generous to him than to the average animal, that was all. It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon. Grey Beaver had crossed the great watershed between Mackenzie and the Yukon in the late winter, and spent the spring in hunting among the western outlying spurs of the Rockies. Then, after the break-up of the ice on the Porcupine, he had built a canoe and paddled down that stream to where it effected its junction with the Yukon just under the Arctic circle. Here stood the old Hudson's Bay Company fort; and here were many Indians, much food, and unprecedented excitement. It was the summer of 1898, and thousands of gold-hunters were going up the Yukon to Dawson and the Klondike. Still hundreds of miles from their goal, nevertheless many of them had been on the way for a year, and the least any of them had travelled to get that far was five thousand miles, while some had come from the other side of the world. Here Grey Beaver stopped. A whisper of the gold-rush had reached his ears, and he had come with several bales of furs, and another of gut-sewn mittens and moccasins. He would not have ventured so long a trip had he not expected generous profits. But what he had expected was nothing to what he realised. His wildest dreams had not exceeded a hundred per cent. profit; he made a thousand per cent. And like a true Indian, he settled down to trade carefully and slowly, even if it took all summer and the rest of the winter to dispose of his goods. It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. As compared with the Indians he had known, they were to him another race of beings, a race of superior gods. They impressed him as possessing superior power, and it is on power that godhead rests. White Fang did not reason it out, did not in his mind make the sharp generalisation that the white gods were more powerful. It was a feeling, nothing more, and yet none the less potent. As, in his puppyhood, the looming bulks of the tepees, man-reared, had affected him as manifestations of power, so was he affected now by the houses and the huge fort all of massive logs. Here was power. Those white gods were strong. They possessed greater mastery over matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among which was Grey Beaver. And yet Grey Beaver was as a child-god among these white- skinned ones. To be sure, White Fang only felt these things. He was not conscious of them. Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking, that animals act; and every act White Fang now performed was based upon the feeling that the white men were the superior gods. In the first place he was very suspicious of them. There was no telling what unknown terrors were theirs, what unknown hurts they could administer. He was curious to observe them, fearful of being noticed by them. For the first few hours he was content with slinking around and watching them from a safe distance. Then he saw that no harm befell the dogs that were near to them, and he came in closer. In turn he was an object of great curiosity to them. His wolfish appearance caught their eyes at once, and they pointed him out to one another. This act of pointing put White Fang on his guard, and when they tried to approach him he showed his teeth and backed away. Not one succeeded in laying a hand on him, and it was well that they did not. White Fang soon learned that very few of these gods--not more than a dozen--lived at this place. Every two or three days a steamer (another and colossal manifestation of power) came into the bank and stopped for several hours. The white men came from off these steamers and went away on them again. There seemed untold numbers of these white men. In the first day or so, he saw more of them than he had seen Indians in all his life; and as the days went by they continued to come up the river, stop, and then go on up the river out of sight. But if the white gods were all-powerful, their dogs did not amount to much. This White Fang quickly discovered by mixing with those that came ashore with their masters. They were irregular shapes and sizes. Some were short-legged--too short; others were long-legged--too long. They had hair instead of fur, and a few had very little hair at that. And none of them knew how to fight. As an enemy of his kind, it was in White Fang's province to fight with them. This he did, and he quickly achieved for them a mighty contempt. They were soft and helpless, made much noise, and floundered around clumsily trying to accomplish by main strength what he accomplished by dexterity and cunning. They rushed bellowing at him. He sprang to the side. They did not know what had become of him; and in that moment he struck them on the shoulder, rolling them off their feet and delivering his stroke at the throat. Sometimes this stroke was successful, and a stricken dog rolled in the dirt, to be pounced upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian dogs that waited. White Fang was wise. He had long since learned that the gods were made angry when their dogs were killed. The white men were no exception to this. So he was content, when he had overthrown and slashed wide the throat of one of their dogs, to drop back and let the pack go in and do the cruel finishing work. It was then that the white men rushed in, visiting their wrath heavily on the pack, while White Fang went free. He would stand off at a little distance and look on, while stones, clubs, axes, and all sorts of weapons fell upon his fellows. White Fang was very wise. But his fellows grew wise in their own way; and in this White Fang grew wise with them. They learned that it was when a steamer first tied to the bank that they had their fun. After the first two or three strange dogs had been downed and destroyed, the white men hustled their own animals back on board and wreaked savage vengeance on the offenders. One white man, having seen his dog, a setter, torn to pieces before his eyes, drew a revolver. He fired rapidly, six times, and six of the pack lay dead or dying--another manifestation of power that sank deep into White Fang's consciousness. White Fang enjoyed it all. He did not love his kind, and he was shrewd enough to escape hurt himself. At first, the killing of the white men's dogs had been a diversion. After a time it became his occupation. There was no work for him to do. Grey Beaver was busy trading and getting wealthy. So White Fang hung around the landing with the disreputable gang of Indian dogs, waiting for steamers. With the arrival of a steamer the fun began. After a few minutes, by the time the white men had got over their surprise, the gang scattered. The fun was over until the next steamer should arrive. But it can scarcely be said that White Fang was a member of the gang. He did not mingle with it, but remained aloof, always himself, and was even feared by it. It is true, he worked with it. He picked the quarrel with the strange dog while the gang waited. And when he had overthrown the strange dog the gang went in to finish it. But it is equally true that he then withdrew, leaving the gang to receive the punishment of the outraged gods. It did not require much exertion to pick these quarrels. All he had to do, when the strange dogs came ashore, was to show himself. When they saw him they rushed for him. It was their instinct. He was the Wild--the unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing, the thing that prowled in the darkness around the fires of the primeval world when they, cowering close to the fires, were reshaping their instincts, learning to fear the Wild out of which they had come, and which they had deserted and betrayed. Generation by generation, down all the generations, had this fear of the Wild been stamped into their natures. For centuries the Wild had stood for terror and destruction. And during all this time free licence had been theirs, from their masters, to kill the things of the Wild. In doing this they had protected both themselves and the gods whose companionship they shared. And so, fresh from the soft southern world, these dogs, trotting down the gang-plank and out upon the Yukon shore had but to see White Fang to experience the irresistible impulse to rush upon him and destroy him. They might be town-reared dogs, but the instinctive fear of the Wild was theirs just the same. Not alone with their own eyes did they see the wolfish creature in the clear light of day, standing before them. They saw him with the eyes of their ancestors, and by their inherited memory they knew White Fang for the wolf, and they remembered the ancient feud. All of which served to make White Fang's days enjoyable. If the sight of him drove these strange dogs upon him, so much the better for him, so much the worse for them. They looked upon him as legitimate prey, and as legitimate prey he looked upon them. Not for nothing had he first seen the light of day in a lonely lair and fought his first fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and the lynx. And not for nothing had his puppyhood been made bitter by the persecution of Lip-lip and the whole puppy pack. It might have been otherwise, and he would then have been otherwise. Had Lip-lip not existed, he would have passed his puppyhood with the other puppies and grown up more doglike and with more liking for dogs. Had Grey Beaver possessed the plummet of affection and love, he might have sounded the deeps of White Fang's nature and brought up to the surface all manner of kindly qualities. But these things had not been so. The clay of White Fang had been moulded until he became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious, the enemy of all his kind. A small number of white men lived in Fort Yukon. These men had been long in the country. They called themselves Sour-doughs, and took great pride in so classifying themselves. For other men, new in the land, they felt nothing but disdain. The men who came ashore from the steamers were newcomers. They were known as _chechaquos_, and they always wilted at the application of the name. They made their bread with baking-powder. This was the invidious distinction between them and the Sour-doughs, who, forsooth, made their bread from sour-dough because they had no baking- powder. All of which is neither here nor there. The men in the fort disdained the newcomers and enjoyed seeing them come to grief. Especially did they enjoy the havoc worked amongst the newcomers' dogs by White Fang and his disreputable gang. When a steamer arrived, the men of the fort made it a point always to come down to the bank and see the fun. They looked forward to it with as much anticipation as did the Indian dogs, while they were not slow to appreciate the savage and crafty part played by White Fang. But there was one man amongst them who particularly enjoyed the sport. He would come running at the first sound of a steamboat's whistle; and when the last fight was over and White Fang and the pack had scattered, he would return slowly to the fort, his face heavy with regret. Sometimes, when a soft southland dog went down, shrieking its death-cry under the fangs of the pack, this man would be unable to contain himself, and would leap into the air and cry out with delight. And always he had a sharp and covetous eye for White Fang. This man was called "Beauty" by the other men of the fort. No one knew his first name, and in general he was known in the country as Beauty Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his naming. He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly with him. He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame was deposited an even more strikingly meagre head. Its apex might be likened to a point. In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been named Beauty by his fellows, he had been called "Pinhead." Backward, from the apex, his head slanted down to his neck and forward it slanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably wide forehead. Beginning here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature had spread his features with a lavish hand. His eyes were large, and between them was the distance of two eyes. His face, in relation to the rest of him, was prodigious. In order to discover the necessary area, Nature had given him an enormous prognathous jaw. It was wide and heavy, and protruded outward and down until it seemed to rest on his chest. Possibly this appearance was due to the weariness of the slender neck, unable properly to support so great a burden. This jaw gave the impression of ferocious determination. But something lacked. Perhaps it was from excess. Perhaps the jaw was too large. At any rate, it was a lie. Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the weakest of weak-kneed and snivelling cowards. To complete his description, his teeth were large and yellow, while the two eye-teeth, larger than their fellows, showed under his lean lips like fangs. His eyes were yellow and muddy, as though Nature had run short on pigments and squeezed together the dregs of all her tubes. It was the same with his hair, sparse and irregular of growth, muddy-yellow and dirty-yellow, rising on his head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected tufts and bunches, in appearance like clumped and wind-blown grain. In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it lay elsewhere. He was not responsible. The clay of him had been so moulded in the making. He did the cooking for the other men in the fort, the dish-washing and the drudgery. They did not despise him. Rather did they tolerate him in a broad human way, as one tolerates any creature evilly treated in the making. Also, they feared him. His cowardly rages made them dread a shot in the back or poison in their coffee. But somebody had to do the cooking, and whatever else his shortcomings, Beauty Smith could cook. This was the man that looked at White Fang, delighted in his ferocious prowess, and desired to possess him. He made overtures to White Fang from the first. White Fang began by ignoring him. Later on, when the overtures became more insistent, White Fang bristled and bared his teeth and backed away. He did not like the man. The feel of him was bad. He sensed the evil in him, and feared the extended hand and the attempts at soft-spoken speech. Because of all this, he hated the man. With the simpler creatures, good and bad are things simply understood. The good stands for all things that bring easement and satisfaction and surcease from pain. Therefore, the good is liked. The bad stands for all things that are fraught with discomfort, menace, and hurt, and is hated accordingly. White Fang's feel of Beauty Smith was bad. From the man's distorted body and twisted mind, in occult ways, like mists rising from malarial marshes, came emanations of the unhealth within. Not by reasoning, not by the five senses alone, but by other and remoter and uncharted senses, came the feeling to White Fang that the man was ominous with evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, and therefore a thing bad, and wisely to be hated. White Fang was in Grey Beaver's camp when Beauty Smith first visited it. At the faint sound of his distant feet, before he came in sight, White Fang knew who was coming and began to bristle. He had been lying down in an abandon of comfort, but he arose quickly, and, as the man arrived, slid away in true wolf-fashion to the edge of the camp. He did not know what they said, but he could see the man and Grey Beaver talking together. Once, the man pointed at him, and White Fang snarled back as though the hand were just descending upon him instead of being, as it was, fifty feet away. The man laughed at this; and White Fang slunk away to the sheltering woods, his head turned to observe as he glided softly over the ground. Grey Beaver refused to sell the dog. He had grown rich with his trading and stood in need of nothing. Besides, White Fang was a valuable animal, the strongest sled-dog he had ever owned, and the best leader. Furthermore, there was no dog like him on the Mackenzie nor the Yukon. He could fight. He killed other dogs as easily as men killed mosquitoes. (Beauty Smith's eyes lighted up at this, and he licked his thin lips with an eager tongue). No, White Fang was not for sale at any price. But Beauty Smith knew the ways of Indians. He visited Grey Beaver's camp often, and hidden under his coat was always a black bottle or so. One of the potencies of whisky is the breeding of thirst. Grey Beaver got the thirst. His fevered membranes and burnt stomach began to clamour for more and more of the scorching fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry by the unwonted stimulant, permitted him to go any length to obtain it. The money he had received for his furs and mittens and moccasins began to go. It went faster and faster, and the shorter his money-sack grew, the shorter grew his temper. In the end his money and goods and temper were all gone. Nothing remained to him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that grew more prodigious with every sober breath he drew. Then it was that Beauty Smith had talk with him again about the sale of White Fang; but this time the price offered was in bottles, not dollars, and Grey Beaver's ears were more eager to hear. "You ketch um dog you take um all right," was his last word. The bottles were delivered, but after two days. "You ketch um dog," were Beauty Smith's words to Grey Beaver. White Fang slunk into camp one evening and dropped down with a sigh of content. The dreaded white god was not there. For days his manifestations of desire to lay hands on him had been growing more insistent, and during that time White Fang had been compelled to avoid the camp. He did not know what evil was threatened by those insistent hands. He knew only that they did threaten evil of some sort, and that it was best for him to keep out of their reach. But scarcely had he lain down when Grey Beaver staggered over to him and tied a leather thong around his neck. He sat down beside White Fang, holding the end of the thong in his hand. In the other hand he held a bottle, which, from time to time, was inverted above his head to the accompaniment of gurgling noises. An hour of this passed, when the vibrations of feet in contact with the ground foreran the one who approached. White Fang heard it first, and he was bristling with recognition while Grey Beaver still nodded stupidly. White Fang tried to draw the thong softly out of his master's hand; but the relaxed fingers closed tightly and Grey Beaver roused himself. Beauty Smith strode into camp and stood over White Fang. He snarled softly up at the thing of fear, watching keenly the deportment of the hands. One hand extended outward and began to descend upon his head. His soft snarl grew tense and harsh. The hand continued slowly to descend, while he crouched beneath it, eyeing it malignantly, his snarl growing shorter and shorter as, with quickening breath, it approached its culmination. Suddenly he snapped, striking with his fangs like a snake. The hand was jerked back, and the teeth came together emptily with a sharp click. Beauty Smith was frightened and angry. Grey Beaver clouted White Fang alongside the head, so that he cowered down close to the earth in respectful obedience. White Fang's suspicious eyes followed every movement. He saw Beauty Smith go away and return with a stout club. Then the end of the thong was given over to him by Grey Beaver. Beauty Smith started to walk away. The thong grew taut. White Fang resisted it. Grey Beaver clouted him right and left to make him get up and follow. He obeyed, but with a rush, hurling himself upon the stranger who was dragging him away. Beauty Smith did not jump away. He had been waiting for this. He swung the club smartly, stopping the rush midway and smashing White Fang down upon the ground. Grey Beaver laughed and nodded approval. Beauty Smith tightened the thong again, and White Fang crawled limply and dizzily to his feet. He did not rush a second time. One smash from the club was sufficient to convince him that the white god knew how to handle it, and he was too wise to fight the inevitable. So he followed morosely at Beauty Smith's heels, his tail between his legs, yet snarling softly under his breath. But Beauty Smith kept a wary eye on him, and the club was held always ready to strike. At the fort Beauty Smith left him securely tied and went in to bed. White Fang waited an hour. Then he applied his teeth to the thong, and in the space of ten seconds was free. He had wasted no time with his teeth. There had been no useless gnawing. The thong was cut across, diagonally, almost as clean as though done by a knife. White Fang looked up at the fort, at the same time bristling and growling. Then he turned and trotted back to Grey Beaver's camp. He owed no allegiance to this strange and terrible god. He had given himself to Grey Beaver, and to Grey Beaver he considered he still belonged. But what had occurred before was repeated--with a difference. Grey Beaver again made him fast with a thong, and in the morning turned him over to Beauty Smith. And here was where the difference came in. Beauty Smith gave him a beating. Tied securely, White Fang could only rage futilely and endure the punishment. Club and whip were both used upon him, and he experienced the worst beating he had ever received in his life. Even the big beating given him in his puppyhood by Grey Beaver was mild compared with this. Beauty Smith enjoyed the task. He delighted in it. He gloated over his victim, and his eyes flamed dully, as he swung the whip or club and listened to White Fang's cries of pain and to his helpless bellows and snarls. For Beauty Smith was cruel in the way that cowards are cruel. Cringing and snivelling himself before the blows or angry speech of a man, he revenged himself, in turn, upon creatures weaker than he. All life likes power, and Beauty Smith was no exception. Denied the expression of power amongst his own kind, he fell back upon the lesser creatures and there vindicated the life that was in him. But Beauty Smith had not created himself, and no blame was to be attached to him. He had come into the world with a twisted body and a brute intelligence. This had constituted the clay of him, and it had not been kindly moulded by the world. White Fang knew why he was being beaten. When Grey Beaver tied the thong around his neck, and passed the end of the thong into Beauty Smith's keeping, White Fang knew that it was his god's will for him to go with Beauty Smith. And when Beauty Smith left him tied outside the fort, he knew that it was Beauty Smith's will that he should remain there. Therefore, he had disobeyed the will of both the gods, and earned the consequent punishment. He had seen dogs change owners in the past, and he had seen the runaways beaten as he was being beaten. He was wise, and yet in the nature of him there were forces greater than wisdom. One of these was fidelity. He did not love Grey Beaver, yet, even in the face of his will and his anger, he was faithful to him. He could not help it. This faithfulness was a quality of the clay that composed him. It was the quality that was peculiarly the possession of his kind; the quality that set apart his species from all other species; the quality that has enabled the wolf and the wild dog to come in from the open and be the companions of man. After the beating, White Fang was dragged back to the fort. But this time Beauty Smith left him tied with a stick. One does not give up a god easily, and so with White Fang. Grey Beaver was his own particular god, and, in spite of Grey Beaver's will, White Fang still clung to him and would not give him up. Grey Beaver had betrayed and forsaken him, but that had no effect upon him. Not for nothing had he surrendered himself body and soul to Grey Beaver. There had been no reservation on White Fang's part, and the bond was not to be broken easily. So, in the night, when the men in the fort were asleep, White Fang applied his teeth to the stick that held him. The wood was seasoned and dry, and it was tied so closely to his neck that he could scarcely get his teeth to it. It was only by the severest muscular exertion and neck- arching that he succeeded in getting the wood between his teeth, and barely between his teeth at that; and it was only by the exercise of an immense patience, extending through many hours, that he succeeded in gnawing through the stick. This was something that dogs were not supposed to do. It was unprecedented. But White Fang did it, trotting away from the fort in the early morning, with the end of the stick hanging to his neck. He was wise. But had he been merely wise he would not have gone back to Grey Beaver who had already twice betrayed him. But there was his faithfulness, and he went back to be betrayed yet a third time. Again he yielded to the tying of a thong around his neck by Grey Beaver, and again Beauty Smith came to claim him. And this time he was beaten even more severely than before. Grey Beaver looked on stolidly while the white man wielded the whip. He gave no protection. It was no longer his dog. When the beating was over White Fang was sick. A soft southland dog would have died under it, but not he. His school of life had been sterner, and he was himself of sterner stuff. He had too great vitality. His clutch on life was too strong. But he was very sick. At first he was unable to drag himself along, and Beauty Smith had to wait half-an-hour for him. And then, blind and reeling, he followed at Beauty Smith's heels back to the fort. But now he was tied with a chain that defied his teeth, and he strove in vain, by lunging, to draw the staple from the timber into which it was driven. After a few days, sober and bankrupt, Grey Beaver departed up the Porcupine on his long journey to the Mackenzie. White Fang remained on the Yukon, the property of a man more than half mad and all brute. But what is a dog to know in its consciousness of madness? To White Fang, Beauty Smith was a veritable, if terrible, god. He was a mad god at best, but White Fang knew nothing of madness; he knew only that he must submit to the will of this new master, obey his every whim and fancy. Under the tutelage of the mad god, White Fang became a fiend. He was kept chained in a pen at the rear of the fort, and here Beauty Smith teased and irritated and drove him wild with petty torments. The man early discovered White Fang's susceptibility to laughter, and made it a point after painfully tricking him, to laugh at him. This laughter was uproarious and scornful, and at the same time the god pointed his finger derisively at White Fang. At such times reason fled from White Fang, and in his transports of rage he was even more mad than Beauty Smith. Formerly, White Fang had been merely the enemy of his kind, withal a ferocious enemy. He now became the enemy of all things, and more ferocious than ever. To such an extent was he tormented, that he hated blindly and without the faintest spark of reason. He hated the chain that bound him, the men who peered in at him through the slats of the pen, the dogs that accompanied the men and that snarled malignantly at him in his helplessness. He hated the very wood of the pen that confined him. And, first, last, and most of all, he hated Beauty Smith. But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that he did to White Fang. One day a number of men gathered about the pen. Beauty Smith entered, club in hand, and took the chain off from White Fang's neck. When his master had gone out, White Fang turned loose and tore around the pen, trying to get at the men outside. He was magnificently terrible. Fully five feet in length, and standing two and one-half feet at the shoulder, he far outweighed a wolf of corresponding size. From his mother he had inherited the heavier proportions of the dog, so that he weighed, without any fat and without an ounce of superfluous flesh, over ninety pounds. It was all muscle, bone, and sinew-fighting flesh in the finest condition. The door of the pen was being opened again. White Fang paused. Something unusual was happening. He waited. The door was opened wider. Then a huge dog was thrust inside, and the door was slammed shut behind him. White Fang had never seen such a dog (it was a mastiff); but the size and fierce aspect of the intruder did not deter him. Here was some thing, not wood nor iron, upon which to wreak his hate. He leaped in with a flash of fangs that ripped down the side of the mastiff's neck. The mastiff shook his head, growled hoarsely, and plunged at White Fang. But White Fang was here, there, and everywhere, always evading and eluding, and always leaping in and slashing with his fangs and leaping out again in time to escape punishment. The men outside shouted and applauded, while Beauty Smith, in an ecstasy of delight, gloated over the ripping and mangling performed by White Fang. There was no hope for the mastiff from the first. He was too ponderous and slow. In the end, while Beauty Smith beat White Fang back with a club, the mastiff was dragged out by its owner. Then there was a payment of bets, and money clinked in Beauty Smith's hand. White Fang came to look forward eagerly to the gathering of the men around his pen. It meant a fight; and this was the only way that was now vouchsafed him of expressing the life that was in him. Tormented, incited to hate, he was kept a prisoner so that there was no way of satisfying that hate except at the times his master saw fit to put another dog against him. Beauty Smith had estimated his powers well, for he was invariably the victor. One day, three dogs were turned in upon him in succession. Another day a full-grown wolf, fresh-caught from the Wild, was shoved in through the door of the pen. And on still another day two dogs were set against him at the same time. This was his severest fight, and though in the end he killed them both he was himself half killed in doing it. In the fall of the year, when the first snows were falling and mush-ice was running in the river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself and White Fang on a steamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson. White Fang had now achieved a reputation in the land. As "the Fighting Wolf" he was known far and wide, and the cage in which he was kept on the steam-boat's deck was usually surrounded by curious men. He raged and snarled at them, or lay quietly and studied them with cold hatred. Why should he not hate them? He never asked himself the question. He knew only hate and lost himself in the passion of it. Life had become a hell to him. He had not been made for the close confinement wild beasts endure at the hands of men. And yet it was in precisely this way that he was treated. Men stared at him, poked sticks between the bars to make him snarl, and then laughed at him. They were his environment, these men, and they were moulding the clay of him into a more ferocious thing than had been intended by Nature. Nevertheless, Nature had given him plasticity. Where many another animal would have died or had its spirit broken, he adjusted himself and lived, and at no expense of the spirit. Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend and tormentor, was capable of breaking White Fang's spirit, but as yet there were no signs of his succeeding. If Beauty Smith had in him a devil, White Fang had another; and the two of them raged against each other unceasingly. In the days before, White Fang had had the wisdom to cower down and submit to a man with a club in his hand; but this wisdom now left him. The mere sight of Beauty Smith was sufficient to send him into transports of fury. And when they came to close quarters, and he had been beaten back by the club, he went on growling and snarling, and showing his fangs. The last growl could never be extracted from him. No matter how terribly he was beaten, he had always another growl; and when Beauty Smith gave up and withdrew, the defiant growl followed after him, or White Fang sprang at the bars of the cage bellowing his hatred. When the steamboat arrived at Dawson, White Fang went ashore. But he still lived a public life, in a cage, surrounded by curious men. He was exhibited as "the Fighting Wolf," and men paid fifty cents in gold dust to see him. He was given no rest. Did he lie down to sleep, he was stirred up by a sharp stick--so that the audience might get its money's worth. In order to make the exhibition interesting, he was kept in a rage most of the time. But worse than all this, was the atmosphere in which he lived. He was regarded as the most fearful of wild beasts, and this was borne in to him through the bars of the cage. Every word, every cautious action, on the part of the men, impressed upon him his own terrible ferocity. It was so much added fuel to the flame of his fierceness. There could be but one result, and that was that his ferocity fed upon itself and increased. It was another instance of the plasticity of his clay, of his capacity for being moulded by the pressure of environment. In addition to being exhibited he was a professional fighting animal. At irregular intervals, whenever a fight could be arranged, he was taken out of his cage and led off into the woods a few miles from town. Usually this occurred at night, so as to avoid interference from the mounted police of the Territory. After a few hours of waiting, when daylight had come, the audience and the dog with which he was to fight arrived. In this manner it came about that he fought all sizes and breeds of dogs. It was a savage land, the men were savage, and the fights were usually to the death. Since White Fang continued to fight, it is obvious that it was the other dogs that died. He never knew defeat. His early training, when he fought with Lip-lip and the whole puppy-pack, stood him in good stead. There was the tenacity with which he clung to the earth. No dog could make him lose his footing. This was the favourite trick of the wolf breeds--to rush in upon him, either directly or with an unexpected swerve, in the hope of striking his shoulder and overthrowing him. Mackenzie hounds, Eskimo and Labrador dogs, huskies and Malemutes--all tried it on him, and all failed. He was never known to lose his footing. Men told this to one another, and looked each time to see it happen; but White Fang always disappointed them. Then there was his lightning quickness. It gave him a tremendous advantage over his antagonists. No matter what their fighting experience, they had never encountered a dog that moved so swiftly as he. Also to be reckoned with, was the immediateness of his attack. The average dog was accustomed to the preliminaries of snarling and bristling and growling, and the average dog was knocked off his feet and finished before he had begun to fight or recovered from his surprise. So often did this happen, that it became the custom to hold White Fang until the other dog went through its preliminaries, was good and ready, and even made the first attack. But greatest of all the advantages in White Fang's favour, was his experience. He knew more about fighting than did any of the dogs that faced him. He had fought more fights, knew how to meet more tricks and methods, and had more tricks himself, while his own method was scarcely to be improved upon. As the time went by, he had fewer and fewer fights. Men despaired of matching him with an equal, and Beauty Smith was compelled to pit wolves against him. These were trapped by the Indians for the purpose, and a fight between White Fang and a wolf was always sure to draw a crowd. Once, a full-grown female lynx was secured, and this time White Fang fought for his life. Her quickness matched his; her ferocity equalled his; while he fought with his fangs alone, and she fought with her sharp- clawed feet as well. But after the lynx, all fighting ceased for White Fang. There were no more animals with which to fight--at least, there was none considered worthy of fighting with him. So he remained on exhibition until spring, when one Tim Keenan, a faro-dealer, arrived in the land. With him came the first bull-dog that had ever entered the Klondike. That this dog and White Fang should come together was inevitable, and for a week the anticipated fight was the mainspring of conversation in certain quarters of the town.

Part Four, Chapters 1-3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210301215611/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fang/section7/

White Fang is a bitter, vicious dog and is made worse when Mit-sah puts him at the front of the pack. But White Fang does not stay close to Mit-sah when they camp, so all the dogs attack him, and he returns their attacks. He becomes so vicious that Gray Beaver swears that there has never been a dog so vicious as White Fang. When White Fang is almost five, Gray Beaver takes him on a trip to the Yukon, and he attacks dogs all along the way. He never wastes his strength, judges time and distance well, and is an excellent fighter. That summer, they arrive at Fort Yukon. It is the summer of 1898, at the height of the gold rush. Gray Beaver has brought furs and mittens and moccasins and makes a thousand percent profit off his goods. He settles there for the winter to trade. White Fang sees his first white men and feels that they are far superior to the Indians, with larger houses and greater powers. Yet their dogs are not very strong, and White Fang fights and kills them. One man lives in Fort Yukon who was called Beauty Smith. He is as far from possessing good looks as any can be--nature was niggardly with his looks. Worse, Beauty is a cruel, evil beast of a man, which White Fang senses. Beauty wants to buy White Fang, but Gray Beaver refuses to sell. So Beauty brings Gray Beaver whiskey and gives it to him until all of his money is drunk away. Then Gray Beaver, entirely broke, sells White Fang to Beauty Smith. White Fang escapes and goes back to Gray Beaver, but Gray Beaver returns him to Beauty Smith, and White Fang is beaten. Finally, after several escapes and beatings, White Fang is secured with a chain, and Gray Beaver leaves the town. White Fang becomes a professional fighting dog. Men make bets on him and he takes his hatred of Beauty out on the dogs and becomes known as "The Fighting Wolf. " Even a lynx is pushed into his cage, but White Fang kills her; there are no fiercer animals to fight until the first bulldog in the Klondike and White Fang are brought together.

Commentary Beauty Smith is an example of the equation of ugliness with spiritual meanness that is often present in stories, especially simple tales like White Fang. He is an excellent comparison with Gray Beaver and with Weedon Scott. Beauty rules by hatred. He bought White Fang because he saw the hatred and fierceness that was already instilled in the dog. However, he uses hate to further White Fang's development. Gray Beaver is in the middle, ruling White Fang with mutual respect without love, but without hatred. Weedon Scott, as we will see in the next section, rules White Fang with love. When Beauty Smith is White Fang's master, this sort of hatred turns itself in on White Fang--his hatred for Beauty comes out in his fighting of their dogs. This section also illuminates the very real problem of alcohol, especially when introduced to the indigenous people. Trade happened just as Beauty Smith wanted it to--the bottle in exchange for whatever one wants. Some northern cities in Alaska have gone "dry" because of these problems. Gray Beaver might not be kind, but at least he is honorable; London shows how alcohol can change that.

sparknotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/part_5_chapters_1_to_2.txt

finished_summaries/sparknotes/White Fang/section_8_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 5.chapters 1-2

part 5, chapters 1-2

{"name": "Part Five, Chapters 1-2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210301215611/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fang/section9/", "summary": "Scott is preparing to go back to his home in California, and White Fang senses that something is wrong. He cries and cries. Scott is torn, knowing that White Fang cannot go to California with him, but feeling that he cannot leave him either. White Fang howls and howls, and they lock him up in the house the day that Scott is preparing to leave. Inside, White Fang cries and whines. They go to the steamboat, but just as Scott boards, White Fang runs up to him and dashes onto the boat. He had leapt out the window of the cabin to escape. Scott decides that he cannot leave that sort of love, and tells Matt that he will write him--White Fang is coming with him to California. They land in San Francisco, and White Fang is appalled at the buildings and the rush of cars and horses and cable and electric cars. He follows his master through the city like attempting to escape from a rushing bad dream. He gets into a car with his master, and by the time he gets back out, the city is gone. Then a man and a woman approach his master, and they try to put their arms around his neck, and White Fang sees the hug and barks with fear. Scott tells him to get down, and that it is all right. They continue on, White Fang running behind the carriage. Soon they meet a sheep-dog, which promptly attacks White Fang. Because she is female, White Fang does not attack her, but cannot seem to get around her. Finally, he bangs into her and pushes through her defense, running after the carriage. When they get close to the house, a deer-hound attacks him. White Fang attacks, and it is only the collie, running quick after White Fang that saves the deer-hound's life. Scott holds White Fang, and they call the dogs off. They go inside the house, White Fang keeping close to his master.", "analysis": "Commentary Despite Scott and Matt's worries and fears, White Fang redeems himself again. This section is about movement. There is not much character development of White Fang or any of the other characters; instead, there is movement--from the north to the south. The men try to restrict White Fang's movement, locking him within the house, but he leaps from the window--the beginning of this movement to go with his master. The boat moves, the cars move; White Fang quickly follows after his master, and keeps close by. Collie blocks White Fang, trying to stop this forward movement, but White Fang cannot stop. This is the most movement that White Fang has done in one section, yet he does not change himself in this section--he just follows his master. For the first time, White Fang is not forced to develop in his environment, he can simply trust in his human master. For example, when Scott and his mother hug, White Fang acts in the manner of a dog from the wild by barking and worried at this \"aggressive\" act. But Scott reassures him, and White Fang, bit by bit, begins to learn that this world is different, and he must trust Scott. White Fang feels great fear for the power and hum of the city. In the next section, he will be haunted by a dream of a cable car attacking him--superimposed on his northern environment. White Fang realizes that this world is more powerful than he can fight against. When he is with his master, he can trust in him. However, when White Fang has nightmares about his visit to San Francisco, all of that power is imposed upon his life with Beauty and his life in the wild. Without Scott to trust in, San Francisco and all of the power of humans is a nightmare to White Fang."}

It was in the air. White Fang sensed the coming calamity, even before there was tangible evidence of it. In vague ways it was borne in upon him that a change was impending. He knew not how nor why, yet he got his feel of the oncoming event from the gods themselves. In ways subtler than they knew, they betrayed their intentions to the wolf-dog that haunted the cabin-stoop, and that, though he never came inside the cabin, knew what went on inside their brains. "Listen to that, will you!" the dog-musher exclaimed at supper one night. Weedon Scott listened. Through the door came a low, anxious whine, like a sobbing under the breath that had just grown audible. Then came the long sniff, as White Fang reassured himself that his god was still inside and had not yet taken himself off in mysterious and solitary flight. "I do believe that wolf's on to you," the dog-musher said. Weedon Scott looked across at his companion with eyes that almost pleaded, though this was given the lie by his words. "What the devil can I do with a wolf in California?" he demanded. "That's what I say," Matt answered. "What the devil can you do with a wolf in California?" But this did not satisfy Weedon Scott. The other seemed to be judging him in a non-committal sort of way. "White man's dogs would have no show against him," Scott went on. "He'd kill them on sight. If he didn't bankrupt me with damage suits, the authorities would take him away from me and electrocute him." "He's a downright murderer, I know," was the dog-musher's comment. Weedon Scott looked at him suspiciously. "It would never do," he said decisively. "It would never do!" Matt concurred. "Why you'd have to hire a man 'specially to take care of 'm." The other's suspicion was allayed. He nodded cheerfully. In the silence that followed, the low, half-sobbing whine was heard at the door and then the long, questing sniff. "There's no denyin' he thinks a hell of a lot of you," Matt said. The other glared at him in sudden wrath. "Damn it all, man! I know my own mind and what's best!" "I'm agreein' with you, only . . . " "Only what?" Scott snapped out. "Only . . . " the dog-musher began softly, then changed his mind and betrayed a rising anger of his own. "Well, you needn't get so all-fired het up about it. Judgin' by your actions one'd think you didn't know your own mind." Weedon Scott debated with himself for a while, and then said more gently: "You are right, Matt. I don't know my own mind, and that's what's the trouble." "Why, it would be rank ridiculousness for me to take that dog along," he broke out after another pause. "I'm agreein' with you," was Matt's answer, and again his employer was not quite satisfied with him. "But how in the name of the great Sardanapolis he knows you're goin' is what gets me," the dog-musher continued innocently. "It's beyond me, Matt," Scott answered, with a mournful shake of the head. Then came the day when, through the open cabin door, White Fang saw the fatal grip on the floor and the love-master packing things into it. Also, there were comings and goings, and the erstwhile placid atmosphere of the cabin was vexed with strange perturbations and unrest. Here was indubitable evidence. White Fang had already scented it. He now reasoned it. His god was preparing for another flight. And since he had not taken him with him before, so, now, he could look to be left behind. That night he lifted the long wolf-howl. As he had howled, in his puppy days, when he fled back from the Wild to the village to find it vanished and naught but a rubbish-heap to mark the site of Grey Beaver's tepee, so now he pointed his muzzle to the cold stars and told to them his woe. Inside the cabin the two men had just gone to bed. "He's gone off his food again," Matt remarked from his bunk. There was a grunt from Weedon Scott's bunk, and a stir of blankets. "From the way he cut up the other time you went away, I wouldn't wonder this time but what he died." The blankets in the other bunk stirred irritably. "Oh, shut up!" Scott cried out through the darkness. "You nag worse than a woman." "I'm agreein' with you," the dog-musher answered, and Weedon Scott was not quite sure whether or not the other had snickered. The next day White Fang's anxiety and restlessness were even more pronounced. He dogged his master's heels whenever he left the cabin, and haunted the front stoop when he remained inside. Through the open door he could catch glimpses of the luggage on the floor. The grip had been joined by two large canvas bags and a box. Matt was rolling the master's blankets and fur robe inside a small tarpaulin. White Fang whined as he watched the operation. Later on two Indians arrived. He watched them closely as they shouldered the luggage and were led off down the hill by Matt, who carried the bedding and the grip. But White Fang did not follow them. The master was still in the cabin. After a time, Matt returned. The master came to the door and called White Fang inside. "You poor devil," he said gently, rubbing White Fang's ears and tapping his spine. "I'm hitting the long trail, old man, where you cannot follow. Now give me a growl--the last, good, good-bye growl." But White Fang refused to growl. Instead, and after a wistful, searching look, he snuggled in, burrowing his head out of sight between the master's arm and body. "There she blows!" Matt cried. From the Yukon arose the hoarse bellowing of a river steamboat. "You've got to cut it short. Be sure and lock the front door. I'll go out the back. Get a move on!" The two doors slammed at the same moment, and Weedon Scott waited for Matt to come around to the front. From inside the door came a low whining and sobbing. Then there were long, deep-drawn sniffs. "You must take good care of him, Matt," Scott said, as they started down the hill. "Write and let me know how he gets along." "Sure," the dog-musher answered. "But listen to that, will you!" Both men stopped. White Fang was howling as dogs howl when their masters lie dead. He was voicing an utter woe, his cry bursting upward in great heart-breaking rushes, dying down into quavering misery, and bursting upward again with a rush upon rush of grief. The _Aurora_ was the first steamboat of the year for the Outside, and her decks were jammed with prosperous adventurers and broken gold seekers, all equally as mad to get to the Outside as they had been originally to get to the Inside. Near the gang-plank, Scott was shaking hands with Matt, who was preparing to go ashore. But Matt's hand went limp in the other's grasp as his gaze shot past and remained fixed on something behind him. Scott turned to see. Sitting on the deck several feet away and watching wistfully was White Fang. The dog-musher swore softly, in awe-stricken accents. Scott could only look in wonder. "Did you lock the front door?" Matt demanded. The other nodded, and asked, "How about the back?" "You just bet I did," was the fervent reply. White Fang flattened his ears ingratiatingly, but remained where he was, making no attempt to approach. "I'll have to take 'm ashore with me." Matt made a couple of steps toward White Fang, but the latter slid away from him. The dog-musher made a rush of it, and White Fang dodged between the legs of a group of men. Ducking, turning, doubling, he slid about the deck, eluding the other's efforts to capture him. But when the love-master spoke, White Fang came to him with prompt obedience. "Won't come to the hand that's fed 'm all these months," the dog-musher muttered resentfully. "And you--you ain't never fed 'm after them first days of gettin' acquainted. I'm blamed if I can see how he works it out that you're the boss." Scott, who had been patting White Fang, suddenly bent closer and pointed out fresh-made cuts on his muzzle, and a gash between the eyes. Matt bent over and passed his hand along White Fang's belly. "We plumb forgot the window. He's all cut an' gouged underneath. Must 'a' butted clean through it, b'gosh!" But Weedon Scott was not listening. He was thinking rapidly. The _Aurora's_ whistle hooted a final announcement of departure. Men were scurrying down the gang-plank to the shore. Matt loosened the bandana from his own neck and started to put it around White Fang's. Scott grasped the dog-musher's hand. "Good-bye, Matt, old man. About the wolf--you needn't write. You see, I've . . . !" "What!" the dog-musher exploded. "You don't mean to say . . .?" "The very thing I mean. Here's your bandana. I'll write to you about him." Matt paused halfway down the gang-plank. "He'll never stand the climate!" he shouted back. "Unless you clip 'm in warm weather!" The gang-plank was hauled in, and the _Aurora_ swung out from the bank. Weedon Scott waved a last good-bye. Then he turned and bent over White Fang, standing by his side. "Now growl, damn you, growl," he said, as he patted the responsive head and rubbed the flattening ears. White Fang landed from the steamer in San Francisco. He was appalled. Deep in him, below any reasoning process or act of consciousness, he had associated power with godhead. And never had the white men seemed such marvellous gods as now, when he trod the slimy pavement of San Francisco. The log cabins he had known were replaced by towering buildings. The streets were crowded with perils--waggons, carts, automobiles; great, straining horses pulling huge trucks; and monstrous cable and electric cars hooting and clanging through the midst, screeching their insistent menace after the manner of the lynxes he had known in the northern woods. All this was the manifestation of power. Through it all, behind it all, was man, governing and controlling, expressing himself, as of old, by his mastery over matter. It was colossal, stunning. White Fang was awed. Fear sat upon him. As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his smallness and puniness on the day he first came in from the Wild to the village of Grey Beaver, so now, in his full-grown stature and pride of strength, he was made to feel small and puny. And there were so many gods! He was made dizzy by the swarming of them. The thunder of the streets smote upon his ears. He was bewildered by the tremendous and endless rush and movement of things. As never before, he felt his dependence on the love-master, close at whose heels he followed, no matter what happened never losing sight of him. But White Fang was to have no more than a nightmare vision of the city--an experience that was like a bad dream, unreal and terrible, that haunted him for long after in his dreams. He was put into a baggage-car by the master, chained in a corner in the midst of heaped trunks and valises. Here a squat and brawny god held sway, with much noise, hurling trunks and boxes about, dragging them in through the door and tossing them into the piles, or flinging them out of the door, smashing and crashing, to other gods who awaited them. And here, in this inferno of luggage, was White Fang deserted by the master. Or at least White Fang thought he was deserted, until he smelled out the master's canvas clothes-bags alongside of him, and proceeded to mount guard over them. "'Bout time you come," growled the god of the car, an hour later, when Weedon Scott appeared at the door. "That dog of yourn won't let me lay a finger on your stuff." White Fang emerged from the car. He was astonished. The nightmare city was gone. The car had been to him no more than a room in a house, and when he had entered it the city had been all around him. In the interval the city had disappeared. The roar of it no longer dinned upon his ears. Before him was smiling country, streaming with sunshine, lazy with quietude. But he had little time to marvel at the transformation. He accepted it as he accepted all the unaccountable doings and manifestations of the gods. It was their way. There was a carriage waiting. A man and a woman approached the master. The woman's arms went out and clutched the master around the neck--a hostile act! The next moment Weedon Scott had torn loose from the embrace and closed with White Fang, who had become a snarling, raging demon. "It's all right, mother," Scott was saying as he kept tight hold of White Fang and placated him. "He thought you were going to injure me, and he wouldn't stand for it. It's all right. It's all right. He'll learn soon enough." "And in the meantime I may be permitted to love my son when his dog is not around," she laughed, though she was pale and weak from the fright. She looked at White Fang, who snarled and bristled and glared malevolently. "He'll have to learn, and he shall, without postponement," Scott said. He spoke softly to White Fang until he had quieted him, then his voice became firm. "Down, sir! Down with you!" This had been one of the things taught him by the master, and White Fang obeyed, though he lay down reluctantly and sullenly. "Now, mother." Scott opened his arms to her, but kept his eyes on White Fang. "Down!" he warned. "Down!" White Fang, bristling silently, half-crouching as he rose, sank back and watched the hostile act repeated. But no harm came of it, nor of the embrace from the strange man-god that followed. Then the clothes-bags were taken into the carriage, the strange gods and the love-master followed, and White Fang pursued, now running vigilantly behind, now bristling up to the running horses and warning them that he was there to see that no harm befell the god they dragged so swiftly across the earth. At the end of fifteen minutes, the carriage swung in through a stone gateway and on between a double row of arched and interlacing walnut trees. On either side stretched lawns, their broad sweep broken here and there by great sturdy-limbed oaks. In the near distance, in contrast with the young-green of the tended grass, sunburnt hay-fields showed tan and gold; while beyond were the tawny hills and upland pastures. From the head of the lawn, on the first soft swell from the valley-level, looked down the deep-porched, many-windowed house. Little opportunity was given White Fang to see all this. Hardly had the carriage entered the grounds, when he was set upon by a sheep-dog, bright- eyed, sharp-muzzled, righteously indignant and angry. It was between him and the master, cutting him off. White Fang snarled no warning, but his hair bristled as he made his silent and deadly rush. This rush was never completed. He halted with awkward abruptness, with stiff fore-legs bracing himself against his momentum, almost sitting down on his haunches, so desirous was he of avoiding contact with the dog he was in the act of attacking. It was a female, and the law of his kind thrust a barrier between. For him to attack her would require nothing less than a violation of his instinct. But with the sheep-dog it was otherwise. Being a female, she possessed no such instinct. On the other hand, being a sheep-dog, her instinctive fear of the Wild, and especially of the wolf, was unusually keen. White Fang was to her a wolf, the hereditary marauder who had preyed upon her flocks from the time sheep were first herded and guarded by some dim ancestor of hers. And so, as he abandoned his rush at her and braced himself to avoid the contact, she sprang upon him. He snarled involuntarily as he felt her teeth in his shoulder, but beyond this made no offer to hurt her. He backed away, stiff-legged with self-consciousness, and tried to go around her. He dodged this way and that, and curved and turned, but to no purpose. She remained always between him and the way he wanted to go. "Here, Collie!" called the strange man in the carriage. Weedon Scott laughed. "Never mind, father. It is good discipline. White Fang will have to learn many things, and it's just as well that he begins now. He'll adjust himself all right." The carriage drove on, and still Collie blocked White Fang's way. He tried to outrun her by leaving the drive and circling across the lawn but she ran on the inner and smaller circle, and was always there, facing him with her two rows of gleaming teeth. Back he circled, across the drive to the other lawn, and again she headed him off. The carriage was bearing the master away. White Fang caught glimpses of it disappearing amongst the trees. The situation was desperate. He essayed another circle. She followed, running swiftly. And then, suddenly, he turned upon her. It was his old fighting trick. Shoulder to shoulder, he struck her squarely. Not only was she overthrown. So fast had she been running that she rolled along, now on her back, now on her side, as she struggled to stop, clawing gravel with her feet and crying shrilly her hurt pride and indignation. White Fang did not wait. The way was clear, and that was all he had wanted. She took after him, never ceasing her outcry. It was the straightaway now, and when it came to real running, White Fang could teach her things. She ran frantically, hysterically, straining to the utmost, advertising the effort she was making with every leap: and all the time White Fang slid smoothly away from her silently, without effort, gliding like a ghost over the ground. As he rounded the house to the _porte-cochere_, he came upon the carriage. It had stopped, and the master was alighting. At this moment, still running at top speed, White Fang became suddenly aware of an attack from the side. It was a deer-hound rushing upon him. White Fang tried to face it. But he was going too fast, and the hound was too close. It struck him on the side; and such was his forward momentum and the unexpectedness of it, White Fang was hurled to the ground and rolled clear over. He came out of the tangle a spectacle of malignancy, ears flattened back, lips writhing, nose wrinkling, his teeth clipping together as the fangs barely missed the hound's soft throat. The master was running up, but was too far away; and it was Collie that saved the hound's life. Before White Fang could spring in and deliver the fatal stroke, and just as he was in the act of springing in, Collie arrived. She had been out-manoeuvred and out-run, to say nothing of her having been unceremoniously tumbled in the gravel, and her arrival was like that of a tornado--made up of offended dignity, justifiable wrath, and instinctive hatred for this marauder from the Wild. She struck White Fang at right angles in the midst of his spring, and again he was knocked off his feet and rolled over. The next moment the master arrived, and with one hand held White Fang, while the father called off the dogs. "I say, this is a pretty warm reception for a poor lone wolf from the Arctic," the master said, while White Fang calmed down under his caressing hand. "In all his life he's only been known once to go off his feet, and here he's been rolled twice in thirty seconds." The carriage had driven away, and other strange gods had appeared from out the house. Some of these stood respectfully at a distance; but two of them, women, perpetrated the hostile act of clutching the master around the neck. White Fang, however, was beginning to tolerate this act. No harm seemed to come of it, while the noises the gods made were certainly not threatening. These gods also made overtures to White Fang, but he warned them off with a snarl, and the master did likewise with word of mouth. At such times White Fang leaned in close against the master's legs and received reassuring pats on the head. The hound, under the command, "Dick! Lie down, sir!" had gone up the steps and lain down to one side of the porch, still growling and keeping a sullen watch on the intruder. Collie had been taken in charge by one of the woman-gods, who held arms around her neck and petted and caressed her; but Collie was very much perplexed and worried, whining and restless, outraged by the permitted presence of this wolf and confident that the gods were making a mistake. All the gods started up the steps to enter the house. White Fang followed closely at the master's heels. Dick, on the porch, growled, and White Fang, on the steps, bristled and growled back. "Take Collie inside and leave the two of them to fight it out," suggested Scott's father. "After that they'll be friends." "Then White Fang, to show his friendship, will have to be chief mourner at the funeral," laughed the master. The elder Scott looked incredulously, first at White Fang, then at Dick, and finally at his son. "You mean . . .?" Weedon nodded his head. "I mean just that. You'd have a dead Dick inside one minute--two minutes at the farthest." He turned to White Fang. "Come on, you wolf. It's you that'll have to come inside." White Fang walked stiff-legged up the steps and across the porch, with tail rigidly erect, keeping his eyes on Dick to guard against a flank attack, and at the same time prepared for whatever fierce manifestation of the unknown that might pounce out upon him from the interior of the house. But no thing of fear pounced out, and when he had gained the inside he scouted carefully around, looking at it and finding it not. Then he lay down with a contented grunt at the master's feet, observing all that went on, ever ready to spring to his feet and fight for life with the terrors he felt must lurk under the trap-roof of the dwelling.

Part Five, Chapters 1-2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210301215611/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/fang/section9/

Scott is preparing to go back to his home in California, and White Fang senses that something is wrong. He cries and cries. Scott is torn, knowing that White Fang cannot go to California with him, but feeling that he cannot leave him either. White Fang howls and howls, and they lock him up in the house the day that Scott is preparing to leave. Inside, White Fang cries and whines. They go to the steamboat, but just as Scott boards, White Fang runs up to him and dashes onto the boat. He had leapt out the window of the cabin to escape. Scott decides that he cannot leave that sort of love, and tells Matt that he will write him--White Fang is coming with him to California. They land in San Francisco, and White Fang is appalled at the buildings and the rush of cars and horses and cable and electric cars. He follows his master through the city like attempting to escape from a rushing bad dream. He gets into a car with his master, and by the time he gets back out, the city is gone. Then a man and a woman approach his master, and they try to put their arms around his neck, and White Fang sees the hug and barks with fear. Scott tells him to get down, and that it is all right. They continue on, White Fang running behind the carriage. Soon they meet a sheep-dog, which promptly attacks White Fang. Because she is female, White Fang does not attack her, but cannot seem to get around her. Finally, he bangs into her and pushes through her defense, running after the carriage. When they get close to the house, a deer-hound attacks him. White Fang attacks, and it is only the collie, running quick after White Fang that saves the deer-hound's life. Scott holds White Fang, and they call the dogs off. They go inside the house, White Fang keeping close to his master.

Commentary Despite Scott and Matt's worries and fears, White Fang redeems himself again. This section is about movement. There is not much character development of White Fang or any of the other characters; instead, there is movement--from the north to the south. The men try to restrict White Fang's movement, locking him within the house, but he leaps from the window--the beginning of this movement to go with his master. The boat moves, the cars move; White Fang quickly follows after his master, and keeps close by. Collie blocks White Fang, trying to stop this forward movement, but White Fang cannot stop. This is the most movement that White Fang has done in one section, yet he does not change himself in this section--he just follows his master. For the first time, White Fang is not forced to develop in his environment, he can simply trust in his human master. For example, when Scott and his mother hug, White Fang acts in the manner of a dog from the wild by barking and worried at this "aggressive" act. But Scott reassures him, and White Fang, bit by bit, begins to learn that this world is different, and he must trust Scott. White Fang feels great fear for the power and hum of the city. In the next section, he will be haunted by a dream of a cable car attacking him--superimposed on his northern environment. White Fang realizes that this world is more powerful than he can fight against. When he is with his master, he can trust in him. However, when White Fang has nightmares about his visit to San Francisco, all of that power is imposed upon his life with Beauty and his life in the wild. Without Scott to trust in, San Francisco and all of the power of humans is a nightmare to White Fang.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/01.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_1_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 1.chapter 1

part 1, chapter 1 the trail of the meat

{"name": "I.1 The Trail of the Meat", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-trail-of-the-meat", "summary": "NOTE White Fang is divided into five parts of two to six chapters each. For quick reference, this commentary will refer to chapters with a Roman part numeral followed by an Arabic chapter numeral . Bill and Henry are sled-drivers in the Yukon who are conveying a dead body-the corpse of a man who was \"a lord or something in his own country\" who would not have had to come \"a-buttin' round the God-forsaken ends of the earth\"-to the trading post of Fort McGurry. Six dogs pull their sled across the frozen wilderness; one man on snowshoes goes in front of the team, the other follows behind the sled itself. As they make their perilous trek, they hear, from time to time, the howling of wolves trailing them. When they make camp for the night, Bill tells Henry that he fed fish to seven dogs, not six. Apparently, a wolf infiltrated the dogs-unusual behavior for a supposedly undomesticated creature. Henry cannot understand why the team's dogs didn't attack the wolf. In the morning, Bill discovers that he and Henry are left with only five dogs. \"Fatty\" has been eaten-presumably, by the team's wolf visitor.", "analysis": ". In his opening chapter, London quickly and dramatically establishes both a mood of suspense-will Bill, Henry, and their dogs get to Fort McGurry with their cargo and, more importantly, with their lives?-and one of the novel's dominant themes, the perilous nature of life. The coffin on the sled serves as a physical symbol of mortality, a symbol made all the more stark and foreboding because of the backdrop of \"the Wild.\" London clearly indicates to his readers that \"the Wild\" refers to more than the rugged, undeveloped Yukon landscape of the late 19th century. It is the physical embodiment of all that is hostile to life: human life, to be sure; advertisement but also-as readers will soon discover when the narrative point-of-view shifts to the wolves-to life in general. The wolf-dog who infiltrates the sled team's dogs and lures Fatty to his death is, after all, acting for her and her pack's survival. Bill and Henry may believe they are in control of the situation, but they are actually \"the meat\" of the chapter title. This sobering realization brings home for readers the \"futility of life\" invoked by the narrator in the opening paragraph. This chapter as a whole dramatizes the fragility of life, especially in such extremely cold and desolate conditions."}

Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness--a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild. But there _was_ life, abroad in the land and defiant. Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur was rimed with frost. Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths, spouting forth in spumes of vapour that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged along behind. The sled was without runners. It was made of stout birch-bark, and its full surface rested on the snow. The front end of the sled was turned up, like a scroll, in order to force down and under the bore of soft snow that surged like a wave before it. On the sled, securely lashed, was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things on the sled--blankets, an axe, and a coffee-pot and frying-pan; but prominent, occupying most of the space, was the long and narrow oblong box. In advance of the dogs, on wide snowshoes, toiled a man. At the rear of the sled toiled a second man. On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toil was over,--a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the Wild to like movement. Life is an offence to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man--man who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement. But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable, toiled the two men who were not yet dead. Their bodies were covered with fur and soft-tanned leather. Eyelashes and cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible. This gave them the seeming of ghostly masques, undertakers in a spectral world at the funeral of some ghost. But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space. They travelled on without speech, saving their breath for the work of their bodies. On every side was the silence, pressing upon them with a tangible presence. It affected their minds as the many atmospheres of deep water affect the body of the diver. It crushed them with the weight of unending vastness and unalterable decree. It crushed them into the remotest recesses of their own minds, pressing out of them, like juices from the grape, all the false ardours and exaltations and undue self-values of the human soul, until they perceived themselves finite and small, specks and motes, moving with weak cunning and little wisdom amidst the play and inter-play of the great blind elements and forces. An hour went by, and a second hour. The pale light of the short sunless day was beginning to fade, when a faint far cry arose on the still air. It soared upward with a swift rush, till it reached its topmost note, where it persisted, palpitant and tense, and then slowly died away. It might have been a lost soul wailing, had it not been invested with a certain sad fierceness and hungry eagerness. The front man turned his head until his eyes met the eyes of the man behind. And then, across the narrow oblong box, each nodded to the other. A second cry arose, piercing the silence with needle-like shrillness. Both men located the sound. It was to the rear, somewhere in the snow expanse they had just traversed. A third and answering cry arose, also to the rear and to the left of the second cry. "They're after us, Bill," said the man at the front. His voice sounded hoarse and unreal, and he had spoken with apparent effort. "Meat is scarce," answered his comrade. "I ain't seen a rabbit sign for days." Thereafter they spoke no more, though their ears were keen for the hunting-cries that continued to rise behind them. At the fall of darkness they swung the dogs into a cluster of spruce trees on the edge of the waterway and made a camp. The coffin, at the side of the fire, served for seat and table. The wolf-dogs, clustered on the far side of the fire, snarled and bickered among themselves, but evinced no inclination to stray off into the darkness. "Seems to me, Henry, they're stayin' remarkable close to camp," Bill commented. Henry, squatting over the fire and settling the pot of coffee with a piece of ice, nodded. Nor did he speak till he had taken his seat on the coffin and begun to eat. "They know where their hides is safe," he said. "They'd sooner eat grub than be grub. They're pretty wise, them dogs." Bill shook his head. "Oh, I don't know." His comrade looked at him curiously. "First time I ever heard you say anything about their not bein' wise." "Henry," said the other, munching with deliberation the beans he was eating, "did you happen to notice the way them dogs kicked up when I was a-feedin' 'em?" "They did cut up more'n usual," Henry acknowledged. "How many dogs 've we got, Henry?" "Six." "Well, Henry . . . " Bill stopped for a moment, in order that his words might gain greater significance. "As I was sayin', Henry, we've got six dogs. I took six fish out of the bag. I gave one fish to each dog, an', Henry, I was one fish short." "You counted wrong." "We've got six dogs," the other reiterated dispassionately. "I took out six fish. One Ear didn't get no fish. I came back to the bag afterward an' got 'm his fish." "We've only got six dogs," Henry said. "Henry," Bill went on. "I won't say they was all dogs, but there was seven of 'm that got fish." Henry stopped eating to glance across the fire and count the dogs. "There's only six now," he said. "I saw the other one run off across the snow," Bill announced with cool positiveness. "I saw seven." Henry looked at him commiseratingly, and said, "I'll be almighty glad when this trip's over." "What d'ye mean by that?" Bill demanded. "I mean that this load of ourn is gettin' on your nerves, an' that you're beginnin' to see things." "I thought of that," Bill answered gravely. "An' so, when I saw it run off across the snow, I looked in the snow an' saw its tracks. Then I counted the dogs an' there was still six of 'em. The tracks is there in the snow now. D'ye want to look at 'em? I'll show 'em to you." Henry did not reply, but munched on in silence, until, the meal finished, he topped it with a final cup of coffee. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said: "Then you're thinkin' as it was--" A long wailing cry, fiercely sad, from somewhere in the darkness, had interrupted him. He stopped to listen to it, then he finished his sentence with a wave of his hand toward the sound of the cry, "--one of them?" Bill nodded. "I'd a blame sight sooner think that than anything else. You noticed yourself the row the dogs made." Cry after cry, and answering cries, were turning the silence into a bedlam. From every side the cries arose, and the dogs betrayed their fear by huddling together and so close to the fire that their hair was scorched by the heat. Bill threw on more wood, before lighting his pipe. "I'm thinking you're down in the mouth some," Henry said. "Henry . . . " He sucked meditatively at his pipe for some time before he went on. "Henry, I was a-thinkin' what a blame sight luckier he is than you an' me'll ever be." He indicated the third person by a downward thrust of the thumb to the box on which they sat. "You an' me, Henry, when we die, we'll be lucky if we get enough stones over our carcases to keep the dogs off of us." "But we ain't got people an' money an' all the rest, like him," Henry rejoined. "Long-distance funerals is somethin' you an' me can't exactly afford." "What gets me, Henry, is what a chap like this, that's a lord or something in his own country, and that's never had to bother about grub nor blankets; why he comes a-buttin' round the Godforsaken ends of the earth--that's what I can't exactly see." "He might have lived to a ripe old age if he'd stayed at home," Henry agreed. Bill opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. Instead, he pointed towards the wall of darkness that pressed about them from every side. There was no suggestion of form in the utter blackness; only could be seen a pair of eyes gleaming like live coals. Henry indicated with his head a second pair, and a third. A circle of the gleaming eyes had drawn about their camp. Now and again a pair of eyes moved, or disappeared to appear again a moment later. The unrest of the dogs had been increasing, and they stampeded, in a surge of sudden fear, to the near side of the fire, cringing and crawling about the legs of the men. In the scramble one of the dogs had been overturned on the edge of the fire, and it had yelped with pain and fright as the smell of its singed coat possessed the air. The commotion caused the circle of eyes to shift restlessly for a moment and even to withdraw a bit, but it settled down again as the dogs became quiet. "Henry, it's a blame misfortune to be out of ammunition." Bill had finished his pipe and was helping his companion to spread the bed of fur and blanket upon the spruce boughs which he had laid over the snow before supper. Henry grunted, and began unlacing his moccasins. "How many cartridges did you say you had left?" he asked. "Three," came the answer. "An' I wisht 'twas three hundred. Then I'd show 'em what for, damn 'em!" He shook his fist angrily at the gleaming eyes, and began securely to prop his moccasins before the fire. "An' I wisht this cold snap'd break," he went on. "It's ben fifty below for two weeks now. An' I wisht I'd never started on this trip, Henry. I don't like the looks of it. I don't feel right, somehow. An' while I'm wishin', I wisht the trip was over an' done with, an' you an' me a-sittin' by the fire in Fort McGurry just about now an' playing cribbage--that's what I wisht." Henry grunted and crawled into bed. As he dozed off he was aroused by his comrade's voice. "Say, Henry, that other one that come in an' got a fish--why didn't the dogs pitch into it? That's what's botherin' me." "You're botherin' too much, Bill," came the sleepy response. "You was never like this before. You jes' shut up now, an' go to sleep, an' you'll be all hunkydory in the mornin'. Your stomach's sour, that's what's botherin' you." The men slept, breathing heavily, side by side, under the one covering. The fire died down, and the gleaming eyes drew closer the circle they had flung about the camp. The dogs clustered together in fear, now and again snarling menacingly as a pair of eyes drew close. Once their uproar became so loud that Bill woke up. He got out of bed carefully, so as not to disturb the sleep of his comrade, and threw more wood on the fire. As it began to flame up, the circle of eyes drew farther back. He glanced casually at the huddling dogs. He rubbed his eyes and looked at them more sharply. Then he crawled back into the blankets. "Henry," he said. "Oh, Henry." Henry groaned as he passed from sleep to waking, and demanded, "What's wrong now?" "Nothin'," came the answer; "only there's seven of 'em again. I just counted." Henry acknowledged receipt of the information with a grunt that slid into a snore as he drifted back into sleep. In the morning it was Henry who awoke first and routed his companion out of bed. Daylight was yet three hours away, though it was already six o'clock; and in the darkness Henry went about preparing breakfast, while Bill rolled the blankets and made the sled ready for lashing. "Say, Henry," he asked suddenly, "how many dogs did you say we had?" "Six." "Wrong," Bill proclaimed triumphantly. "Seven again?" Henry queried. "No, five; one's gone." "The hell!" Henry cried in wrath, leaving the cooking to come and count the dogs. "You're right, Bill," he concluded. "Fatty's gone." "An' he went like greased lightnin' once he got started. Couldn't 've seen 'm for smoke." "No chance at all," Henry concluded. "They jes' swallowed 'm alive. I bet he was yelpin' as he went down their throats, damn 'em!" "He always was a fool dog," said Bill. "But no fool dog ought to be fool enough to go off an' commit suicide that way." He looked over the remainder of the team with a speculative eye that summed up instantly the salient traits of each animal. "I bet none of the others would do it." "Couldn't drive 'em away from the fire with a club," Bill agreed. "I always did think there was somethin' wrong with Fatty anyway." And this was the epitaph of a dead dog on the Northland trail--less scant than the epitaph of many another dog, of many a man.

I.1 The Trail of the Meat

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-trail-of-the-meat

NOTE White Fang is divided into five parts of two to six chapters each. For quick reference, this commentary will refer to chapters with a Roman part numeral followed by an Arabic chapter numeral . Bill and Henry are sled-drivers in the Yukon who are conveying a dead body-the corpse of a man who was "a lord or something in his own country" who would not have had to come "a-buttin' round the God-forsaken ends of the earth"-to the trading post of Fort McGurry. Six dogs pull their sled across the frozen wilderness; one man on snowshoes goes in front of the team, the other follows behind the sled itself. As they make their perilous trek, they hear, from time to time, the howling of wolves trailing them. When they make camp for the night, Bill tells Henry that he fed fish to seven dogs, not six. Apparently, a wolf infiltrated the dogs-unusual behavior for a supposedly undomesticated creature. Henry cannot understand why the team's dogs didn't attack the wolf. In the morning, Bill discovers that he and Henry are left with only five dogs. "Fatty" has been eaten-presumably, by the team's wolf visitor.

. In his opening chapter, London quickly and dramatically establishes both a mood of suspense-will Bill, Henry, and their dogs get to Fort McGurry with their cargo and, more importantly, with their lives?-and one of the novel's dominant themes, the perilous nature of life. The coffin on the sled serves as a physical symbol of mortality, a symbol made all the more stark and foreboding because of the backdrop of "the Wild." London clearly indicates to his readers that "the Wild" refers to more than the rugged, undeveloped Yukon landscape of the late 19th century. It is the physical embodiment of all that is hostile to life: human life, to be sure; advertisement but also-as readers will soon discover when the narrative point-of-view shifts to the wolves-to life in general. The wolf-dog who infiltrates the sled team's dogs and lures Fatty to his death is, after all, acting for her and her pack's survival. Bill and Henry may believe they are in control of the situation, but they are actually "the meat" of the chapter title. This sobering realization brings home for readers the "futility of life" invoked by the narrator in the opening paragraph. This chapter as a whole dramatizes the fragility of life, especially in such extremely cold and desolate conditions.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/02.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_2_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 1.chapter 2

part 1, chapter 2 the she wolf

{"name": "I.2 The She-Wolf", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-she-wolf", "summary": "Henry and Bill continue their journey across the Wild, the howling of wolves always pursuing them. In camp at night, Bill manages to attack the wolf that is approaching their dogs; however, Bill says the wolf looks like a dog. Despite his \"whack\" at the interloper, another dog is gone when morning breaks. When the team camps the next night, Bill ties the dogs together with sticks and leather thongs to prevent them from straying. As they watch their dog named \"One Ear\" straining at this leash in the direction of the prowling strange animal who is daring to approach their campfire, they realize the unwanted visitor must be a female, and not altogether wild, at that: \"That wolf's a dog, an' it's eaten fish many's the time from the hand of man.\" The next morning, yet another dog has been lost: One Ear must have chewed Spanker loose, being unable to free himself. Bill resolves to tie the dogs out of each other's reach the next night. The journey continues. Bill notices the wolf pack keeping up with them-not close during the day, but never far away, either: \"They're scattered an rangin' along wide, keepin' up with us an' lookin' for game at the same time. You see, they're sure of us\"-meaning, the wolves think the humans' fate is sealed. Later, Henry and Bill encounter the she-wolf firsthand as she trails the sled. Bill tries to shoot the she-wolf, but the animal escapes. Bill resolves to shoot the she-wolf later, but Henry warns him that, the she-wolf's hunger clearly as great as it is, \"once start in, they'll sure get you.\" .", "analysis": ". This chapter further develops the fragility and vulnerability of life. Bill and Henry are at great risk, of course, as are their dogs. On the other hand, the she-wolf and her pack are advertisement vulnerable as well, as all life must eat. London introduces a new note into his development of this theme in Bill and Henry's conversation at the end of the chapter. Henry tells Bill, \"A man's half licked when he says he is.\" In other words, life is not defeated until it acknowledges that it is. Readers will see that this lesson holds true not only for people but also for animals. Throughout the novel, White Fang and other wolves will demonstrate tremendous strength, persistence, and tenacity, refusing in a variety of ways to admit they have been \"licked.\""}

Breakfast eaten and the slim camp-outfit lashed to the sled, the men turned their backs on the cheery fire and launched out into the darkness. At once began to rise the cries that were fiercely sad--cries that called through the darkness and cold to one another and answered back. Conversation ceased. Daylight came at nine o'clock. At midday the sky to the south warmed to rose-colour, and marked where the bulge of the earth intervened between the meridian sun and the northern world. But the rose-colour swiftly faded. The grey light of day that remained lasted until three o'clock, when it, too, faded, and the pall of the Arctic night descended upon the lone and silent land. As darkness came on, the hunting-cries to right and left and rear drew closer--so close that more than once they sent surges of fear through the toiling dogs, throwing them into short-lived panics. At the conclusion of one such panic, when he and Henry had got the dogs back in the traces, Bill said: "I wisht they'd strike game somewheres, an' go away an' leave us alone." "They do get on the nerves horrible," Henry sympathised. They spoke no more until camp was made. Henry was bending over and adding ice to the babbling pot of beans when he was startled by the sound of a blow, an exclamation from Bill, and a sharp snarling cry of pain from among the dogs. He straightened up in time to see a dim form disappearing across the snow into the shelter of the dark. Then he saw Bill, standing amid the dogs, half triumphant, half crestfallen, in one hand a stout club, in the other the tail and part of the body of a sun-cured salmon. "It got half of it," he announced; "but I got a whack at it jes' the same. D'ye hear it squeal?" "What'd it look like?" Henry asked. "Couldn't see. But it had four legs an' a mouth an' hair an' looked like any dog." "Must be a tame wolf, I reckon." "It's damned tame, whatever it is, comin' in here at feedin' time an' gettin' its whack of fish." That night, when supper was finished and they sat on the oblong box and pulled at their pipes, the circle of gleaming eyes drew in even closer than before. "I wisht they'd spring up a bunch of moose or something, an' go away an' leave us alone," Bill said. Henry grunted with an intonation that was not all sympathy, and for a quarter of an hour they sat on in silence, Henry staring at the fire, and Bill at the circle of eyes that burned in the darkness just beyond the firelight. "I wisht we was pullin' into McGurry right now," he began again. "Shut up your wishin' and your croakin'," Henry burst out angrily. "Your stomach's sour. That's what's ailin' you. Swallow a spoonful of sody, an' you'll sweeten up wonderful an' be more pleasant company." In the morning Henry was aroused by fervid blasphemy that proceeded from the mouth of Bill. Henry propped himself up on an elbow and looked to see his comrade standing among the dogs beside the replenished fire, his arms raised in objurgation, his face distorted with passion. "Hello!" Henry called. "What's up now?" "Frog's gone," came the answer. "No." "I tell you yes." Henry leaped out of the blankets and to the dogs. He counted them with care, and then joined his partner in cursing the power of the Wild that had robbed them of another dog. "Frog was the strongest dog of the bunch," Bill pronounced finally. "An' he was no fool dog neither," Henry added. And so was recorded the second epitaph in two days. A gloomy breakfast was eaten, and the four remaining dogs were harnessed to the sled. The day was a repetition of the days that had gone before. The men toiled without speech across the face of the frozen world. The silence was unbroken save by the cries of their pursuers, that, unseen, hung upon their rear. With the coming of night in the mid-afternoon, the cries sounded closer as the pursuers drew in according to their custom; and the dogs grew excited and frightened, and were guilty of panics that tangled the traces and further depressed the two men. "There, that'll fix you fool critters," Bill said with satisfaction that night, standing erect at completion of his task. Henry left the cooking to come and see. Not only had his partner tied the dogs up, but he had tied them, after the Indian fashion, with sticks. About the neck of each dog he had fastened a leather thong. To this, and so close to the neck that the dog could not get his teeth to it, he had tied a stout stick four or five feet in length. The other end of the stick, in turn, was made fast to a stake in the ground by means of a leather thong. The dog was unable to gnaw through the leather at his own end of the stick. The stick prevented him from getting at the leather that fastened the other end. Henry nodded his head approvingly. "It's the only contraption that'll ever hold One Ear," he said. "He can gnaw through leather as clean as a knife an' jes' about half as quick. They all'll be here in the mornin' hunkydory." "You jes' bet they will," Bill affirmed. "If one of em' turns up missin', I'll go without my coffee." "They jes' know we ain't loaded to kill," Henry remarked at bed-time, indicating the gleaming circle that hemmed them in. "If we could put a couple of shots into 'em, they'd be more respectful. They come closer every night. Get the firelight out of your eyes an' look hard--there! Did you see that one?" For some time the two men amused themselves with watching the movement of vague forms on the edge of the firelight. By looking closely and steadily at where a pair of eyes burned in the darkness, the form of the animal would slowly take shape. They could even see these forms move at times. A sound among the dogs attracted the men's attention. One Ear was uttering quick, eager whines, lunging at the length of his stick toward the darkness, and desisting now and again in order to make frantic attacks on the stick with his teeth. "Look at that, Bill," Henry whispered. Full into the firelight, with a stealthy, sidelong movement, glided a doglike animal. It moved with commingled mistrust and daring, cautiously observing the men, its attention fixed on the dogs. One Ear strained the full length of the stick toward the intruder and whined with eagerness. "That fool One Ear don't seem scairt much," Bill said in a low tone. "It's a she-wolf," Henry whispered back, "an' that accounts for Fatty an' Frog. She's the decoy for the pack. She draws out the dog an' then all the rest pitches in an' eats 'm up." The fire crackled. A log fell apart with a loud spluttering noise. At the sound of it the strange animal leaped back into the darkness. "Henry, I'm a-thinkin'," Bill announced. "Thinkin' what?" "I'm a-thinkin' that was the one I lambasted with the club." "Ain't the slightest doubt in the world," was Henry's response. "An' right here I want to remark," Bill went on, "that that animal's familyarity with campfires is suspicious an' immoral." "It knows for certain more'n a self-respectin' wolf ought to know," Henry agreed. "A wolf that knows enough to come in with the dogs at feedin' time has had experiences." "Ol' Villan had a dog once that run away with the wolves," Bill cogitates aloud. "I ought to know. I shot it out of the pack in a moose pasture over 'on Little Stick. An' Ol' Villan cried like a baby. Hadn't seen it for three years, he said. Ben with the wolves all that time." "I reckon you've called the turn, Bill. That wolf's a dog, an' it's eaten fish many's the time from the hand of man." "An if I get a chance at it, that wolf that's a dog'll be jes' meat," Bill declared. "We can't afford to lose no more animals." "But you've only got three cartridges," Henry objected. "I'll wait for a dead sure shot," was the reply. In the morning Henry renewed the fire and cooked breakfast to the accompaniment of his partner's snoring. "You was sleepin' jes' too comfortable for anything," Henry told him, as he routed him out for breakfast. "I hadn't the heart to rouse you." Bill began to eat sleepily. He noticed that his cup was empty and started to reach for the pot. But the pot was beyond arm's length and beside Henry. "Say, Henry," he chided gently, "ain't you forgot somethin'?" Henry looked about with great carefulness and shook his head. Bill held up the empty cup. "You don't get no coffee," Henry announced. "Ain't run out?" Bill asked anxiously. "Nope." "Ain't thinkin' it'll hurt my digestion?" "Nope." A flush of angry blood pervaded Bill's face. "Then it's jes' warm an' anxious I am to be hearin' you explain yourself," he said. "Spanker's gone," Henry answered. Without haste, with the air of one resigned to misfortune Bill turned his head, and from where he sat counted the dogs. "How'd it happen?" he asked apathetically. Henry shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know. Unless One Ear gnawed 'm loose. He couldn't a-done it himself, that's sure." "The darned cuss." Bill spoke gravely and slowly, with no hint of the anger that was raging within. "Jes' because he couldn't chew himself loose, he chews Spanker loose." "Well, Spanker's troubles is over anyway; I guess he's digested by this time an' cavortin' over the landscape in the bellies of twenty different wolves," was Henry's epitaph on this, the latest lost dog. "Have some coffee, Bill." But Bill shook his head. "Go on," Henry pleaded, elevating the pot. Bill shoved his cup aside. "I'll be ding-dong-danged if I do. I said I wouldn't if ary dog turned up missin', an' I won't." "It's darn good coffee," Henry said enticingly. But Bill was stubborn, and he ate a dry breakfast washed down with mumbled curses at One Ear for the trick he had played. "I'll tie 'em up out of reach of each other to-night," Bill said, as they took the trail. They had travelled little more than a hundred yards, when Henry, who was in front, bent down and picked up something with which his snowshoe had collided. It was dark, and he could not see it, but he recognised it by the touch. He flung it back, so that it struck the sled and bounced along until it fetched up on Bill's snowshoes. "Mebbe you'll need that in your business," Henry said. Bill uttered an exclamation. It was all that was left of Spanker--the stick with which he had been tied. "They ate 'm hide an' all," Bill announced. "The stick's as clean as a whistle. They've ate the leather offen both ends. They're damn hungry, Henry, an' they'll have you an' me guessin' before this trip's over." Henry laughed defiantly. "I ain't been trailed this way by wolves before, but I've gone through a whole lot worse an' kept my health. Takes more'n a handful of them pesky critters to do for yours truly, Bill, my son." "I don't know, I don't know," Bill muttered ominously. "Well, you'll know all right when we pull into McGurry." "I ain't feelin' special enthusiastic," Bill persisted. "You're off colour, that's what's the matter with you," Henry dogmatised. "What you need is quinine, an' I'm goin' to dose you up stiff as soon as we make McGurry." Bill grunted his disagreement with the diagnosis, and lapsed into silence. The day was like all the days. Light came at nine o'clock. At twelve o'clock the southern horizon was warmed by the unseen sun; and then began the cold grey of afternoon that would merge, three hours later, into night. It was just after the sun's futile effort to appear, that Bill slipped the rifle from under the sled-lashings and said: "You keep right on, Henry, I'm goin' to see what I can see." "You'd better stick by the sled," his partner protested. "You've only got three cartridges, an' there's no tellin' what might happen." "Who's croaking now?" Bill demanded triumphantly. Henry made no reply, and plodded on alone, though often he cast anxious glances back into the grey solitude where his partner had disappeared. An hour later, taking advantage of the cut-offs around which the sled had to go, Bill arrived. "They're scattered an' rangin' along wide," he said: "keeping up with us an' lookin' for game at the same time. You see, they're sure of us, only they know they've got to wait to get us. In the meantime they're willin' to pick up anything eatable that comes handy." "You mean they _think_ they're sure of us," Henry objected pointedly. But Bill ignored him. "I seen some of them. They're pretty thin. They ain't had a bite in weeks I reckon, outside of Fatty an' Frog an' Spanker; an' there's so many of 'em that that didn't go far. They're remarkable thin. Their ribs is like wash-boards, an' their stomachs is right up against their backbones. They're pretty desperate, I can tell you. They'll be goin' mad, yet, an' then watch out." A few minutes later, Henry, who was now travelling behind the sled, emitted a low, warning whistle. Bill turned and looked, then quietly stopped the dogs. To the rear, from around the last bend and plainly into view, on the very trail they had just covered, trotted a furry, slinking form. Its nose was to the trail, and it trotted with a peculiar, sliding, effortless gait. When they halted, it halted, throwing up its head and regarding them steadily with nostrils that twitched as it caught and studied the scent of them. "It's the she-wolf," Bill answered. The dogs had lain down in the snow, and he walked past them to join his partner in the sled. Together they watched the strange animal that had pursued them for days and that had already accomplished the destruction of half their dog-team. After a searching scrutiny, the animal trotted forward a few steps. This it repeated several times, till it was a short hundred yards away. It paused, head up, close by a clump of spruce trees, and with sight and scent studied the outfit of the watching men. It looked at them in a strangely wistful way, after the manner of a dog; but in its wistfulness there was none of the dog affection. It was a wistfulness bred of hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, as merciless as the frost itself. It was large for a wolf, its gaunt frame advertising the lines of an animal that was among the largest of its kind. "Stands pretty close to two feet an' a half at the shoulders," Henry commented. "An' I'll bet it ain't far from five feet long." "Kind of strange colour for a wolf," was Bill's criticism. "I never seen a red wolf before. Looks almost cinnamon to me." The animal was certainly not cinnamon-coloured. Its coat was the true wolf-coat. The dominant colour was grey, and yet there was to it a faint reddish hue--a hue that was baffling, that appeared and disappeared, that was more like an illusion of the vision, now grey, distinctly grey, and again giving hints and glints of a vague redness of colour not classifiable in terms of ordinary experience. "Looks for all the world like a big husky sled-dog," Bill said. "I wouldn't be s'prised to see it wag its tail." "Hello, you husky!" he called. "Come here, you whatever-your-name-is." "Ain't a bit scairt of you," Henry laughed. Bill waved his hand at it threateningly and shouted loudly; but the animal betrayed no fear. The only change in it that they could notice was an accession of alertness. It still regarded them with the merciless wistfulness of hunger. They were meat, and it was hungry; and it would like to go in and eat them if it dared. "Look here, Henry," Bill said, unconsciously lowering his voice to a whisper because of what he imitated. "We've got three cartridges. But it's a dead shot. Couldn't miss it. It's got away with three of our dogs, an' we oughter put a stop to it. What d'ye say?" Henry nodded his consent. Bill cautiously slipped the gun from under the sled-lashing. The gun was on the way to his shoulder, but it never got there. For in that instant the she-wolf leaped sidewise from the trail into the clump of spruce trees and disappeared. The two men looked at each other. Henry whistled long and comprehendingly. "I might have knowed it," Bill chided himself aloud as he replaced the gun. "Of course a wolf that knows enough to come in with the dogs at feedin' time, 'd know all about shooting-irons. I tell you right now, Henry, that critter's the cause of all our trouble. We'd have six dogs at the present time, 'stead of three, if it wasn't for her. An' I tell you right now, Henry, I'm goin' to get her. She's too smart to be shot in the open. But I'm goin' to lay for her. I'll bushwhack her as sure as my name is Bill." "You needn't stray off too far in doin' it," his partner admonished. "If that pack ever starts to jump you, them three cartridges'd be wuth no more'n three whoops in hell. Them animals is damn hungry, an' once they start in, they'll sure get you, Bill." They camped early that night. Three dogs could not drag the sled so fast nor for so long hours as could six, and they were showing unmistakable signs of playing out. And the men went early to bed, Bill first seeing to it that the dogs were tied out of gnawing-reach of one another. But the wolves were growing bolder, and the men were aroused more than once from their sleep. So near did the wolves approach, that the dogs became frantic with terror, and it was necessary to replenish the fire from time to time in order to keep the adventurous marauders at safer distance. "I've hearn sailors talk of sharks followin' a ship," Bill remarked, as he crawled back into the blankets after one such replenishing of the fire. "Well, them wolves is land sharks. They know their business better'n we do, an' they ain't a-holdin' our trail this way for their health. They're goin' to get us. They're sure goin' to get us, Henry." "They've half got you a'ready, a-talkin' like that," Henry retorted sharply. "A man's half licked when he says he is. An' you're half eaten from the way you're goin' on about it." "They've got away with better men than you an' me," Bill answered. "Oh, shet up your croakin'. You make me all-fired tired." Henry rolled over angrily on his side, but was surprised that Bill made no similar display of temper. This was not Bill's way, for he was easily angered by sharp words. Henry thought long over it before he went to sleep, and as his eyelids fluttered down and he dozed off, the thought in his mind was: "There's no mistakin' it, Bill's almighty blue. I'll have to cheer him up to-morrow."

I.2 The She-Wolf

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-she-wolf

Henry and Bill continue their journey across the Wild, the howling of wolves always pursuing them. In camp at night, Bill manages to attack the wolf that is approaching their dogs; however, Bill says the wolf looks like a dog. Despite his "whack" at the interloper, another dog is gone when morning breaks. When the team camps the next night, Bill ties the dogs together with sticks and leather thongs to prevent them from straying. As they watch their dog named "One Ear" straining at this leash in the direction of the prowling strange animal who is daring to approach their campfire, they realize the unwanted visitor must be a female, and not altogether wild, at that: "That wolf's a dog, an' it's eaten fish many's the time from the hand of man." The next morning, yet another dog has been lost: One Ear must have chewed Spanker loose, being unable to free himself. Bill resolves to tie the dogs out of each other's reach the next night. The journey continues. Bill notices the wolf pack keeping up with them-not close during the day, but never far away, either: "They're scattered an rangin' along wide, keepin' up with us an' lookin' for game at the same time. You see, they're sure of us"-meaning, the wolves think the humans' fate is sealed. Later, Henry and Bill encounter the she-wolf firsthand as she trails the sled. Bill tries to shoot the she-wolf, but the animal escapes. Bill resolves to shoot the she-wolf later, but Henry warns him that, the she-wolf's hunger clearly as great as it is, "once start in, they'll sure get you." .

. This chapter further develops the fragility and vulnerability of life. Bill and Henry are at great risk, of course, as are their dogs. On the other hand, the she-wolf and her pack are advertisement vulnerable as well, as all life must eat. London introduces a new note into his development of this theme in Bill and Henry's conversation at the end of the chapter. Henry tells Bill, "A man's half licked when he says he is." In other words, life is not defeated until it acknowledges that it is. Readers will see that this lesson holds true not only for people but also for animals. Throughout the novel, White Fang and other wolves will demonstrate tremendous strength, persistence, and tenacity, refusing in a variety of ways to admit they have been "licked."

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/03.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_3_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 1.chapter 3

part 1, chapter 3 the hunger cry

{"name": "I.3 The Hunger Cry", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-hunger-cry", "summary": "When the sled overturns, One Ear breaks away, lured by the she-wolf by playfully \"flirting\" with him and leading him into an ambush by the wolf pack. Bill pursues with his rifle. Henry listens, helpless, as Bill uses up his ammunition; he also hears One Ear's death cry. He knows that he has lost both the dog and Bill. Wearily, Henry makes camp, and the wolf pack again gathers, forming a close ring around him and his fire, which he strives to keep burning. In the morning, to lighten his load, he builds a scaffold and leaves the coffin behind before continuing on. The wolves grow bolder in their pursuit of Henry. The she-wolf, in particular, seems to eye Henry with a certainty that she will soon be devouring him. Eventually, not even the break of day sends the wolves scattering. Henry gives up his journey; at night, he struggles mightily to remain awake, but his exhaustion overpowers him. He dreams that he has reached Fort McGurry, but that the fort is being attacked by wolves. The howling he hears in his dream blends with the wolves' howling in real life as they finally descend upon him. Henry fights them with firebrands, burning himself in the process. But his resistance is short-lived; in the end, he sits and says to the wolves, \"I guess you can come an' get me any time.\" He dozes off again. When he wakes, the wolves have gone and a rescue party has found him. Broken and spent, Henry is carried away, and the wolves seek other meat.", "analysis": ". In this chapter, London increases readers' suspense by depicting the increasingly bold behavior of the wolves. He connects this suspense to his theme of survival with such characterization statements as, \" looking upon with a possessive eye, as if, in truth, he were merely a delayed meal that was soon to be eaten.\" Henry also experiences a shift of perception in this chapter: believing his death by the wolf pack to be imminent, he gains a new appreciation of himself as a physical creature: \"like a blow the realization would strike him that this wonderful body of his, this living flesh, was no more than so much meat.\" Such moments serve to \"equalize\" man and beast in London's conception of the Wild: it is a place where all life is equal, both in its vulnerability and in its will to survive. Some life will demonstrate enough will; other life will not. advertisement London's \"Wild\" thus very much shows the influence of Darwinian thought, with its emphasis upon \"the survival of the fittest.\" This chapter's portrayal of Henry exposes how ill-suited human beings are, by nature, to the Wild. They survive only to the degree to which they adapt, but London could be suggesting that such adaptation is only temporary at best. By the end of the chapter, the Wild has broken Henry's will completely. His last-minute rescue is entirely fortuitous, and is not the result of his survival tactics. Even though Henry survives, the Wild, thematically speaking, has conquered him."}

The day began auspiciously. They had lost no dogs during the night, and they swung out upon the trail and into the silence, the darkness, and the cold with spirits that were fairly light. Bill seemed to have forgotten his forebodings of the previous night, and even waxed facetious with the dogs when, at midday, they overturned the sled on a bad piece of trail. It was an awkward mix-up. The sled was upside down and jammed between a tree-trunk and a huge rock, and they were forced to unharness the dogs in order to straighten out the tangle. The two men were bent over the sled and trying to right it, when Henry observed One Ear sidling away. "Here, you, One Ear!" he cried, straightening up and turning around on the dog. But One Ear broke into a run across the snow, his traces trailing behind him. And there, out in the snow of their back track, was the she-wolf waiting for him. As he neared her, he became suddenly cautious. He slowed down to an alert and mincing walk and then stopped. He regarded her carefully and dubiously, yet desirefully. She seemed to smile at him, showing her teeth in an ingratiating rather than a menacing way. She moved toward him a few steps, playfully, and then halted. One Ear drew near to her, still alert and cautious, his tail and ears in the air, his head held high. He tried to sniff noses with her, but she retreated playfully and coyly. Every advance on his part was accompanied by a corresponding retreat on her part. Step by step she was luring him away from the security of his human companionship. Once, as though a warning had in vague ways flitted through his intelligence, he turned his head and looked back at the overturned sled, at his team-mates, and at the two men who were calling to him. But whatever idea was forming in his mind, was dissipated by the she-wolf, who advanced upon him, sniffed noses with him for a fleeting instant, and then resumed her coy retreat before his renewed advances. In the meantime, Bill had bethought himself of the rifle. But it was jammed beneath the overturned sled, and by the time Henry had helped him to right the load, One Ear and the she-wolf were too close together and the distance too great to risk a shot. Too late One Ear learned his mistake. Before they saw the cause, the two men saw him turn and start to run back toward them. Then, approaching at right angles to the trail and cutting off his retreat they saw a dozen wolves, lean and grey, bounding across the snow. On the instant, the she- wolf's coyness and playfulness disappeared. With a snarl she sprang upon One Ear. He thrust her off with his shoulder, and, his retreat cut off and still intent on regaining the sled, he altered his course in an attempt to circle around to it. More wolves were appearing every moment and joining in the chase. The she-wolf was one leap behind One Ear and holding her own. "Where are you goin'?" Henry suddenly demanded, laying his hand on his partner's arm. Bill shook it off. "I won't stand it," he said. "They ain't a-goin' to get any more of our dogs if I can help it." Gun in hand, he plunged into the underbrush that lined the side of the trail. His intention was apparent enough. Taking the sled as the centre of the circle that One Ear was making, Bill planned to tap that circle at a point in advance of the pursuit. With his rifle, in the broad daylight, it might be possible for him to awe the wolves and save the dog. "Say, Bill!" Henry called after him. "Be careful! Don't take no chances!" Henry sat down on the sled and watched. There was nothing else for him to do. Bill had already gone from sight; but now and again, appearing and disappearing amongst the underbrush and the scattered clumps of spruce, could be seen One Ear. Henry judged his case to be hopeless. The dog was thoroughly alive to its danger, but it was running on the outer circle while the wolf-pack was running on the inner and shorter circle. It was vain to think of One Ear so outdistancing his pursuers as to be able to cut across their circle in advance of them and to regain the sled. The different lines were rapidly approaching a point. Somewhere out there in the snow, screened from his sight by trees and thickets, Henry knew that the wolf-pack, One Ear, and Bill were coming together. All too quickly, far more quickly than he had expected, it happened. He heard a shot, then two shots, in rapid succession, and he knew that Bill's ammunition was gone. Then he heard a great outcry of snarls and yelps. He recognised One Ear's yell of pain and terror, and he heard a wolf-cry that bespoke a stricken animal. And that was all. The snarls ceased. The yelping died away. Silence settled down again over the lonely land. He sat for a long while upon the sled. There was no need for him to go and see what had happened. He knew it as though it had taken place before his eyes. Once, he roused with a start and hastily got the axe out from underneath the lashings. But for some time longer he sat and brooded, the two remaining dogs crouching and trembling at his feet. At last he arose in a weary manner, as though all the resilience had gone out of his body, and proceeded to fasten the dogs to the sled. He passed a rope over his shoulder, a man-trace, and pulled with the dogs. He did not go far. At the first hint of darkness he hastened to make a camp, and he saw to it that he had a generous supply of firewood. He fed the dogs, cooked and ate his supper, and made his bed close to the fire. But he was not destined to enjoy that bed. Before his eyes closed the wolves had drawn too near for safety. It no longer required an effort of the vision to see them. They were all about him and the fire, in a narrow circle, and he could see them plainly in the firelight lying down, sitting up, crawling forward on their bellies, or slinking back and forth. They even slept. Here and there he could see one curled up in the snow like a dog, taking the sleep that was now denied himself. He kept the fire brightly blazing, for he knew that it alone intervened between the flesh of his body and their hungry fangs. His two dogs stayed close by him, one on either side, leaning against him for protection, crying and whimpering, and at times snarling desperately when a wolf approached a little closer than usual. At such moments, when his dogs snarled, the whole circle would be agitated, the wolves coming to their feet and pressing tentatively forward, a chorus of snarls and eager yelps rising about him. Then the circle would lie down again, and here and there a wolf would resume its broken nap. But this circle had a continuous tendency to draw in upon him. Bit by bit, an inch at a time, with here a wolf bellying forward, and there a wolf bellying forward, the circle would narrow until the brutes were almost within springing distance. Then he would seize brands from the fire and hurl them into the pack. A hasty drawing back always resulted, accompanied by angry yelps and frightened snarls when a well-aimed brand struck and scorched a too daring animal. Morning found the man haggard and worn, wide-eyed from want of sleep. He cooked breakfast in the darkness, and at nine o'clock, when, with the coming of daylight, the wolf-pack drew back, he set about the task he had planned through the long hours of the night. Chopping down young saplings, he made them cross-bars of a scaffold by lashing them high up to the trunks of standing trees. Using the sled-lashing for a heaving rope, and with the aid of the dogs, he hoisted the coffin to the top of the scaffold. "They got Bill, an' they may get me, but they'll sure never get you, young man," he said, addressing the dead body in its tree-sepulchre. Then he took the trail, the lightened sled bounding along behind the willing dogs; for they, too, knew that safety lay open in the gaining of Fort McGurry. The wolves were now more open in their pursuit, trotting sedately behind and ranging along on either side, their red tongues lolling out, their lean sides showing the undulating ribs with every movement. They were very lean, mere skin-bags stretched over bony frames, with strings for muscles--so lean that Henry found it in his mind to marvel that they still kept their feet and did not collapse forthright in the snow. He did not dare travel until dark. At midday, not only did the sun warm the southern horizon, but it even thrust its upper rim, pale and golden, above the sky-line. He received it as a sign. The days were growing longer. The sun was returning. But scarcely had the cheer of its light departed, than he went into camp. There were still several hours of grey daylight and sombre twilight, and he utilised them in chopping an enormous supply of fire-wood. With night came horror. Not only were the starving wolves growing bolder, but lack of sleep was telling upon Henry. He dozed despite himself, crouching by the fire, the blankets about his shoulders, the axe between his knees, and on either side a dog pressing close against him. He awoke once and saw in front of him, not a dozen feet away, a big grey wolf, one of the largest of the pack. And even as he looked, the brute deliberately stretched himself after the manner of a lazy dog, yawning full in his face and looking upon him with a possessive eye, as if, in truth, he were merely a delayed meal that was soon to be eaten. This certitude was shown by the whole pack. Fully a score he could count, staring hungrily at him or calmly sleeping in the snow. They reminded him of children gathered about a spread table and awaiting permission to begin to eat. And he was the food they were to eat! He wondered how and when the meal would begin. As he piled wood on the fire he discovered an appreciation of his own body which he had never felt before. He watched his moving muscles and was interested in the cunning mechanism of his fingers. By the light of the fire he crooked his fingers slowly and repeatedly now one at a time, now all together, spreading them wide or making quick gripping movements. He studied the nail-formation, and prodded the finger-tips, now sharply, and again softly, gauging the while the nerve-sensations produced. It fascinated him, and he grew suddenly fond of this subtle flesh of his that worked so beautifully and smoothly and delicately. Then he would cast a glance of fear at the wolf-circle drawn expectantly about him, and like a blow the realisation would strike him that this wonderful body of his, this living flesh, was no more than so much meat, a quest of ravenous animals, to be torn and slashed by their hungry fangs, to be sustenance to them as the moose and the rabbit had often been sustenance to him. He came out of a doze that was half nightmare, to see the red-hued she- wolf before him. She was not more than half a dozen feet away sitting in the snow and wistfully regarding him. The two dogs were whimpering and snarling at his feet, but she took no notice of them. She was looking at the man, and for some time he returned her look. There was nothing threatening about her. She looked at him merely with a great wistfulness, but he knew it to be the wistfulness of an equally great hunger. He was the food, and the sight of him excited in her the gustatory sensations. Her mouth opened, the saliva drooled forth, and she licked her chops with the pleasure of anticipation. A spasm of fear went through him. He reached hastily for a brand to throw at her. But even as he reached, and before his fingers had closed on the missile, she sprang back into safety; and he knew that she was used to having things thrown at her. She had snarled as she sprang away, baring her white fangs to their roots, all her wistfulness vanishing, being replaced by a carnivorous malignity that made him shudder. He glanced at the hand that held the brand, noticing the cunning delicacy of the fingers that gripped it, how they adjusted themselves to all the inequalities of the surface, curling over and under and about the rough wood, and one little finger, too close to the burning portion of the brand, sensitively and automatically writhing back from the hurtful heat to a cooler gripping-place; and in the same instant he seemed to see a vision of those same sensitive and delicate fingers being crushed and torn by the white teeth of the she-wolf. Never had he been so fond of this body of his as now when his tenure of it was so precarious. All night, with burning brands, he fought off the hungry pack. When he dozed despite himself, the whimpering and snarling of the dogs aroused him. Morning came, but for the first time the light of day failed to scatter the wolves. The man waited in vain for them to go. They remained in a circle about him and his fire, displaying an arrogance of possession that shook his courage born of the morning light. He made one desperate attempt to pull out on the trail. But the moment he left the protection of the fire, the boldest wolf leaped for him, but leaped short. He saved himself by springing back, the jaws snapping together a scant six inches from his thigh. The rest of the pack was now up and surging upon him, and a throwing of firebrands right and left was necessary to drive them back to a respectful distance. Even in the daylight he did not dare leave the fire to chop fresh wood. Twenty feet away towered a huge dead spruce. He spent half the day extending his campfire to the tree, at any moment a half dozen burning faggots ready at hand to fling at his enemies. Once at the tree, he studied the surrounding forest in order to fell the tree in the direction of the most firewood. The night was a repetition of the night before, save that the need for sleep was becoming overpowering. The snarling of his dogs was losing its efficacy. Besides, they were snarling all the time, and his benumbed and drowsy senses no longer took note of changing pitch and intensity. He awoke with a start. The she-wolf was less than a yard from him. Mechanically, at short range, without letting go of it, he thrust a brand full into her open and snarling mouth. She sprang away, yelling with pain, and while he took delight in the smell of burning flesh and hair, he watched her shaking her head and growling wrathfully a score of feet away. But this time, before he dozed again, he tied a burning pine-knot to his right hand. His eyes were closed but few minutes when the burn of the flame on his flesh awakened him. For several hours he adhered to this programme. Every time he was thus awakened he drove back the wolves with flying brands, replenished the fire, and rearranged the pine-knot on his hand. All worked well, but there came a time when he fastened the pine- knot insecurely. As his eyes closed it fell away from his hand. He dreamed. It seemed to him that he was in Fort McGurry. It was warm and comfortable, and he was playing cribbage with the Factor. Also, it seemed to him that the fort was besieged by wolves. They were howling at the very gates, and sometimes he and the Factor paused from the game to listen and laugh at the futile efforts of the wolves to get in. And then, so strange was the dream, there was a crash. The door was burst open. He could see the wolves flooding into the big living-room of the fort. They were leaping straight for him and the Factor. With the bursting open of the door, the noise of their howling had increased tremendously. This howling now bothered him. His dream was merging into something else--he knew not what; but through it all, following him, persisted the howling. And then he awoke to find the howling real. There was a great snarling and yelping. The wolves were rushing him. They were all about him and upon him. The teeth of one had closed upon his arm. Instinctively he leaped into the fire, and as he leaped, he felt the sharp slash of teeth that tore through the flesh of his leg. Then began a fire fight. His stout mittens temporarily protected his hands, and he scooped live coals into the air in all directions, until the campfire took on the semblance of a volcano. But it could not last long. His face was blistering in the heat, his eyebrows and lashes were singed off, and the heat was becoming unbearable to his feet. With a flaming brand in each hand, he sprang to the edge of the fire. The wolves had been driven back. On every side, wherever the live coals had fallen, the snow was sizzling, and every little while a retiring wolf, with wild leap and snort and snarl, announced that one such live coal had been stepped upon. Flinging his brands at the nearest of his enemies, the man thrust his smouldering mittens into the snow and stamped about to cool his feet. His two dogs were missing, and he well knew that they had served as a course in the protracted meal which had begun days before with Fatty, the last course of which would likely be himself in the days to follow. "You ain't got me yet!" he cried, savagely shaking his fist at the hungry beasts; and at the sound of his voice the whole circle was agitated, there was a general snarl, and the she-wolf slid up close to him across the snow and watched him with hungry wistfulness. He set to work to carry out a new idea that had come to him. He extended the fire into a large circle. Inside this circle he crouched, his sleeping outfit under him as a protection against the melting snow. When he had thus disappeared within his shelter of flame, the whole pack came curiously to the rim of the fire to see what had become of him. Hitherto they had been denied access to the fire, and they now settled down in a close-drawn circle, like so many dogs, blinking and yawning and stretching their lean bodies in the unaccustomed warmth. Then the she- wolf sat down, pointed her nose at a star, and began to howl. One by one the wolves joined her, till the whole pack, on haunches, with noses pointed skyward, was howling its hunger cry. Dawn came, and daylight. The fire was burning low. The fuel had run out, and there was need to get more. The man attempted to step out of his circle of flame, but the wolves surged to meet him. Burning brands made them spring aside, but they no longer sprang back. In vain he strove to drive them back. As he gave up and stumbled inside his circle, a wolf leaped for him, missed, and landed with all four feet in the coals. It cried out with terror, at the same time snarling, and scrambled back to cool its paws in the snow. The man sat down on his blankets in a crouching position. His body leaned forward from the hips. His shoulders, relaxed and drooping, and his head on his knees advertised that he had given up the struggle. Now and again he raised his head to note the dying down of the fire. The circle of flame and coals was breaking into segments with openings in between. These openings grew in size, the segments diminished. "I guess you can come an' get me any time," he mumbled. "Anyway, I'm goin' to sleep." Once he awakened, and in an opening in the circle, directly in front of him, he saw the she-wolf gazing at him. Again he awakened, a little later, though it seemed hours to him. A mysterious change had taken place--so mysterious a change that he was shocked wider awake. Something had happened. He could not understand at first. Then he discovered it. The wolves were gone. Remained only the trampled snow to show how closely they had pressed him. Sleep was welling up and gripping him again, his head was sinking down upon his knees, when he roused with a sudden start. There were cries of men, and churn of sleds, the creaking of harnesses, and the eager whimpering of straining dogs. Four sleds pulled in from the river bed to the camp among the trees. Half a dozen men were about the man who crouched in the centre of the dying fire. They were shaking and prodding him into consciousness. He looked at them like a drunken man and maundered in strange, sleepy speech. "Red she-wolf. . . . Come in with the dogs at feedin' time. . . . First she ate the dog-food. . . . Then she ate the dogs. . . . An' after that she ate Bill. . . . " "Where's Lord Alfred?" one of the men bellowed in his ear, shaking him roughly. He shook his head slowly. "No, she didn't eat him. . . . He's roostin' in a tree at the last camp." "Dead?" the man shouted. "An' in a box," Henry answered. He jerked his shoulder petulantly away from the grip of his questioner. "Say, you lemme alone. . . . I'm jes' plump tuckered out. . . . Goo' night, everybody." His eyes fluttered and went shut. His chin fell forward on his chest. And even as they eased him down upon the blankets his snores were rising on the frosty air. But there was another sound. Far and faint it was, in the remote distance, the cry of the hungry wolf-pack as it took the trail of other meat than the man it had just missed. PART II

I.3 The Hunger Cry

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-hunger-cry

When the sled overturns, One Ear breaks away, lured by the she-wolf by playfully "flirting" with him and leading him into an ambush by the wolf pack. Bill pursues with his rifle. Henry listens, helpless, as Bill uses up his ammunition; he also hears One Ear's death cry. He knows that he has lost both the dog and Bill. Wearily, Henry makes camp, and the wolf pack again gathers, forming a close ring around him and his fire, which he strives to keep burning. In the morning, to lighten his load, he builds a scaffold and leaves the coffin behind before continuing on. The wolves grow bolder in their pursuit of Henry. The she-wolf, in particular, seems to eye Henry with a certainty that she will soon be devouring him. Eventually, not even the break of day sends the wolves scattering. Henry gives up his journey; at night, he struggles mightily to remain awake, but his exhaustion overpowers him. He dreams that he has reached Fort McGurry, but that the fort is being attacked by wolves. The howling he hears in his dream blends with the wolves' howling in real life as they finally descend upon him. Henry fights them with firebrands, burning himself in the process. But his resistance is short-lived; in the end, he sits and says to the wolves, "I guess you can come an' get me any time." He dozes off again. When he wakes, the wolves have gone and a rescue party has found him. Broken and spent, Henry is carried away, and the wolves seek other meat.

. In this chapter, London increases readers' suspense by depicting the increasingly bold behavior of the wolves. He connects this suspense to his theme of survival with such characterization statements as, " looking upon with a possessive eye, as if, in truth, he were merely a delayed meal that was soon to be eaten." Henry also experiences a shift of perception in this chapter: believing his death by the wolf pack to be imminent, he gains a new appreciation of himself as a physical creature: "like a blow the realization would strike him that this wonderful body of his, this living flesh, was no more than so much meat." Such moments serve to "equalize" man and beast in London's conception of the Wild: it is a place where all life is equal, both in its vulnerability and in its will to survive. Some life will demonstrate enough will; other life will not. advertisement London's "Wild" thus very much shows the influence of Darwinian thought, with its emphasis upon "the survival of the fittest." This chapter's portrayal of Henry exposes how ill-suited human beings are, by nature, to the Wild. They survive only to the degree to which they adapt, but London could be suggesting that such adaptation is only temporary at best. By the end of the chapter, the Wild has broken Henry's will completely. His last-minute rescue is entirely fortuitous, and is not the result of his survival tactics. Even though Henry survives, the Wild, thematically speaking, has conquered him.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_4_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 2.chapter 1

part 2, chapter 1 the battle of the fangs

{"name": "II.1 The Battle of the Fangs", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-battle-of-the-fangs", "summary": "The chapter's title refers to the conflict among three male wolves in the pack-a gaunt old leader wolf ; a younger, large gray wolf, also a leader; and a three-year-old-who \"court\" the she-wolf, competing for her as a mate. Procreation is, of course, survival of the species, and so the interplay among these four wolves takes on great import against the background of the relentlessly life-challenging Wild. The wolves can only pay attention to mating, however, once the need for food has been met. The downing of a bull moose affords meat and continued life for the pack, and then the \"courtship\" begins in earnest. The three-year-old falls first, a victim of the young leading wolf's fangs; in his carelessness after that battle, however, the younger wolf falls prey to One Eye, who proceeds to become the she-wolf's mate. As the days pass, the she-wolf becomes restless, searching for a safe place to deliver her litter. One night, One Eye and the she-wolf come near an Indian camp. The she-wolf responds instinctively, feeling a desire to draw closer to the fire and the people. Clearly, she has not forgotten that she was once tamed, to some degree, and belonged to the world of humans. One Eye, for his part, hangs back entirely, never having been domesticated. Ultimately, the pair does not approach the camp, but moves on in search of an appropriate lair, robbing human trappers' snares for food as they do.", "analysis": ". Having looked at the quest for survival from a human perspective in Part I, London now turns to look at the same struggle from the perspective of the wild animal. Readers may profitably reflect, throughout the novel, on what lessons, if any, London may be trying to impart through the juxtaposition of these two perspectives, for they will notice much to remind humans of their own animal nature. For example, we are given occasion to think about our own obedience to the \"hierarchy of needs\" when we read, \"They might have fought , but even wooing and its rivalry waited upon the more pressing hunger-need of the pack.\" Or readers might pause to think of the human saying, \"All's fair in love and war,\" when they read that the three-year-old wolf and the younger leading wolf had often been allies, but are now divided over the she-wolf: \"Forgotten were the days they had hunted together, the game they had pulled down, the famine they had suffered. advertisement That business was a thing of the past. The business of love was at hand.\" . London introduces another kind of love into his narrative in this chapter: the love of a beast for its master. Note how the she-wolf experiences \"wistfulness\" and \"desire\" as she sees the Indian camp. The story of the she-wolf's past with humans is as unknown to readers at this point as it is to One Eye, but we are being prepared to read about the love between dog and man that will occupy much of the rest of the novel."}

It was the she-wolf who had first caught the sound of men's voices and the whining of the sled-dogs; and it was the she-wolf who was first to spring away from the cornered man in his circle of dying flame. The pack had been loath to forego the kill it had hunted down, and it lingered for several minutes, making sure of the sounds, and then it, too, sprang away on the trail made by the she-wolf. Running at the forefront of the pack was a large grey wolf--one of its several leaders. It was he who directed the pack's course on the heels of the she-wolf. It was he who snarled warningly at the younger members of the pack or slashed at them with his fangs when they ambitiously tried to pass him. And it was he who increased the pace when he sighted the she-wolf, now trotting slowly across the snow. She dropped in alongside by him, as though it were her appointed position, and took the pace of the pack. He did not snarl at her, nor show his teeth, when any leap of hers chanced to put her in advance of him. On the contrary, he seemed kindly disposed toward her--too kindly to suit her, for he was prone to run near to her, and when he ran too near it was she who snarled and showed her teeth. Nor was she above slashing his shoulder sharply on occasion. At such times he betrayed no anger. He merely sprang to the side and ran stiffly ahead for several awkward leaps, in carriage and conduct resembling an abashed country swain. This was his one trouble in the running of the pack; but she had other troubles. On her other side ran a gaunt old wolf, grizzled and marked with the scars of many battles. He ran always on her right side. The fact that he had but one eye, and that the left eye, might account for this. He, also, was addicted to crowding her, to veering toward her till his scarred muzzle touched her body, or shoulder, or neck. As with the running mate on the left, she repelled these attentions with her teeth; but when both bestowed their attentions at the same time she was roughly jostled, being compelled, with quick snaps to either side, to drive both lovers away and at the same time to maintain her forward leap with the pack and see the way of her feet before her. At such times her running mates flashed their teeth and growled threateningly across at each other. They might have fought, but even wooing and its rivalry waited upon the more pressing hunger-need of the pack. After each repulse, when the old wolf sheered abruptly away from the sharp-toothed object of his desire, he shouldered against a young three- year-old that ran on his blind right side. This young wolf had attained his full size; and, considering the weak and famished condition of the pack, he possessed more than the average vigour and spirit. Nevertheless, he ran with his head even with the shoulder of his one-eyed elder. When he ventured to run abreast of the older wolf (which was seldom), a snarl and a snap sent him back even with the shoulder again. Sometimes, however, he dropped cautiously and slowly behind and edged in between the old leader and the she-wolf. This was doubly resented, even triply resented. When she snarled her displeasure, the old leader would whirl on the three-year-old. Sometimes she whirled with him. And sometimes the young leader on the left whirled, too. At such times, confronted by three sets of savage teeth, the young wolf stopped precipitately, throwing himself back on his haunches, with fore- legs stiff, mouth menacing, and mane bristling. This confusion in the front of the moving pack always caused confusion in the rear. The wolves behind collided with the young wolf and expressed their displeasure by administering sharp nips on his hind-legs and flanks. He was laying up trouble for himself, for lack of food and short tempers went together; but with the boundless faith of youth he persisted in repeating the manoeuvre every little while, though it never succeeded in gaining anything for him but discomfiture. Had there been food, love-making and fighting would have gone on apace, and the pack-formation would have been broken up. But the situation of the pack was desperate. It was lean with long-standing hunger. It ran below its ordinary speed. At the rear limped the weak members, the very young and the very old. At the front were the strongest. Yet all were more like skeletons than full-bodied wolves. Nevertheless, with the exception of the ones that limped, the movements of the animals were effortless and tireless. Their stringy muscles seemed founts of inexhaustible energy. Behind every steel-like contraction of a muscle, lay another steel-like contraction, and another, and another, apparently without end. They ran many miles that day. They ran through the night. And the next day found them still running. They were running over the surface of a world frozen and dead. No life stirred. They alone moved through the vast inertness. They alone were alive, and they sought for other things that were alive in order that they might devour them and continue to live. They crossed low divides and ranged a dozen small streams in a lower-lying country before their quest was rewarded. Then they came upon moose. It was a big bull they first found. Here was meat and life, and it was guarded by no mysterious fires nor flying missiles of flame. Splay hoofs and palmated antlers they knew, and they flung their customary patience and caution to the wind. It was a brief fight and fierce. The big bull was beset on every side. He ripped them open or split their skulls with shrewdly driven blows of his great hoofs. He crushed them and broke them on his large horns. He stamped them into the snow under him in the wallowing struggle. But he was foredoomed, and he went down with the she-wolf tearing savagely at his throat, and with other teeth fixed everywhere upon him, devouring him alive, before ever his last struggles ceased or his last damage had been wrought. There was food in plenty. The bull weighed over eight hundred pounds--fully twenty pounds of meat per mouth for the forty-odd wolves of the pack. But if they could fast prodigiously, they could feed prodigiously, and soon a few scattered bones were all that remained of the splendid live brute that had faced the pack a few hours before. There was now much resting and sleeping. With full stomachs, bickering and quarrelling began among the younger males, and this continued through the few days that followed before the breaking-up of the pack. The famine was over. The wolves were now in the country of game, and though they still hunted in pack, they hunted more cautiously, cutting out heavy cows or crippled old bulls from the small moose-herds they ran across. There came a day, in this land of plenty, when the wolf-pack split in half and went in different directions. The she-wolf, the young leader on her left, and the one-eyed elder on her right, led their half of the pack down to the Mackenzie River and across into the lake country to the east. Each day this remnant of the pack dwindled. Two by two, male and female, the wolves were deserting. Occasionally a solitary male was driven out by the sharp teeth of his rivals. In the end there remained only four: the she-wolf, the young leader, the one-eyed one, and the ambitious three- year-old. The she-wolf had by now developed a ferocious temper. Her three suitors all bore the marks of her teeth. Yet they never replied in kind, never defended themselves against her. They turned their shoulders to her most savage slashes, and with wagging tails and mincing steps strove to placate her wrath. But if they were all mildness toward her, they were all fierceness toward one another. The three-year-old grew too ambitious in his fierceness. He caught the one-eyed elder on his blind side and ripped his ear into ribbons. Though the grizzled old fellow could see only on one side, against the youth and vigour of the other he brought into play the wisdom of long years of experience. His lost eye and his scarred muzzle bore evidence to the nature of his experience. He had survived too many battles to be in doubt for a moment about what to do. The battle began fairly, but it did not end fairly. There was no telling what the outcome would have been, for the third wolf joined the elder, and together, old leader and young leader, they attacked the ambitious three-year-old and proceeded to destroy him. He was beset on either side by the merciless fangs of his erstwhile comrades. Forgotten were the days they had hunted together, the game they had pulled down, the famine they had suffered. That business was a thing of the past. The business of love was at hand--ever a sterner and crueller business than that of food-getting. And in the meanwhile, the she-wolf, the cause of it all, sat down contentedly on her haunches and watched. She was even pleased. This was her day--and it came not often--when manes bristled, and fang smote fang or ripped and tore the yielding flesh, all for the possession of her. And in the business of love the three-year-old, who had made this his first adventure upon it, yielded up his life. On either side of his body stood his two rivals. They were gazing at the she-wolf, who sat smiling in the snow. But the elder leader was wise, very wise, in love even as in battle. The younger leader turned his head to lick a wound on his shoulder. The curve of his neck was turned toward his rival. With his one eye the elder saw the opportunity. He darted in low and closed with his fangs. It was a long, ripping slash, and deep as well. His teeth, in passing, burst the wall of the great vein of the throat. Then he leaped clear. The young leader snarled terribly, but his snarl broke midmost into a tickling cough. Bleeding and coughing, already stricken, he sprang at the elder and fought while life faded from him, his legs going weak beneath him, the light of day dulling on his eyes, his blows and springs falling shorter and shorter. And all the while the she-wolf sat on her haunches and smiled. She was made glad in vague ways by the battle, for this was the love-making of the Wild, the sex-tragedy of the natural world that was tragedy only to those that died. To those that survived it was not tragedy, but realisation and achievement. When the young leader lay in the snow and moved no more, One Eye stalked over to the she-wolf. His carriage was one of mingled triumph and caution. He was plainly expectant of a rebuff, and he was just as plainly surprised when her teeth did not flash out at him in anger. For the first time she met him with a kindly manner. She sniffed noses with him, and even condescended to leap about and frisk and play with him in quite puppyish fashion. And he, for all his grey years and sage experience, behaved quite as puppyishly and even a little more foolishly. Forgotten already were the vanquished rivals and the love-tale red-written on the snow. Forgotten, save once, when old One Eye stopped for a moment to lick his stiffening wounds. Then it was that his lips half writhed into a snarl, and the hair of his neck and shoulders involuntarily bristled, while he half crouched for a spring, his claws spasmodically clutching into the snow-surface for firmer footing. But it was all forgotten the next moment, as he sprang after the she-wolf, who was coyly leading him a chase through the woods. After that they ran side by side, like good friends who have come to an understanding. The days passed by, and they kept together, hunting their meat and killing and eating it in common. After a time the she-wolf began to grow restless. She seemed to be searching for something that she could not find. The hollows under fallen trees seemed to attract her, and she spent much time nosing about among the larger snow-piled crevices in the rocks and in the caves of overhanging banks. Old One Eye was not interested at all, but he followed her good-naturedly in her quest, and when her investigations in particular places were unusually protracted, he would lie down and wait until she was ready to go on. They did not remain in one place, but travelled across country until they regained the Mackenzie River, down which they slowly went, leaving it often to hunt game along the small streams that entered it, but always returning to it again. Sometimes they chanced upon other wolves, usually in pairs; but there was no friendliness of intercourse displayed on either side, no gladness at meeting, no desire to return to the pack-formation. Several times they encountered solitary wolves. These were always males, and they were pressingly insistent on joining with One Eye and his mate. This he resented, and when she stood shoulder to shoulder with him, bristling and showing her teeth, the aspiring solitary ones would back off, turn-tail, and continue on their lonely way. One moonlight night, running through the quiet forest, One Eye suddenly halted. His muzzle went up, his tail stiffened, and his nostrils dilated as he scented the air. One foot also he held up, after the manner of a dog. He was not satisfied, and he continued to smell the air, striving to understand the message borne upon it to him. One careless sniff had satisfied his mate, and she trotted on to reassure him. Though he followed her, he was still dubious, and he could not forbear an occasional halt in order more carefully to study the warning. She crept out cautiously on the edge of a large open space in the midst of the trees. For some time she stood alone. Then One Eye, creeping and crawling, every sense on the alert, every hair radiating infinite suspicion, joined her. They stood side by side, watching and listening and smelling. To their ears came the sounds of dogs wrangling and scuffling, the guttural cries of men, the sharper voices of scolding women, and once the shrill and plaintive cry of a child. With the exception of the huge bulks of the skin-lodges, little could be seen save the flames of the fire, broken by the movements of intervening bodies, and the smoke rising slowly on the quiet air. But to their nostrils came the myriad smells of an Indian camp, carrying a story that was largely incomprehensible to One Eye, but every detail of which the she-wolf knew. She was strangely stirred, and sniffed and sniffed with an increasing delight. But old One Eye was doubtful. He betrayed his apprehension, and started tentatively to go. She turned and touched his neck with her muzzle in a reassuring way, then regarded the camp again. A new wistfulness was in her face, but it was not the wistfulness of hunger. She was thrilling to a desire that urged her to go forward, to be in closer to that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men. One Eye moved impatiently beside her; her unrest came back upon her, and she knew again her pressing need to find the thing for which she searched. She turned and trotted back into the forest, to the great relief of One Eye, who trotted a little to the fore until they were well within the shelter of the trees. As they slid along, noiseless as shadows, in the moonlight, they came upon a run-way. Both noses went down to the footprints in the snow. These footprints were very fresh. One Eye ran ahead cautiously, his mate at his heels. The broad pads of their feet were spread wide and in contact with the snow were like velvet. One Eye caught sight of a dim movement of white in the midst of the white. His sliding gait had been deceptively swift, but it was as nothing to the speed at which he now ran. Before him was bounding the faint patch of white he had discovered. They were running along a narrow alley flanked on either side by a growth of young spruce. Through the trees the mouth of the alley could be seen, opening out on a moonlit glade. Old One Eye was rapidly overhauling the fleeing shape of white. Bound by bound he gained. Now he was upon it. One leap more and his teeth would be sinking into it. But that leap was never made. High in the air, and straight up, soared the shape of white, now a struggling snowshoe rabbit that leaped and bounded, executing a fantastic dance there above him in the air and never once returning to earth. One Eye sprang back with a snort of sudden fright, then shrank down to the snow and crouched, snarling threats at this thing of fear he did not understand. But the she-wolf coolly thrust past him. She poised for a moment, then sprang for the dancing rabbit. She, too, soared high, but not so high as the quarry, and her teeth clipped emptily together with a metallic snap. She made another leap, and another. Her mate had slowly relaxed from his crouch and was watching her. He now evinced displeasure at her repeated failures, and himself made a mighty spring upward. His teeth closed upon the rabbit, and he bore it back to earth with him. But at the same time there was a suspicious crackling movement beside him, and his astonished eye saw a young spruce sapling bending down above him to strike him. His jaws let go their grip, and he leaped backward to escape this strange danger, his lips drawn back from his fangs, his throat snarling, every hair bristling with rage and fright. And in that moment the sapling reared its slender length upright and the rabbit soared dancing in the air again. The she-wolf was angry. She sank her fangs into her mate's shoulder in reproof; and he, frightened, unaware of what constituted this new onslaught, struck back ferociously and in still greater fright, ripping down the side of the she-wolf's muzzle. For him to resent such reproof was equally unexpected to her, and she sprang upon him in snarling indignation. Then he discovered his mistake and tried to placate her. But she proceeded to punish him roundly, until he gave over all attempts at placation, and whirled in a circle, his head away from her, his shoulders receiving the punishment of her teeth. In the meantime the rabbit danced above them in the air. The she-wolf sat down in the snow, and old One Eye, now more in fear of his mate than of the mysterious sapling, again sprang for the rabbit. As he sank back with it between his teeth, he kept his eye on the sapling. As before, it followed him back to earth. He crouched down under the impending blow, his hair bristling, but his teeth still keeping tight hold of the rabbit. But the blow did not fall. The sapling remained bent above him. When he moved it moved, and he growled at it through his clenched jaws; when he remained still, it remained still, and he concluded it was safer to continue remaining still. Yet the warm blood of the rabbit tasted good in his mouth. It was his mate who relieved him from the quandary in which he found himself. She took the rabbit from him, and while the sapling swayed and teetered threateningly above her she calmly gnawed off the rabbit's head. At once the sapling shot up, and after that gave no more trouble, remaining in the decorous and perpendicular position in which nature had intended it to grow. Then, between them, the she-wolf and One Eye devoured the game which the mysterious sapling had caught for them. There were other run-ways and alleys where rabbits were hanging in the air, and the wolf-pair prospected them all, the she-wolf leading the way, old One Eye following and observant, learning the method of robbing snares--a knowledge destined to stand him in good stead in the days to come.

II.1 The Battle of the Fangs

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The chapter's title refers to the conflict among three male wolves in the pack-a gaunt old leader wolf ; a younger, large gray wolf, also a leader; and a three-year-old-who "court" the she-wolf, competing for her as a mate. Procreation is, of course, survival of the species, and so the interplay among these four wolves takes on great import against the background of the relentlessly life-challenging Wild. The wolves can only pay attention to mating, however, once the need for food has been met. The downing of a bull moose affords meat and continued life for the pack, and then the "courtship" begins in earnest. The three-year-old falls first, a victim of the young leading wolf's fangs; in his carelessness after that battle, however, the younger wolf falls prey to One Eye, who proceeds to become the she-wolf's mate. As the days pass, the she-wolf becomes restless, searching for a safe place to deliver her litter. One night, One Eye and the she-wolf come near an Indian camp. The she-wolf responds instinctively, feeling a desire to draw closer to the fire and the people. Clearly, she has not forgotten that she was once tamed, to some degree, and belonged to the world of humans. One Eye, for his part, hangs back entirely, never having been domesticated. Ultimately, the pair does not approach the camp, but moves on in search of an appropriate lair, robbing human trappers' snares for food as they do.

. Having looked at the quest for survival from a human perspective in Part I, London now turns to look at the same struggle from the perspective of the wild animal. Readers may profitably reflect, throughout the novel, on what lessons, if any, London may be trying to impart through the juxtaposition of these two perspectives, for they will notice much to remind humans of their own animal nature. For example, we are given occasion to think about our own obedience to the "hierarchy of needs" when we read, "They might have fought , but even wooing and its rivalry waited upon the more pressing hunger-need of the pack." Or readers might pause to think of the human saying, "All's fair in love and war," when they read that the three-year-old wolf and the younger leading wolf had often been allies, but are now divided over the she-wolf: "Forgotten were the days they had hunted together, the game they had pulled down, the famine they had suffered. advertisement That business was a thing of the past. The business of love was at hand." . London introduces another kind of love into his narrative in this chapter: the love of a beast for its master. Note how the she-wolf experiences "wistfulness" and "desire" as she sees the Indian camp. The story of the she-wolf's past with humans is as unknown to readers at this point as it is to One Eye, but we are being prepared to read about the love between dog and man that will occupy much of the rest of the novel.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_5_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 2.chapter 2

part 2, chapter 2 the lair

{"name": "II.2 The Lair", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-lair", "summary": "The she-wolf eventually shakes the lure of the Indian camp and moves on with One Eye. She is very close to giving birth to her litter when the pair finds a suitable cave. The she-wolf settles into the lair while One Eye instinctively goes in search of food for the soon-to-arrive pups. After his first foray, he returns with no food, but does find that the she-wolf has given birth. She is at first very protective of the pups, exercising her motherly, instinctual knowledge that the father could be a danger to the newborns. As time passes, however-and, importantly, once One Eye returns with food-she relaxes her guard.", "analysis": ". London continues to develop the theme of life's fragility, and yet at the same time its persistence, in this chapter. Note, for example, his careful attention to the chronological setting: \"Life was stirring. The feel of spring was in the air, the feel of growing life under the snow, of sap ascending in the trees, of buds bursting the shackles of the frost.\" The important role that instinct plays in this chapter also contributes to this theme's development. The text implicitly states that life persists despites its vulnerability through the mechanism of instinct. Instinct bridges that tension. For instance: \"Old One Eye was feeling the urge of an impulse, that was, in turn, an instinct that had come down to him from all the fathers of wolves. He did not question it, nor puzzle over it. It was there, in the fiber of his being; and it was the most natural thing in the world that he should obey it by turning his back on his newborn family and by trotting out and away on the meat trail whereby he lived.\" Clearly, instinct allows survival in the Wild. As readers will see later in White Fang's own experience, however, an opposite principle holds true for \"civilization,\" in which instincts must often be checked. This chapter also gives readers a glimpse of the wolves' place within the larger scheme of living things. Note that One Eye is able to kill the ptarmigan easily but is unable to kill the porcupine until after it has been wounded in its fight with the lynx. advertisement Here we see that \"survival of the fittest\" is not always the operative principle in surviving the Wild-or, perhaps, that \"the fittest\" can be defined in more than one way, for One Eye has the cunning and resourcefulness to take advantage of the lynx and porcupine's fight to his own benefit, and that of his family. The episode is an absorbing look at the hierarchy of living creatures, very different, and yet united by the common bond of life itself; as the text states when One Eye, the porcupine, and the lynx eye each other, \"ll three animals were keyed to a tenseness of living that was almost painful.\""}

For two days the she-wolf and One Eye hung about the Indian camp. He was worried and apprehensive, yet the camp lured his mate and she was loath to depart. But when, one morning, the air was rent with the report of a rifle close at hand, and a bullet smashed against a tree trunk several inches from One Eye's head, they hesitated no more, but went off on a long, swinging lope that put quick miles between them and the danger. They did not go far--a couple of days' journey. The she-wolf's need to find the thing for which she searched had now become imperative. She was getting very heavy, and could run but slowly. Once, in the pursuit of a rabbit, which she ordinarily would have caught with ease, she gave over and lay down and rested. One Eye came to her; but when he touched her neck gently with his muzzle she snapped at him with such quick fierceness that he tumbled over backward and cut a ridiculous figure in his effort to escape her teeth. Her temper was now shorter than ever; but he had become more patient than ever and more solicitous. And then she found the thing for which she sought. It was a few miles up a small stream that in the summer time flowed into the Mackenzie, but that then was frozen over and frozen down to its rocky bottom--a dead stream of solid white from source to mouth. The she-wolf was trotting wearily along, her mate well in advance, when she came upon the overhanging, high clay-bank. She turned aside and trotted over to it. The wear and tear of spring storms and melting snows had underwashed the bank and in one place had made a small cave out of a narrow fissure. She paused at the mouth of the cave and looked the wall over carefully. Then, on one side and the other, she ran along the base of the wall to where its abrupt bulk merged from the softer-lined landscape. Returning to the cave, she entered its narrow mouth. For a short three feet she was compelled to crouch, then the walls widened and rose higher in a little round chamber nearly six feet in diameter. The roof barely cleared her head. It was dry and cosey. She inspected it with painstaking care, while One Eye, who had returned, stood in the entrance and patiently watched her. She dropped her head, with her nose to the ground and directed toward a point near to her closely bunched feet, and around this point she circled several times; then, with a tired sigh that was almost a grunt, she curled her body in, relaxed her legs, and dropped down, her head toward the entrance. One Eye, with pointed, interested ears, laughed at her, and beyond, outlined against the white light, she could see the brush of his tail waving good-naturedly. Her own ears, with a snuggling movement, laid their sharp points backward and down against the head for a moment, while her mouth opened and her tongue lolled peaceably out, and in this way she expressed that she was pleased and satisfied. One Eye was hungry. Though he lay down in the entrance and slept, his sleep was fitful. He kept awaking and cocking his ears at the bright world without, where the April sun was blazing across the snow. When he dozed, upon his ears would steal the faint whispers of hidden trickles of running water, and he would rouse and listen intently. The sun had come back, and all the awakening Northland world was calling to him. Life was stirring. The feel of spring was in the air, the feel of growing life under the snow, of sap ascending in the trees, of buds bursting the shackles of the frost. He cast anxious glances at his mate, but she showed no desire to get up. He looked outside, and half a dozen snow-birds fluttered across his field of vision. He started to get up, then looked back to his mate again, and settled down and dozed. A shrill and minute singing stole upon his hearing. Once, and twice, he sleepily brushed his nose with his paw. Then he woke up. There, buzzing in the air at the tip of his nose, was a lone mosquito. It was a full-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen in a dry log all winter and that had now been thawed out by the sun. He could resist the call of the world no longer. Besides, he was hungry. He crawled over to his mate and tried to persuade her to get up. But she only snarled at him, and he walked out alone into the bright sunshine to find the snow-surface soft under foot and the travelling difficult. He went up the frozen bed of the stream, where the snow, shaded by the trees, was yet hard and crystalline. He was gone eight hours, and he came back through the darkness hungrier than when he had started. He had found game, but he had not caught it. He had broken through the melting snow crust, and wallowed, while the snowshoe rabbits had skimmed along on top lightly as ever. He paused at the mouth of the cave with a sudden shock of suspicion. Faint, strange sounds came from within. They were sounds not made by his mate, and yet they were remotely familiar. He bellied cautiously inside and was met by a warning snarl from the she-wolf. This he received without perturbation, though he obeyed it by keeping his distance; but he remained interested in the other sounds--faint, muffled sobbings and slubberings. His mate warned him irritably away, and he curled up and slept in the entrance. When morning came and a dim light pervaded the lair, he again sought after the source of the remotely familiar sounds. There was a new note in his mate's warning snarl. It was a jealous note, and he was very careful in keeping a respectful distance. Nevertheless, he made out, sheltering between her legs against the length of her body, five strange little bundles of life, very feeble, very helpless, making tiny whimpering noises, with eyes that did not open to the light. He was surprised. It was not the first time in his long and successful life that this thing had happened. It had happened many times, yet each time it was as fresh a surprise as ever to him. His mate looked at him anxiously. Every little while she emitted a low growl, and at times, when it seemed to her he approached too near, the growl shot up in her throat to a sharp snarl. Of her own experience she had no memory of the thing happening; but in her instinct, which was the experience of all the mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers that had eaten their new-born and helpless progeny. It manifested itself as a fear strong within her, that made her prevent One Eye from more closely inspecting the cubs he had fathered. But there was no danger. Old One Eye was feeling the urge of an impulse, that was, in turn, an instinct that had come down to him from all the fathers of wolves. He did not question it, nor puzzle over it. It was there, in the fibre of his being; and it was the most natural thing in the world that he should obey it by turning his back on his new-born family and by trotting out and away on the meat-trail whereby he lived. Five or six miles from the lair, the stream divided, its forks going off among the mountains at a right angle. Here, leading up the left fork, he came upon a fresh track. He smelled it and found it so recent that he crouched swiftly, and looked in the direction in which it disappeared. Then he turned deliberately and took the right fork. The footprint was much larger than the one his own feet made, and he knew that in the wake of such a trail there was little meat for him. Half a mile up the right fork, his quick ears caught the sound of gnawing teeth. He stalked the quarry and found it to be a porcupine, standing upright against a tree and trying his teeth on the bark. One Eye approached carefully but hopelessly. He knew the breed, though he had never met it so far north before; and never in his long life had porcupine served him for a meal. But he had long since learned that there was such a thing as Chance, or Opportunity, and he continued to draw near. There was never any telling what might happen, for with live things events were somehow always happening differently. The porcupine rolled itself into a ball, radiating long, sharp needles in all directions that defied attack. In his youth One Eye had once sniffed too near a similar, apparently inert ball of quills, and had the tail flick out suddenly in his face. One quill he had carried away in his muzzle, where it had remained for weeks, a rankling flame, until it finally worked out. So he lay down, in a comfortable crouching position, his nose fully a foot away, and out of the line of the tail. Thus he waited, keeping perfectly quiet. There was no telling. Something might happen. The porcupine might unroll. There might be opportunity for a deft and ripping thrust of paw into the tender, unguarded belly. But at the end of half an hour he arose, growled wrathfully at the motionless ball, and trotted on. He had waited too often and futilely in the past for porcupines to unroll, to waste any more time. He continued up the right fork. The day wore along, and nothing rewarded his hunt. The urge of his awakened instinct of fatherhood was strong upon him. He must find meat. In the afternoon he blundered upon a ptarmigan. He came out of a thicket and found himself face to face with the slow-witted bird. It was sitting on a log, not a foot beyond the end of his nose. Each saw the other. The bird made a startled rise, but he struck it with his paw, and smashed it down to earth, then pounced upon it, and caught it in his teeth as it scuttled across the snow trying to rise in the air again. As his teeth crunched through the tender flesh and fragile bones, he began naturally to eat. Then he remembered, and, turning on the back- track, started for home, carrying the ptarmigan in his mouth. A mile above the forks, running velvet-footed as was his custom, a gliding shadow that cautiously prospected each new vista of the trail, he came upon later imprints of the large tracks he had discovered in the early morning. As the track led his way, he followed, prepared to meet the maker of it at every turn of the stream. He slid his head around a corner of rock, where began an unusually large bend in the stream, and his quick eyes made out something that sent him crouching swiftly down. It was the maker of the track, a large female lynx. She was crouching as he had crouched once that day, in front of her the tight-rolled ball of quills. If he had been a gliding shadow before, he now became the ghost of such a shadow, as he crept and circled around, and came up well to leeward of the silent, motionless pair. He lay down in the snow, depositing the ptarmigan beside him, and with eyes peering through the needles of a low-growing spruce he watched the play of life before him--the waiting lynx and the waiting porcupine, each intent on life; and, such was the curiousness of the game, the way of life for one lay in the eating of the other, and the way of life for the other lay in being not eaten. While old One Eye, the wolf crouching in the covert, played his part, too, in the game, waiting for some strange freak of Chance, that might help him on the meat-trail which was his way of life. Half an hour passed, an hour; and nothing happened. The ball of quills might have been a stone for all it moved; the lynx might have been frozen to marble; and old One Eye might have been dead. Yet all three animals were keyed to a tenseness of living that was almost painful, and scarcely ever would it come to them to be more alive than they were then in their seeming petrifaction. One Eye moved slightly and peered forth with increased eagerness. Something was happening. The porcupine had at last decided that its enemy had gone away. Slowly, cautiously, it was unrolling its ball of impregnable armour. It was agitated by no tremor of anticipation. Slowly, slowly, the bristling ball straightened out and lengthened. One Eye watching, felt a sudden moistness in his mouth and a drooling of saliva, involuntary, excited by the living meat that was spreading itself like a repast before him. Not quite entirely had the porcupine unrolled when it discovered its enemy. In that instant the lynx struck. The blow was like a flash of light. The paw, with rigid claws curving like talons, shot under the tender belly and came back with a swift ripping movement. Had the porcupine been entirely unrolled, or had it not discovered its enemy a fraction of a second before the blow was struck, the paw would have escaped unscathed; but a side-flick of the tail sank sharp quills into it as it was withdrawn. Everything had happened at once--the blow, the counter-blow, the squeal of agony from the porcupine, the big cat's squall of sudden hurt and astonishment. One Eye half arose in his excitement, his ears up, his tail straight out and quivering behind him. The lynx's bad temper got the best of her. She sprang savagely at the thing that had hurt her. But the porcupine, squealing and grunting, with disrupted anatomy trying feebly to roll up into its ball-protection, flicked out its tail again, and again the big cat squalled with hurt and astonishment. Then she fell to backing away and sneezing, her nose bristling with quills like a monstrous pin-cushion. She brushed her nose with her paws, trying to dislodge the fiery darts, thrust it into the snow, and rubbed it against twigs and branches, and all the time leaping about, ahead, sidewise, up and down, in a frenzy of pain and fright. She sneezed continually, and her stub of a tail was doing its best toward lashing about by giving quick, violent jerks. She quit her antics, and quieted down for a long minute. One Eye watched. And even he could not repress a start and an involuntary bristling of hair along his back when she suddenly leaped, without warning, straight up in the air, at the same time emitting a long and most terrible squall. Then she sprang away, up the trail, squalling with every leap she made. It was not until her racket had faded away in the distance and died out that One Eye ventured forth. He walked as delicately as though all the snow were carpeted with porcupine quills, erect and ready to pierce the soft pads of his feet. The porcupine met his approach with a furious squealing and a clashing of its long teeth. It had managed to roll up in a ball again, but it was not quite the old compact ball; its muscles were too much torn for that. It had been ripped almost in half, and was still bleeding profusely. One Eye scooped out mouthfuls of the blood-soaked snow, and chewed and tasted and swallowed. This served as a relish, and his hunger increased mightily; but he was too old in the world to forget his caution. He waited. He lay down and waited, while the porcupine grated its teeth and uttered grunts and sobs and occasional sharp little squeals. In a little while, One Eye noticed that the quills were drooping and that a great quivering had set up. The quivering came to an end suddenly. There was a final defiant clash of the long teeth. Then all the quills drooped quite down, and the body relaxed and moved no more. With a nervous, shrinking paw, One Eye stretched out the porcupine to its full length and turned it over on its back. Nothing had happened. It was surely dead. He studied it intently for a moment, then took a careful grip with his teeth and started off down the stream, partly carrying, partly dragging the porcupine, with head turned to the side so as to avoid stepping on the prickly mass. He recollected something, dropped the burden, and trotted back to where he had left the ptarmigan. He did not hesitate a moment. He knew clearly what was to be done, and this he did by promptly eating the ptarmigan. Then he returned and took up his burden. When he dragged the result of his day's hunt into the cave, the she-wolf inspected it, turned her muzzle to him, and lightly licked him on the neck. But the next instant she was warning him away from the cubs with a snarl that was less harsh than usual and that was more apologetic than menacing. Her instinctive fear of the father of her progeny was toning down. He was behaving as a wolf-father should, and manifesting no unholy desire to devour the young lives she had brought into the world.

II.2 The Lair

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-lair

The she-wolf eventually shakes the lure of the Indian camp and moves on with One Eye. She is very close to giving birth to her litter when the pair finds a suitable cave. The she-wolf settles into the lair while One Eye instinctively goes in search of food for the soon-to-arrive pups. After his first foray, he returns with no food, but does find that the she-wolf has given birth. She is at first very protective of the pups, exercising her motherly, instinctual knowledge that the father could be a danger to the newborns. As time passes, however-and, importantly, once One Eye returns with food-she relaxes her guard.

. London continues to develop the theme of life's fragility, and yet at the same time its persistence, in this chapter. Note, for example, his careful attention to the chronological setting: "Life was stirring. The feel of spring was in the air, the feel of growing life under the snow, of sap ascending in the trees, of buds bursting the shackles of the frost." The important role that instinct plays in this chapter also contributes to this theme's development. The text implicitly states that life persists despites its vulnerability through the mechanism of instinct. Instinct bridges that tension. For instance: "Old One Eye was feeling the urge of an impulse, that was, in turn, an instinct that had come down to him from all the fathers of wolves. He did not question it, nor puzzle over it. It was there, in the fiber of his being; and it was the most natural thing in the world that he should obey it by turning his back on his newborn family and by trotting out and away on the meat trail whereby he lived." Clearly, instinct allows survival in the Wild. As readers will see later in White Fang's own experience, however, an opposite principle holds true for "civilization," in which instincts must often be checked. This chapter also gives readers a glimpse of the wolves' place within the larger scheme of living things. Note that One Eye is able to kill the ptarmigan easily but is unable to kill the porcupine until after it has been wounded in its fight with the lynx. advertisement Here we see that "survival of the fittest" is not always the operative principle in surviving the Wild-or, perhaps, that "the fittest" can be defined in more than one way, for One Eye has the cunning and resourcefulness to take advantage of the lynx and porcupine's fight to his own benefit, and that of his family. The episode is an absorbing look at the hierarchy of living creatures, very different, and yet united by the common bond of life itself; as the text states when One Eye, the porcupine, and the lynx eye each other, "ll three animals were keyed to a tenseness of living that was almost painful."

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_6_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 2.chapter 3

part 2, chapter 3 the gray cub

{"name": "II.3 The Gray Cub", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-gray-cub", "summary": "The only gray cub, and the fiercest member of the she-wolf's litter, demonstrates a special awareness and aptitude for survival early on. He discovers that one wall of the cave opens to the outside world. All the cubs are drawn toward the light, but the she-wolf keeps them away from the \"wall of light\" first with her nose, then with her paw. \" Thus learned hurt.\" Eventually, however, as hunger takes hold, even his attempts to gain the wall of light cease: \"The cubs slept, while the life that was in them flickered and died down. \" Desperate to feed their offspring, One Eye and the she-wolf spend a great deal of time outside the lair in search of food. As the famine wears on, only the gray cub survives. One Eye eventually stops returning to the lair; the she-wolf discovers One Eye's remains at the end of a certain trail, the physical evidence of a battle One Eye lost against the lynx.", "analysis": ". Only now, after five chapters, does London introduce his readers to the novel's title character, the as-yet unnamed White Fang. Alone among the litter, White Fang discovers the liminal nature-that is, the threshold or \"in between\" quality-of the cave entrance, that \"wall of light\" beyond which he will soon venture. This discovery can be taken as a symbol of White Fang's destiny to be a liminal creature himself, long on the threshold or straddling the border between the Wild and the world of men, feeling the impulses toward domesticity and wildness warring even within his own nature. Further, the \"wall of light\" symbolizes the striving White Fang will undergo: the constant striving to survive-\"He was always striving to attain it. The life that was within him urged him continually toward the wall of light.\" advertisement Also of note in this chapter is the way in which London further highlights the bonds that are common to all life. The she-wolf understands-again, it would seem, instinctively-that the lynx who killed her mate has her own kittens for which to provide. \"he Wild is the Wild,\" the narrator concludes as if on the she-wolf's behalf, \"and motherhood is motherhood, at all times fiercely protective whether in the Wild or out of it.\" London thus not only emphasizes the common elements among wild creatures but the experience of motherhood that unites those \"beasts\" with supposedly \"civilized\" humanity."}

He was different from his brothers and sisters. Their hair already betrayed the reddish hue inherited from their mother, the she-wolf; while he alone, in this particular, took after his father. He was the one little grey cub of the litter. He had bred true to the straight wolf- stock--in fact, he had bred true to old One Eye himself, physically, with but a single exception, and that was he had two eyes to his father's one. The grey cub's eyes had not been open long, yet already he could see with steady clearness. And while his eyes were still closed, he had felt, tasted, and smelled. He knew his two brothers and his two sisters very well. He had begun to romp with them in a feeble, awkward way, and even to squabble, his little throat vibrating with a queer rasping noise (the forerunner of the growl), as he worked himself into a passion. And long before his eyes had opened he had learned by touch, taste, and smell to know his mother--a fount of warmth and liquid food and tenderness. She possessed a gentle, caressing tongue that soothed him when it passed over his soft little body, and that impelled him to snuggle close against her and to doze off to sleep. Most of the first month of his life had been passed thus in sleeping; but now he could see quite well, and he stayed awake for longer periods of time, and he was coming to learn his world quite well. His world was gloomy; but he did not know that, for he knew no other world. It was dim- lighted; but his eyes had never had to adjust themselves to any other light. His world was very small. Its limits were the walls of the lair; but as he had no knowledge of the wide world outside, he was never oppressed by the narrow confines of his existence. But he had early discovered that one wall of his world was different from the rest. This was the mouth of the cave and the source of light. He had discovered that it was different from the other walls long before he had any thoughts of his own, any conscious volitions. It had been an irresistible attraction before ever his eyes opened and looked upon it. The light from it had beat upon his sealed lids, and the eyes and the optic nerves had pulsated to little, sparklike flashes, warm-coloured and strangely pleasing. The life of his body, and of every fibre of his body, the life that was the very substance of his body and that was apart from his own personal life, had yearned toward this light and urged his body toward it in the same way that the cunning chemistry of a plant urges it toward the sun. Always, in the beginning, before his conscious life dawned, he had crawled toward the mouth of the cave. And in this his brothers and sisters were one with him. Never, in that period, did any of them crawl toward the dark corners of the back-wall. The light drew them as if they were plants; the chemistry of the life that composed them demanded the light as a necessity of being; and their little puppet-bodies crawled blindly and chemically, like the tendrils of a vine. Later on, when each developed individuality and became personally conscious of impulsions and desires, the attraction of the light increased. They were always crawling and sprawling toward it, and being driven back from it by their mother. It was in this way that the grey cub learned other attributes of his mother than the soft, soothing tongue. In his insistent crawling toward the light, he discovered in her a nose that with a sharp nudge administered rebuke, and later, a paw, that crushed him down and rolled him over and over with swift, calculating stroke. Thus he learned hurt; and on top of it he learned to avoid hurt, first, by not incurring the risk of it; and second, when he had incurred the risk, by dodging and by retreating. These were conscious actions, and were the results of his first generalisations upon the world. Before that he had recoiled automatically from hurt, as he had crawled automatically toward the light. After that he recoiled from hurt because he _knew_ that it was hurt. He was a fierce little cub. So were his brothers and sisters. It was to be expected. He was a carnivorous animal. He came of a breed of meat- killers and meat-eaters. His father and mother lived wholly upon meat. The milk he had sucked with his first flickering life, was milk transformed directly from meat, and now, at a month old, when his eyes had been open for but a week, he was beginning himself to eat meat--meat half-digested by the she-wolf and disgorged for the five growing cubs that already made too great demand upon her breast. But he was, further, the fiercest of the litter. He could make a louder rasping growl than any of them. His tiny rages were much more terrible than theirs. It was he that first learned the trick of rolling a fellow- cub over with a cunning paw-stroke. And it was he that first gripped another cub by the ear and pulled and tugged and growled through jaws tight-clenched. And certainly it was he that caused the mother the most trouble in keeping her litter from the mouth of the cave. The fascination of the light for the grey cub increased from day to day. He was perpetually departing on yard-long adventures toward the cave's entrance, and as perpetually being driven back. Only he did not know it for an entrance. He did not know anything about entrances--passages whereby one goes from one place to another place. He did not know any other place, much less of a way to get there. So to him the entrance of the cave was a wall--a wall of light. As the sun was to the outside dweller, this wall was to him the sun of his world. It attracted him as a candle attracts a moth. He was always striving to attain it. The life that was so swiftly expanding within him, urged him continually toward the wall of light. The life that was within him knew that it was the one way out, the way he was predestined to tread. But he himself did not know anything about it. He did not know there was any outside at all. There was one strange thing about this wall of light. His father (he had already come to recognise his father as the one other dweller in the world, a creature like his mother, who slept near the light and was a bringer of meat)--his father had a way of walking right into the white far wall and disappearing. The grey cub could not understand this. Though never permitted by his mother to approach that wall, he had approached the other walls, and encountered hard obstruction on the end of his tender nose. This hurt. And after several such adventures, he left the walls alone. Without thinking about it, he accepted this disappearing into the wall as a peculiarity of his father, as milk and half-digested meat were peculiarities of his mother. In fact, the grey cub was not given to thinking--at least, to the kind of thinking customary of men. His brain worked in dim ways. Yet his conclusions were as sharp and distinct as those achieved by men. He had a method of accepting things, without questioning the why and wherefore. In reality, this was the act of classification. He was never disturbed over why a thing happened. How it happened was sufficient for him. Thus, when he had bumped his nose on the back-wall a few times, he accepted that he would not disappear into walls. In the same way he accepted that his father could disappear into walls. But he was not in the least disturbed by desire to find out the reason for the difference between his father and himself. Logic and physics were no part of his mental make- up. Like most creatures of the Wild, he early experienced famine. There came a time when not only did the meat-supply cease, but the milk no longer came from his mother's breast. At first, the cubs whimpered and cried, but for the most part they slept. It was not long before they were reduced to a coma of hunger. There were no more spats and squabbles, no more tiny rages nor attempts at growling; while the adventures toward the far white wall ceased altogether. The cubs slept, while the life that was in them flickered and died down. One Eye was desperate. He ranged far and wide, and slept but little in the lair that had now become cheerless and miserable. The she-wolf, too, left her litter and went out in search of meat. In the first days after the birth of the cubs, One Eye had journeyed several times back to the Indian camp and robbed the rabbit snares; but, with the melting of the snow and the opening of the streams, the Indian camp had moved away, and that source of supply was closed to him. When the grey cub came back to life and again took interest in the far white wall, he found that the population of his world had been reduced. Only one sister remained to him. The rest were gone. As he grew stronger, he found himself compelled to play alone, for the sister no longer lifted her head nor moved about. His little body rounded out with the meat he now ate; but the food had come too late for her. She slept continuously, a tiny skeleton flung round with skin in which the flame flickered lower and lower and at last went out. Then there came a time when the grey cub no longer saw his father appearing and disappearing in the wall nor lying down asleep in the entrance. This had happened at the end of a second and less severe famine. The she-wolf knew why One Eye never came back, but there was no way by which she could tell what she had seen to the grey cub. Hunting herself for meat, up the left fork of the stream where lived the lynx, she had followed a day-old trail of One Eye. And she had found him, or what remained of him, at the end of the trail. There were many signs of the battle that had been fought, and of the lynx's withdrawal to her lair after having won the victory. Before she went away, the she-wolf had found this lair, but the signs told her that the lynx was inside, and she had not dared to venture in. After that, the she-wolf in her hunting avoided the left fork. For she knew that in the lynx's lair was a litter of kittens, and she knew the lynx for a fierce, bad-tempered creature and a terrible fighter. It was all very well for half a dozen wolves to drive a lynx, spitting and bristling, up a tree; but it was quite a different matter for a lone wolf to encounter a lynx--especially when the lynx was known to have a litter of hungry kittens at her back. But the Wild is the Wild, and motherhood is motherhood, at all times fiercely protective whether in the Wild or out of it; and the time was to come when the she-wolf, for her grey cub's sake, would venture the left fork, and the lair in the rocks, and the lynx's wrath.

II.3 The Gray Cub

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-gray-cub

The only gray cub, and the fiercest member of the she-wolf's litter, demonstrates a special awareness and aptitude for survival early on. He discovers that one wall of the cave opens to the outside world. All the cubs are drawn toward the light, but the she-wolf keeps them away from the "wall of light" first with her nose, then with her paw. " Thus learned hurt." Eventually, however, as hunger takes hold, even his attempts to gain the wall of light cease: "The cubs slept, while the life that was in them flickered and died down. " Desperate to feed their offspring, One Eye and the she-wolf spend a great deal of time outside the lair in search of food. As the famine wears on, only the gray cub survives. One Eye eventually stops returning to the lair; the she-wolf discovers One Eye's remains at the end of a certain trail, the physical evidence of a battle One Eye lost against the lynx.

. Only now, after five chapters, does London introduce his readers to the novel's title character, the as-yet unnamed White Fang. Alone among the litter, White Fang discovers the liminal nature-that is, the threshold or "in between" quality-of the cave entrance, that "wall of light" beyond which he will soon venture. This discovery can be taken as a symbol of White Fang's destiny to be a liminal creature himself, long on the threshold or straddling the border between the Wild and the world of men, feeling the impulses toward domesticity and wildness warring even within his own nature. Further, the "wall of light" symbolizes the striving White Fang will undergo: the constant striving to survive-"He was always striving to attain it. The life that was within him urged him continually toward the wall of light." advertisement Also of note in this chapter is the way in which London further highlights the bonds that are common to all life. The she-wolf understands-again, it would seem, instinctively-that the lynx who killed her mate has her own kittens for which to provide. "he Wild is the Wild," the narrator concludes as if on the she-wolf's behalf, "and motherhood is motherhood, at all times fiercely protective whether in the Wild or out of it." London thus not only emphasizes the common elements among wild creatures but the experience of motherhood that unites those "beasts" with supposedly "civilized" humanity.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/07.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_7_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 2.chapter 4

part 2, chapter 4 the wall of the world

{"name": "II.4 The Wall of the World", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-wall-of-the-world", "summary": "The gray cub , makes his initial, confusing yet invigorating foray beyond the \"wall of light\" into the world outside the lair. He adjusts, falteringly, to new terrain and to new animals, and comes to make a basic division of all things in the world between living and non-living. He even stumbles across a poorly hidden ptarmigan nest and makes his first kill. Before he can make his way back to the lair, however, he encounters a young weasel. He is attacked by the weasel's mother, and is rescued, just in time, by his own.", "analysis": ". White Fang's passing out of the lair illustrates the dynamic interplay of instincts that animates life: \"Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on.\" This chapter functions in some ways as a classic, archetypal initiation. White Fang experiences a summons to adventure: the instinctive draw of the light established in the previous chapter, the attraction all life feels toward light. He undergoes a separation from the world he has always known: the lair. He experiences change and gains new knowledge: \"he cub was learning. There were live things and things not alive.\" He even undergoes what might be classified a \"baptism\": White Fang steps into the stream and almost drowns. \"The water rushed into his lungs. To him it signified death. He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open mouth.\" White Fang thus experiences a truly mythic, even \"heroic\" initiation: he \"dies\" and is \"reborn,\" he transitions, true to his liminal nature, from one world to another. And he returns to the old world with a \"boon,\" the gift of a new understanding of life: for instance, he has learned not to trust in appearances. \"He would have to learn the reality of a thing before he could put his faith in it.\" This lesson, in particular, will serve White Fang well in his dealings with human beings throughout the rest of the novel. This chapter also returns to the question of whether life is futile, even in the Wild. Note that the narrator tells us that, in killing the ptarmigan, White Fang is realizing his own purpose, his own reason for existence, and is therefore \"justifying his existence.\" Readers may wonder if London intends for his readers to ask how they do or may justify their own existence-i.e., for what do they strive, or for what purpose have they been \"equipped\"? The novel is on one level about wolves; however, on a deeper level, as is all literature, it is about humanity, as the presence of such existential concerns in the chapter demonstrates. advertisement The narrator's statement, \"Fear!-that legacy of the Wild which no animal may escape nor exchange for pottage,\" is an allusion to Genesis 25:29-34, in which Esau sells his birthright to his brother Jacob in exchange for lentil stew . Readers will see that fear, in various forms, plays a large part in the narrative that is to come, and should note its occurrence as the story continues."}

By the time his mother began leaving the cave on hunting expeditions, the cub had learned well the law that forbade his approaching the entrance. Not only had this law been forcibly and many times impressed on him by his mother's nose and paw, but in him the instinct of fear was developing. Never, in his brief cave-life, had he encountered anything of which to be afraid. Yet fear was in him. It had come down to him from a remote ancestry through a thousand thousand lives. It was a heritage he had received directly from One Eye and the she-wolf; but to them, in turn, it had been passed down through all the generations of wolves that had gone before. Fear!--that legacy of the Wild which no animal may escape nor exchange for pottage. So the grey cub knew fear, though he knew not the stuff of which fear was made. Possibly he accepted it as one of the restrictions of life. For he had already learned that there were such restrictions. Hunger he had known; and when he could not appease his hunger he had felt restriction. The hard obstruction of the cave-wall, the sharp nudge of his mother's nose, the smashing stroke of her paw, the hunger unappeased of several famines, had borne in upon him that all was not freedom in the world, that to life there were limitations and restraints. These limitations and restraints were laws. To be obedient to them was to escape hurt and make for happiness. He did not reason the question out in this man fashion. He merely classified the things that hurt and the things that did not hurt. And after such classification he avoided the things that hurt, the restrictions and restraints, in order to enjoy the satisfactions and the remunerations of life. Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother, and in obedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear, he kept away from the mouth of the cave. It remained to him a white wall of light. When his mother was absent, he slept most of the time, while during the intervals that he was awake he kept very quiet, suppressing the whimpering cries that tickled in his throat and strove for noise. Once, lying awake, he heard a strange sound in the white wall. He did not know that it was a wolverine, standing outside, all a-trembling with its own daring, and cautiously scenting out the contents of the cave. The cub knew only that the sniff was strange, a something unclassified, therefore unknown and terrible--for the unknown was one of the chief elements that went into the making of fear. The hair bristled upon the grey cub's back, but it bristled silently. How was he to know that this thing that sniffed was a thing at which to bristle? It was not born of any knowledge of his, yet it was the visible expression of the fear that was in him, and for which, in his own life, there was no accounting. But fear was accompanied by another instinct--that of concealment. The cub was in a frenzy of terror, yet he lay without movement or sound, frozen, petrified into immobility, to all appearances dead. His mother, coming home, growled as she smelt the wolverine's track, and bounded into the cave and licked and nozzled him with undue vehemence of affection. And the cub felt that somehow he had escaped a great hurt. But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which was growth. Instinct and law demanded of him obedience. But growth demanded disobedience. His mother and fear impelled him to keep away from the white wall. Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for light. So there was no damming up the tide of life that was rising within him--rising with every mouthful of meat he swallowed, with every breath he drew. In the end, one day, fear and obedience were swept away by the rush of life, and the cub straddled and sprawled toward the entrance. Unlike any other wall with which he had had experience, this wall seemed to recede from him as he approached. No hard surface collided with the tender little nose he thrust out tentatively before him. The substance of the wall seemed as permeable and yielding as light. And as condition, in his eyes, had the seeming of form, so he entered into what had been wall to him and bathed in the substance that composed it. It was bewildering. He was sprawling through solidity. And ever the light grew brighter. Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on. Suddenly he found himself at the mouth of the cave. The wall, inside which he had thought himself, as suddenly leaped back before him to an immeasurable distance. The light had become painfully bright. He was dazzled by it. Likewise he was made dizzy by this abrupt and tremendous extension of space. Automatically, his eyes were adjusting themselves to the brightness, focusing themselves to meet the increased distance of objects. At first, the wall had leaped beyond his vision. He now saw it again; but it had taken upon itself a remarkable remoteness. Also, its appearance had changed. It was now a variegated wall, composed of the trees that fringed the stream, the opposing mountain that towered above the trees, and the sky that out-towered the mountain. A great fear came upon him. This was more of the terrible unknown. He crouched down on the lip of the cave and gazed out on the world. He was very much afraid. Because it was unknown, it was hostile to him. Therefore the hair stood up on end along his back and his lips wrinkled weakly in an attempt at a ferocious and intimidating snarl. Out of his puniness and fright he challenged and menaced the whole wide world. Nothing happened. He continued to gaze, and in his interest he forgot to snarl. Also, he forgot to be afraid. For the time, fear had been routed by growth, while growth had assumed the guise of curiosity. He began to notice near objects--an open portion of the stream that flashed in the sun, the blasted pine-tree that stood at the base of the slope, and the slope itself, that ran right up to him and ceased two feet beneath the lip of the cave on which he crouched. Now the grey cub had lived all his days on a level floor. He had never experienced the hurt of a fall. He did not know what a fall was. So he stepped boldly out upon the air. His hind-legs still rested on the cave- lip, so he fell forward head downward. The earth struck him a harsh blow on the nose that made him yelp. Then he began rolling down the slope, over and over. He was in a panic of terror. The unknown had caught him at last. It had gripped savagely hold of him and was about to wreak upon him some terrific hurt. Growth was now routed by fear, and he ki-yi'd like any frightened puppy. The unknown bore him on he knew not to what frightful hurt, and he yelped and ki-yi'd unceasingly. This was a different proposition from crouching in frozen fear while the unknown lurked just alongside. Now the unknown had caught tight hold of him. Silence would do no good. Besides, it was not fear, but terror, that convulsed him. But the slope grew more gradual, and its base was grass-covered. Here the cub lost momentum. When at last he came to a stop, he gave one last agonised yell and then a long, whimpering wail. Also, and quite as a matter of course, as though in his life he had already made a thousand toilets, he proceeded to lick away the dry clay that soiled him. After that he sat up and gazed about him, as might the first man of the earth who landed upon Mars. The cub had broken through the wall of the world, the unknown had let go its hold of him, and here he was without hurt. But the first man on Mars would have experienced less unfamiliarity than did he. Without any antecedent knowledge, without any warning whatever that such existed, he found himself an explorer in a totally new world. Now that the terrible unknown had let go of him, he forgot that the unknown had any terrors. He was aware only of curiosity in all the things about him. He inspected the grass beneath him, the moss-berry plant just beyond, and the dead trunk of the blasted pine that stood on the edge of an open space among the trees. A squirrel, running around the base of the trunk, came full upon him, and gave him a great fright. He cowered down and snarled. But the squirrel was as badly scared. It ran up the tree, and from a point of safety chattered back savagely. This helped the cub's courage, and though the woodpecker he next encountered gave him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way. Such was his confidence, that when a moose-bird impudently hopped up to him, he reached out at it with a playful paw. The result was a sharp peck on the end of his nose that made him cower down and ki-yi. The noise he made was too much for the moose-bird, who sought safety in flight. But the cub was learning. His misty little mind had already made an unconscious classification. There were live things and things not alive. Also, he must watch out for the live things. The things not alive remained always in one place, but the live things moved about, and there was no telling what they might do. The thing to expect of them was the unexpected, and for this he must be prepared. He travelled very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things. A twig that he thought a long way off, would the next instant hit him on the nose or rake along his ribs. There were inequalities of surface. Sometimes he overstepped and stubbed his nose. Quite as often he understepped and stubbed his feet. Then there were the pebbles and stones that turned under him when he trod upon them; and from them he came to know that the things not alive were not all in the same state of stable equilibrium as was his cave--also, that small things not alive were more liable than large things to fall down or turn over. But with every mishap he was learning. The longer he walked, the better he walked. He was adjusting himself. He was learning to calculate his own muscular movements, to know his physical limitations, to measure distances between objects, and between objects and himself. His was the luck of the beginner. Born to be a hunter of meat (though he did not know it), he blundered upon meat just outside his own cave-door on his first foray into the world. It was by sheer blundering that he chanced upon the shrewdly hidden ptarmigan nest. He fell into it. He had essayed to walk along the trunk of a fallen pine. The rotten bark gave way under his feet, and with a despairing yelp he pitched down the rounded crescent, smashed through the leafage and stalks of a small bush, and in the heart of the bush, on the ground, fetched up in the midst of seven ptarmigan chicks. They made noises, and at first he was frightened at them. Then he perceived that they were very little, and he became bolder. They moved. He placed his paw on one, and its movements were accelerated. This was a source of enjoyment to him. He smelled it. He picked it up in his mouth. It struggled and tickled his tongue. At the same time he was made aware of a sensation of hunger. His jaws closed together. There was a crunching of fragile bones, and warm blood ran in his mouth. The taste of it was good. This was meat, the same as his mother gave him, only it was alive between his teeth and therefore better. So he ate the ptarmigan. Nor did he stop till he had devoured the whole brood. Then he licked his chops in quite the same way his mother did, and began to crawl out of the bush. He encountered a feathered whirlwind. He was confused and blinded by the rush of it and the beat of angry wings. He hid his head between his paws and yelped. The blows increased. The mother ptarmigan was in a fury. Then he became angry. He rose up, snarling, striking out with his paws. He sank his tiny teeth into one of the wings and pulled and tugged sturdily. The ptarmigan struggled against him, showering blows upon him with her free wing. It was his first battle. He was elated. He forgot all about the unknown. He no longer was afraid of anything. He was fighting, tearing at a live thing that was striking at him. Also, this live thing was meat. The lust to kill was on him. He had just destroyed little live things. He would now destroy a big live thing. He was too busy and happy to know that he was happy. He was thrilling and exulting in ways new to him and greater to him than any he had known before. He held on to the wing and growled between his tight-clenched teeth. The ptarmigan dragged him out of the bush. When she turned and tried to drag him back into the bush's shelter, he pulled her away from it and on into the open. And all the time she was making outcry and striking with her free wing, while feathers were flying like a snow-fall. The pitch to which he was aroused was tremendous. All the fighting blood of his breed was up in him and surging through him. This was living, though he did not know it. He was realising his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made--killing meat and battling to kill it. He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do. After a time, the ptarmigan ceased her struggling. He still held her by the wing, and they lay on the ground and looked at each other. He tried to growl threateningly, ferociously. She pecked on his nose, which by now, what of previous adventures was sore. He winced but held on. She pecked him again and again. From wincing he went to whimpering. He tried to back away from her, oblivious to the fact that by his hold on her he dragged her after him. A rain of pecks fell on his ill-used nose. The flood of fight ebbed down in him, and, releasing his prey, he turned tail and scampered on across the open in inglorious retreat. He lay down to rest on the other side of the open, near the edge of the bushes, his tongue lolling out, his chest heaving and panting, his nose still hurting him and causing him to continue his whimper. But as he lay there, suddenly there came to him a feeling as of something terrible impending. The unknown with all its terrors rushed upon him, and he shrank back instinctively into the shelter of the bush. As he did so, a draught of air fanned him, and a large, winged body swept ominously and silently past. A hawk, driving down out of the blue, had barely missed him. While he lay in the bush, recovering from his fright and peering fearfully out, the mother-ptarmigan on the other side of the open space fluttered out of the ravaged nest. It was because of her loss that she paid no attention to the winged bolt of the sky. But the cub saw, and it was a warning and a lesson to him--the swift downward swoop of the hawk, the short skim of its body just above the ground, the strike of its talons in the body of the ptarmigan, the ptarmigan's squawk of agony and fright, and the hawk's rush upward into the blue, carrying the ptarmigan away with it It was a long time before the cub left its shelter. He had learned much. Live things were meat. They were good to eat. Also, live things when they were large enough, could give hurt. It was better to eat small live things like ptarmigan chicks, and to let alone large live things like ptarmigan hens. Nevertheless he felt a little prick of ambition, a sneaking desire to have another battle with that ptarmigan hen--only the hawk had carried her away. Maybe there were other ptarmigan hens. He would go and see. He came down a shelving bank to the stream. He had never seen water before. The footing looked good. There were no inequalities of surface. He stepped boldly out on it; and went down, crying with fear, into the embrace of the unknown. It was cold, and he gasped, breathing quickly. The water rushed into his lungs instead of the air that had always accompanied his act of breathing. The suffocation he experienced was like the pang of death. To him it signified death. He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything. He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open mouth. He did not go down again. Quite as though it had been a long-established custom of his he struck out with all his legs and began to swim. The near bank was a yard away; but he had come up with his back to it, and the first thing his eyes rested upon was the opposite bank, toward which he immediately began to swim. The stream was a small one, but in the pool it widened out to a score of feet. Midway in the passage, the current picked up the cub and swept him downstream. He was caught in the miniature rapid at the bottom of the pool. Here was little chance for swimming. The quiet water had become suddenly angry. Sometimes he was under, sometimes on top. At all times he was in violent motion, now being turned over or around, and again, being smashed against a rock. And with every rock he struck, he yelped. His progress was a series of yelps, from which might have been adduced the number of rocks he encountered. Below the rapid was a second pool, and here, captured by the eddy, he was gently borne to the bank, and as gently deposited on a bed of gravel. He crawled frantically clear of the water and lay down. He had learned some more about the world. Water was not alive. Yet it moved. Also, it looked as solid as the earth, but was without any solidity at all. His conclusion was that things were not always what they appeared to be. The cub's fear of the unknown was an inherited distrust, and it had now been strengthened by experience. Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust of appearances. He would have to learn the reality of a thing before he could put his faith into it. One other adventure was destined for him that day. He had recollected that there was such a thing in the world as his mother. And then there came to him a feeling that he wanted her more than all the rest of the things in the world. Not only was his body tired with the adventures it had undergone, but his little brain was equally tired. In all the days he had lived it had not worked so hard as on this one day. Furthermore, he was sleepy. So he started out to look for the cave and his mother, feeling at the same time an overwhelming rush of loneliness and helplessness. He was sprawling along between some bushes, when he heard a sharp intimidating cry. There was a flash of yellow before his eyes. He saw a weasel leaping swiftly away from him. It was a small live thing, and he had no fear. Then, before him, at his feet, he saw an extremely small live thing, only several inches long, a young weasel, that, like himself, had disobediently gone out adventuring. It tried to retreat before him. He turned it over with his paw. It made a queer, grating noise. The next moment the flash of yellow reappeared before his eyes. He heard again the intimidating cry, and at the same instant received a sharp blow on the side of the neck and felt the sharp teeth of the mother-weasel cut into his flesh. While he yelped and ki-yi'd and scrambled backward, he saw the mother- weasel leap upon her young one and disappear with it into the neighbouring thicket. The cut of her teeth in his neck still hurt, but his feelings were hurt more grievously, and he sat down and weakly whimpered. This mother-weasel was so small and so savage. He was yet to learn that for size and weight the weasel was the most ferocious, vindictive, and terrible of all the killers of the Wild. But a portion of this knowledge was quickly to be his. He was still whimpering when the mother-weasel reappeared. She did not rush him, now that her young one was safe. She approached more cautiously, and the cub had full opportunity to observe her lean, snakelike body, and her head, erect, eager, and snake-like itself. Her sharp, menacing cry sent the hair bristling along his back, and he snarled warningly at her. She came closer and closer. There was a leap, swifter than his unpractised sight, and the lean, yellow body disappeared for a moment out of the field of his vision. The next moment she was at his throat, her teeth buried in his hair and flesh. At first he snarled and tried to fight; but he was very young, and this was only his first day in the world, and his snarl became a whimper, his fight a struggle to escape. The weasel never relaxed her hold. She hung on, striving to press down with her teeth to the great vein where his life-blood bubbled. The weasel was a drinker of blood, and it was ever her preference to drink from the throat of life itself. The grey cub would have died, and there would have been no story to write about him, had not the she-wolf come bounding through the bushes. The weasel let go the cub and flashed at the she-wolf's throat, missing, but getting a hold on the jaw instead. The she-wolf flirted her head like the snap of a whip, breaking the weasel's hold and flinging it high in the air. And, still in the air, the she-wolf's jaws closed on the lean, yellow body, and the weasel knew death between the crunching teeth. The cub experienced another access of affection on the part of his mother. Her joy at finding him seemed even greater than his joy at being found. She nozzled him and caressed him and licked the cuts made in him by the weasel's teeth. Then, between them, mother and cub, they ate the blood-drinker, and after that went back to the cave and slept.

II.4 The Wall of the World

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-wall-of-the-world

The gray cub , makes his initial, confusing yet invigorating foray beyond the "wall of light" into the world outside the lair. He adjusts, falteringly, to new terrain and to new animals, and comes to make a basic division of all things in the world between living and non-living. He even stumbles across a poorly hidden ptarmigan nest and makes his first kill. Before he can make his way back to the lair, however, he encounters a young weasel. He is attacked by the weasel's mother, and is rescued, just in time, by his own.

. White Fang's passing out of the lair illustrates the dynamic interplay of instincts that animates life: "Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on." This chapter functions in some ways as a classic, archetypal initiation. White Fang experiences a summons to adventure: the instinctive draw of the light established in the previous chapter, the attraction all life feels toward light. He undergoes a separation from the world he has always known: the lair. He experiences change and gains new knowledge: "he cub was learning. There were live things and things not alive." He even undergoes what might be classified a "baptism": White Fang steps into the stream and almost drowns. "The water rushed into his lungs. To him it signified death. He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open mouth." White Fang thus experiences a truly mythic, even "heroic" initiation: he "dies" and is "reborn," he transitions, true to his liminal nature, from one world to another. And he returns to the old world with a "boon," the gift of a new understanding of life: for instance, he has learned not to trust in appearances. "He would have to learn the reality of a thing before he could put his faith in it." This lesson, in particular, will serve White Fang well in his dealings with human beings throughout the rest of the novel. This chapter also returns to the question of whether life is futile, even in the Wild. Note that the narrator tells us that, in killing the ptarmigan, White Fang is realizing his own purpose, his own reason for existence, and is therefore "justifying his existence." Readers may wonder if London intends for his readers to ask how they do or may justify their own existence-i.e., for what do they strive, or for what purpose have they been "equipped"? The novel is on one level about wolves; however, on a deeper level, as is all literature, it is about humanity, as the presence of such existential concerns in the chapter demonstrates. advertisement The narrator's statement, "Fear!-that legacy of the Wild which no animal may escape nor exchange for pottage," is an allusion to Genesis 25:29-34, in which Esau sells his birthright to his brother Jacob in exchange for lentil stew . Readers will see that fear, in various forms, plays a large part in the narrative that is to come, and should note its occurrence as the story continues.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/08.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_8_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 2.chapter 5

part 2, chapter 5 the law of meat

{"name": "II.5 The Law of Meat", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-law-of-meat", "summary": "White Fang makes more forays out of the lair, growing stronger and more confident of himself, and making more kills. When a particularly desperate famine strikes, the she-wolf, unbeknownst to White Fang, goes to the lair of the lynx and kills one of the lynx's kittens. The mother lynx arrives at the wolves' lair, and a battle ensues. White Fang tries to fight alongside his mother and does, in fact, help her by clinging onto one of the lynx's legs; the burden he thus adds to the mother lynx helps his own mother to prevail. The she-wolf, however, is sorely wounded in the fight, and slowly dies as well. Yet, through her death, White Fang comes to understand, however dimly, \"the law of meat,\" which is this law of survival: \"EAT OR BE EATEN.\" .", "analysis": ". This chapter introduces the theme of power. White Fang sees that his mother is less afraid of animals and things in the outside world than he is, and he attributes this, not to her greater experience of living, but to her inherent power: \"His mother represented power.\" He respects his mother because of this innate power she seems to possess. White Fang will fear, respect, and love other, albeit human, characters in the rest of the book, and those advertisement relationships will depend, too, upon his perception of their power and how they use it. . The death of White Fang's mother teaches the cub another key lesson: \"There were two kinds of life-his own kind and the other kind.\" Once more, readers can ponder how this lesson works itself out in the world of humanity, not only in the world of the Wild. London is using his animal characters to show his human readers how the Wild and the \"civilized\" are much alike."}

The cub's development was rapid. He rested for two days, and then ventured forth from the cave again. It was on this adventure that he found the young weasel whose mother he had helped eat, and he saw to it that the young weasel went the way of its mother. But on this trip he did not get lost. When he grew tired, he found his way back to the cave and slept. And every day thereafter found him out and ranging a wider area. He began to get accurate measurement of his strength and his weakness, and to know when to be bold and when to be cautious. He found it expedient to be cautious all the time, except for the rare moments, when, assured of his own intrepidity, he abandoned himself to petty rages and lusts. He was always a little demon of fury when he chanced upon a stray ptarmigan. Never did he fail to respond savagely to the chatter of the squirrel he had first met on the blasted pine. While the sight of a moose-bird almost invariably put him into the wildest of rages; for he never forgot the peck on the nose he had received from the first of that ilk he encountered. But there were times when even a moose-bird failed to affect him, and those were times when he felt himself to be in danger from some other prowling meat hunter. He never forgot the hawk, and its moving shadow always sent him crouching into the nearest thicket. He no longer sprawled and straddled, and already he was developing the gait of his mother, slinking and furtive, apparently without exertion, yet sliding along with a swiftness that was as deceptive as it was imperceptible. In the matter of meat, his luck had been all in the beginning. The seven ptarmigan chicks and the baby weasel represented the sum of his killings. His desire to kill strengthened with the days, and he cherished hungry ambitions for the squirrel that chattered so volubly and always informed all wild creatures that the wolf-cub was approaching. But as birds flew in the air, squirrels could climb trees, and the cub could only try to crawl unobserved upon the squirrel when it was on the ground. The cub entertained a great respect for his mother. She could get meat, and she never failed to bring him his share. Further, she was unafraid of things. It did not occur to him that this fearlessness was founded upon experience and knowledge. Its effect on him was that of an impression of power. His mother represented power; and as he grew older he felt this power in the sharper admonishment of her paw; while the reproving nudge of her nose gave place to the slash of her fangs. For this, likewise, he respected his mother. She compelled obedience from him, and the older he grew the shorter grew her temper. Famine came again, and the cub with clearer consciousness knew once more the bite of hunger. The she-wolf ran herself thin in the quest for meat. She rarely slept any more in the cave, spending most of her time on the meat-trail, and spending it vainly. This famine was not a long one, but it was severe while it lasted. The cub found no more milk in his mother's breast, nor did he get one mouthful of meat for himself. Before, he had hunted in play, for the sheer joyousness of it; now he hunted in deadly earnestness, and found nothing. Yet the failure of it accelerated his development. He studied the habits of the squirrel with greater carefulness, and strove with greater craft to steal upon it and surprise it. He studied the wood-mice and tried to dig them out of their burrows; and he learned much about the ways of moose-birds and woodpeckers. And there came a day when the hawk's shadow did not drive him crouching into the bushes. He had grown stronger and wiser, and more confident. Also, he was desperate. So he sat on his haunches, conspicuously in an open space, and challenged the hawk down out of the sky. For he knew that there, floating in the blue above him, was meat, the meat his stomach yearned after so insistently. But the hawk refused to come down and give battle, and the cub crawled away into a thicket and whimpered his disappointment and hunger. The famine broke. The she-wolf brought home meat. It was strange meat, different from any she had ever brought before. It was a lynx kitten, partly grown, like the cub, but not so large. And it was all for him. His mother had satisfied her hunger elsewhere; though he did not know that it was the rest of the lynx litter that had gone to satisfy her. Nor did he know the desperateness of her deed. He knew only that the velvet- furred kitten was meat, and he ate and waxed happier with every mouthful. A full stomach conduces to inaction, and the cub lay in the cave, sleeping against his mother's side. He was aroused by her snarling. Never had he heard her snarl so terribly. Possibly in her whole life it was the most terrible snarl she ever gave. There was reason for it, and none knew it better than she. A lynx's lair is not despoiled with impunity. In the full glare of the afternoon light, crouching in the entrance of the cave, the cub saw the lynx-mother. The hair rippled up along his back at the sight. Here was fear, and it did not require his instinct to tell him of it. And if sight alone were not sufficient, the cry of rage the intruder gave, beginning with a snarl and rushing abruptly upward into a hoarse screech, was convincing enough in itself. The cub felt the prod of the life that was in him, and stood up and snarled valiantly by his mother's side. But she thrust him ignominiously away and behind her. Because of the low-roofed entrance the lynx could not leap in, and when she made a crawling rush of it the she-wolf sprang upon her and pinned her down. The cub saw little of the battle. There was a tremendous snarling and spitting and screeching. The two animals threshed about, the lynx ripping and tearing with her claws and using her teeth as well, while the she-wolf used her teeth alone. Once, the cub sprang in and sank his teeth into the hind leg of the lynx. He clung on, growling savagely. Though he did not know it, by the weight of his body he clogged the action of the leg and thereby saved his mother much damage. A change in the battle crushed him under both their bodies and wrenched loose his hold. The next moment the two mothers separated, and, before they rushed together again, the lynx lashed out at the cub with a huge fore-paw that ripped his shoulder open to the bone and sent him hurtling sidewise against the wall. Then was added to the uproar the cub's shrill yelp of pain and fright. But the fight lasted so long that he had time to cry himself out and to experience a second burst of courage; and the end of the battle found him again clinging to a hind-leg and furiously growling between his teeth. The lynx was dead. But the she-wolf was very weak and sick. At first she caressed the cub and licked his wounded shoulder; but the blood she had lost had taken with it her strength, and for all of a day and a night she lay by her dead foe's side, without movement, scarcely breathing. For a week she never left the cave, except for water, and then her movements were slow and painful. At the end of that time the lynx was devoured, while the she-wolf's wounds had healed sufficiently to permit her to take the meat-trail again. The cub's shoulder was stiff and sore, and for some time he limped from the terrible slash he had received. But the world now seemed changed. He went about in it with greater confidence, with a feeling of prowess that had not been his in the days before the battle with the lynx. He had looked upon life in a more ferocious aspect; he had fought; he had buried his teeth in the flesh of a foe; and he had survived. And because of all this, he carried himself more boldly, with a touch of defiance that was new in him. He was no longer afraid of minor things, and much of his timidity had vanished, though the unknown never ceased to press upon him with its mysteries and terrors, intangible and ever-menacing. He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw much of the killing of meat and began to play his part in it. And in his own dim way he learned the law of meat. There were two kinds of life--his own kind and the other kind. His own kind included his mother and himself. The other kind included all live things that moved. But the other kind was divided. One portion was what his own kind killed and ate. This portion was composed of the non-killers and the small killers. The other portion killed and ate his own kind, or was killed and eaten by his own kind. And out of this classification arose the law. The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralise about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all. He saw the law operating around him on every side. He had eaten the ptarmigan chicks. The hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother. The hawk would also have eaten him. Later, when he had grown more formidable, he wanted to eat the hawk. He had eaten the lynx kitten. The lynx-mother would have eaten him had she not herself been killed and eaten. And so it went. The law was being lived about him by all live things, and he himself was part and parcel of the law. He was a killer. His only food was meat, live meat, that ran away swiftly before him, or flew into the air, or climbed trees, or hid in the ground, or faced him and fought with him, or turned the tables and ran after him. Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life as a voracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless, planless, endless. But the cub did not think in man-fashion. He did not look at things with wide vision. He was single-purposed, and entertained but one thought or desire at a time. Besides the law of meat, there were a myriad other and lesser laws for him to learn and obey. The world was filled with surprise. The stir of the life that was in him, the play of his muscles, was an unending happiness. To run down meat was to experience thrills and elations. His rages and battles were pleasures. Terror itself, and the mystery of the unknown, led to his living. And there were easements and satisfactions. To have a full stomach, to doze lazily in the sunshine--such things were remuneration in full for his ardours and toils, while his ardours and tolls were in themselves self-remunerative. They were expressions of life, and life is always happy when it is expressing itself. So the cub had no quarrel with his hostile environment. He was very much alive, very happy, and very proud of himself. PART III

II.5 The Law of Meat

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-law-of-meat

White Fang makes more forays out of the lair, growing stronger and more confident of himself, and making more kills. When a particularly desperate famine strikes, the she-wolf, unbeknownst to White Fang, goes to the lair of the lynx and kills one of the lynx's kittens. The mother lynx arrives at the wolves' lair, and a battle ensues. White Fang tries to fight alongside his mother and does, in fact, help her by clinging onto one of the lynx's legs; the burden he thus adds to the mother lynx helps his own mother to prevail. The she-wolf, however, is sorely wounded in the fight, and slowly dies as well. Yet, through her death, White Fang comes to understand, however dimly, "the law of meat," which is this law of survival: "EAT OR BE EATEN." .

. This chapter introduces the theme of power. White Fang sees that his mother is less afraid of animals and things in the outside world than he is, and he attributes this, not to her greater experience of living, but to her inherent power: "His mother represented power." He respects his mother because of this innate power she seems to possess. White Fang will fear, respect, and love other, albeit human, characters in the rest of the book, and those advertisement relationships will depend, too, upon his perception of their power and how they use it. . The death of White Fang's mother teaches the cub another key lesson: "There were two kinds of life-his own kind and the other kind." Once more, readers can ponder how this lesson works itself out in the world of humanity, not only in the world of the Wild. London is using his animal characters to show his human readers how the Wild and the "civilized" are much alike.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_10_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 3.chapter 2

part 3, chapter 2 the bondage

{"name": "III.2 The Bondage", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-bondage", "summary": "White Fang begins to \"render his allegiance\" to the man-gods, as has Kiche his mother. He realizes that men have power to enforce their wishes and so, gradually, he submits to them-even though he still hears the Wild calling. Kiche, whom Gray Beaver frees when he decides she is no longer likely to run away, hears the call of the wild also, but she hears as well \"that other and louder call, the call of the fire and of man.\" . White Fang continues to struggle against Lip-lip; their repeated fights make White Fang's already-savage temperament even more so. This savagery finds fierce expression when Gray Beaver sells Kiche as payment of a debt. Gray Beaver administers two terrible beatings to White Fang when the pup tries to pursue his mother, the second prompted by White Fang's attempt to bite Gray Beaver. Lip-lip is able to attack White Fang upon his return to camp because the pup has been weakened by Gray Beaver's \"manhandling\" of him. White Fang resigns himself to living in bondage, yearning for Kiche's return. .", "analysis": ". This chapter further develops the narrative's meditations on power. It begins, for instance, by strengthening analogy of man's relationship to beasts as gods' relationship to men by pointing out that, unlike human beings' faith in the divine, wolves and dogs' faith in men has never been shattered. It points out how White Fang learns how to exercise his own power when he \"lure Lip-lip into Kiche's avenging jaws.\" But it focuses most on men's ability to enforce their wishes through the power of sheer, brute force strength. White Fang yields to men because they are physically stronger than he, as the beating he receives from Gray Beaver graphically and decisively demonstrates. advertisement Further, Lip-lip's subsequent reprisal against him, stopped by Gray Beaver, teaches him that \"the right to punish was something the gods reserved for themselves and denied to the lesser creatures under them.\" London thus establishes the link between power and hierarchy: the latter is entirely dependent upon the former. As the dogs establish a hierarchy among themselves based on the power to do harm , so do human beings establish their superiority over \"lesser creatures\" on the same basis. Once again, London is highlighting the commonality between man and animal that underlies seeming disparity."}

The days were thronged with experience for White Fang. During the time that Kiche was tied by the stick, he ran about over all the camp, inquiring, investigating, learning. He quickly came to know much of the ways of the man-animals, but familiarity did not breed contempt. The more he came to know them, the more they vindicated their superiority, the more they displayed their mysterious powers, the greater loomed their god-likeness. To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouch at man's feet, this grief has never come. Unlike man, whose gods are of the unseen and the overguessed, vapours and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power, intangible out-croppings of self into the realm of spirit--unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to the fire find their gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and their existence. No effort of faith is necessary to believe in such a god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god. There is no getting away from it. There it stands, on its two hind-legs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds when it is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh. And so it was with White Fang. The man-animals were gods unmistakable and unescapable. As his mother, Kiche, had rendered her allegiance to them at the first cry of her name, so he was beginning to render his allegiance. He gave them the trail as a privilege indubitably theirs. When they walked, he got out of their way. When they called, he came. When they threatened, he cowered down. When they commanded him to go, he went away hurriedly. For behind any wish of theirs was power to enforce that wish, power that hurt, power that expressed itself in clouts and clubs, in flying stones and stinging lashes of whips. He belonged to them as all dogs belonged to them. His actions were theirs to command. His body was theirs to maul, to stamp upon, to tolerate. Such was the lesson that was quickly borne in upon him. It came hard, going as it did, counter to much that was strong and dominant in his own nature; and, while he disliked it in the learning of it, unknown to himself he was learning to like it. It was a placing of his destiny in another's hands, a shifting of the responsibilities of existence. This in itself was compensation, for it is always easier to lean upon another than to stand alone. But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and soul, to the man-animals. He could not immediately forego his wild heritage and his memories of the Wild. There were days when he crept to the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him far and away. And always he returned, restless and uncomfortable, to whimper softly and wistfully at Kiche's side and to lick her face with eager, questioning tongue. White Fang learned rapidly the ways of the camp. He knew the injustice and greediness of the older dogs when meat or fish was thrown out to be eaten. He came to know that men were more just, children more cruel, and women more kindly and more likely to toss him a bit of meat or bone. And after two or three painful adventures with the mothers of part-grown puppies, he came into the knowledge that it was always good policy to let such mothers alone, to keep away from them as far as possible, and to avoid them when he saw them coming. But the bane of his life was Lip-lip. Larger, older, and stronger, Lip- lip had selected White Fang for his special object of persecution. While Fang fought willingly enough, but he was outclassed. His enemy was too big. Lip-lip became a nightmare to him. Whenever he ventured away from his mother, the bully was sure to appear, trailing at his heels, snarling at him, picking upon him, and watchful of an opportunity, when no man- animal was near, to spring upon him and force a fight. As Lip-lip invariably won, he enjoyed it hugely. It became his chief delight in life, as it became White Fang's chief torment. But the effect upon White Fang was not to cow him. Though he suffered most of the damage and was always defeated, his spirit remained unsubdued. Yet a bad effect was produced. He became malignant and morose. His temper had been savage by birth, but it became more savage under this unending persecution. The genial, playful, puppyish side of him found little expression. He never played and gambolled about with the other puppies of the camp. Lip-lip would not permit it. The moment White Fang appeared near them, Lip-lip was upon him, bullying and hectoring him, or fighting with him until he had driven him away. The effect of all this was to rob White Fang of much of his puppyhood and to make him in his comportment older than his age. Denied the outlet, through play, of his energies, he recoiled upon himself and developed his mental processes. He became cunning; he had idle time in which to devote himself to thoughts of trickery. Prevented from obtaining his share of meat and fish when a general feed was given to the camp-dogs, he became a clever thief. He had to forage for himself, and he foraged well, though he was oft-times a plague to the squaws in consequence. He learned to sneak about camp, to be crafty, to know what was going on everywhere, to see and to hear everything and to reason accordingly, and successfully to devise ways and means of avoiding his implacable persecutor. It was early in the days of his persecution that he played his first really big crafty game and got therefrom his first taste of revenge. As Kiche, when with the wolves, had lured out to destruction dogs from the camps of men, so White Fang, in manner somewhat similar, lured Lip-lip into Kiche's avenging jaws. Retreating before Lip-lip, White Fang made an indirect flight that led in and out and around the various tepees of the camp. He was a good runner, swifter than any puppy of his size, and swifter than Lip-lip. But he did not run his best in this chase. He barely held his own, one leap ahead of his pursuer. Lip-lip, excited by the chase and by the persistent nearness of his victim, forgot caution and locality. When he remembered locality, it was too late. Dashing at top speed around a tepee, he ran full tilt into Kiche lying at the end of her stick. He gave one yelp of consternation, and then her punishing jaws closed upon him. She was tied, but he could not get away from her easily. She rolled him off his legs so that he could not run, while she repeatedly ripped and slashed him with her fangs. When at last he succeeded in rolling clear of her, he crawled to his feet, badly dishevelled, hurt both in body and in spirit. His hair was standing out all over him in tufts where her teeth had mauled. He stood where he had arisen, opened his mouth, and broke out the long, heart-broken puppy wail. But even this he was not allowed to complete. In the middle of it, White Fang, rushing in, sank his teeth into Lip-lip's hind leg. There was no fight left in Lip-lip, and he ran away shamelessly, his victim hot on his heels and worrying him all the way back to his own tepee. Here the squaws came to his aid, and White Fang, transformed into a raging demon, was finally driven off only by a fusillade of stones. Came the day when Grey Beaver, deciding that the liability of her running away was past, released Kiche. White Fang was delighted with his mother's freedom. He accompanied her joyfully about the camp; and, so long as he remained close by her side, Lip-lip kept a respectful distance. White Fang even bristled up to him and walked stiff-legged, but Lip-lip ignored the challenge. He was no fool himself, and whatever vengeance he desired to wreak, he could wait until he caught White Fang alone. Later on that day, Kiche and White Fang strayed into the edge of the woods next to the camp. He had led his mother there, step by step, and now when she stopped, he tried to inveigle her farther. The stream, the lair, and the quiet woods were calling to him, and he wanted her to come. He ran on a few steps, stopped, and looked back. She had not moved. He whined pleadingly, and scurried playfully in and out of the underbrush. He ran back to her, licked her face, and ran on again. And still she did not move. He stopped and regarded her, all of an intentness and eagerness, physically expressed, that slowly faded out of him as she turned her head and gazed back at the camp. There was something calling to him out there in the open. His mother heard it too. But she heard also that other and louder call, the call of the fire and of man--the call which has been given alone of all animals to the wolf to answer, to the wolf and the wild-dog, who are brothers. Kiche turned and slowly trotted back toward camp. Stronger than the physical restraint of the stick was the clutch of the camp upon her. Unseen and occultly, the gods still gripped with their power and would not let her go. White Fang sat down in the shadow of a birch and whimpered softly. There was a strong smell of pine, and subtle wood fragrances filled the air, reminding him of his old life of freedom before the days of his bondage. But he was still only a part-grown puppy, and stronger than the call either of man or of the Wild was the call of his mother. All the hours of his short life he had depended upon her. The time was yet to come for independence. So he arose and trotted forlornly back to camp, pausing once, and twice, to sit down and whimper and to listen to the call that still sounded in the depths of the forest. In the Wild the time of a mother with her young is short; but under the dominion of man it is sometimes even shorter. Thus it was with White Fang. Grey Beaver was in the debt of Three Eagles. Three Eagles was going away on a trip up the Mackenzie to the Great Slave Lake. A strip of scarlet cloth, a bearskin, twenty cartridges, and Kiche, went to pay the debt. White Fang saw his mother taken aboard Three Eagles' canoe, and tried to follow her. A blow from Three Eagles knocked him backward to the land. The canoe shoved off. He sprang into the water and swam after it, deaf to the sharp cries of Grey Beaver to return. Even a man- animal, a god, White Fang ignored, such was the terror he was in of losing his mother. But gods are accustomed to being obeyed, and Grey Beaver wrathfully launched a canoe in pursuit. When he overtook White Fang, he reached down and by the nape of the neck lifted him clear of the water. He did not deposit him at once in the bottom of the canoe. Holding him suspended with one hand, with the other hand he proceeded to give him a beating. And it _was_ a beating. His hand was heavy. Every blow was shrewd to hurt; and he delivered a multitude of blows. Impelled by the blows that rained upon him, now from this side, now from that, White Fang swung back and forth like an erratic and jerky pendulum. Varying were the emotions that surged through him. At first, he had known surprise. Then came a momentary fear, when he yelped several times to the impact of the hand. But this was quickly followed by anger. His free nature asserted itself, and he showed his teeth and snarled fearlessly in the face of the wrathful god. This but served to make the god more wrathful. The blows came faster, heavier, more shrewd to hurt. Grey Beaver continued to beat, White Fang continued to snarl. But this could not last for ever. One or the other must give over, and that one was White Fang. Fear surged through him again. For the first time he was being really man-handled. The occasional blows of sticks and stones he had previously experienced were as caresses compared with this. He broke down and began to cry and yelp. For a time each blow brought a yelp from him; but fear passed into terror, until finally his yelps were voiced in unbroken succession, unconnected with the rhythm of the punishment. At last Grey Beaver withheld his hand. White Fang, hanging limply, continued to cry. This seemed to satisfy his master, who flung him down roughly in the bottom of the canoe. In the meantime the canoe had drifted down the stream. Grey Beaver picked up the paddle. White Fang was in his way. He spurned him savagely with his foot. In that moment White Fang's free nature flashed forth again, and he sank his teeth into the moccasined foot. The beating that had gone before was as nothing compared with the beating he now received. Grey Beaver's wrath was terrible; likewise was White Fang's fright. Not only the hand, but the hard wooden paddle was used upon him; and he was bruised and sore in all his small body when he was again flung down in the canoe. Again, and this time with purpose, did Grey Beaver kick him. White Fang did not repeat his attack on the foot. He had learned another lesson of his bondage. Never, no matter what the circumstance, must he dare to bite the god who was lord and master over him; the body of the lord and master was sacred, not to be defiled by the teeth of such as he. That was evidently the crime of crimes, the one offence there was no condoning nor overlooking. When the canoe touched the shore, White Fang lay whimpering and motionless, waiting the will of Grey Beaver. It was Grey Beaver's will that he should go ashore, for ashore he was flung, striking heavily on his side and hurting his bruises afresh. He crawled tremblingly to his feet and stood whimpering. Lip-lip, who had watched the whole proceeding from the bank, now rushed upon him, knocking him over and sinking his teeth into him. White Fang was too helpless to defend himself, and it would have gone hard with him had not Grey Beaver's foot shot out, lifting Lip-lip into the air with its violence so that he smashed down to earth a dozen feet away. This was the man-animal's justice; and even then, in his own pitiable plight, White Fang experienced a little grateful thrill. At Grey Beaver's heels he limped obediently through the village to the tepee. And so it came that White Fang learned that the right to punish was something the gods reserved for themselves and denied to the lesser creatures under them. That night, when all was still, White Fang remembered his mother and sorrowed for her. He sorrowed too loudly and woke up Grey Beaver, who beat him. After that he mourned gently when the gods were around. But sometimes, straying off to the edge of the woods by himself, he gave vent to his grief, and cried it out with loud whimperings and wailings. It was during this period that he might have harkened to the memories of the lair and the stream and run back to the Wild. But the memory of his mother held him. As the hunting man-animals went out and came back, so she would come back to the village some time. So he remained in his bondage waiting for her. But it was not altogether an unhappy bondage. There was much to interest him. Something was always happening. There was no end to the strange things these gods did, and he was always curious to see. Besides, he was learning how to get along with Grey Beaver. Obedience, rigid, undeviating obedience, was what was exacted of him; and in return he escaped beatings and his existence was tolerated. Nay, Grey Beaver himself sometimes tossed him a piece of meat, and defended him against the other dogs in the eating of it. And such a piece of meat was of value. It was worth more, in some strange way, then a dozen pieces of meat from the hand of a squaw. Grey Beaver never petted nor caressed. Perhaps it was the weight of his hand, perhaps his justice, perhaps the sheer power of him, and perhaps it was all these things that influenced White Fang; for a certain tie of attachment was forming between him and his surly lord. Insidiously, and by remote ways, as well as by the power of stick and stone and clout of hand, were the shackles of White Fang's bondage being riveted upon him. The qualities in his kind that in the beginning made it possible for them to come in to the fires of men, were qualities capable of development. They were developing in him, and the camp-life, replete with misery as it was, was secretly endearing itself to him all the time. But White Fang was unaware of it. He knew only grief for the loss of Kiche, hope for her return, and a hungry yearning for the free life that had been his.

III.2 The Bondage

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-bondage

White Fang begins to "render his allegiance" to the man-gods, as has Kiche his mother. He realizes that men have power to enforce their wishes and so, gradually, he submits to them-even though he still hears the Wild calling. Kiche, whom Gray Beaver frees when he decides she is no longer likely to run away, hears the call of the wild also, but she hears as well "that other and louder call, the call of the fire and of man." . White Fang continues to struggle against Lip-lip; their repeated fights make White Fang's already-savage temperament even more so. This savagery finds fierce expression when Gray Beaver sells Kiche as payment of a debt. Gray Beaver administers two terrible beatings to White Fang when the pup tries to pursue his mother, the second prompted by White Fang's attempt to bite Gray Beaver. Lip-lip is able to attack White Fang upon his return to camp because the pup has been weakened by Gray Beaver's "manhandling" of him. White Fang resigns himself to living in bondage, yearning for Kiche's return. .

. This chapter further develops the narrative's meditations on power. It begins, for instance, by strengthening analogy of man's relationship to beasts as gods' relationship to men by pointing out that, unlike human beings' faith in the divine, wolves and dogs' faith in men has never been shattered. It points out how White Fang learns how to exercise his own power when he "lure Lip-lip into Kiche's avenging jaws." But it focuses most on men's ability to enforce their wishes through the power of sheer, brute force strength. White Fang yields to men because they are physically stronger than he, as the beating he receives from Gray Beaver graphically and decisively demonstrates. advertisement Further, Lip-lip's subsequent reprisal against him, stopped by Gray Beaver, teaches him that "the right to punish was something the gods reserved for themselves and denied to the lesser creatures under them." London thus establishes the link between power and hierarchy: the latter is entirely dependent upon the former. As the dogs establish a hierarchy among themselves based on the power to do harm , so do human beings establish their superiority over "lesser creatures" on the same basis. Once again, London is highlighting the commonality between man and animal that underlies seeming disparity.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_11_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 3.chapter 3

part 3, chapter 3 the outcast

{"name": "III.3 The Outcast", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-outcast", "summary": "The other dogs gradually join Lip-lip in persecuting White Fang; the pup becomes increasingly hostile to the point that not only the other animals but also the humans in the camp shun and hate him. In order to survive, White Fang becomes \"more cruel, more ferocious, and more intelligent.\" .", "analysis": ". In this brief chapter, London outlines the ways in which White Fang's \"development was in the direction of power.\" He learns to attack other dogs when they are alone, for instance, and to omit the \"preliminaries\" that normally accompany dogs' fighting. The chapter explores the function of \"nurture\" as opposed to \"nature,\" to borrow the two opposing terms of the advertisement familiar debate, in White Fang's character: \"In order to face the constant danger of hurt and even of destruction , his predatory and protective faculties were unduly developed.\" Interestingly, London maintains readers' sympathies for White Fang by noting that neither the humans nor the other dogs \"look after the causes of his conduct.\" How often, in human society, do we dismiss others for their conduct without seeking to understand the possibly hidden root causes of their behavior?"}

Lip-lip continued so to darken his days that White Fang became wickeder and more ferocious than it was his natural right to be. Savageness was a part of his make-up, but the savageness thus developed exceeded his make- up. He acquired a reputation for wickedness amongst the man-animals themselves. Wherever there was trouble and uproar in camp, fighting and squabbling or the outcry of a squaw over a bit of stolen meat, they were sure to find White Fang mixed up in it and usually at the bottom of it. They did not bother to look after the causes of his conduct. They saw only the effects, and the effects were bad. He was a sneak and a thief, a mischief-maker, a fomenter of trouble; and irate squaws told him to his face, the while he eyed them alert and ready to dodge any quick-flung missile, that he was a wolf and worthless and bound to come to an evil end. He found himself an outcast in the midst of the populous camp. All the young dogs followed Lip-lip's lead. There was a difference between White Fang and them. Perhaps they sensed his wild-wood breed, and instinctively felt for him the enmity that the domestic dog feels for the wolf. But be that as it may, they joined with Lip-lip in the persecution. And, once declared against him, they found good reason to continue declared against him. One and all, from time to time, they felt his teeth; and to his credit, he gave more than he received. Many of them he could whip in single fight; but single fight was denied him. The beginning of such a fight was a signal for all the young dogs in camp to come running and pitch upon him. Out of this pack-persecution he learned two important things: how to take care of himself in a mass-fight against him--and how, on a single dog, to inflict the greatest amount of damage in the briefest space of time. To keep one's feet in the midst of the hostile mass meant life, and this he learnt well. He became cat-like in his ability to stay on his feet. Even grown dogs might hurtle him backward or sideways with the impact of their heavy bodies; and backward or sideways he would go, in the air or sliding on the ground, but always with his legs under him and his feet downward to the mother earth. When dogs fight, there are usually preliminaries to the actual combat--snarlings and bristlings and stiff-legged struttings. But White Fang learned to omit these preliminaries. Delay meant the coming against him of all the young dogs. He must do his work quickly and get away. So he learnt to give no warning of his intention. He rushed in and snapped and slashed on the instant, without notice, before his foe could prepare to meet him. Thus he learned how to inflict quick and severe damage. Also he learned the value of surprise. A dog, taken off its guard, its shoulder slashed open or its ear ripped in ribbons before it knew what was happening, was a dog half whipped. Furthermore, it was remarkably easy to overthrow a dog taken by surprise; while a dog, thus overthrown, invariably exposed for a moment the soft underside of its neck--the vulnerable point at which to strike for its life. White Fang knew this point. It was a knowledge bequeathed to him directly from the hunting generation of wolves. So it was that White Fang's method when he took the offensive, was: first to find a young dog alone; second, to surprise it and knock it off its feet; and third, to drive in with his teeth at the soft throat. Being but partly grown his jaws had not yet become large enough nor strong enough to make his throat-attack deadly; but many a young dog went around camp with a lacerated throat in token of White Fang's intention. And one day, catching one of his enemies alone on the edge of the woods, he managed, by repeatedly overthrowing him and attacking the throat, to cut the great vein and let out the life. There was a great row that night. He had been observed, the news had been carried to the dead dog's master, the squaws remembered all the instances of stolen meat, and Grey Beaver was beset by many angry voices. But he resolutely held the door of his tepee, inside which he had placed the culprit, and refused to permit the vengeance for which his tribespeople clamoured. White Fang became hated by man and dog. During this period of his development he never knew a moment's security. The tooth of every dog was against him, the hand of every man. He was greeted with snarls by his kind, with curses and stones by his gods. He lived tensely. He was always keyed up, alert for attack, wary of being attacked, with an eye for sudden and unexpected missiles, prepared to act precipitately and coolly, to leap in with a flash of teeth, or to leap away with a menacing snarl. As for snarling he could snarl more terribly than any dog, young or old, in camp. The intent of the snarl is to warn or frighten, and judgment is required to know when it should be used. White Fang knew how to make it and when to make it. Into his snarl he incorporated all that was vicious, malignant, and horrible. With nose serrulated by continuous spasms, hair bristling in recurrent waves, tongue whipping out like a red snake and whipping back again, ears flattened down, eyes gleaming hatred, lips wrinkled back, and fangs exposed and dripping, he could compel a pause on the part of almost any assailant. A temporary pause, when taken off his guard, gave him the vital moment in which to think and determine his action. But often a pause so gained lengthened out until it evolved into a complete cessation from the attack. And before more than one of the grown dogs White Fang's snarl enabled him to beat an honourable retreat. An outcast himself from the pack of the part-grown dogs, his sanguinary methods and remarkable efficiency made the pack pay for its persecution of him. Not permitted himself to run with the pack, the curious state of affairs obtained that no member of the pack could run outside the pack. White Fang would not permit it. What of his bushwhacking and waylaying tactics, the young dogs were afraid to run by themselves. With the exception of Lip-lip, they were compelled to hunch together for mutual protection against the terrible enemy they had made. A puppy alone by the river bank meant a puppy dead or a puppy that aroused the camp with its shrill pain and terror as it fled back from the wolf-cub that had waylaid it. But White Fang's reprisals did not cease, even when the young dogs had learned thoroughly that they must stay together. He attacked them when he caught them alone, and they attacked him when they were bunched. The sight of him was sufficient to start them rushing after him, at which times his swiftness usually carried him into safety. But woe the dog that outran his fellows in such pursuit! White Fang had learned to turn suddenly upon the pursuer that was ahead of the pack and thoroughly to rip him up before the pack could arrive. This occurred with great frequency, for, once in full cry, the dogs were prone to forget themselves in the excitement of the chase, while White Fang never forgot himself. Stealing backward glances as he ran, he was always ready to whirl around and down the overzealous pursuer that outran his fellows. Young dogs are bound to play, and out of the exigencies of the situation they realised their play in this mimic warfare. Thus it was that the hunt of White Fang became their chief game--a deadly game, withal, and at all times a serious game. He, on the other hand, being the fastest-footed, was unafraid to venture anywhere. During the period that he waited vainly for his mother to come back, he led the pack many a wild chase through the adjacent woods. But the pack invariably lost him. Its noise and outcry warned him of its presence, while he ran alone, velvet- footed, silently, a moving shadow among the trees after the manner of his father and mother before him. Further he was more directly connected with the Wild than they; and he knew more of its secrets and stratagems. A favourite trick of his was to lose his trail in running water and then lie quietly in a near-by thicket while their baffled cries arose around him. Hated by his kind and by mankind, indomitable, perpetually warred upon and himself waging perpetual war, his development was rapid and one-sided. This was no soil for kindliness and affection to blossom in. Of such things he had not the faintest glimmering. The code he learned was to obey the strong and to oppress the weak. Grey Beaver was a god, and strong. Therefore White Fang obeyed him. But the dog younger or smaller than himself was weak, a thing to be destroyed. His development was in the direction of power. In order to face the constant danger of hurt and even of destruction, his predatory and protective faculties were unduly developed. He became quicker of movement than the other dogs, swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with ironlike muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel, more ferocious, and more intelligent. He had to become all these things, else he would not have held his own nor survive the hostile environment in which he found himself.

III.3 The Outcast

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-outcast

The other dogs gradually join Lip-lip in persecuting White Fang; the pup becomes increasingly hostile to the point that not only the other animals but also the humans in the camp shun and hate him. In order to survive, White Fang becomes "more cruel, more ferocious, and more intelligent." .

. In this brief chapter, London outlines the ways in which White Fang's "development was in the direction of power." He learns to attack other dogs when they are alone, for instance, and to omit the "preliminaries" that normally accompany dogs' fighting. The chapter explores the function of "nurture" as opposed to "nature," to borrow the two opposing terms of the advertisement familiar debate, in White Fang's character: "In order to face the constant danger of hurt and even of destruction , his predatory and protective faculties were unduly developed." Interestingly, London maintains readers' sympathies for White Fang by noting that neither the humans nor the other dogs "look after the causes of his conduct." How often, in human society, do we dismiss others for their conduct without seeking to understand the possibly hidden root causes of their behavior?

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_12_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 3.chapter 4

part 3, chapter 4 the trail of the gods

{"name": "III.4 The Trail of the Gods", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-trail-of-the-gods", "summary": "As autumn arrives, White Fang takes advantage of the tribe's movement to a new camp to escape. He soon finds, however, that \"bondage had softened him.\" He shivers from the cold; he suffers from hunger; he experiences fear and loneliness. Wounded and nearing exhaustion, White Fang tracks down the natives. When he finds Gray Beaver, he expects to receive another beating, but does not. Instead, Gray Beaver feeds him. White Fang's surrender to the humans is complete.", "analysis": ". White Fang's short-lived flight to freedom really only establishes how much in bondage to Gray Beaver he is. He no longer belongs to the Wild; although he can still be ferocious , he has been thoroughly domesticated, as London makes clear at the chapter's end: \"White Fang lay at Gray Beaver's feet. secure in the knowledge that the morrow would find him. in the camp of the man-animals, with the gods to whom he had given himself and upon whom he was now dependent. \" At this point in the story, then, White Fang's relationship to human beings is based on his need for their food and shelter. Later in the novel, readers will see how his relationship to humanity changes in order to include another essential ingredient for survival: his need to be loved."}

In the fall of the year, when the days were shortening and the bite of the frost was coming into the air, White Fang got his chance for liberty. For several days there had been a great hubbub in the village. The summer camp was being dismantled, and the tribe, bag and baggage, was preparing to go off to the fall hunting. White Fang watched it all with eager eyes, and when the tepees began to come down and the canoes were loading at the bank, he understood. Already the canoes were departing, and some had disappeared down the river. Quite deliberately he determined to stay behind. He waited his opportunity to slink out of camp to the woods. Here, in the running stream where ice was beginning to form, he hid his trail. Then he crawled into the heart of a dense thicket and waited. The time passed by, and he slept intermittently for hours. Then he was aroused by Grey Beaver's voice calling him by name. There were other voices. White Fang could hear Grey Beaver's squaw taking part in the search, and Mit-sah, who was Grey Beaver's son. White Fang trembled with fear, and though the impulse came to crawl out of his hiding-place, he resisted it. After a time the voices died away, and some time after that he crept out to enjoy the success of his undertaking. Darkness was coming on, and for a while he played about among the trees, pleasuring in his freedom. Then, and quite suddenly, he became aware of loneliness. He sat down to consider, listening to the silence of the forest and perturbed by it. That nothing moved nor sounded, seemed ominous. He felt the lurking of danger, unseen and unguessed. He was suspicious of the looming bulks of the trees and of the dark shadows that might conceal all manner of perilous things. Then it was cold. Here was no warm side of a tepee against which to snuggle. The frost was in his feet, and he kept lifting first one fore- foot and then the other. He curved his bushy tail around to cover them, and at the same time he saw a vision. There was nothing strange about it. Upon his inward sight was impressed a succession of memory-pictures. He saw the camp again, the tepees, and the blaze of the fires. He heard the shrill voices of the women, the gruff basses of the men, and the snarling of the dogs. He was hungry, and he remembered pieces of meat and fish that had been thrown him. Here was no meat, nothing but a threatening and inedible silence. His bondage had softened him. Irresponsibility had weakened him. He had forgotten how to shift for himself. The night yawned about him. His senses, accustomed to the hum and bustle of the camp, used to the continuous impact of sights and sounds, were now left idle. There was nothing to do, nothing to see nor hear. They strained to catch some interruption of the silence and immobility of nature. They were appalled by inaction and by the feel of something terrible impending. He gave a great start of fright. A colossal and formless something was rushing across the field of his vision. It was a tree-shadow flung by the moon, from whose face the clouds had been brushed away. Reassured, he whimpered softly; then he suppressed the whimper for fear that it might attract the attention of the lurking dangers. A tree, contracting in the cool of the night, made a loud noise. It was directly above him. He yelped in his fright. A panic seized him, and he ran madly toward the village. He knew an overpowering desire for the protection and companionship of man. In his nostrils was the smell of the camp-smoke. In his ears the camp-sounds and cries were ringing loud. He passed out of the forest and into the moonlit open where were no shadows nor darknesses. But no village greeted his eyes. He had forgotten. The village had gone away. His wild flight ceased abruptly. There was no place to which to flee. He slunk forlornly through the deserted camp, smelling the rubbish-heaps and the discarded rags and tags of the gods. He would have been glad for the rattle of stones about him, flung by an angry squaw, glad for the hand of Grey Beaver descending upon him in wrath; while he would have welcomed with delight Lip-lip and the whole snarling, cowardly pack. He came to where Grey Beaver's tepee had stood. In the centre of the space it had occupied, he sat down. He pointed his nose at the moon. His throat was afflicted by rigid spasms, his mouth opened, and in a heart- broken cry bubbled up his loneliness and fear, his grief for Kiche, all his past sorrows and miseries as well as his apprehension of sufferings and dangers to come. It was the long wolf-howl, full-throated and mournful, the first howl he had ever uttered. The coming of daylight dispelled his fears but increased his loneliness. The naked earth, which so shortly before had been so populous, thrust his loneliness more forcibly upon him. It did not take him long to make up his mind. He plunged into the forest and followed the river bank down the stream. All day he ran. He did not rest. He seemed made to run on forever. His iron-like body ignored fatigue. And even after fatigue came, his heritage of endurance braced him to endless endeavour and enabled him to drive his complaining body onward. Where the river swung in against precipitous bluffs, he climbed the high mountains behind. Rivers and streams that entered the main river he forded or swam. Often he took to the rim-ice that was beginning to form, and more than once he crashed through and struggled for life in the icy current. Always he was on the lookout for the trail of the gods where it might leave the river and proceed inland. White Fang was intelligent beyond the average of his kind; yet his mental vision was not wide enough to embrace the other bank of the Mackenzie. What if the trail of the gods led out on that side? It never entered his head. Later on, when he had travelled more and grown older and wiser and come to know more of trails and rivers, it might be that he could grasp and apprehend such a possibility. But that mental power was yet in the future. Just now he ran blindly, his own bank of the Mackenzie alone entering into his calculations. All night he ran, blundering in the darkness into mishaps and obstacles that delayed but did not daunt. By the middle of the second day he had been running continuously for thirty hours, and the iron of his flesh was giving out. It was the endurance of his mind that kept him going. He had not eaten in forty hours, and he was weak with hunger. The repeated drenchings in the icy water had likewise had their effect on him. His handsome coat was draggled. The broad pads of his feet were bruised and bleeding. He had begun to limp, and this limp increased with the hours. To make it worse, the light of the sky was obscured and snow began to fall--a raw, moist, melting, clinging snow, slippery under foot, that hid from him the landscape he traversed, and that covered over the inequalities of the ground so that the way of his feet was more difficult and painful. Grey Beaver had intended camping that night on the far bank of the Mackenzie, for it was in that direction that the hunting lay. But on the near bank, shortly before dark, a moose coming down to drink, had been espied by Kloo-kooch, who was Grey Beaver's squaw. Now, had not the moose come down to drink, had not Mit-sah been steering out of the course because of the snow, had not Kloo-kooch sighted the moose, and had not Grey Beaver killed it with a lucky shot from his rifle, all subsequent things would have happened differently. Grey Beaver would not have camped on the near side of the Mackenzie, and White Fang would have passed by and gone on, either to die or to find his way to his wild brothers and become one of them--a wolf to the end of his days. Night had fallen. The snow was flying more thickly, and White Fang, whimpering softly to himself as he stumbled and limped along, came upon a fresh trail in the snow. So fresh was it that he knew it immediately for what it was. Whining with eagerness, he followed back from the river bank and in among the trees. The camp-sounds came to his ears. He saw the blaze of the fire, Kloo-kooch cooking, and Grey Beaver squatting on his hams and mumbling a chunk of raw tallow. There was fresh meat in camp! White Fang expected a beating. He crouched and bristled a little at the thought of it. Then he went forward again. He feared and disliked the beating he knew to be waiting for him. But he knew, further, that the comfort of the fire would be his, the protection of the gods, the companionship of the dogs--the last, a companionship of enmity, but none the less a companionship and satisfying to his gregarious needs. He came cringing and crawling into the firelight. Grey Beaver saw him, and stopped munching the tallow. White Fang crawled slowly, cringing and grovelling in the abjectness of his abasement and submission. He crawled straight toward Grey Beaver, every inch of his progress becoming slower and more painful. At last he lay at the master's feet, into whose possession he now surrendered himself, voluntarily, body and soul. Of his own choice, he came in to sit by man's fire and to be ruled by him. White Fang trembled, waiting for the punishment to fall upon him. There was a movement of the hand above him. He cringed involuntarily under the expected blow. It did not fall. He stole a glance upward. Grey Beaver was breaking the lump of tallow in half! Grey Beaver was offering him one piece of the tallow! Very gently and somewhat suspiciously, he first smelled the tallow and then proceeded to eat it. Grey Beaver ordered meat to be brought to him, and guarded him from the other dogs while he ate. After that, grateful and content, White Fang lay at Grey Beaver's feet, gazing at the fire that warmed him, blinking and dozing, secure in the knowledge that the morrow would find him, not wandering forlorn through bleak forest-stretches, but in the camp of the man-animals, with the gods to whom he had given himself and upon whom he was now dependent.

III.4 The Trail of the Gods

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-trail-of-the-gods

As autumn arrives, White Fang takes advantage of the tribe's movement to a new camp to escape. He soon finds, however, that "bondage had softened him." He shivers from the cold; he suffers from hunger; he experiences fear and loneliness. Wounded and nearing exhaustion, White Fang tracks down the natives. When he finds Gray Beaver, he expects to receive another beating, but does not. Instead, Gray Beaver feeds him. White Fang's surrender to the humans is complete.

. White Fang's short-lived flight to freedom really only establishes how much in bondage to Gray Beaver he is. He no longer belongs to the Wild; although he can still be ferocious , he has been thoroughly domesticated, as London makes clear at the chapter's end: "White Fang lay at Gray Beaver's feet. secure in the knowledge that the morrow would find him. in the camp of the man-animals, with the gods to whom he had given himself and upon whom he was now dependent. " At this point in the story, then, White Fang's relationship to human beings is based on his need for their food and shelter. Later in the novel, readers will see how his relationship to humanity changes in order to include another essential ingredient for survival: his need to be loved.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_13_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 3.chapter 5

part 3, chapter 5 the covenant

{"name": "III.5 The Covenant", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-covenant", "summary": "White Fang is one of seven dogs in the sled team of Mit-sah, Gray Beaver's son. Lip-lip is another. Mit-sah makes Lip-lip the lead dog of the team. The other dogs in the team so hate Lip-lip that they strive to attack him as they run, with the result that the sled goes faster. To further increase the other dogs' animosity toward Lip-lip, Mit-sah gives him preferential treatment. When Lip-lip is overthrown, however, White Fang does not immediately become leader of the pack; he is too isolated, too hostile, for that position. Instead, he treats the other dogs as a tyrant treats his oppressed subjects-behavior he has learned from Gray Beaver's treatment of him. In a village to which the sled travels, White Fang learns that \"the unpardonable crime was to bite one of the gods\" is not a law without qualifications, for he attacks a boy who threatens him with a beating when he tries to eat scraps of frozen meat that the boy has created by chopping some meat up. Gray Beaver defends White Fang, however, for the dog was only obeying \"the law of forage.\" Later, White Fang defends Mit-sah when the village's boys gang up on him. This behavior, too, Gray Beaver defends, and even rewards White Fang that night with extra meat. Thus Gray Beaver and White Fang solidify \"the ancient covenant\" between human and dog.", "analysis": ". London continues to trace the effects of White Fang's environment on the dog. The chapter portrays White Fang as \"a monstrous tyrant\" who \"oppresse the weak with a vengeance\" in obedience to \"the law\" of the Wild. Were White Fang not a dog, one might say that London is depicting the character's \"dehumanization.\" At any rate, he is firmly fixing the situation from which White Fang will be \"redeemed\" as the novel progresses. In fact, London expressly anticipates White Fang's future relationships with human beings by contrasting those relationships with his relationship to Gray Beaver: \"Gray Beaver did not caress nor speak kind words.\" London develops the image of the human hand and its potential to do good or ill: \"White Fang knew nothing of the heaven a man's hand might contain for him. \" White Fang is caught in a \"bleak and materialistic\" view of life; the narrative thus returns to the questions, raised in the beginning chapters, of, \"What is life? Is it futile, or does it possess meaning?\" . Other significant elements in this chapter include: White Fang's distinction between \"his\" humans and other humans-as well as the dog's insight that \"a thieving god was usually a cowardly god\"-that foreshadows events near the novel's conclusion; London's use of religious language to continue developing his portrait of the relationship between man and advertisement beast; and London's reference in this chapter to the \"cunning\" in \"the recesses of the Indian mind,\" which could be construed as a stereotype against Native Americans but is, given the novel's concern with the relationship between beast and human, more likely a statement about the cunning of the human mind when dealing with animals. The covenant depends upon cunning-indeed, London goes to great lengths at this chapter's end to point out that it does not depend upon love: \"He did not know what love was. He had no experience of love.\""}

When December was well along, Grey Beaver went on a journey up the Mackenzie. Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch went with him. One sled he drove himself, drawn by dogs he had traded for or borrowed. A second and smaller sled was driven by Mit-sah, and to this was harnessed a team of puppies. It was more of a toy affair than anything else, yet it was the delight of Mit-sah, who felt that he was beginning to do a man's work in the world. Also, he was learning to drive dogs and to train dogs; while the puppies themselves were being broken in to the harness. Furthermore, the sled was of some service, for it carried nearly two hundred pounds of outfit and food. White Fang had seen the camp-dogs toiling in the harness, so that he did not resent overmuch the first placing of the harness upon himself. About his neck was put a moss-stuffed collar, which was connected by two pulling-traces to a strap that passed around his chest and over his back. It was to this that was fastened the long rope by which he pulled at the sled. There were seven puppies in the team. The others had been born earlier in the year and were nine and ten months old, while White Fang was only eight months old. Each dog was fastened to the sled by a single rope. No two ropes were of the same length, while the difference in length between any two ropes was at least that of a dog's body. Every rope was brought to a ring at the front end of the sled. The sled itself was without runners, being a birch-bark toboggan, with upturned forward end to keep it from ploughing under the snow. This construction enabled the weight of the sled and load to be distributed over the largest snow-surface; for the snow was crystal-powder and very soft. Observing the same principle of widest distribution of weight, the dogs at the ends of their ropes radiated fan-fashion from the nose of the sled, so that no dog trod in another's footsteps. There was, furthermore, another virtue in the fan-formation. The ropes of varying length prevented the dogs attacking from the rear those that ran in front of them. For a dog to attack another, it would have to turn upon one at a shorter rope. In which case it would find itself face to face with the dog attacked, and also it would find itself facing the whip of the driver. But the most peculiar virtue of all lay in the fact that the dog that strove to attack one in front of him must pull the sled faster, and that the faster the sled travelled, the faster could the dog attacked run away. Thus, the dog behind could never catch up with the one in front. The faster he ran, the faster ran the one he was after, and the faster ran all the dogs. Incidentally, the sled went faster, and thus, by cunning indirection, did man increase his mastery over the beasts. Mit-sah resembled his father, much of whose grey wisdom he possessed. In the past he had observed Lip-lip's persecution of White Fang; but at that time Lip-lip was another man's dog, and Mit-sah had never dared more than to shy an occasional stone at him. But now Lip-lip was his dog, and he proceeded to wreak his vengeance on him by putting him at the end of the longest rope. This made Lip-lip the leader, and was apparently an honour! but in reality it took away from him all honour, and instead of being bully and master of the pack, he now found himself hated and persecuted by the pack. Because he ran at the end of the longest rope, the dogs had always the view of him running away before them. All that they saw of him was his bushy tail and fleeing hind legs--a view far less ferocious and intimidating than his bristling mane and gleaming fangs. Also, dogs being so constituted in their mental ways, the sight of him running away gave desire to run after him and a feeling that he ran away from them. The moment the sled started, the team took after Lip-lip in a chase that extended throughout the day. At first he had been prone to turn upon his pursuers, jealous of his dignity and wrathful; but at such times Mit-sah would throw the stinging lash of the thirty-foot cariboo-gut whip into his face and compel him to turn tail and run on. Lip-lip might face the pack, but he could not face that whip, and all that was left him to do was to keep his long rope taut and his flanks ahead of the teeth of his mates. But a still greater cunning lurked in the recesses of the Indian mind. To give point to unending pursuit of the leader, Mit-sah favoured him over the other dogs. These favours aroused in them jealousy and hatred. In their presence Mit-sah would give him meat and would give it to him only. This was maddening to them. They would rage around just outside the throwing-distance of the whip, while Lip-lip devoured the meat and Mit- sah protected him. And when there was no meat to give, Mit-sah would keep the team at a distance and make believe to give meat to Lip-lip. White Fang took kindly to the work. He had travelled a greater distance than the other dogs in the yielding of himself to the rule of the gods, and he had learned more thoroughly the futility of opposing their will. In addition, the persecution he had suffered from the pack had made the pack less to him in the scheme of things, and man more. He had not learned to be dependent on his kind for companionship. Besides, Kiche was well-nigh forgotten; and the chief outlet of expression that remained to him was in the allegiance he tendered the gods he had accepted as masters. So he worked hard, learned discipline, and was obedient. Faithfulness and willingness characterised his toil. These are essential traits of the wolf and the wild-dog when they have become domesticated, and these traits White Fang possessed in unusual measure. A companionship did exist between White Fang and the other dogs, but it was one of warfare and enmity. He had never learned to play with them. He knew only how to fight, and fight with them he did, returning to them a hundred-fold the snaps and slashes they had given him in the days when Lip-lip was leader of the pack. But Lip-lip was no longer leader--except when he fled away before his mates at the end of his rope, the sled bounding along behind. In camp he kept close to Mit-sah or Grey Beaver or Kloo-kooch. He did not dare venture away from the gods, for now the fangs of all dogs were against him, and he tasted to the dregs the persecution that had been White Fang's. With the overthrow of Lip-lip, White Fang could have become leader of the pack. But he was too morose and solitary for that. He merely thrashed his team-mates. Otherwise he ignored them. They got out of his way when he came along; nor did the boldest of them ever dare to rob him of his meat. On the contrary, they devoured their own meat hurriedly, for fear that he would take it away from them. White Fang knew the law well: _to oppress the weak and obey the strong_. He ate his share of meat as rapidly as he could. And then woe the dog that had not yet finished! A snarl and a flash of fangs, and that dog would wail his indignation to the uncomforting stars while White Fang finished his portion for him. Every little while, however, one dog or another would flame up in revolt and be promptly subdued. Thus White Fang was kept in training. He was jealous of the isolation in which he kept himself in the midst of the pack, and he fought often to maintain it. But such fights were of brief duration. He was too quick for the others. They were slashed open and bleeding before they knew what had happened, were whipped almost before they had begun to fight. As rigid as the sled-discipline of the gods, was the discipline maintained by White Fang amongst his fellows. He never allowed them any latitude. He compelled them to an unremitting respect for him. They might do as they pleased amongst themselves. That was no concern of his. But it _was_ his concern that they leave him alone in his isolation, get out of his way when he elected to walk among them, and at all times acknowledge his mastery over them. A hint of stiff-leggedness on their part, a lifted lip or a bristle of hair, and he would be upon them, merciless and cruel, swiftly convincing them of the error of their way. He was a monstrous tyrant. His mastery was rigid as steel. He oppressed the weak with a vengeance. Not for nothing had he been exposed to the pitiless struggles for life in the day of his cubhood, when his mother and he, alone and unaided, held their own and survived in the ferocious environment of the Wild. And not for nothing had he learned to walk softly when superior strength went by. He oppressed the weak, but he respected the strong. And in the course of the long journey with Grey Beaver he walked softly indeed amongst the full-grown dogs in the camps of the strange man-animals they encountered. The months passed by. Still continued the journey of Grey Beaver. White Fang's strength was developed by the long hours on trail and the steady toil at the sled; and it would have seemed that his mental development was well-nigh complete. He had come to know quite thoroughly the world in which he lived. His outlook was bleak and materialistic. The world as he saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, a world in which caresses and affection and the bright sweetnesses of the spirit did not exist. He had no affection for Grey Beaver. True, he was a god, but a most savage god. White Fang was glad to acknowledge his lordship, but it was a lordship based upon superior intelligence and brute strength. There was something in the fibre of White Fang's being that made his lordship a thing to be desired, else he would not have come back from the Wild when he did to tender his allegiance. There were deeps in his nature which had never been sounded. A kind word, a caressing touch of the hand, on the part of Grey Beaver, might have sounded these deeps; but Grey Beaver did not caress, nor speak kind words. It was not his way. His primacy was savage, and savagely he ruled, administering justice with a club, punishing transgression with the pain of a blow, and rewarding merit, not by kindness, but by withholding a blow. So White Fang knew nothing of the heaven a man's hand might contain for him. Besides, he did not like the hands of the man-animals. He was suspicious of them. It was true that they sometimes gave meat, but more often they gave hurt. Hands were things to keep away from. They hurled stones, wielded sticks and clubs and whips, administered slaps and clouts, and, when they touched him, were cunning to hurt with pinch and twist and wrench. In strange villages he had encountered the hands of the children and learned that they were cruel to hurt. Also, he had once nearly had an eye poked out by a toddling papoose. From these experiences he became suspicious of all children. He could not tolerate them. When they came near with their ominous hands, he got up. It was in a village at the Great Slave Lake, that, in the course of resenting the evil of the hands of the man-animals, he came to modify the law that he had learned from Grey Beaver: namely, that the unpardonable crime was to bite one of the gods. In this village, after the custom of all dogs in all villages, White Fang went foraging, for food. A boy was chopping frozen moose-meat with an axe, and the chips were flying in the snow. White Fang, sliding by in quest of meat, stopped and began to eat the chips. He observed the boy lay down the axe and take up a stout club. White Fang sprang clear, just in time to escape the descending blow. The boy pursued him, and he, a stranger in the village, fled between two tepees to find himself cornered against a high earth bank. There was no escape for White Fang. The only way out was between the two tepees, and this the boy guarded. Holding his club prepared to strike, he drew in on his cornered quarry. White Fang was furious. He faced the boy, bristling and snarling, his sense of justice outraged. He knew the law of forage. All the wastage of meat, such as the frozen chips, belonged to the dog that found it. He had done no wrong, broken no law, yet here was this boy preparing to give him a beating. White Fang scarcely knew what happened. He did it in a surge of rage. And he did it so quickly that the boy did not know either. All the boy knew was that he had in some unaccountable way been overturned into the snow, and that his club-hand had been ripped wide open by White Fang's teeth. But White Fang knew that he had broken the law of the gods. He had driven his teeth into the sacred flesh of one of them, and could expect nothing but a most terrible punishment. He fled away to Grey Beaver, behind whose protecting legs he crouched when the bitten boy and the boy's family came, demanding vengeance. But they went away with vengeance unsatisfied. Grey Beaver defended White Fang. So did Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch. White Fang, listening to the wordy war and watching the angry gestures, knew that his act was justified. And so it came that he learned there were gods and gods. There were his gods, and there were other gods, and between them there was a difference. Justice or injustice, it was all the same, he must take all things from the hands of his own gods. But he was not compelled to take injustice from the other gods. It was his privilege to resent it with his teeth. And this also was a law of the gods. Before the day was out, White Fang was to learn more about this law. Mit- sah, alone, gathering firewood in the forest, encountered the boy that had been bitten. With him were other boys. Hot words passed. Then all the boys attacked Mit-sah. It was going hard with him. Blows were raining upon him from all sides. White Fang looked on at first. This was an affair of the gods, and no concern of his. Then he realised that this was Mit-sah, one of his own particular gods, who was being maltreated. It was no reasoned impulse that made White Fang do what he then did. A mad rush of anger sent him leaping in amongst the combatants. Five minutes later the landscape was covered with fleeing boys, many of whom dripped blood upon the snow in token that White Fang's teeth had not been idle. When Mit-sah told the story in camp, Grey Beaver ordered meat to be given to White Fang. He ordered much meat to be given, and White Fang, gorged and sleepy by the fire, knew that the law had received its verification. It was in line with these experiences that White Fang came to learn the law of property and the duty of the defence of property. From the protection of his god's body to the protection of his god's possessions was a step, and this step he made. What was his god's was to be defended against all the world--even to the extent of biting other gods. Not only was such an act sacrilegious in its nature, but it was fraught with peril. The gods were all-powerful, and a dog was no match against them; yet White Fang learned to face them, fiercely belligerent and unafraid. Duty rose above fear, and thieving gods learned to leave Grey Beaver's property alone. One thing, in this connection, White Fang quickly learnt, and that was that a thieving god was usually a cowardly god and prone to run away at the sounding of the alarm. Also, he learned that but brief time elapsed between his sounding of the alarm and Grey Beaver coming to his aid. He came to know that it was not fear of him that drove the thief away, but fear of Grey Beaver. White Fang did not give the alarm by barking. He never barked. His method was to drive straight at the intruder, and to sink his teeth in if he could. Because he was morose and solitary, having nothing to do with the other dogs, he was unusually fitted to guard his master's property; and in this he was encouraged and trained by Grey Beaver. One result of this was to make White Fang more ferocious and indomitable, and more solitary. The months went by, binding stronger and stronger the covenant between dog and man. This was the ancient covenant that the first wolf that came in from the Wild entered into with man. And, like all succeeding wolves and wild dogs that had done likewise, White Fang worked the covenant out for himself. The terms were simple. For the possession of a flesh-and- blood god, he exchanged his own liberty. Food and fire, protection and companionship, were some of the things he received from the god. In return, he guarded the god's property, defended his body, worked for him, and obeyed him. The possession of a god implies service. White Fang's was a service of duty and awe, but not of love. He did not know what love was. He had no experience of love. Kiche was a remote memory. Besides, not only had he abandoned the Wild and his kind when he gave himself up to man, but the terms of the covenant were such that if ever he met Kiche again he would not desert his god to go with her. His allegiance to man seemed somehow a law of his being greater than the love of liberty, of kind and kin.

III.5 The Covenant

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-covenant

White Fang is one of seven dogs in the sled team of Mit-sah, Gray Beaver's son. Lip-lip is another. Mit-sah makes Lip-lip the lead dog of the team. The other dogs in the team so hate Lip-lip that they strive to attack him as they run, with the result that the sled goes faster. To further increase the other dogs' animosity toward Lip-lip, Mit-sah gives him preferential treatment. When Lip-lip is overthrown, however, White Fang does not immediately become leader of the pack; he is too isolated, too hostile, for that position. Instead, he treats the other dogs as a tyrant treats his oppressed subjects-behavior he has learned from Gray Beaver's treatment of him. In a village to which the sled travels, White Fang learns that "the unpardonable crime was to bite one of the gods" is not a law without qualifications, for he attacks a boy who threatens him with a beating when he tries to eat scraps of frozen meat that the boy has created by chopping some meat up. Gray Beaver defends White Fang, however, for the dog was only obeying "the law of forage." Later, White Fang defends Mit-sah when the village's boys gang up on him. This behavior, too, Gray Beaver defends, and even rewards White Fang that night with extra meat. Thus Gray Beaver and White Fang solidify "the ancient covenant" between human and dog.

. London continues to trace the effects of White Fang's environment on the dog. The chapter portrays White Fang as "a monstrous tyrant" who "oppresse the weak with a vengeance" in obedience to "the law" of the Wild. Were White Fang not a dog, one might say that London is depicting the character's "dehumanization." At any rate, he is firmly fixing the situation from which White Fang will be "redeemed" as the novel progresses. In fact, London expressly anticipates White Fang's future relationships with human beings by contrasting those relationships with his relationship to Gray Beaver: "Gray Beaver did not caress nor speak kind words." London develops the image of the human hand and its potential to do good or ill: "White Fang knew nothing of the heaven a man's hand might contain for him. " White Fang is caught in a "bleak and materialistic" view of life; the narrative thus returns to the questions, raised in the beginning chapters, of, "What is life? Is it futile, or does it possess meaning?" . Other significant elements in this chapter include: White Fang's distinction between "his" humans and other humans-as well as the dog's insight that "a thieving god was usually a cowardly god"-that foreshadows events near the novel's conclusion; London's use of religious language to continue developing his portrait of the relationship between man and advertisement beast; and London's reference in this chapter to the "cunning" in "the recesses of the Indian mind," which could be construed as a stereotype against Native Americans but is, given the novel's concern with the relationship between beast and human, more likely a statement about the cunning of the human mind when dealing with animals. The covenant depends upon cunning-indeed, London goes to great lengths at this chapter's end to point out that it does not depend upon love: "He did not know what love was. He had no experience of love."

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_14_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 3.chapter 6

part 3, chapter 6 the famine

{"name": "III.6 The Famine", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-famine", "summary": "Gray Beaver, Mit-sah, and the dogs return to their own village. White Fang has grown much-so much, in fact, that another dog, Baseek, wrongly assumes that he has intimidated White Fang into relinquishing claim to some meat. White Fang attacks him, and Baseek retreats. In midsummer, White Fang has a reunion with Kiche-although his mother does not recognize him, and treats him as a threat to her newborn litter. When White Fang is three years old, the tribe with which he lives experiences famine. The hunger becomes so acute that the humans are forced to eat the weakest of the dogs. White Fang, in no danger of being eaten, retreats to the woods to fend for himself; he eats squirrels; he-reminiscent of his father's behavior -robs Gray Beaver's snare of a rabbit; he even eats a younger wolf. He meets Kiche again but this time is able to dismiss her without any sense of remembering her; he returns, ironically, to the lair of the lynx that he and Kiche had long ago fought. At last, White Fang even kills Lip-lip. He returns to the village and finds that the famine has abated, and he resumes his place in Gray Beaver's teepee. White Fang has survived.", "analysis": ". The conflicts in this chapter play their part in constituting White Fang's adult personality. The conflict between White Fang and Baseek gives the former \"a greater faith in himself, and a greater pride.\" Also, the very different conflict between White Fang and Kiche reinforce in him the instinct, \"the law of his kind that the males must not fight the advertisement females.\" These elements of White Fang's personality will serve him well throughout the rest of the novel, especially at the conclusion. Readers could consider what positive benefits a negative environment can have, on animals as well as on humans. Does London adopt a fatalistic attitude regarding the old \"nature versus nurture\" debate, or is his story suggesting something else? London seems to favor the common-sense view that both factors play a part in determining who we are when he uses the image of clay to describe White Fang's heredity."}

The spring of the year was at hand when Grey Beaver finished his long journey. It was April, and White Fang was a year old when he pulled into the home villages and was loosed from the harness by Mit-sah. Though a long way from his full growth, White Fang, next to Lip-lip, was the largest yearling in the village. Both from his father, the wolf, and from Kiche, he had inherited stature and strength, and already he was measuring up alongside the full-grown dogs. But he had not yet grown compact. His body was slender and rangy, and his strength more stringy than massive. His coat was the true wolf-grey, and to all appearances he was true wolf himself. The quarter-strain of dog he had inherited from Kiche had left no mark on him physically, though it had played its part in his mental make-up. He wandered through the village, recognising with staid satisfaction the various gods he had known before the long journey. Then there were the dogs, puppies growing up like himself, and grown dogs that did not look so large and formidable as the memory pictures he retained of them. Also, he stood less in fear of them than formerly, stalking among them with a certain careless ease that was as new to him as it was enjoyable. There was Baseek, a grizzled old fellow that in his younger days had but to uncover his fangs to send White Fang cringing and crouching to the right about. From him White Fang had learned much of his own insignificance; and from him he was now to learn much of the change and development that had taken place in himself. While Baseek had been growing weaker with age, White Fang had been growing stronger with youth. It was at the cutting-up of a moose, fresh-killed, that White Fang learned of the changed relations in which he stood to the dog-world. He had got for himself a hoof and part of the shin-bone, to which quite a bit of meat was attached. Withdrawn from the immediate scramble of the other dogs--in fact out of sight behind a thicket--he was devouring his prize, when Baseek rushed in upon him. Before he knew what he was doing, he had slashed the intruder twice and sprung clear. Baseek was surprised by the other's temerity and swiftness of attack. He stood, gazing stupidly across at White Fang, the raw, red shin-bone between them. Baseek was old, and already he had come to know the increasing valour of the dogs it had been his wont to bully. Bitter experiences these, which, perforce, he swallowed, calling upon all his wisdom to cope with them. In the old days he would have sprung upon White Fang in a fury of righteous wrath. But now his waning powers would not permit such a course. He bristled fiercely and looked ominously across the shin-bone at White Fang. And White Fang, resurrecting quite a deal of the old awe, seemed to wilt and to shrink in upon himself and grow small, as he cast about in his mind for a way to beat a retreat not too inglorious. And right here Baseek erred. Had he contented himself with looking fierce and ominous, all would have been well. White Fang, on the verge of retreat, would have retreated, leaving the meat to him. But Baseek did not wait. He considered the victory already his and stepped forward to the meat. As he bent his head carelessly to smell it, White Fang bristled slightly. Even then it was not too late for Baseek to retrieve the situation. Had he merely stood over the meat, head up and glowering, White Fang would ultimately have slunk away. But the fresh meat was strong in Baseek's nostrils, and greed urged him to take a bite of it. This was too much for White Fang. Fresh upon his months of mastery over his own team-mates, it was beyond his self-control to stand idly by while another devoured the meat that belonged to him. He struck, after his custom, without warning. With the first slash, Baseek's right ear was ripped into ribbons. He was astounded at the suddenness of it. But more things, and most grievous ones, were happening with equal suddenness. He was knocked off his feet. His throat was bitten. While he was struggling to his feet the young dog sank teeth twice into his shoulder. The swiftness of it was bewildering. He made a futile rush at White Fang, clipping the empty air with an outraged snap. The next moment his nose was laid open, and he was staggering backward away from the meat. The situation was now reversed. White Fang stood over the shin-bone, bristling and menacing, while Baseek stood a little way off, preparing to retreat. He dared not risk a fight with this young lightning-flash, and again he knew, and more bitterly, the enfeeblement of oncoming age. His attempt to maintain his dignity was heroic. Calmly turning his back upon young dog and shin-bone, as though both were beneath his notice and unworthy of his consideration, he stalked grandly away. Nor, until well out of sight, did he stop to lick his bleeding wounds. The effect on White Fang was to give him a greater faith in himself, and a greater pride. He walked less softly among the grown dogs; his attitude toward them was less compromising. Not that he went out of his way looking for trouble. Far from it. But upon his way he demanded consideration. He stood upon his right to go his way unmolested and to give trail to no dog. He had to be taken into account, that was all. He was no longer to be disregarded and ignored, as was the lot of puppies, and as continued to be the lot of the puppies that were his team-mates. They got out of the way, gave trail to the grown dogs, and gave up meat to them under compulsion. But White Fang, uncompanionable, solitary, morose, scarcely looking to right or left, redoubtable, forbidding of aspect, remote and alien, was accepted as an equal by his puzzled elders. They quickly learned to leave him alone, neither venturing hostile acts nor making overtures of friendliness. If they left him alone, he left them alone--a state of affairs that they found, after a few encounters, to be pre-eminently desirable. In midsummer White Fang had an experience. Trotting along in his silent way to investigate a new tepee which had been erected on the edge of the village while he was away with the hunters after moose, he came full upon Kiche. He paused and looked at her. He remembered her vaguely, but he _remembered_ her, and that was more than could be said for her. She lifted her lip at him in the old snarl of menace, and his memory became clear. His forgotten cubhood, all that was associated with that familiar snarl, rushed back to him. Before he had known the gods, she had been to him the centre-pin of the universe. The old familiar feelings of that time came back upon him, surged up within him. He bounded towards her joyously, and she met him with shrewd fangs that laid his cheek open to the bone. He did not understand. He backed away, bewildered and puzzled. But it was not Kiche's fault. A wolf-mother was not made to remember her cubs of a year or so before. So she did not remember White Fang. He was a strange animal, an intruder; and her present litter of puppies gave her the right to resent such intrusion. One of the puppies sprawled up to White Fang. They were half-brothers, only they did not know it. White Fang sniffed the puppy curiously, whereupon Kiche rushed upon him, gashing his face a second time. He backed farther away. All the old memories and associations died down again and passed into the grave from which they had been resurrected. He looked at Kiche licking her puppy and stopping now and then to snarl at him. She was without value to him. He had learned to get along without her. Her meaning was forgotten. There was no place for her in his scheme of things, as there was no place for him in hers. He was still standing, stupid and bewildered, the memories forgotten, wondering what it was all about, when Kiche attacked him a third time, intent on driving him away altogether from the vicinity. And White Fang allowed himself to be driven away. This was a female of his kind, and it was a law of his kind that the males must not fight the females. He did not know anything about this law, for it was no generalisation of the mind, not a something acquired by experience of the world. He knew it as a secret prompting, as an urge of instinct--of the same instinct that made him howl at the moon and stars of nights, and that made him fear death and the unknown. The months went by. White Fang grew stronger, heavier, and more compact, while his character was developing along the lines laid down by his heredity and his environment. His heredity was a life-stuff that may be likened to clay. It possessed many possibilities, was capable of being moulded into many different forms. Environment served to model the clay, to give it a particular form. Thus, had White Fang never come in to the fires of man, the Wild would have moulded him into a true wolf. But the gods had given him a different environment, and he was moulded into a dog that was rather wolfish, but that was a dog and not a wolf. And so, according to the clay of his nature and the pressure of his surroundings, his character was being moulded into a certain particular shape. There was no escaping it. He was becoming more morose, more uncompanionable, more solitary, more ferocious; while the dogs were learning more and more that it was better to be at peace with him than at war, and Grey Beaver was coming to prize him more greatly with the passage of each day. White Fang, seeming to sum up strength in all his qualities, nevertheless suffered from one besetting weakness. He could not stand being laughed at. The laughter of men was a hateful thing. They might laugh among themselves about anything they pleased except himself, and he did not mind. But the moment laughter was turned upon him he would fly into a most terrible rage. Grave, dignified, sombre, a laugh made him frantic to ridiculousness. It so outraged him and upset him that for hours he would behave like a demon. And woe to the dog that at such times ran foul of him. He knew the law too well to take it out of Grey Beaver; behind Grey Beaver were a club and godhead. But behind the dogs there was nothing but space, and into this space they flew when White Fang came on the scene, made mad by laughter. In the third year of his life there came a great famine to the Mackenzie Indians. In the summer the fish failed. In the winter the cariboo forsook their accustomed track. Moose were scarce, the rabbits almost disappeared, hunting and preying animals perished. Denied their usual food-supply, weakened by hunger, they fell upon and devoured one another. Only the strong survived. White Fang's gods were always hunting animals. The old and the weak of them died of hunger. There was wailing in the village, where the women and children went without in order that what little they had might go into the bellies of the lean and hollow-eyed hunters who trod the forest in the vain pursuit of meat. To such extremity were the gods driven that they ate the soft-tanned leather of their mocassins and mittens, while the dogs ate the harnesses off their backs and the very whip-lashes. Also, the dogs ate one another, and also the gods ate the dogs. The weakest and the more worthless were eaten first. The dogs that still lived, looked on and understood. A few of the boldest and wisest forsook the fires of the gods, which had now become a shambles, and fled into the forest, where, in the end, they starved to death or were eaten by wolves. In this time of misery, White Fang, too, stole away into the woods. He was better fitted for the life than the other dogs, for he had the training of his cubhood to guide him. Especially adept did he become in stalking small living things. He would lie concealed for hours, following every movement of a cautious tree-squirrel, waiting, with a patience as huge as the hunger he suffered from, until the squirrel ventured out upon the ground. Even then, White Fang was not premature. He waited until he was sure of striking before the squirrel could gain a tree-refuge. Then, and not until then, would he flash from his hiding- place, a grey projectile, incredibly swift, never failing its mark--the fleeing squirrel that fled not fast enough. Successful as he was with squirrels, there was one difficulty that prevented him from living and growing fat on them. There were not enough squirrels. So he was driven to hunt still smaller things. So acute did his hunger become at times that he was not above rooting out wood-mice from their burrows in the ground. Nor did he scorn to do battle with a weasel as hungry as himself and many times more ferocious. In the worst pinches of the famine he stole back to the fires of the gods. But he did not go into the fires. He lurked in the forest, avoiding discovery and robbing the snares at the rare intervals when game was caught. He even robbed Grey Beaver's snare of a rabbit at a time when Grey Beaver staggered and tottered through the forest, sitting down often to rest, what of weakness and of shortness of breath. One day White Fang encountered a young wolf, gaunt and scrawny, loose- jointed with famine. Had he not been hungry himself, White Fang might have gone with him and eventually found his way into the pack amongst his wild brethren. As it was, he ran the young wolf down and killed and ate him. Fortune seemed to favour him. Always, when hardest pressed for food, he found something to kill. Again, when he was weak, it was his luck that none of the larger preying animals chanced upon him. Thus, he was strong from the two days' eating a lynx had afforded him when the hungry wolf- pack ran full tilt upon him. It was a long, cruel chase, but he was better nourished than they, and in the end outran them. And not only did he outrun them, but, circling widely back on his track, he gathered in one of his exhausted pursuers. After that he left that part of the country and journeyed over to the valley wherein he had been born. Here, in the old lair, he encountered Kiche. Up to her old tricks, she, too, had fled the inhospitable fires of the gods and gone back to her old refuge to give birth to her young. Of this litter but one remained alive when White Fang came upon the scene, and this one was not destined to live long. Young life had little chance in such a famine. Kiche's greeting of her grown son was anything but affectionate. But White Fang did not mind. He had outgrown his mother. So he turned tail philosophically and trotted on up the stream. At the forks he took the turning to the left, where he found the lair of the lynx with whom his mother and he had fought long before. Here, in the abandoned lair, he settled down and rested for a day. During the early summer, in the last days of the famine, he met Lip-lip, who had likewise taken to the woods, where he had eked out a miserable existence. White Fang came upon him unexpectedly. Trotting in opposite directions along the base of a high bluff, they rounded a corner of rock and found themselves face to face. They paused with instant alarm, and looked at each other suspiciously. White Fang was in splendid condition. His hunting had been good, and for a week he had eaten his fill. He was even gorged from his latest kill. But in the moment he looked at Lip-lip his hair rose on end all along his back. It was an involuntary bristling on his part, the physical state that in the past had always accompanied the mental state produced in him by Lip-lip's bullying and persecution. As in the past he had bristled and snarled at sight of Lip-lip, so now, and automatically, he bristled and snarled. He did not waste any time. The thing was done thoroughly and with despatch. Lip-lip essayed to back away, but White Fang struck him hard, shoulder to shoulder. Lip-lip was overthrown and rolled upon his back. White Fang's teeth drove into the scrawny throat. There was a death-struggle, during which White Fang walked around, stiff-legged and observant. Then he resumed his course and trotted on along the base of the bluff. One day, not long after, he came to the edge of the forest, where a narrow stretch of open land sloped down to the Mackenzie. He had been over this ground before, when it was bare, but now a village occupied it. Still hidden amongst the trees, he paused to study the situation. Sights and sounds and scents were familiar to him. It was the old village changed to a new place. But sights and sounds and smells were different from those he had last had when he fled away from it. There was no whimpering nor wailing. Contented sounds saluted his ear, and when he heard the angry voice of a woman he knew it to be the anger that proceeds from a full stomach. And there was a smell in the air of fish. There was food. The famine was gone. He came out boldly from the forest and trotted into camp straight to Grey Beaver's tepee. Grey Beaver was not there; but Kloo-kooch welcomed him with glad cries and the whole of a fresh-caught fish, and he lay down to wait Grey Beaver's coming. PART IV

III.6 The Famine

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-famine

Gray Beaver, Mit-sah, and the dogs return to their own village. White Fang has grown much-so much, in fact, that another dog, Baseek, wrongly assumes that he has intimidated White Fang into relinquishing claim to some meat. White Fang attacks him, and Baseek retreats. In midsummer, White Fang has a reunion with Kiche-although his mother does not recognize him, and treats him as a threat to her newborn litter. When White Fang is three years old, the tribe with which he lives experiences famine. The hunger becomes so acute that the humans are forced to eat the weakest of the dogs. White Fang, in no danger of being eaten, retreats to the woods to fend for himself; he eats squirrels; he-reminiscent of his father's behavior -robs Gray Beaver's snare of a rabbit; he even eats a younger wolf. He meets Kiche again but this time is able to dismiss her without any sense of remembering her; he returns, ironically, to the lair of the lynx that he and Kiche had long ago fought. At last, White Fang even kills Lip-lip. He returns to the village and finds that the famine has abated, and he resumes his place in Gray Beaver's teepee. White Fang has survived.

. The conflicts in this chapter play their part in constituting White Fang's adult personality. The conflict between White Fang and Baseek gives the former "a greater faith in himself, and a greater pride." Also, the very different conflict between White Fang and Kiche reinforce in him the instinct, "the law of his kind that the males must not fight the advertisement females." These elements of White Fang's personality will serve him well throughout the rest of the novel, especially at the conclusion. Readers could consider what positive benefits a negative environment can have, on animals as well as on humans. Does London adopt a fatalistic attitude regarding the old "nature versus nurture" debate, or is his story suggesting something else? London seems to favor the common-sense view that both factors play a part in determining who we are when he uses the image of clay to describe White Fang's heredity.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_15_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 4.chapter 1

part 4, chapter 1 the enemy of his kind

{"name": "IV.1 The Enemy of His Kind", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-enemy-of-his-kind", "summary": "Mit-sah makes White Fang the leader of the sled team, effectively ending any chance, however remote, White Fang may have had of being a friend to the rest of the dogs. He is now their enemy, as Lip-lip was before him. White Fang takes his vengeance on his fellow pack dogs by night. They try to kill him, but they cannot; White Fang is too fast, too strong, and too cunning. White Fang is five years old in the summer of 1898 when Gray Beaver takes him to Fort Yukon, where white men are pursuing the Gold Rush. Gray Beaver hopes to trade his goods and wares with white men and make a large profit, which he promptly does, larger even than he had anticipated. The white gold-rushers impress White Fang as \"another race of beings, a race of superior gods.\" But the new gods' dogs prove no match for White Fang. He easily fights and defeats them; even, cunningly, leaving before the final blows, allowing the pack of dogs that assembles in his wake to finish off his victim for him, and thus himself avoid punishment from the white men. Separated from Indian sled dogs by hate and from white domesticated dogs by fear, White Fang is virtually an animal unto himself, an incarnation of the Wild-aloof, angry, and alone.", "analysis": ". Throughout this chapter, London continues to remind us of the resiliency and tenacity of life: for instance, \"But endure he must, or perish, and the life that was in him had no desire to perish.\" The narration also equates life with struggle: \".life and footing were synonymous in this unending warfare with the pack. \" It is appropriate that these qualities of life in the abstract should now be made concrete in White Fang, for this chapter also explicitly introduces White Fang as a symbol of the Wild itself: \"But to him. still clung the Wild. He symbolized it, was its personification.\" White Fang, due to the cruel environment of human camps-ironically, crueler than the Wild itself in which he lived with Kiche-has become the Wild itself, that \"unknown\" and \"ever warring\" reality he himself used to fear, now feared by others. but also, and more significantly, the cunning of his human masters. In this respect, too, he has become his own past fear.) This symbolic identification of White Fang with the Wild makes his domestication at the end of the book a powerful statement of man's relationship to the natural world. The representation of White Fang as the Wild personified further develops London's treatment of our environment's effect upon us: \"The clay of him was so molded. The clay of White Fang had been molded until he became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious, the enemy of all his kind.\" Readers cannot help but wonder if he can ever be re-made, re-molded, into something else. London also reminds us in this chapter, however, that \"nature\" as well as \"nuture\" plays a role in the molding of the clay of life: note how the white men's dogs are cowed by White Fang because he embodies for them a primal fear of the unknown Wild, passed down through the generations. advertisement This chapter also echoes the comment in III.5 that \"there were gods and gods.\" It portrays the white men, with their superior power as new and superior gods . Again, the narrative makes the assertion, \"t is on power that godhead rests.\" But this statement may not exhaust London's definition of either power or godhead, as the conclusion of the story will demonstrate."}

Had there been in White Fang's nature any possibility, no matter how remote, of his ever coming to fraternise with his kind, such possibility was irretrievably destroyed when he was made leader of the sled-team. For now the dogs hated him--hated him for the extra meat bestowed upon him by Mit-sah; hated him for all the real and fancied favours he received; hated him for that he fled always at the head of the team, his waving brush of a tail and his perpetually retreating hind-quarters for ever maddening their eyes. And White Fang just as bitterly hated them back. Being sled-leader was anything but gratifying to him. To be compelled to run away before the yelling pack, every dog of which, for three years, he had thrashed and mastered, was almost more than he could endure. But endure it he must, or perish, and the life that was in him had no desire to perish out. The moment Mit-sah gave his order for the start, that moment the whole team, with eager, savage cries, sprang forward at White Fang. There was no defence for him. If he turned upon them, Mit-sah would throw the stinging lash of the whip into his face. Only remained to him to run away. He could not encounter that howling horde with his tail and hind-quarters. These were scarcely fit weapons with which to meet the many merciless fangs. So run away he did, violating his own nature and pride with every leap he made, and leaping all day long. One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself. Such a recoil is like that of a hair, made to grow out from the body, turning unnaturally upon the direction of its growth and growing into the body--a rankling, festering thing of hurt. And so with White Fang. Every urge of his being impelled him to spring upon the pack that cried at his heels, but it was the will of the gods that this should not be; and behind the will, to enforce it, was the whip of cariboo-gut with its biting thirty-foot lash. So White Fang could only eat his heart in bitterness and develop a hatred and malice commensurate with the ferocity and indomitability of his nature. If ever a creature was the enemy of its kind, White Fang was that creature. He asked no quarter, gave none. He was continually marred and scarred by the teeth of the pack, and as continually he left his own marks upon the pack. Unlike most leaders, who, when camp was made and the dogs were unhitched, huddled near to the gods for protection, White Fang disdained such protection. He walked boldly about the camp, inflicting punishment in the night for what he had suffered in the day. In the time before he was made leader of the team, the pack had learned to get out of his way. But now it was different. Excited by the day- long pursuit of him, swayed subconsciously by the insistent iteration on their brains of the sight of him fleeing away, mastered by the feeling of mastery enjoyed all day, the dogs could not bring themselves to give way to him. When he appeared amongst them, there was always a squabble. His progress was marked by snarl and snap and growl. The very atmosphere he breathed was surcharged with hatred and malice, and this but served to increase the hatred and malice within him. When Mit-sah cried out his command for the team to stop, White Fang obeyed. At first this caused trouble for the other dogs. All of them would spring upon the hated leader only to find the tables turned. Behind him would be Mit-sah, the great whip singing in his hand. So the dogs came to understand that when the team stopped by order, White Fang was to be let alone. But when White Fang stopped without orders, then it was allowed them to spring upon him and destroy him if they could. After several experiences, White Fang never stopped without orders. He learned quickly. It was in the nature of things, that he must learn quickly if he were to survive the unusually severe conditions under which life was vouchsafed him. But the dogs could never learn the lesson to leave him alone in camp. Each day, pursuing him and crying defiance at him, the lesson of the previous night was erased, and that night would have to be learned over again, to be as immediately forgotten. Besides, there was a greater consistence in their dislike of him. They sensed between themselves and him a difference of kind--cause sufficient in itself for hostility. Like him, they were domesticated wolves. But they had been domesticated for generations. Much of the Wild had been lost, so that to them the Wild was the unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing and ever warring. But to him, in appearance and action and impulse, still clung the Wild. He symbolised it, was its personification: so that when they showed their teeth to him they were defending themselves against the powers of destruction that lurked in the shadows of the forest and in the dark beyond the camp-fire. But there was one lesson the dogs did learn, and that was to keep together. White Fang was too terrible for any of them to face single- handed. They met him with the mass-formation, otherwise he would have killed them, one by one, in a night. As it was, he never had a chance to kill them. He might roll a dog off its feet, but the pack would be upon him before he could follow up and deliver the deadly throat-stroke. At the first hint of conflict, the whole team drew together and faced him. The dogs had quarrels among themselves, but these were forgotten when trouble was brewing with White Fang. On the other hand, try as they would, they could not kill White Fang. He was too quick for them, too formidable, too wise. He avoided tight places and always backed out of it when they bade fair to surround him. While, as for getting him off his feet, there was no dog among them capable of doing the trick. His feet clung to the earth with the same tenacity that he clung to life. For that matter, life and footing were synonymous in this unending warfare with the pack, and none knew it better than White Fang. So he became the enemy of his kind, domesticated wolves that they were, softened by the fires of man, weakened in the sheltering shadow of man's strength. White Fang was bitter and implacable. The clay of him was so moulded. He declared a vendetta against all dogs. And so terribly did he live this vendetta that Grey Beaver, fierce savage himself, could not but marvel at White Fang's ferocity. Never, he swore, had there been the like of this animal; and the Indians in strange villages swore likewise when they considered the tale of his killings amongst their dogs. When White Fang was nearly five years old, Grey Beaver took him on another great journey, and long remembered was the havoc he worked amongst the dogs of the many villages along the Mackenzie, across the Rockies, and down the Porcupine to the Yukon. He revelled in the vengeance he wreaked upon his kind. They were ordinary, unsuspecting dogs. They were not prepared for his swiftness and directness, for his attack without warning. They did not know him for what he was, a lightning-flash of slaughter. They bristled up to him, stiff-legged and challenging, while he, wasting no time on elaborate preliminaries, snapping into action like a steel spring, was at their throats and destroying them before they knew what was happening and while they were yet in the throes of surprise. He became an adept at fighting. He economised. He never wasted his strength, never tussled. He was in too quickly for that, and, if he missed, was out again too quickly. The dislike of the wolf for close quarters was his to an unusual degree. He could not endure a prolonged contact with another body. It smacked of danger. It made him frantic. He must be away, free, on his own legs, touching no living thing. It was the Wild still clinging to him, asserting itself through him. This feeling had been accentuated by the Ishmaelite life he had led from his puppyhood. Danger lurked in contacts. It was the trap, ever the trap, the fear of it lurking deep in the life of him, woven into the fibre of him. In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered had no chance against him. He eluded their fangs. He got them, or got away, himself untouched in either event. In the natural course of things there were exceptions to this. There were times when several dogs, pitching on to him, punished him before he could get away; and there were times when a single dog scored deeply on him. But these were accidents. In the main, so efficient a fighter had he become, he went his way unscathed. Another advantage he possessed was that of correctly judging time and distance. Not that he did this consciously, however. He did not calculate such things. It was all automatic. His eyes saw correctly, and the nerves carried the vision correctly to his brain. The parts of him were better adjusted than those of the average dog. They worked together more smoothly and steadily. His was a better, far better, nervous, mental, and muscular co-ordination. When his eyes conveyed to his brain the moving image of an action, his brain without conscious effort, knew the space that limited that action and the time required for its completion. Thus, he could avoid the leap of another dog, or the drive of its fangs, and at the same moment could seize the infinitesimal fraction of time in which to deliver his own attack. Body and brain, his was a more perfected mechanism. Not that he was to be praised for it. Nature had been more generous to him than to the average animal, that was all. It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon. Grey Beaver had crossed the great watershed between Mackenzie and the Yukon in the late winter, and spent the spring in hunting among the western outlying spurs of the Rockies. Then, after the break-up of the ice on the Porcupine, he had built a canoe and paddled down that stream to where it effected its junction with the Yukon just under the Arctic circle. Here stood the old Hudson's Bay Company fort; and here were many Indians, much food, and unprecedented excitement. It was the summer of 1898, and thousands of gold-hunters were going up the Yukon to Dawson and the Klondike. Still hundreds of miles from their goal, nevertheless many of them had been on the way for a year, and the least any of them had travelled to get that far was five thousand miles, while some had come from the other side of the world. Here Grey Beaver stopped. A whisper of the gold-rush had reached his ears, and he had come with several bales of furs, and another of gut-sewn mittens and moccasins. He would not have ventured so long a trip had he not expected generous profits. But what he had expected was nothing to what he realised. His wildest dreams had not exceeded a hundred per cent. profit; he made a thousand per cent. And like a true Indian, he settled down to trade carefully and slowly, even if it took all summer and the rest of the winter to dispose of his goods. It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. As compared with the Indians he had known, they were to him another race of beings, a race of superior gods. They impressed him as possessing superior power, and it is on power that godhead rests. White Fang did not reason it out, did not in his mind make the sharp generalisation that the white gods were more powerful. It was a feeling, nothing more, and yet none the less potent. As, in his puppyhood, the looming bulks of the tepees, man-reared, had affected him as manifestations of power, so was he affected now by the houses and the huge fort all of massive logs. Here was power. Those white gods were strong. They possessed greater mastery over matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among which was Grey Beaver. And yet Grey Beaver was as a child-god among these white- skinned ones. To be sure, White Fang only felt these things. He was not conscious of them. Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking, that animals act; and every act White Fang now performed was based upon the feeling that the white men were the superior gods. In the first place he was very suspicious of them. There was no telling what unknown terrors were theirs, what unknown hurts they could administer. He was curious to observe them, fearful of being noticed by them. For the first few hours he was content with slinking around and watching them from a safe distance. Then he saw that no harm befell the dogs that were near to them, and he came in closer. In turn he was an object of great curiosity to them. His wolfish appearance caught their eyes at once, and they pointed him out to one another. This act of pointing put White Fang on his guard, and when they tried to approach him he showed his teeth and backed away. Not one succeeded in laying a hand on him, and it was well that they did not. White Fang soon learned that very few of these gods--not more than a dozen--lived at this place. Every two or three days a steamer (another and colossal manifestation of power) came into the bank and stopped for several hours. The white men came from off these steamers and went away on them again. There seemed untold numbers of these white men. In the first day or so, he saw more of them than he had seen Indians in all his life; and as the days went by they continued to come up the river, stop, and then go on up the river out of sight. But if the white gods were all-powerful, their dogs did not amount to much. This White Fang quickly discovered by mixing with those that came ashore with their masters. They were irregular shapes and sizes. Some were short-legged--too short; others were long-legged--too long. They had hair instead of fur, and a few had very little hair at that. And none of them knew how to fight. As an enemy of his kind, it was in White Fang's province to fight with them. This he did, and he quickly achieved for them a mighty contempt. They were soft and helpless, made much noise, and floundered around clumsily trying to accomplish by main strength what he accomplished by dexterity and cunning. They rushed bellowing at him. He sprang to the side. They did not know what had become of him; and in that moment he struck them on the shoulder, rolling them off their feet and delivering his stroke at the throat. Sometimes this stroke was successful, and a stricken dog rolled in the dirt, to be pounced upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian dogs that waited. White Fang was wise. He had long since learned that the gods were made angry when their dogs were killed. The white men were no exception to this. So he was content, when he had overthrown and slashed wide the throat of one of their dogs, to drop back and let the pack go in and do the cruel finishing work. It was then that the white men rushed in, visiting their wrath heavily on the pack, while White Fang went free. He would stand off at a little distance and look on, while stones, clubs, axes, and all sorts of weapons fell upon his fellows. White Fang was very wise. But his fellows grew wise in their own way; and in this White Fang grew wise with them. They learned that it was when a steamer first tied to the bank that they had their fun. After the first two or three strange dogs had been downed and destroyed, the white men hustled their own animals back on board and wreaked savage vengeance on the offenders. One white man, having seen his dog, a setter, torn to pieces before his eyes, drew a revolver. He fired rapidly, six times, and six of the pack lay dead or dying--another manifestation of power that sank deep into White Fang's consciousness. White Fang enjoyed it all. He did not love his kind, and he was shrewd enough to escape hurt himself. At first, the killing of the white men's dogs had been a diversion. After a time it became his occupation. There was no work for him to do. Grey Beaver was busy trading and getting wealthy. So White Fang hung around the landing with the disreputable gang of Indian dogs, waiting for steamers. With the arrival of a steamer the fun began. After a few minutes, by the time the white men had got over their surprise, the gang scattered. The fun was over until the next steamer should arrive. But it can scarcely be said that White Fang was a member of the gang. He did not mingle with it, but remained aloof, always himself, and was even feared by it. It is true, he worked with it. He picked the quarrel with the strange dog while the gang waited. And when he had overthrown the strange dog the gang went in to finish it. But it is equally true that he then withdrew, leaving the gang to receive the punishment of the outraged gods. It did not require much exertion to pick these quarrels. All he had to do, when the strange dogs came ashore, was to show himself. When they saw him they rushed for him. It was their instinct. He was the Wild--the unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing, the thing that prowled in the darkness around the fires of the primeval world when they, cowering close to the fires, were reshaping their instincts, learning to fear the Wild out of which they had come, and which they had deserted and betrayed. Generation by generation, down all the generations, had this fear of the Wild been stamped into their natures. For centuries the Wild had stood for terror and destruction. And during all this time free licence had been theirs, from their masters, to kill the things of the Wild. In doing this they had protected both themselves and the gods whose companionship they shared. And so, fresh from the soft southern world, these dogs, trotting down the gang-plank and out upon the Yukon shore had but to see White Fang to experience the irresistible impulse to rush upon him and destroy him. They might be town-reared dogs, but the instinctive fear of the Wild was theirs just the same. Not alone with their own eyes did they see the wolfish creature in the clear light of day, standing before them. They saw him with the eyes of their ancestors, and by their inherited memory they knew White Fang for the wolf, and they remembered the ancient feud. All of which served to make White Fang's days enjoyable. If the sight of him drove these strange dogs upon him, so much the better for him, so much the worse for them. They looked upon him as legitimate prey, and as legitimate prey he looked upon them. Not for nothing had he first seen the light of day in a lonely lair and fought his first fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and the lynx. And not for nothing had his puppyhood been made bitter by the persecution of Lip-lip and the whole puppy pack. It might have been otherwise, and he would then have been otherwise. Had Lip-lip not existed, he would have passed his puppyhood with the other puppies and grown up more doglike and with more liking for dogs. Had Grey Beaver possessed the plummet of affection and love, he might have sounded the deeps of White Fang's nature and brought up to the surface all manner of kindly qualities. But these things had not been so. The clay of White Fang had been moulded until he became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious, the enemy of all his kind.

IV.1 The Enemy of His Kind

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Mit-sah makes White Fang the leader of the sled team, effectively ending any chance, however remote, White Fang may have had of being a friend to the rest of the dogs. He is now their enemy, as Lip-lip was before him. White Fang takes his vengeance on his fellow pack dogs by night. They try to kill him, but they cannot; White Fang is too fast, too strong, and too cunning. White Fang is five years old in the summer of 1898 when Gray Beaver takes him to Fort Yukon, where white men are pursuing the Gold Rush. Gray Beaver hopes to trade his goods and wares with white men and make a large profit, which he promptly does, larger even than he had anticipated. The white gold-rushers impress White Fang as "another race of beings, a race of superior gods." But the new gods' dogs prove no match for White Fang. He easily fights and defeats them; even, cunningly, leaving before the final blows, allowing the pack of dogs that assembles in his wake to finish off his victim for him, and thus himself avoid punishment from the white men. Separated from Indian sled dogs by hate and from white domesticated dogs by fear, White Fang is virtually an animal unto himself, an incarnation of the Wild-aloof, angry, and alone.

. Throughout this chapter, London continues to remind us of the resiliency and tenacity of life: for instance, "But endure he must, or perish, and the life that was in him had no desire to perish." The narration also equates life with struggle: ".life and footing were synonymous in this unending warfare with the pack. " It is appropriate that these qualities of life in the abstract should now be made concrete in White Fang, for this chapter also explicitly introduces White Fang as a symbol of the Wild itself: "But to him. still clung the Wild. He symbolized it, was its personification." White Fang, due to the cruel environment of human camps-ironically, crueler than the Wild itself in which he lived with Kiche-has become the Wild itself, that "unknown" and "ever warring" reality he himself used to fear, now feared by others. but also, and more significantly, the cunning of his human masters. In this respect, too, he has become his own past fear.) This symbolic identification of White Fang with the Wild makes his domestication at the end of the book a powerful statement of man's relationship to the natural world. The representation of White Fang as the Wild personified further develops London's treatment of our environment's effect upon us: "The clay of him was so molded. The clay of White Fang had been molded until he became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious, the enemy of all his kind." Readers cannot help but wonder if he can ever be re-made, re-molded, into something else. London also reminds us in this chapter, however, that "nature" as well as "nuture" plays a role in the molding of the clay of life: note how the white men's dogs are cowed by White Fang because he embodies for them a primal fear of the unknown Wild, passed down through the generations. advertisement This chapter also echoes the comment in III.5 that "there were gods and gods." It portrays the white men, with their superior power as new and superior gods . Again, the narrative makes the assertion, "t is on power that godhead rests." But this statement may not exhaust London's definition of either power or godhead, as the conclusion of the story will demonstrate.

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White Fang.part 4.chapter 2

part 4, chapter 2 the mad god

{"name": "IV.2 The Mad God", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-mad-god", "summary": "Although he is alone, it is not White Fang's fate to remain so, for he is noticed by a white trader, Beauty Smith. Smith especially enjoys watching the spectacle of White Fang fight new arrivals' dogs, and he sets out to buy White Fang from Gray Beaver. Initially, Gray Beaver is not interested. Smith, however, introduces Gray Beaver to whiskey, and is able to trap him in addiction. Overcome by \"thirst\" for drink, Gray Beaver finally agrees to sell White Fang in exchange for bottles of alcohol. White Fang, still loyal to Gray Beaver, makes three escape attempts; each time, however, he receives terrible beatings, one the most severe of his life, and with Gray Beaver's express approval.", "analysis": ". London introduces a \"foil\" for White Fang in Beauty Smith, the ironically nicknamed, ugly white trader-ugly in terms of both appearance and temperament. In literature, a \"foil\" is a secondary character who highlights the distinctive traits of the main character, or protagonist, by either contrast or comparison. In this case, the comparisons are abundant. For example, London tells us that \"Beauty Smith was a advertisement monstrosity\"-just as White Fang is regarded by other dogs as a monster and a terror-but we are also told on several occasions that Beauty \"was not responsible\" for the way he is-that, in other words, his environment has molded and, really, misshapen the \"clay\" of his life the way White Fang's environment has molded and misshapen his. Readers may question whether Smith can so easily be exonerated of any responsibility for his cruelty and barbarism-he is, after all, a man and not a dog-but this question may point to a critique of Darwinistic thinking on London's part."}

A small number of white men lived in Fort Yukon. These men had been long in the country. They called themselves Sour-doughs, and took great pride in so classifying themselves. For other men, new in the land, they felt nothing but disdain. The men who came ashore from the steamers were newcomers. They were known as _chechaquos_, and they always wilted at the application of the name. They made their bread with baking-powder. This was the invidious distinction between them and the Sour-doughs, who, forsooth, made their bread from sour-dough because they had no baking- powder. All of which is neither here nor there. The men in the fort disdained the newcomers and enjoyed seeing them come to grief. Especially did they enjoy the havoc worked amongst the newcomers' dogs by White Fang and his disreputable gang. When a steamer arrived, the men of the fort made it a point always to come down to the bank and see the fun. They looked forward to it with as much anticipation as did the Indian dogs, while they were not slow to appreciate the savage and crafty part played by White Fang. But there was one man amongst them who particularly enjoyed the sport. He would come running at the first sound of a steamboat's whistle; and when the last fight was over and White Fang and the pack had scattered, he would return slowly to the fort, his face heavy with regret. Sometimes, when a soft southland dog went down, shrieking its death-cry under the fangs of the pack, this man would be unable to contain himself, and would leap into the air and cry out with delight. And always he had a sharp and covetous eye for White Fang. This man was called "Beauty" by the other men of the fort. No one knew his first name, and in general he was known in the country as Beauty Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his naming. He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly with him. He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame was deposited an even more strikingly meagre head. Its apex might be likened to a point. In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been named Beauty by his fellows, he had been called "Pinhead." Backward, from the apex, his head slanted down to his neck and forward it slanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably wide forehead. Beginning here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature had spread his features with a lavish hand. His eyes were large, and between them was the distance of two eyes. His face, in relation to the rest of him, was prodigious. In order to discover the necessary area, Nature had given him an enormous prognathous jaw. It was wide and heavy, and protruded outward and down until it seemed to rest on his chest. Possibly this appearance was due to the weariness of the slender neck, unable properly to support so great a burden. This jaw gave the impression of ferocious determination. But something lacked. Perhaps it was from excess. Perhaps the jaw was too large. At any rate, it was a lie. Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the weakest of weak-kneed and snivelling cowards. To complete his description, his teeth were large and yellow, while the two eye-teeth, larger than their fellows, showed under his lean lips like fangs. His eyes were yellow and muddy, as though Nature had run short on pigments and squeezed together the dregs of all her tubes. It was the same with his hair, sparse and irregular of growth, muddy-yellow and dirty-yellow, rising on his head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected tufts and bunches, in appearance like clumped and wind-blown grain. In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it lay elsewhere. He was not responsible. The clay of him had been so moulded in the making. He did the cooking for the other men in the fort, the dish-washing and the drudgery. They did not despise him. Rather did they tolerate him in a broad human way, as one tolerates any creature evilly treated in the making. Also, they feared him. His cowardly rages made them dread a shot in the back or poison in their coffee. But somebody had to do the cooking, and whatever else his shortcomings, Beauty Smith could cook. This was the man that looked at White Fang, delighted in his ferocious prowess, and desired to possess him. He made overtures to White Fang from the first. White Fang began by ignoring him. Later on, when the overtures became more insistent, White Fang bristled and bared his teeth and backed away. He did not like the man. The feel of him was bad. He sensed the evil in him, and feared the extended hand and the attempts at soft-spoken speech. Because of all this, he hated the man. With the simpler creatures, good and bad are things simply understood. The good stands for all things that bring easement and satisfaction and surcease from pain. Therefore, the good is liked. The bad stands for all things that are fraught with discomfort, menace, and hurt, and is hated accordingly. White Fang's feel of Beauty Smith was bad. From the man's distorted body and twisted mind, in occult ways, like mists rising from malarial marshes, came emanations of the unhealth within. Not by reasoning, not by the five senses alone, but by other and remoter and uncharted senses, came the feeling to White Fang that the man was ominous with evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, and therefore a thing bad, and wisely to be hated. White Fang was in Grey Beaver's camp when Beauty Smith first visited it. At the faint sound of his distant feet, before he came in sight, White Fang knew who was coming and began to bristle. He had been lying down in an abandon of comfort, but he arose quickly, and, as the man arrived, slid away in true wolf-fashion to the edge of the camp. He did not know what they said, but he could see the man and Grey Beaver talking together. Once, the man pointed at him, and White Fang snarled back as though the hand were just descending upon him instead of being, as it was, fifty feet away. The man laughed at this; and White Fang slunk away to the sheltering woods, his head turned to observe as he glided softly over the ground. Grey Beaver refused to sell the dog. He had grown rich with his trading and stood in need of nothing. Besides, White Fang was a valuable animal, the strongest sled-dog he had ever owned, and the best leader. Furthermore, there was no dog like him on the Mackenzie nor the Yukon. He could fight. He killed other dogs as easily as men killed mosquitoes. (Beauty Smith's eyes lighted up at this, and he licked his thin lips with an eager tongue). No, White Fang was not for sale at any price. But Beauty Smith knew the ways of Indians. He visited Grey Beaver's camp often, and hidden under his coat was always a black bottle or so. One of the potencies of whisky is the breeding of thirst. Grey Beaver got the thirst. His fevered membranes and burnt stomach began to clamour for more and more of the scorching fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry by the unwonted stimulant, permitted him to go any length to obtain it. The money he had received for his furs and mittens and moccasins began to go. It went faster and faster, and the shorter his money-sack grew, the shorter grew his temper. In the end his money and goods and temper were all gone. Nothing remained to him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that grew more prodigious with every sober breath he drew. Then it was that Beauty Smith had talk with him again about the sale of White Fang; but this time the price offered was in bottles, not dollars, and Grey Beaver's ears were more eager to hear. "You ketch um dog you take um all right," was his last word. The bottles were delivered, but after two days. "You ketch um dog," were Beauty Smith's words to Grey Beaver. White Fang slunk into camp one evening and dropped down with a sigh of content. The dreaded white god was not there. For days his manifestations of desire to lay hands on him had been growing more insistent, and during that time White Fang had been compelled to avoid the camp. He did not know what evil was threatened by those insistent hands. He knew only that they did threaten evil of some sort, and that it was best for him to keep out of their reach. But scarcely had he lain down when Grey Beaver staggered over to him and tied a leather thong around his neck. He sat down beside White Fang, holding the end of the thong in his hand. In the other hand he held a bottle, which, from time to time, was inverted above his head to the accompaniment of gurgling noises. An hour of this passed, when the vibrations of feet in contact with the ground foreran the one who approached. White Fang heard it first, and he was bristling with recognition while Grey Beaver still nodded stupidly. White Fang tried to draw the thong softly out of his master's hand; but the relaxed fingers closed tightly and Grey Beaver roused himself. Beauty Smith strode into camp and stood over White Fang. He snarled softly up at the thing of fear, watching keenly the deportment of the hands. One hand extended outward and began to descend upon his head. His soft snarl grew tense and harsh. The hand continued slowly to descend, while he crouched beneath it, eyeing it malignantly, his snarl growing shorter and shorter as, with quickening breath, it approached its culmination. Suddenly he snapped, striking with his fangs like a snake. The hand was jerked back, and the teeth came together emptily with a sharp click. Beauty Smith was frightened and angry. Grey Beaver clouted White Fang alongside the head, so that he cowered down close to the earth in respectful obedience. White Fang's suspicious eyes followed every movement. He saw Beauty Smith go away and return with a stout club. Then the end of the thong was given over to him by Grey Beaver. Beauty Smith started to walk away. The thong grew taut. White Fang resisted it. Grey Beaver clouted him right and left to make him get up and follow. He obeyed, but with a rush, hurling himself upon the stranger who was dragging him away. Beauty Smith did not jump away. He had been waiting for this. He swung the club smartly, stopping the rush midway and smashing White Fang down upon the ground. Grey Beaver laughed and nodded approval. Beauty Smith tightened the thong again, and White Fang crawled limply and dizzily to his feet. He did not rush a second time. One smash from the club was sufficient to convince him that the white god knew how to handle it, and he was too wise to fight the inevitable. So he followed morosely at Beauty Smith's heels, his tail between his legs, yet snarling softly under his breath. But Beauty Smith kept a wary eye on him, and the club was held always ready to strike. At the fort Beauty Smith left him securely tied and went in to bed. White Fang waited an hour. Then he applied his teeth to the thong, and in the space of ten seconds was free. He had wasted no time with his teeth. There had been no useless gnawing. The thong was cut across, diagonally, almost as clean as though done by a knife. White Fang looked up at the fort, at the same time bristling and growling. Then he turned and trotted back to Grey Beaver's camp. He owed no allegiance to this strange and terrible god. He had given himself to Grey Beaver, and to Grey Beaver he considered he still belonged. But what had occurred before was repeated--with a difference. Grey Beaver again made him fast with a thong, and in the morning turned him over to Beauty Smith. And here was where the difference came in. Beauty Smith gave him a beating. Tied securely, White Fang could only rage futilely and endure the punishment. Club and whip were both used upon him, and he experienced the worst beating he had ever received in his life. Even the big beating given him in his puppyhood by Grey Beaver was mild compared with this. Beauty Smith enjoyed the task. He delighted in it. He gloated over his victim, and his eyes flamed dully, as he swung the whip or club and listened to White Fang's cries of pain and to his helpless bellows and snarls. For Beauty Smith was cruel in the way that cowards are cruel. Cringing and snivelling himself before the blows or angry speech of a man, he revenged himself, in turn, upon creatures weaker than he. All life likes power, and Beauty Smith was no exception. Denied the expression of power amongst his own kind, he fell back upon the lesser creatures and there vindicated the life that was in him. But Beauty Smith had not created himself, and no blame was to be attached to him. He had come into the world with a twisted body and a brute intelligence. This had constituted the clay of him, and it had not been kindly moulded by the world. White Fang knew why he was being beaten. When Grey Beaver tied the thong around his neck, and passed the end of the thong into Beauty Smith's keeping, White Fang knew that it was his god's will for him to go with Beauty Smith. And when Beauty Smith left him tied outside the fort, he knew that it was Beauty Smith's will that he should remain there. Therefore, he had disobeyed the will of both the gods, and earned the consequent punishment. He had seen dogs change owners in the past, and he had seen the runaways beaten as he was being beaten. He was wise, and yet in the nature of him there were forces greater than wisdom. One of these was fidelity. He did not love Grey Beaver, yet, even in the face of his will and his anger, he was faithful to him. He could not help it. This faithfulness was a quality of the clay that composed him. It was the quality that was peculiarly the possession of his kind; the quality that set apart his species from all other species; the quality that has enabled the wolf and the wild dog to come in from the open and be the companions of man. After the beating, White Fang was dragged back to the fort. But this time Beauty Smith left him tied with a stick. One does not give up a god easily, and so with White Fang. Grey Beaver was his own particular god, and, in spite of Grey Beaver's will, White Fang still clung to him and would not give him up. Grey Beaver had betrayed and forsaken him, but that had no effect upon him. Not for nothing had he surrendered himself body and soul to Grey Beaver. There had been no reservation on White Fang's part, and the bond was not to be broken easily. So, in the night, when the men in the fort were asleep, White Fang applied his teeth to the stick that held him. The wood was seasoned and dry, and it was tied so closely to his neck that he could scarcely get his teeth to it. It was only by the severest muscular exertion and neck- arching that he succeeded in getting the wood between his teeth, and barely between his teeth at that; and it was only by the exercise of an immense patience, extending through many hours, that he succeeded in gnawing through the stick. This was something that dogs were not supposed to do. It was unprecedented. But White Fang did it, trotting away from the fort in the early morning, with the end of the stick hanging to his neck. He was wise. But had he been merely wise he would not have gone back to Grey Beaver who had already twice betrayed him. But there was his faithfulness, and he went back to be betrayed yet a third time. Again he yielded to the tying of a thong around his neck by Grey Beaver, and again Beauty Smith came to claim him. And this time he was beaten even more severely than before. Grey Beaver looked on stolidly while the white man wielded the whip. He gave no protection. It was no longer his dog. When the beating was over White Fang was sick. A soft southland dog would have died under it, but not he. His school of life had been sterner, and he was himself of sterner stuff. He had too great vitality. His clutch on life was too strong. But he was very sick. At first he was unable to drag himself along, and Beauty Smith had to wait half-an-hour for him. And then, blind and reeling, he followed at Beauty Smith's heels back to the fort. But now he was tied with a chain that defied his teeth, and he strove in vain, by lunging, to draw the staple from the timber into which it was driven. After a few days, sober and bankrupt, Grey Beaver departed up the Porcupine on his long journey to the Mackenzie. White Fang remained on the Yukon, the property of a man more than half mad and all brute. But what is a dog to know in its consciousness of madness? To White Fang, Beauty Smith was a veritable, if terrible, god. He was a mad god at best, but White Fang knew nothing of madness; he knew only that he must submit to the will of this new master, obey his every whim and fancy.

IV.2 The Mad God

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Although he is alone, it is not White Fang's fate to remain so, for he is noticed by a white trader, Beauty Smith. Smith especially enjoys watching the spectacle of White Fang fight new arrivals' dogs, and he sets out to buy White Fang from Gray Beaver. Initially, Gray Beaver is not interested. Smith, however, introduces Gray Beaver to whiskey, and is able to trap him in addiction. Overcome by "thirst" for drink, Gray Beaver finally agrees to sell White Fang in exchange for bottles of alcohol. White Fang, still loyal to Gray Beaver, makes three escape attempts; each time, however, he receives terrible beatings, one the most severe of his life, and with Gray Beaver's express approval.

. London introduces a "foil" for White Fang in Beauty Smith, the ironically nicknamed, ugly white trader-ugly in terms of both appearance and temperament. In literature, a "foil" is a secondary character who highlights the distinctive traits of the main character, or protagonist, by either contrast or comparison. In this case, the comparisons are abundant. For example, London tells us that "Beauty Smith was a advertisement monstrosity"-just as White Fang is regarded by other dogs as a monster and a terror-but we are also told on several occasions that Beauty "was not responsible" for the way he is-that, in other words, his environment has molded and, really, misshapen the "clay" of his life the way White Fang's environment has molded and misshapen his. Readers may question whether Smith can so easily be exonerated of any responsibility for his cruelty and barbarism-he is, after all, a man and not a dog-but this question may point to a critique of Darwinistic thinking on London's part.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_17_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 4.chapter 3

part 4, chapter 3 the reign of hate

{"name": "IV.3 The Reign of Hate", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-reign-of-hate", "summary": "Beauty Smith treats White Fang with such cruelty that the dog becomes the enemy not only of his own kind but also \"of all things.\" Smith treats White Fang so cruelly in order that he can win money by pitting White Fang against other dogs in fights. White Fang becomes known as \"The Fighting Wolf.\" He defeats all other dogs due to his agility, his ferocity, and his experience. After he defeats a lynx, he faces no more fights-until a man named Tim Keenan comes to the camp and pits White Fang against his bulldog, Cherokee.", "analysis": ". This chapter marks the nadir of White Fang's \"devolution\" or \"dehumanization.\" London stresses that Beauty Smith's barbarous treatment of White Fang strips the dog of all reason: for example, \"To such an extent was he tormented, that he hated blindly and without the faintest spark of reason. \" White Fang is represented as, in effect, pure life force, unmediated by any kind of rationality; he fights not just because Beauty Smith forces him too, but because fighting is \"the only way. of expressing the advertisement life that was in him.\" Ironically, although White Fang is living among \"civilized\" men , he is still struggling simply to survive as he would be in the Wild, even though \"ife had become a hell for him.\" London thus makes a sad, poignant statement about the indomitable quality of life: it is capable of insisting on surviving even in the absence of pleasure, even in the absence of love. This quality may be what London means by referring to White Fang's \"plasticity.\" Life will find a way, even in the harshest of environments."}

Under the tutelage of the mad god, White Fang became a fiend. He was kept chained in a pen at the rear of the fort, and here Beauty Smith teased and irritated and drove him wild with petty torments. The man early discovered White Fang's susceptibility to laughter, and made it a point after painfully tricking him, to laugh at him. This laughter was uproarious and scornful, and at the same time the god pointed his finger derisively at White Fang. At such times reason fled from White Fang, and in his transports of rage he was even more mad than Beauty Smith. Formerly, White Fang had been merely the enemy of his kind, withal a ferocious enemy. He now became the enemy of all things, and more ferocious than ever. To such an extent was he tormented, that he hated blindly and without the faintest spark of reason. He hated the chain that bound him, the men who peered in at him through the slats of the pen, the dogs that accompanied the men and that snarled malignantly at him in his helplessness. He hated the very wood of the pen that confined him. And, first, last, and most of all, he hated Beauty Smith. But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that he did to White Fang. One day a number of men gathered about the pen. Beauty Smith entered, club in hand, and took the chain off from White Fang's neck. When his master had gone out, White Fang turned loose and tore around the pen, trying to get at the men outside. He was magnificently terrible. Fully five feet in length, and standing two and one-half feet at the shoulder, he far outweighed a wolf of corresponding size. From his mother he had inherited the heavier proportions of the dog, so that he weighed, without any fat and without an ounce of superfluous flesh, over ninety pounds. It was all muscle, bone, and sinew-fighting flesh in the finest condition. The door of the pen was being opened again. White Fang paused. Something unusual was happening. He waited. The door was opened wider. Then a huge dog was thrust inside, and the door was slammed shut behind him. White Fang had never seen such a dog (it was a mastiff); but the size and fierce aspect of the intruder did not deter him. Here was some thing, not wood nor iron, upon which to wreak his hate. He leaped in with a flash of fangs that ripped down the side of the mastiff's neck. The mastiff shook his head, growled hoarsely, and plunged at White Fang. But White Fang was here, there, and everywhere, always evading and eluding, and always leaping in and slashing with his fangs and leaping out again in time to escape punishment. The men outside shouted and applauded, while Beauty Smith, in an ecstasy of delight, gloated over the ripping and mangling performed by White Fang. There was no hope for the mastiff from the first. He was too ponderous and slow. In the end, while Beauty Smith beat White Fang back with a club, the mastiff was dragged out by its owner. Then there was a payment of bets, and money clinked in Beauty Smith's hand. White Fang came to look forward eagerly to the gathering of the men around his pen. It meant a fight; and this was the only way that was now vouchsafed him of expressing the life that was in him. Tormented, incited to hate, he was kept a prisoner so that there was no way of satisfying that hate except at the times his master saw fit to put another dog against him. Beauty Smith had estimated his powers well, for he was invariably the victor. One day, three dogs were turned in upon him in succession. Another day a full-grown wolf, fresh-caught from the Wild, was shoved in through the door of the pen. And on still another day two dogs were set against him at the same time. This was his severest fight, and though in the end he killed them both he was himself half killed in doing it. In the fall of the year, when the first snows were falling and mush-ice was running in the river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself and White Fang on a steamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson. White Fang had now achieved a reputation in the land. As "the Fighting Wolf" he was known far and wide, and the cage in which he was kept on the steam-boat's deck was usually surrounded by curious men. He raged and snarled at them, or lay quietly and studied them with cold hatred. Why should he not hate them? He never asked himself the question. He knew only hate and lost himself in the passion of it. Life had become a hell to him. He had not been made for the close confinement wild beasts endure at the hands of men. And yet it was in precisely this way that he was treated. Men stared at him, poked sticks between the bars to make him snarl, and then laughed at him. They were his environment, these men, and they were moulding the clay of him into a more ferocious thing than had been intended by Nature. Nevertheless, Nature had given him plasticity. Where many another animal would have died or had its spirit broken, he adjusted himself and lived, and at no expense of the spirit. Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend and tormentor, was capable of breaking White Fang's spirit, but as yet there were no signs of his succeeding. If Beauty Smith had in him a devil, White Fang had another; and the two of them raged against each other unceasingly. In the days before, White Fang had had the wisdom to cower down and submit to a man with a club in his hand; but this wisdom now left him. The mere sight of Beauty Smith was sufficient to send him into transports of fury. And when they came to close quarters, and he had been beaten back by the club, he went on growling and snarling, and showing his fangs. The last growl could never be extracted from him. No matter how terribly he was beaten, he had always another growl; and when Beauty Smith gave up and withdrew, the defiant growl followed after him, or White Fang sprang at the bars of the cage bellowing his hatred. When the steamboat arrived at Dawson, White Fang went ashore. But he still lived a public life, in a cage, surrounded by curious men. He was exhibited as "the Fighting Wolf," and men paid fifty cents in gold dust to see him. He was given no rest. Did he lie down to sleep, he was stirred up by a sharp stick--so that the audience might get its money's worth. In order to make the exhibition interesting, he was kept in a rage most of the time. But worse than all this, was the atmosphere in which he lived. He was regarded as the most fearful of wild beasts, and this was borne in to him through the bars of the cage. Every word, every cautious action, on the part of the men, impressed upon him his own terrible ferocity. It was so much added fuel to the flame of his fierceness. There could be but one result, and that was that his ferocity fed upon itself and increased. It was another instance of the plasticity of his clay, of his capacity for being moulded by the pressure of environment. In addition to being exhibited he was a professional fighting animal. At irregular intervals, whenever a fight could be arranged, he was taken out of his cage and led off into the woods a few miles from town. Usually this occurred at night, so as to avoid interference from the mounted police of the Territory. After a few hours of waiting, when daylight had come, the audience and the dog with which he was to fight arrived. In this manner it came about that he fought all sizes and breeds of dogs. It was a savage land, the men were savage, and the fights were usually to the death. Since White Fang continued to fight, it is obvious that it was the other dogs that died. He never knew defeat. His early training, when he fought with Lip-lip and the whole puppy-pack, stood him in good stead. There was the tenacity with which he clung to the earth. No dog could make him lose his footing. This was the favourite trick of the wolf breeds--to rush in upon him, either directly or with an unexpected swerve, in the hope of striking his shoulder and overthrowing him. Mackenzie hounds, Eskimo and Labrador dogs, huskies and Malemutes--all tried it on him, and all failed. He was never known to lose his footing. Men told this to one another, and looked each time to see it happen; but White Fang always disappointed them. Then there was his lightning quickness. It gave him a tremendous advantage over his antagonists. No matter what their fighting experience, they had never encountered a dog that moved so swiftly as he. Also to be reckoned with, was the immediateness of his attack. The average dog was accustomed to the preliminaries of snarling and bristling and growling, and the average dog was knocked off his feet and finished before he had begun to fight or recovered from his surprise. So often did this happen, that it became the custom to hold White Fang until the other dog went through its preliminaries, was good and ready, and even made the first attack. But greatest of all the advantages in White Fang's favour, was his experience. He knew more about fighting than did any of the dogs that faced him. He had fought more fights, knew how to meet more tricks and methods, and had more tricks himself, while his own method was scarcely to be improved upon. As the time went by, he had fewer and fewer fights. Men despaired of matching him with an equal, and Beauty Smith was compelled to pit wolves against him. These were trapped by the Indians for the purpose, and a fight between White Fang and a wolf was always sure to draw a crowd. Once, a full-grown female lynx was secured, and this time White Fang fought for his life. Her quickness matched his; her ferocity equalled his; while he fought with his fangs alone, and she fought with her sharp- clawed feet as well. But after the lynx, all fighting ceased for White Fang. There were no more animals with which to fight--at least, there was none considered worthy of fighting with him. So he remained on exhibition until spring, when one Tim Keenan, a faro-dealer, arrived in the land. With him came the first bull-dog that had ever entered the Klondike. That this dog and White Fang should come together was inevitable, and for a week the anticipated fight was the mainspring of conversation in certain quarters of the town.

IV.3 The Reign of Hate

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-reign-of-hate

Beauty Smith treats White Fang with such cruelty that the dog becomes the enemy not only of his own kind but also "of all things." Smith treats White Fang so cruelly in order that he can win money by pitting White Fang against other dogs in fights. White Fang becomes known as "The Fighting Wolf." He defeats all other dogs due to his agility, his ferocity, and his experience. After he defeats a lynx, he faces no more fights-until a man named Tim Keenan comes to the camp and pits White Fang against his bulldog, Cherokee.

. This chapter marks the nadir of White Fang's "devolution" or "dehumanization." London stresses that Beauty Smith's barbarous treatment of White Fang strips the dog of all reason: for example, "To such an extent was he tormented, that he hated blindly and without the faintest spark of reason. " White Fang is represented as, in effect, pure life force, unmediated by any kind of rationality; he fights not just because Beauty Smith forces him too, but because fighting is "the only way. of expressing the advertisement life that was in him." Ironically, although White Fang is living among "civilized" men , he is still struggling simply to survive as he would be in the Wild, even though "ife had become a hell for him." London thus makes a sad, poignant statement about the indomitable quality of life: it is capable of insisting on surviving even in the absence of pleasure, even in the absence of love. This quality may be what London means by referring to White Fang's "plasticity." Life will find a way, even in the harshest of environments.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_18_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 4.chapter 4

part 4, chapter 4 the clinging death

{"name": "IV.4 The Clinging Death", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-clinging-death", "summary": "White Fang is pitted against Cherokee the bulldog, with surprising results. Having never faced a bulldog before, White Fang is unsure how to defeat him; and, very quickly, the fight degenerates, to White Fang's harm. Cherokee eventually takes White Fang by the neck and slowly begins choking the life out of him. White Fang is in mortal danger until the fight is interrupted by Weedon Scott, a mining expert who arrives in camp with his companion Matt. Scott buys White Fang from Beauty Smith, despite Smith's protests that the dog is not for sale.", "analysis": ". The dog fight described in this chapter led President Theodore Roosevelt to accuse London of being a \"nature faker,\" declaring, \"I can't believe that Mr. London knows much about the wolves, and I am certain he knows nothing about their fighting, or as a realist he would not tell this tale.\" London replied: \"President Roosevelt does not think a bull-dog can lick a wolf-dog. I think a bull-dog can lick a wolf-dog. And there we are. Difference of opinion may make, and does make, horse-racing. I can understand that difference of opinion can make dog-fighting. But what gets me is how difference of opinion regarding the relative merits of a bull-dog and a wolf-dog makes me a nature-faker and President Roosevelt a vindicated and triumphant scientist.\" . This controversy aside, the fight serves to demonstrate, once more, the power of life, its will to survive; White Fang lives because Weedon Scott intervenes, but he would not have survived to that point had not his nature rebelled ferociously against death: \"The basic life that was in him took charge of him.\" Note that London continues the portrayal, begun in IV.3, of White Fang as an irrational creature: \"All intelligence was gone. It was as though he had no brain.\" The description points out how far White Fang has fallen from the status of an animal who once possessed \"cunning\" . This emphasis on White Fang's irrationality also contrasts with Scott's \"sane rage\" when he breaks up the dog fight. London appears to be suggesting that the \"mere flesh-love of life, \" while powerful, does not in and of advertisement itself constitute living. As Weedon Scott will demonstrate, to really live means to think and to love. Since Beauty Smith and his fellow gamblers possesses neither of these qualities, therefore, it is quite appropriate, and more than just an accident of language, for Scott to call them, repeatedly, \"beasts.\" They have demonstrated that they are no better than the dogs they pit against each other-and perhaps quite a bit worse. Here again, London sounds his theme of the \"bestial\" nature, or at least bestial potential, within supposedly \"civilized\" man."}

Beauty Smith slipped the chain from his neck and stepped back. For once White Fang did not make an immediate attack. He stood still, ears pricked forward, alert and curious, surveying the strange animal that faced him. He had never seen such a dog before. Tim Keenan shoved the bull-dog forward with a muttered "Go to it." The animal waddled toward the centre of the circle, short and squat and ungainly. He came to a stop and blinked across at White Fang. There were cries from the crowd of, "Go to him, Cherokee! Sick 'm, Cherokee! Eat 'm up!" But Cherokee did not seem anxious to fight. He turned his head and blinked at the men who shouted, at the same time wagging his stump of a tail good-naturedly. He was not afraid, but merely lazy. Besides, it did not seem to him that it was intended he should fight with the dog he saw before him. He was not used to fighting with that kind of dog, and he was waiting for them to bring on the real dog. Tim Keenan stepped in and bent over Cherokee, fondling him on both sides of the shoulders with hands that rubbed against the grain of the hair and that made slight, pushing-forward movements. These were so many suggestions. Also, their effect was irritating, for Cherokee began to growl, very softly, deep down in his throat. There was a correspondence in rhythm between the growls and the movements of the man's hands. The growl rose in the throat with the culmination of each forward-pushing movement, and ebbed down to start up afresh with the beginning of the next movement. The end of each movement was the accent of the rhythm, the movement ending abruptly and the growling rising with a jerk. This was not without its effect on White Fang. The hair began to rise on his neck and across the shoulders. Tim Keenan gave a final shove forward and stepped back again. As the impetus that carried Cherokee forward died down, he continued to go forward of his own volition, in a swift, bow-legged run. Then White Fang struck. A cry of startled admiration went up. He had covered the distance and gone in more like a cat than a dog; and with the same cat-like swiftness he had slashed with his fangs and leaped clear. The bull-dog was bleeding back of one ear from a rip in his thick neck. He gave no sign, did not even snarl, but turned and followed after White Fang. The display on both sides, the quickness of the one and the steadiness of the other, had excited the partisan spirit of the crowd, and the men were making new bets and increasing original bets. Again, and yet again, White Fang sprang in, slashed, and got away untouched, and still his strange foe followed after him, without too great haste, not slowly, but deliberately and determinedly, in a businesslike sort of way. There was purpose in his method--something for him to do that he was intent upon doing and from which nothing could distract him. His whole demeanour, every action, was stamped with this purpose. It puzzled White Fang. Never had he seen such a dog. It had no hair protection. It was soft, and bled easily. There was no thick mat of fur to baffle White Fang's teeth as they were often baffled by dogs of his own breed. Each time that his teeth struck they sank easily into the yielding flesh, while the animal did not seem able to defend itself. Another disconcerting thing was that it made no outcry, such as he had been accustomed to with the other dogs he had fought. Beyond a growl or a grunt, the dog took its punishment silently. And never did it flag in its pursuit of him. Not that Cherokee was slow. He could turn and whirl swiftly enough, but White Fang was never there. Cherokee was puzzled, too. He had never fought before with a dog with which he could not close. The desire to close had always been mutual. But here was a dog that kept at a distance, dancing and dodging here and there and all about. And when it did get its teeth into him, it did not hold on but let go instantly and darted away again. But White Fang could not get at the soft underside of the throat. The bull-dog stood too short, while its massive jaws were an added protection. White Fang darted in and out unscathed, while Cherokee's wounds increased. Both sides of his neck and head were ripped and slashed. He bled freely, but showed no signs of being disconcerted. He continued his plodding pursuit, though once, for the moment baffled, he came to a full stop and blinked at the men who looked on, at the same time wagging his stump of a tail as an expression of his willingness to fight. In that moment White Fang was in upon him and out, in passing ripping his trimmed remnant of an ear. With a slight manifestation of anger, Cherokee took up the pursuit again, running on the inside of the circle White Fang was making, and striving to fasten his deadly grip on White Fang's throat. The bull-dog missed by a hair's-breadth, and cries of praise went up as White Fang doubled suddenly out of danger in the opposite direction. The time went by. White Fang still danced on, dodging and doubling, leaping in and out, and ever inflicting damage. And still the bull-dog, with grim certitude, toiled after him. Sooner or later he would accomplish his purpose, get the grip that would win the battle. In the meantime, he accepted all the punishment the other could deal him. His tufts of ears had become tassels, his neck and shoulders were slashed in a score of places, and his very lips were cut and bleeding--all from these lightning snaps that were beyond his foreseeing and guarding. Time and again White Fang had attempted to knock Cherokee off his feet; but the difference in their height was too great. Cherokee was too squat, too close to the ground. White Fang tried the trick once too often. The chance came in one of his quick doublings and counter-circlings. He caught Cherokee with head turned away as he whirled more slowly. His shoulder was exposed. White Fang drove in upon it: but his own shoulder was high above, while he struck with such force that his momentum carried him on across over the other's body. For the first time in his fighting history, men saw White Fang lose his footing. His body turned a half-somersault in the air, and he would have landed on his back had he not twisted, catlike, still in the air, in the effort to bring his feet to the earth. As it was, he struck heavily on his side. The next instant he was on his feet, but in that instant Cherokee's teeth closed on his throat. It was not a good grip, being too low down toward the chest; but Cherokee held on. White Fang sprang to his feet and tore wildly around, trying to shake off the bull-dog's body. It made him frantic, this clinging, dragging weight. It bound his movements, restricted his freedom. It was like the trap, and all his instinct resented it and revolted against it. It was a mad revolt. For several minutes he was to all intents insane. The basic life that was in him took charge of him. The will to exist of his body surged over him. He was dominated by this mere flesh-love of life. All intelligence was gone. It was as though he had no brain. His reason was unseated by the blind yearning of the flesh to exist and move, at all hazards to move, to continue to move, for movement was the expression of its existence. Round and round he went, whirling and turning and reversing, trying to shake off the fifty-pound weight that dragged at his throat. The bull- dog did little but keep his grip. Sometimes, and rarely, he managed to get his feet to the earth and for a moment to brace himself against White Fang. But the next moment his footing would be lost and he would be dragging around in the whirl of one of White Fang's mad gyrations. Cherokee identified himself with his instinct. He knew that he was doing the right thing by holding on, and there came to him certain blissful thrills of satisfaction. At such moments he even closed his eyes and allowed his body to be hurled hither and thither, willy-nilly, careless of any hurt that might thereby come to it. That did not count. The grip was the thing, and the grip he kept. White Fang ceased only when he had tired himself out. He could do nothing, and he could not understand. Never, in all his fighting, had this thing happened. The dogs he had fought with did not fight that way. With them it was snap and slash and get away, snap and slash and get away. He lay partly on his side, panting for breath. Cherokee still holding his grip, urged against him, trying to get him over entirely on his side. White Fang resisted, and he could feel the jaws shifting their grip, slightly relaxing and coming together again in a chewing movement. Each shift brought the grip closer to his throat. The bull-dog's method was to hold what he had, and when opportunity favoured to work in for more. Opportunity favoured when White Fang remained quiet. When White Fang struggled, Cherokee was content merely to hold on. The bulging back of Cherokee's neck was the only portion of his body that White Fang's teeth could reach. He got hold toward the base where the neck comes out from the shoulders; but he did not know the chewing method of fighting, nor were his jaws adapted to it. He spasmodically ripped and tore with his fangs for a space. Then a change in their position diverted him. The bull-dog had managed to roll him over on his back, and still hanging on to his throat, was on top of him. Like a cat, White Fang bowed his hind-quarters in, and, with the feet digging into his enemy's abdomen above him, he began to claw with long tearing-strokes. Cherokee might well have been disembowelled had he not quickly pivoted on his grip and got his body off of White Fang's and at right angles to it. There was no escaping that grip. It was like Fate itself, and as inexorable. Slowly it shifted up along the jugular. All that saved White Fang from death was the loose skin of his neck and the thick fur that covered it. This served to form a large roll in Cherokee's mouth, the fur of which well-nigh defied his teeth. But bit by bit, whenever the chance offered, he was getting more of the loose skin and fur in his mouth. The result was that he was slowly throttling White Fang. The latter's breath was drawn with greater and greater difficulty as the moments went by. It began to look as though the battle were over. The backers of Cherokee waxed jubilant and offered ridiculous odds. White Fang's backers were correspondingly depressed, and refused bets of ten to one and twenty to one, though one man was rash enough to close a wager of fifty to one. This man was Beauty Smith. He took a step into the ring and pointed his finger at White Fang. Then he began to laugh derisively and scornfully. This produced the desired effect. White Fang went wild with rage. He called up his reserves of strength, and gained his feet. As he struggled around the ring, the fifty pounds of his foe ever dragging on his throat, his anger passed on into panic. The basic life of him dominated him again, and his intelligence fled before the will of his flesh to live. Round and round and back again, stumbling and falling and rising, even uprearing at times on his hind-legs and lifting his foe clear of the earth, he struggled vainly to shake off the clinging death. At last he fell, toppling backward, exhausted; and the bull-dog promptly shifted his grip, getting in closer, mangling more and more of the fur- folded flesh, throttling White Fang more severely than ever. Shouts of applause went up for the victor, and there were many cries of "Cherokee!" "Cherokee!" To this Cherokee responded by vigorous wagging of the stump of his tail. But the clamour of approval did not distract him. There was no sympathetic relation between his tail and his massive jaws. The one might wag, but the others held their terrible grip on White Fang's throat. It was at this time that a diversion came to the spectators. There was a jingle of bells. Dog-mushers' cries were heard. Everybody, save Beauty Smith, looked apprehensively, the fear of the police strong upon them. But they saw, up the trail, and not down, two men running with sled and dogs. They were evidently coming down the creek from some prospecting trip. At sight of the crowd they stopped their dogs and came over and joined it, curious to see the cause of the excitement. The dog-musher wore a moustache, but the other, a taller and younger man, was smooth- shaven, his skin rosy from the pounding of his blood and the running in the frosty air. White Fang had practically ceased struggling. Now and again he resisted spasmodically and to no purpose. He could get little air, and that little grew less and less under the merciless grip that ever tightened. In spite of his armour of fur, the great vein of his throat would have long since been torn open, had not the first grip of the bull-dog been so low down as to be practically on the chest. It had taken Cherokee a long time to shift that grip upward, and this had also tended further to clog his jaws with fur and skin-fold. In the meantime, the abysmal brute in Beauty Smith had been rising into his brain and mastering the small bit of sanity that he possessed at best. When he saw White Fang's eyes beginning to glaze, he knew beyond doubt that the fight was lost. Then he broke loose. He sprang upon White Fang and began savagely to kick him. There were hisses from the crowd and cries of protest, but that was all. While this went on, and Beauty Smith continued to kick White Fang, there was a commotion in the crowd. The tall young newcomer was forcing his way through, shouldering men right and left without ceremony or gentleness. When he broke through into the ring, Beauty Smith was just in the act of delivering another kick. All his weight was on one foot, and he was in a state of unstable equilibrium. At that moment the newcomer's fist landed a smashing blow full in his face. Beauty Smith's remaining leg left the ground, and his whole body seemed to lift into the air as he turned over backward and struck the snow. The newcomer turned upon the crowd. "You cowards!" he cried. "You beasts!" He was in a rage himself--a sane rage. His grey eyes seemed metallic and steel-like as they flashed upon the crowd. Beauty Smith regained his feet and came toward him, sniffling and cowardly. The new-comer did not understand. He did not know how abject a coward the other was, and thought he was coming back intent on fighting. So, with a "You beast!" he smashed Beauty Smith over backward with a second blow in the face. Beauty Smith decided that the snow was the safest place for him, and lay where he had fallen, making no effort to get up. "Come on, Matt, lend a hand," the newcomer called the dog-musher, who had followed him into the ring. Both men bent over the dogs. Matt took hold of White Fang, ready to pull when Cherokee's jaws should be loosened. This the younger man endeavoured to accomplish by clutching the bulldog's jaws in his hands and trying to spread them. It was a vain undertaking. As he pulled and tugged and wrenched, he kept exclaiming with every expulsion of breath, "Beasts!" The crowd began to grow unruly, and some of the men were protesting against the spoiling of the sport; but they were silenced when the newcomer lifted his head from his work for a moment and glared at them. "You damn beasts!" he finally exploded, and went back to his task. "It's no use, Mr. Scott, you can't break 'm apart that way," Matt said at last. The pair paused and surveyed the locked dogs. "Ain't bleedin' much," Matt announced. "Ain't got all the way in yet." "But he's liable to any moment," Scott answered. "There, did you see that! He shifted his grip in a bit." The younger man's excitement and apprehension for White Fang was growing. He struck Cherokee about the head savagely again and again. But that did not loosen the jaws. Cherokee wagged the stump of his tail in advertisement that he understood the meaning of the blows, but that he knew he was himself in the right and only doing his duty by keeping his grip. "Won't some of you help?" Scott cried desperately at the crowd. But no help was offered. Instead, the crowd began sarcastically to cheer him on and showered him with facetious advice. "You'll have to get a pry," Matt counselled. The other reached into the holster at his hip, drew his revolver, and tried to thrust its muzzle between the bull-dog's jaws. He shoved, and shoved hard, till the grating of the steel against the locked teeth could be distinctly heard. Both men were on their knees, bending over the dogs. Tim Keenan strode into the ring. He paused beside Scott and touched him on the shoulder, saying ominously: "Don't break them teeth, stranger." "Then I'll break his neck," Scott retorted, continuing his shoving and wedging with the revolver muzzle. "I said don't break them teeth," the faro-dealer repeated more ominously than before. But if it was a bluff he intended, it did not work. Scott never desisted from his efforts, though he looked up coolly and asked: "Your dog?" The faro-dealer grunted. "Then get in here and break this grip." "Well, stranger," the other drawled irritatingly, "I don't mind telling you that's something I ain't worked out for myself. I don't know how to turn the trick." "Then get out of the way," was the reply, "and don't bother me. I'm busy." Tim Keenan continued standing over him, but Scott took no further notice of his presence. He had managed to get the muzzle in between the jaws on one side, and was trying to get it out between the jaws on the other side. This accomplished, he pried gently and carefully, loosening the jaws a bit at a time, while Matt, a bit at a time, extricated White Fang's mangled neck. "Stand by to receive your dog," was Scott's peremptory order to Cherokee's owner. The faro-dealer stooped down obediently and got a firm hold on Cherokee. "Now!" Scott warned, giving the final pry. The dogs were drawn apart, the bull-dog struggling vigorously. "Take him away," Scott commanded, and Tim Keenan dragged Cherokee back into the crowd. White Fang made several ineffectual efforts to get up. Once he gained his feet, but his legs were too weak to sustain him, and he slowly wilted and sank back into the snow. His eyes were half closed, and the surface of them was glassy. His jaws were apart, and through them the tongue protruded, draggled and limp. To all appearances he looked like a dog that had been strangled to death. Matt examined him. "Just about all in," he announced; "but he's breathin' all right." Beauty Smith had regained his feet and come over to look at White Fang. "Matt, how much is a good sled-dog worth?" Scott asked. The dog-musher, still on his knees and stooped over White Fang, calculated for a moment. "Three hundred dollars," he answered. "And how much for one that's all chewed up like this one?" Scott asked, nudging White Fang with his foot. "Half of that," was the dog-musher's judgment. Scott turned upon Beauty Smith. "Did you hear, Mr. Beast? I'm going to take your dog from you, and I'm going to give you a hundred and fifty for him." He opened his pocket-book and counted out the bills. Beauty Smith put his hands behind his back, refusing to touch the proffered money. "I ain't a-sellin'," he said. "Oh, yes you are," the other assured him. "Because I'm buying. Here's your money. The dog's mine." Beauty Smith, his hands still behind him, began to back away. Scott sprang toward him, drawing his fist back to strike. Beauty Smith cowered down in anticipation of the blow. "I've got my rights," he whimpered. "You've forfeited your rights to own that dog," was the rejoinder. "Are you going to take the money? or do I have to hit you again?" "All right," Beauty Smith spoke up with the alacrity of fear. "But I take the money under protest," he added. "The dog's a mint. I ain't a- goin' to be robbed. A man's got his rights." "Correct," Scott answered, passing the money over to him. "A man's got his rights. But you're not a man. You're a beast." "Wait till I get back to Dawson," Beauty Smith threatened. "I'll have the law on you." "If you open your mouth when you get back to Dawson, I'll have you run out of town. Understand?" Beauty Smith replied with a grunt. "Understand?" the other thundered with abrupt fierceness. "Yes," Beauty Smith grunted, shrinking away. "Yes what?" "Yes, sir," Beauty Smith snarled. "Look out! He'll bite!" some one shouted, and a guffaw of laughter went up. Scott turned his back on him, and returned to help the dog-musher, who was working over White Fang. Some of the men were already departing; others stood in groups, looking on and talking. Tim Keenan joined one of the groups. "Who's that mug?" he asked. "Weedon Scott," some one answered. "And who in hell is Weedon Scott?" the faro-dealer demanded. "Oh, one of them crackerjack minin' experts. He's in with all the big bugs. If you want to keep out of trouble, you'll steer clear of him, that's my talk. He's all hunky with the officials. The Gold Commissioner's a special pal of his." "I thought he must be somebody," was the faro-dealer's comment. "That's why I kept my hands offen him at the start."

IV.4 The Clinging Death

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-clinging-death

White Fang is pitted against Cherokee the bulldog, with surprising results. Having never faced a bulldog before, White Fang is unsure how to defeat him; and, very quickly, the fight degenerates, to White Fang's harm. Cherokee eventually takes White Fang by the neck and slowly begins choking the life out of him. White Fang is in mortal danger until the fight is interrupted by Weedon Scott, a mining expert who arrives in camp with his companion Matt. Scott buys White Fang from Beauty Smith, despite Smith's protests that the dog is not for sale.

. The dog fight described in this chapter led President Theodore Roosevelt to accuse London of being a "nature faker," declaring, "I can't believe that Mr. London knows much about the wolves, and I am certain he knows nothing about their fighting, or as a realist he would not tell this tale." London replied: "President Roosevelt does not think a bull-dog can lick a wolf-dog. I think a bull-dog can lick a wolf-dog. And there we are. Difference of opinion may make, and does make, horse-racing. I can understand that difference of opinion can make dog-fighting. But what gets me is how difference of opinion regarding the relative merits of a bull-dog and a wolf-dog makes me a nature-faker and President Roosevelt a vindicated and triumphant scientist." . This controversy aside, the fight serves to demonstrate, once more, the power of life, its will to survive; White Fang lives because Weedon Scott intervenes, but he would not have survived to that point had not his nature rebelled ferociously against death: "The basic life that was in him took charge of him." Note that London continues the portrayal, begun in IV.3, of White Fang as an irrational creature: "All intelligence was gone. It was as though he had no brain." The description points out how far White Fang has fallen from the status of an animal who once possessed "cunning" . This emphasis on White Fang's irrationality also contrasts with Scott's "sane rage" when he breaks up the dog fight. London appears to be suggesting that the "mere flesh-love of life, " while powerful, does not in and of advertisement itself constitute living. As Weedon Scott will demonstrate, to really live means to think and to love. Since Beauty Smith and his fellow gamblers possesses neither of these qualities, therefore, it is quite appropriate, and more than just an accident of language, for Scott to call them, repeatedly, "beasts." They have demonstrated that they are no better than the dogs they pit against each other-and perhaps quite a bit worse. Here again, London sounds his theme of the "bestial" nature, or at least bestial potential, within supposedly "civilized" man.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/19.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_19_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 4.chapter 5

part 4, chapter 5 the indomitable

{"name": "IV.5 The Indomitable", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-indomitable", "summary": "Although Matt is able to recognize that White Fang has been domesticated previously, Weedon Scott is dubious that he will be able to tame the dog. When Scott attempts to throw a piece of meat to White Fang, the meat is intercepted by another of Scott's sled-dogs. That dog pays for it with his life as White Fang swiftly kills him. He also bites Matt's leg when Matt kicks him in rebuke. Scott thinks he should do White Fang a favor and put the beast out its misery by killing him, but Matt argues that it was the dog's own fault, and his, for interfering with this wild creature's feeding: \"I wouldn't give two whoops in hell for a dog that wouldn't fight for his own meat.\" Scott gives White Fang a chance, and begins to pet him. White Fang fights the instinct to bite Scott's hand for as long as he can, but, at length, he must yield to it. This time, Matt moves to kill White Fang, but Scott intercedes. They notice that White Fang seems to understand the threat of the rifle and decide that he is too intelligent a beast to kill. They agree to give White Fang another chance.", "analysis": ". This brief chapter suggests that White Fang's intelligence has not deserted him entirely. Freed advertisement from the tyranny of Beauty Smith, the dog is able to again demonstrate his intelligence as he shows his reaction to the rifle. His ferocious defense of his meat and his delayed biting of Scott's hand emerge as understandable, inevitable consequences of the harsh treatment he has received at humans' hands for so long. Scott states what the narrator has previously stated: \"Poor devil. What he needs is some show of human kindness.\" This chapter, then, serves as an important turning point in the narrative's plot. From this point on, White Fang will receive those displays of kindness, and will change as a result."}

"It's hopeless," Weedon Scott confessed. He sat on the step of his cabin and stared at the dog-musher, who responded with a shrug that was equally hopeless. Together they looked at White Fang at the end of his stretched chain, bristling, snarling, ferocious, straining to get at the sled-dogs. Having received sundry lessons from Matt, said lessons being imparted by means of a club, the sled-dogs had learned to leave White Fang alone; and even then they were lying down at a distance, apparently oblivious of his existence. "It's a wolf and there's no taming it," Weedon Scott announced. "Oh, I don't know about that," Matt objected. "Might be a lot of dog in 'm, for all you can tell. But there's one thing I know sure, an' that there's no gettin' away from." The dog-musher paused and nodded his head confidentially at Moosehide Mountain. "Well, don't be a miser with what you know," Scott said sharply, after waiting a suitable length of time. "Spit it out. What is it?" The dog-musher indicated White Fang with a backward thrust of his thumb. "Wolf or dog, it's all the same--he's ben tamed 'ready." "No!" "I tell you yes, an' broke to harness. Look close there. D'ye see them marks across the chest?" "You're right, Matt. He was a sled-dog before Beauty Smith got hold of him." "And there's not much reason against his bein' a sled-dog again." "What d'ye think?" Scott queried eagerly. Then the hope died down as he added, shaking his head, "We've had him two weeks now, and if anything he's wilder than ever at the present moment." "Give 'm a chance," Matt counselled. "Turn 'm loose for a spell." The other looked at him incredulously. "Yes," Matt went on, "I know you've tried to, but you didn't take a club." "You try it then." The dog-musher secured a club and went over to the chained animal. White Fang watched the club after the manner of a caged lion watching the whip of its trainer. "See 'm keep his eye on that club," Matt said. "That's a good sign. He's no fool. Don't dast tackle me so long as I got that club handy. He's not clean crazy, sure." As the man's hand approached his neck, White Fang bristled and snarled and crouched down. But while he eyed the approaching hand, he at the same time contrived to keep track of the club in the other hand, suspended threateningly above him. Matt unsnapped the chain from the collar and stepped back. White Fang could scarcely realise that he was free. Many months had gone by since he passed into the possession of Beauty Smith, and in all that period he had never known a moment of freedom except at the times he had been loosed to fight with other dogs. Immediately after such fights he had always been imprisoned again. He did not know what to make of it. Perhaps some new devilry of the gods was about to be perpetrated on him. He walked slowly and cautiously, prepared to be assailed at any moment. He did not know what to do, it was all so unprecedented. He took the precaution to sheer off from the two watching gods, and walked carefully to the corner of the cabin. Nothing happened. He was plainly perplexed, and he came back again, pausing a dozen feet away and regarding the two men intently. "Won't he run away?" his new owner asked. Matt shrugged his shoulders. "Got to take a gamble. Only way to find out is to find out." "Poor devil," Scott murmured pityingly. "What he needs is some show of human kindness," he added, turning and going into the cabin. He came out with a piece of meat, which he tossed to White Fang. He sprang away from it, and from a distance studied it suspiciously. "Hi-yu, Major!" Matt shouted warningly, but too late. Major had made a spring for the meat. At the instant his jaws closed on it, White Fang struck him. He was overthrown. Matt rushed in, but quicker than he was White Fang. Major staggered to his feet, but the blood spouting from his throat reddened the snow in a widening path. "It's too bad, but it served him right," Scott said hastily. But Matt's foot had already started on its way to kick White Fang. There was a leap, a flash of teeth, a sharp exclamation. White Fang, snarling fiercely, scrambled backward for several yards, while Matt stooped and investigated his leg. "He got me all right," he announced, pointing to the torn trousers and undercloths, and the growing stain of red. "I told you it was hopeless, Matt," Scott said in a discouraged voice. "I've thought about it off and on, while not wanting to think of it. But we've come to it now. It's the only thing to do." As he talked, with reluctant movements he drew his revolver, threw open the cylinder, and assured himself of its contents. "Look here, Mr. Scott," Matt objected; "that dog's ben through hell. You can't expect 'm to come out a white an' shinin' angel. Give 'm time." "Look at Major," the other rejoined. The dog-musher surveyed the stricken dog. He had sunk down on the snow in the circle of his blood and was plainly in the last gasp. "Served 'm right. You said so yourself, Mr. Scott. He tried to take White Fang's meat, an' he's dead-O. That was to be expected. I wouldn't give two whoops in hell for a dog that wouldn't fight for his own meat." "But look at yourself, Matt. It's all right about the dogs, but we must draw the line somewhere." "Served me right," Matt argued stubbornly. "What'd I want to kick 'm for? You said yourself that he'd done right. Then I had no right to kick 'm." "It would be a mercy to kill him," Scott insisted. "He's untamable." "Now look here, Mr. Scott, give the poor devil a fightin' chance. He ain't had no chance yet. He's just come through hell, an' this is the first time he's ben loose. Give 'm a fair chance, an' if he don't deliver the goods, I'll kill 'm myself. There!" "God knows I don't want to kill him or have him killed," Scott answered, putting away the revolver. "We'll let him run loose and see what kindness can do for him. And here's a try at it." He walked over to White Fang and began talking to him gently and soothingly. "Better have a club handy," Matt warned. Scott shook his head and went on trying to win White Fang's confidence. White Fang was suspicious. Something was impending. He had killed this god's dog, bitten his companion god, and what else was to be expected than some terrible punishment? But in the face of it he was indomitable. He bristled and showed his teeth, his eyes vigilant, his whole body wary and prepared for anything. The god had no club, so he suffered him to approach quite near. The god's hand had come out and was descending upon his head. White Fang shrank together and grew tense as he crouched under it. Here was danger, some treachery or something. He knew the hands of the gods, their proved mastery, their cunning to hurt. Besides, there was his old antipathy to being touched. He snarled more menacingly, crouched still lower, and still the hand descended. He did not want to bite the hand, and he endured the peril of it until his instinct surged up in him, mastering him with its insatiable yearning for life. Weedon Scott had believed that he was quick enough to avoid any snap or slash. But he had yet to learn the remarkable quickness of White Fang, who struck with the certainty and swiftness of a coiled snake. Scott cried out sharply with surprise, catching his torn hand and holding it tightly in his other hand. Matt uttered a great oath and sprang to his side. White Fang crouched down, and backed away, bristling, showing his fangs, his eyes malignant with menace. Now he could expect a beating as fearful as any he had received from Beauty Smith. "Here! What are you doing?" Scott cried suddenly. Matt had dashed into the cabin and come out with a rifle. "Nothin'," he said slowly, with a careless calmness that was assumed, "only goin' to keep that promise I made. I reckon it's up to me to kill 'm as I said I'd do." "No you don't!" "Yes I do. Watch me." As Matt had pleaded for White Fang when he had been bitten, it was now Weedon Scott's turn to plead. "You said to give him a chance. Well, give it to him. We've only just started, and we can't quit at the beginning. It served me right, this time. And--look at him!" White Fang, near the corner of the cabin and forty feet away, was snarling with blood-curdling viciousness, not at Scott, but at the dog- musher. "Well, I'll be everlastingly gosh-swoggled!" was the dog-musher's expression of astonishment. "Look at the intelligence of him," Scott went on hastily. "He knows the meaning of firearms as well as you do. He's got intelligence and we've got to give that intelligence a chance. Put up the gun." "All right, I'm willin'," Matt agreed, leaning the rifle against the woodpile. "But will you look at that!" he exclaimed the next moment. White Fang had quieted down and ceased snarling. "This is worth investigatin'. Watch." Matt, reached for the rifle, and at the same moment White Fang snarled. He stepped away from the rifle, and White Fang's lifted lips descended, covering his teeth. "Now, just for fun." Matt took the rifle and began slowly to raise it to his shoulder. White Fang's snarling began with the movement, and increased as the movement approached its culmination. But the moment before the rifle came to a level on him, he leaped sidewise behind the corner of the cabin. Matt stood staring along the sights at the empty space of snow which had been occupied by White Fang. The dog-musher put the rifle down solemnly, then turned and looked at his employer. "I agree with you, Mr. Scott. That dog's too intelligent to kill."

IV.5 The Indomitable

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-indomitable

Although Matt is able to recognize that White Fang has been domesticated previously, Weedon Scott is dubious that he will be able to tame the dog. When Scott attempts to throw a piece of meat to White Fang, the meat is intercepted by another of Scott's sled-dogs. That dog pays for it with his life as White Fang swiftly kills him. He also bites Matt's leg when Matt kicks him in rebuke. Scott thinks he should do White Fang a favor and put the beast out its misery by killing him, but Matt argues that it was the dog's own fault, and his, for interfering with this wild creature's feeding: "I wouldn't give two whoops in hell for a dog that wouldn't fight for his own meat." Scott gives White Fang a chance, and begins to pet him. White Fang fights the instinct to bite Scott's hand for as long as he can, but, at length, he must yield to it. This time, Matt moves to kill White Fang, but Scott intercedes. They notice that White Fang seems to understand the threat of the rifle and decide that he is too intelligent a beast to kill. They agree to give White Fang another chance.

. This brief chapter suggests that White Fang's intelligence has not deserted him entirely. Freed advertisement from the tyranny of Beauty Smith, the dog is able to again demonstrate his intelligence as he shows his reaction to the rifle. His ferocious defense of his meat and his delayed biting of Scott's hand emerge as understandable, inevitable consequences of the harsh treatment he has received at humans' hands for so long. Scott states what the narrator has previously stated: "Poor devil. What he needs is some show of human kindness." This chapter, then, serves as an important turning point in the narrative's plot. From this point on, White Fang will receive those displays of kindness, and will change as a result.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/20.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_20_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 4.chapter 6

part 4, chapter 6 the love master

{"name": "IV.6 The Love-Master", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-love-master", "summary": "Weedon Scott begins the long process of bonding with White Fang and winning his trust. Indeed, White Fang gradually grows to love Scott. He never, however, outgrows his growl, even though a note of affection and contentment is now in it that was not present before. He grows to love Scott so much, in fact, that when Scott leaves on a trip, White Fang becomes physically ill-languishing, refusing to eat-and does not recover until Scott returns. One night after Scott's return, Beauty Smith stealthily approaches, attempting to steal White Fang back. White Fang viciously attacks Smith, who runs away in terror.", "analysis": ". This chapter expands on suggestions earlier in the book that love is a necessary part of life: White Fang becomes \"aware of a certain satisfaction, as though some need were being gratified, as though some void in his being were being filled. \" In fact, White Fang's first experience of love marks \"the beginning of the end for White Fang-the ending of the old life and the reign of hate.\" To use religious language that London does not employ , White Fang is being \"born again.\" He is becoming, in the biblical phrase, a \"new creation\" thanks to Scott's love. London shows that love is the necessary element for rising above \"mere flesh-love of life\" . Interestingly, though, this new creation is advertisement not entirely discontinuous from the old. For example, notice that White Fang still growls, even though his growl now has a new undertone of love. The old has been, not obliterated, but transformed, perhaps one might say even exalted. In yielding himself to Scott-\"as though he said: 'I put myself into thy hands'\"-White Fang is \"in the process of finding himself\" ."}

As White Fang watched Weedon Scott approach, he bristled and snarled to advertise that he would not submit to punishment. Twenty-four hours had passed since he had slashed open the hand that was now bandaged and held up by a sling to keep the blood out of it. In the past White Fang had experienced delayed punishments, and he apprehended that such a one was about to befall him. How could it be otherwise? He had committed what was to him sacrilege, sunk his fangs into the holy flesh of a god, and of a white-skinned superior god at that. In the nature of things, and of intercourse with gods, something terrible awaited him. The god sat down several feet away. White Fang could see nothing dangerous in that. When the gods administered punishment they stood on their legs. Besides, this god had no club, no whip, no firearm. And furthermore, he himself was free. No chain nor stick bound him. He could escape into safety while the god was scrambling to his feet. In the meantime he would wait and see. The god remained quiet, made no movement; and White Fang's snarl slowly dwindled to a growl that ebbed down in his throat and ceased. Then the god spoke, and at the first sound of his voice, the hair rose on White Fang's neck and the growl rushed up in his throat. But the god made no hostile movement, and went on calmly talking. For a time White Fang growled in unison with him, a correspondence of rhythm being established between growl and voice. But the god talked on interminably. He talked to White Fang as White Fang had never been talked to before. He talked softly and soothingly, with a gentleness that somehow, somewhere, touched White Fang. In spite of himself and all the pricking warnings of his instinct, White Fang began to have confidence in this god. He had a feeling of security that was belied by all his experience with men. After a long time, the god got up and went into the cabin. White Fang scanned him apprehensively when he came out. He had neither whip nor club nor weapon. Nor was his uninjured hand behind his back hiding something. He sat down as before, in the same spot, several feet away. He held out a small piece of meat. White Fang pricked his ears and investigated it suspiciously, managing to look at the same time both at the meat and the god, alert for any overt act, his body tense and ready to spring away at the first sign of hostility. Still the punishment delayed. The god merely held near to his nose a piece of meat. And about the meat there seemed nothing wrong. Still White Fang suspected; and though the meat was proffered to him with short inviting thrusts of the hand, he refused to touch it. The gods were all- wise, and there was no telling what masterful treachery lurked behind that apparently harmless piece of meat. In past experience, especially in dealing with squaws, meat and punishment had often been disastrously related. In the end, the god tossed the meat on the snow at White Fang's feet. He smelled the meat carefully; but he did not look at it. While he smelled it he kept his eyes on the god. Nothing happened. He took the meat into his mouth and swallowed it. Still nothing happened. The god was actually offering him another piece of meat. Again he refused to take it from the hand, and again it was tossed to him. This was repeated a number of times. But there came a time when the god refused to toss it. He kept it in his hand and steadfastly proffered it. The meat was good meat, and White Fang was hungry. Bit by bit, infinitely cautious, he approached the hand. At last the time came that he decided to eat the meat from the hand. He never took his eyes from the god, thrusting his head forward with ears flattened back and hair involuntarily rising and cresting on his neck. Also a low growl rumbled in his throat as warning that he was not to be trifled with. He ate the meat, and nothing happened. Piece by piece, he ate all the meat, and nothing happened. Still the punishment delayed. He licked his chops and waited. The god went on talking. In his voice was kindness--something of which White Fang had no experience whatever. And within him it aroused feelings which he had likewise never experienced before. He was aware of a certain strange satisfaction, as though some need were being gratified, as though some void in his being were being filled. Then again came the prod of his instinct and the warning of past experience. The gods were ever crafty, and they had unguessed ways of attaining their ends. Ah, he had thought so! There it came now, the god's hand, cunning to hurt, thrusting out at him, descending upon his head. But the god went on talking. His voice was soft and soothing. In spite of the menacing hand, the voice inspired confidence. And in spite of the assuring voice, the hand inspired distrust. White Fang was torn by conflicting feelings, impulses. It seemed he would fly to pieces, so terrible was the control he was exerting, holding together by an unwonted indecision the counter- forces that struggled within him for mastery. He compromised. He snarled and bristled and flattened his ears. But he neither snapped nor sprang away. The hand descended. Nearer and nearer it came. It touched the ends of his upstanding hair. He shrank down under it. It followed down after him, pressing more closely against him. Shrinking, almost shivering, he still managed to hold himself together. It was a torment, this hand that touched him and violated his instinct. He could not forget in a day all the evil that had been wrought him at the hands of men. But it was the will of the god, and he strove to submit. The hand lifted and descended again in a patting, caressing movement. This continued, but every time the hand lifted, the hair lifted under it. And every time the hand descended, the ears flattened down and a cavernous growl surged in his throat. White Fang growled and growled with insistent warning. By this means he announced that he was prepared to retaliate for any hurt he might receive. There was no telling when the god's ulterior motive might be disclosed. At any moment that soft, confidence-inspiring voice might break forth in a roar of wrath, that gentle and caressing hand transform itself into a vice-like grip to hold him helpless and administer punishment. But the god talked on softly, and ever the hand rose and fell with non- hostile pats. White Fang experienced dual feelings. It was distasteful to his instinct. It restrained him, opposed the will of him toward personal liberty. And yet it was not physically painful. On the contrary, it was even pleasant, in a physical way. The patting movement slowly and carefully changed to a rubbing of the ears about their bases, and the physical pleasure even increased a little. Yet he continued to fear, and he stood on guard, expectant of unguessed evil, alternately suffering and enjoying as one feeling or the other came uppermost and swayed him. "Well, I'll be gosh-swoggled!" So spoke Matt, coming out of the cabin, his sleeves rolled up, a pan of dirty dish-water in his hands, arrested in the act of emptying the pan by the sight of Weedon Scott patting White Fang. At the instant his voice broke the silence, White Fang leaped back, snarling savagely at him. Matt regarded his employer with grieved disapproval. "If you don't mind my expressin' my feelin's, Mr. Scott, I'll make free to say you're seventeen kinds of a damn fool an' all of 'em different, an' then some." Weedon Scott smiled with a superior air, gained his feet, and walked over to White Fang. He talked soothingly to him, but not for long, then slowly put out his hand, rested it on White Fang's head, and resumed the interrupted patting. White Fang endured it, keeping his eyes fixed suspiciously, not upon the man that patted him, but upon the man that stood in the doorway. "You may be a number one, tip-top minin' expert, all right all right," the dog-musher delivered himself oracularly, "but you missed the chance of your life when you was a boy an' didn't run off an' join a circus." White Fang snarled at the sound of his voice, but this time did not leap away from under the hand that was caressing his head and the back of his neck with long, soothing strokes. It was the beginning of the end for White Fang--the ending of the old life and the reign of hate. A new and incomprehensibly fairer life was dawning. It required much thinking and endless patience on the part of Weedon Scott to accomplish this. And on the part of White Fang it required nothing less than a revolution. He had to ignore the urges and promptings of instinct and reason, defy experience, give the lie to life itself. Life, as he had known it, not only had had no place in it for much that he now did; but all the currents had gone counter to those to which he now abandoned himself. In short, when all things were considered, he had to achieve an orientation far vaster than the one he had achieved at the time he came voluntarily in from the Wild and accepted Grey Beaver as his lord. At that time he was a mere puppy, soft from the making, without form, ready for the thumb of circumstance to begin its work upon him. But now it was different. The thumb of circumstance had done its work only too well. By it he had been formed and hardened into the Fighting Wolf, fierce and implacable, unloving and unlovable. To accomplish the change was like a reflux of being, and this when the plasticity of youth was no longer his; when the fibre of him had become tough and knotty; when the warp and the woof of him had made of him an adamantine texture, harsh and unyielding; when the face of his spirit had become iron and all his instincts and axioms had crystallised into set rules, cautions, dislikes, and desires. Yet again, in this new orientation, it was the thumb of circumstance that pressed and prodded him, softening that which had become hard and remoulding it into fairer form. Weedon Scott was in truth this thumb. He had gone to the roots of White Fang's nature, and with kindness touched to life potencies that had languished and well-nigh perished. One such potency was _love_. It took the place of _like_, which latter had been the highest feeling that thrilled him in his intercourse with the gods. But this love did not come in a day. It began with _like_ and out of it slowly developed. White Fang did not run away, though he was allowed to remain loose, because he liked this new god. This was certainly better than the life he had lived in the cage of Beauty Smith, and it was necessary that he should have some god. The lordship of man was a need of his nature. The seal of his dependence on man had been set upon him in that early day when he turned his back on the Wild and crawled to Grey Beaver's feet to receive the expected beating. This seal had been stamped upon him again, and ineradicably, on his second return from the Wild, when the long famine was over and there was fish once more in the village of Grey Beaver. And so, because he needed a god and because he preferred Weedon Scott to Beauty Smith, White Fang remained. In acknowledgment of fealty, he proceeded to take upon himself the guardianship of his master's property. He prowled about the cabin while the sled-dogs slept, and the first night- visitor to the cabin fought him off with a club until Weedon Scott came to the rescue. But White Fang soon learned to differentiate between thieves and honest men, to appraise the true value of step and carriage. The man who travelled, loud-stepping, the direct line to the cabin door, he let alone--though he watched him vigilantly until the door opened and he received the endorsement of the master. But the man who went softly, by circuitous ways, peering with caution, seeking after secrecy--that was the man who received no suspension of judgment from White Fang, and who went away abruptly, hurriedly, and without dignity. Weedon Scott had set himself the task of redeeming White Fang--or rather, of redeeming mankind from the wrong it had done White Fang. It was a matter of principle and conscience. He felt that the ill done White Fang was a debt incurred by man and that it must be paid. So he went out of his way to be especially kind to the Fighting Wolf. Each day he made it a point to caress and pet White Fang, and to do it at length. At first suspicious and hostile, White Fang grew to like this petting. But there was one thing that he never outgrew--his growling. Growl he would, from the moment the petting began till it ended. But it was a growl with a new note in it. A stranger could not hear this note, and to such a stranger the growling of White Fang was an exhibition of primordial savagery, nerve-racking and blood-curdling. But White Fang's throat had become harsh-fibred from the making of ferocious sounds through the many years since his first little rasp of anger in the lair of his cubhood, and he could not soften the sounds of that throat now to express the gentleness he felt. Nevertheless, Weedon Scott's ear and sympathy were fine enough to catch the new note all but drowned in the fierceness--the note that was the faintest hint of a croon of content and that none but he could hear. As the days went by, the evolution of _like_ into _love_ was accelerated. White Fang himself began to grow aware of it, though in his consciousness he knew not what love was. It manifested itself to him as a void in his being--a hungry, aching, yearning void that clamoured to be filled. It was a pain and an unrest; and it received easement only by the touch of the new god's presence. At such times love was joy to him, a wild, keen- thrilling satisfaction. But when away from his god, the pain and the unrest returned; the void in him sprang up and pressed against him with its emptiness, and the hunger gnawed and gnawed unceasingly. White Fang was in the process of finding himself. In spite of the maturity of his years and of the savage rigidity of the mould that had formed him, his nature was undergoing an expansion. There was a burgeoning within him of strange feelings and unwonted impulses. His old code of conduct was changing. In the past he had liked comfort and surcease from pain, disliked discomfort and pain, and he had adjusted his actions accordingly. But now it was different. Because of this new feeling within him, he ofttimes elected discomfort and pain for the sake of his god. Thus, in the early morning, instead of roaming and foraging, or lying in a sheltered nook, he would wait for hours on the cheerless cabin-stoop for a sight of the god's face. At night, when the god returned home, White Fang would leave the warm sleeping-place he had burrowed in the snow in order to receive the friendly snap of fingers and the word of greeting. Meat, even meat itself, he would forego to be with his god, to receive a caress from him or to accompany him down into the town. _Like_ had been replaced by _love_. And love was the plummet dropped down into the deeps of him where like had never gone. And responsive out of his deeps had come the new thing--love. That which was given unto him did he return. This was a god indeed, a love-god, a warm and radiant god, in whose light White Fang's nature expanded as a flower expands under the sun. But White Fang was not demonstrative. He was too old, too firmly moulded, to become adept at expressing himself in new ways. He was too self-possessed, too strongly poised in his own isolation. Too long had he cultivated reticence, aloofness, and moroseness. He had never barked in his life, and he could not now learn to bark a welcome when his god approached. He was never in the way, never extravagant nor foolish in the expression of his love. He never ran to meet his god. He waited at a distance; but he always waited, was always there. His love partook of the nature of worship, dumb, inarticulate, a silent adoration. Only by the steady regard of his eyes did he express his love, and by the unceasing following with his eyes of his god's every movement. Also, at times, when his god looked at him and spoke to him, he betrayed an awkward self-consciousness, caused by the struggle of his love to express itself and his physical inability to express it. He learned to adjust himself in many ways to his new mode of life. It was borne in upon him that he must let his master's dogs alone. Yet his dominant nature asserted itself, and he had first to thrash them into an acknowledgment of his superiority and leadership. This accomplished, he had little trouble with them. They gave trail to him when he came and went or walked among them, and when he asserted his will they obeyed. In the same way, he came to tolerate Matt--as a possession of his master. His master rarely fed him. Matt did that, it was his business; yet White Fang divined that it was his master's food he ate and that it was his master who thus fed him vicariously. Matt it was who tried to put him into the harness and make him haul sled with the other dogs. But Matt failed. It was not until Weedon Scott put the harness on White Fang and worked him, that he understood. He took it as his master's will that Matt should drive him and work him just as he drove and worked his master's other dogs. Different from the Mackenzie toboggans were the Klondike sleds with runners under them. And different was the method of driving the dogs. There was no fan-formation of the team. The dogs worked in single file, one behind another, hauling on double traces. And here, in the Klondike, the leader was indeed the leader. The wisest as well as strongest dog was the leader, and the team obeyed him and feared him. That White Fang should quickly gain this post was inevitable. He could not be satisfied with less, as Matt learned after much inconvenience and trouble. White Fang picked out the post for himself, and Matt backed his judgment with strong language after the experiment had been tried. But, though he worked in the sled in the day, White Fang did not forego the guarding of his master's property in the night. Thus he was on duty all the time, ever vigilant and faithful, the most valuable of all the dogs. "Makin' free to spit out what's in me," Matt said one day, "I beg to state that you was a wise guy all right when you paid the price you did for that dog. You clean swindled Beauty Smith on top of pushin' his face in with your fist." A recrudescence of anger glinted in Weedon Scott's grey eyes, and he muttered savagely, "The beast!" In the late spring a great trouble came to White Fang. Without warning, the love-master disappeared. There had been warning, but White Fang was unversed in such things and did not understand the packing of a grip. He remembered afterwards that his packing had preceded the master's disappearance; but at the time he suspected nothing. That night he waited for the master to return. At midnight the chill wind that blew drove him to shelter at the rear of the cabin. There he drowsed, only half asleep, his ears keyed for the first sound of the familiar step. But, at two in the morning, his anxiety drove him out to the cold front stoop, where he crouched, and waited. But no master came. In the morning the door opened and Matt stepped outside. White Fang gazed at him wistfully. There was no common speech by which he might learn what he wanted to know. The days came and went, but never the master. White Fang, who had never known sickness in his life, became sick. He became very sick, so sick that Matt was finally compelled to bring him inside the cabin. Also, in writing to his employer, Matt devoted a postscript to White Fang. Weedon Scott reading the letter down in Circle City, came upon the following: "That dam wolf won't work. Won't eat. Aint got no spunk left. All the dogs is licking him. Wants to know what has become of you, and I don't know how to tell him. Mebbe he is going to die." It was as Matt had said. White Fang had ceased eating, lost heart, and allowed every dog of the team to thrash him. In the cabin he lay on the floor near the stove, without interest in food, in Matt, nor in life. Matt might talk gently to him or swear at him, it was all the same; he never did more than turn his dull eyes upon the man, then drop his head back to its customary position on his fore-paws. And then, one night, Matt, reading to himself with moving lips and mumbled sounds, was startled by a low whine from White Fang. He had got upon his feet, his ears cocked towards the door, and he was listening intently. A moment later, Matt heard a footstep. The door opened, and Weedon Scott stepped in. The two men shook hands. Then Scott looked around the room. "Where's the wolf?" he asked. Then he discovered him, standing where he had been lying, near to the stove. He had not rushed forward after the manner of other dogs. He stood, watching and waiting. "Holy smoke!" Matt exclaimed. "Look at 'm wag his tail!" Weedon Scott strode half across the room toward him, at the same time calling him. White Fang came to him, not with a great bound, yet quickly. He was awakened from self-consciousness, but as he drew near, his eyes took on a strange expression. Something, an incommunicable vastness of feeling, rose up into his eyes as a light and shone forth. "He never looked at me that way all the time you was gone!" Matt commented. Weedon Scott did not hear. He was squatting down on his heels, face to face with White Fang and petting him--rubbing at the roots of the ears, making long caressing strokes down the neck to the shoulders, tapping the spine gently with the balls of his fingers. And White Fang was growling responsively, the crooning note of the growl more pronounced than ever. But that was not all. What of his joy, the great love in him, ever surging and struggling to express itself, succeeded in finding a new mode of expression. He suddenly thrust his head forward and nudged his way in between the master's arm and body. And here, confined, hidden from view all except his ears, no longer growling, he continued to nudge and snuggle. The two men looked at each other. Scott's eyes were shining. "Gosh!" said Matt in an awe-stricken voice. A moment later, when he had recovered himself, he said, "I always insisted that wolf was a dog. Look at 'm!" With the return of the love-master, White Fang's recovery was rapid. Two nights and a day he spent in the cabin. Then he sallied forth. The sled- dogs had forgotten his prowess. They remembered only the latest, which was his weakness and sickness. At the sight of him as he came out of the cabin, they sprang upon him. "Talk about your rough-houses," Matt murmured gleefully, standing in the doorway and looking on. "Give 'm hell, you wolf! Give 'm hell!--an' then some!" White Fang did not need the encouragement. The return of the love-master was enough. Life was flowing through him again, splendid and indomitable. He fought from sheer joy, finding in it an expression of much that he felt and that otherwise was without speech. There could be but one ending. The team dispersed in ignominious defeat, and it was not until after dark that the dogs came sneaking back, one by one, by meekness and humility signifying their fealty to White Fang. Having learned to snuggle, White Fang was guilty of it often. It was the final word. He could not go beyond it. The one thing of which he had always been particularly jealous was his head. He had always disliked to have it touched. It was the Wild in him, the fear of hurt and of the trap, that had given rise to the panicky impulses to avoid contacts. It was the mandate of his instinct that that head must be free. And now, with the love-master, his snuggling was the deliberate act of putting himself into a position of hopeless helplessness. It was an expression of perfect confidence, of absolute self-surrender, as though he said: "I put myself into thy hands. Work thou thy will with me." One night, not long after the return, Scott and Matt sat at a game of cribbage preliminary to going to bed. "Fifteen-two, fifteen-four an' a pair makes six," Matt was pegging up, when there was an outcry and sound of snarling without. They looked at each other as they started to rise to their feet. "The wolf's nailed somebody," Matt said. A wild scream of fear and anguish hastened them. "Bring a light!" Scott shouted, as he sprang outside. Matt followed with the lamp, and by its light they saw a man lying on his back in the snow. His arms were folded, one above the other, across his face and throat. Thus he was trying to shield himself from White Fang's teeth. And there was need for it. White Fang was in a rage, wickedly making his attack on the most vulnerable spot. From shoulder to wrist of the crossed arms, the coat-sleeve, blue flannel shirt and undershirt were ripped in rags, while the arms themselves were terribly slashed and streaming blood. All this the two men saw in the first instant. The next instant Weedon Scott had White Fang by the throat and was dragging him clear. White Fang struggled and snarled, but made no attempt to bite, while he quickly quieted down at a sharp word from the master. Matt helped the man to his feet. As he arose he lowered his crossed arms, exposing the bestial face of Beauty Smith. The dog-musher let go of him precipitately, with action similar to that of a man who has picked up live fire. Beauty Smith blinked in the lamplight and looked about him. He caught sight of White Fang and terror rushed into his face. At the same moment Matt noticed two objects lying in the snow. He held the lamp close to them, indicating them with his toe for his employer's benefit--a steel dog-chain and a stout club. Weedon Scott saw and nodded. Not a word was spoken. The dog-musher laid his hand on Beauty Smith's shoulder and faced him to the right about. No word needed to be spoken. Beauty Smith started. In the meantime the love-master was patting White Fang and talking to him. "Tried to steal you, eh? And you wouldn't have it! Well, well, he made a mistake, didn't he?" "Must 'a' thought he had hold of seventeen devils," the dog-musher sniggered. White Fang, still wrought up and bristling, growled and growled, the hair slowly lying down, the crooning note remote and dim, but growing in his throat. PART V

IV.6 The Love-Master

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-love-master

Weedon Scott begins the long process of bonding with White Fang and winning his trust. Indeed, White Fang gradually grows to love Scott. He never, however, outgrows his growl, even though a note of affection and contentment is now in it that was not present before. He grows to love Scott so much, in fact, that when Scott leaves on a trip, White Fang becomes physically ill-languishing, refusing to eat-and does not recover until Scott returns. One night after Scott's return, Beauty Smith stealthily approaches, attempting to steal White Fang back. White Fang viciously attacks Smith, who runs away in terror.

. This chapter expands on suggestions earlier in the book that love is a necessary part of life: White Fang becomes "aware of a certain satisfaction, as though some need were being gratified, as though some void in his being were being filled. " In fact, White Fang's first experience of love marks "the beginning of the end for White Fang-the ending of the old life and the reign of hate." To use religious language that London does not employ , White Fang is being "born again." He is becoming, in the biblical phrase, a "new creation" thanks to Scott's love. London shows that love is the necessary element for rising above "mere flesh-love of life" . Interestingly, though, this new creation is advertisement not entirely discontinuous from the old. For example, notice that White Fang still growls, even though his growl now has a new undertone of love. The old has been, not obliterated, but transformed, perhaps one might say even exalted. In yielding himself to Scott-"as though he said: 'I put myself into thy hands'"-White Fang is "in the process of finding himself" .

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/21.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_21_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 5.chapter 1

part 5, chapter 1 the long trail

{"name": "V.1 The Long Trail", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-long-trail", "summary": "With the turn of the year, the gold-rushers are \"as mad to get to the Outside as they had been originally to get to the Inside,\" and Weedon Scott is among those planning to leave. He intends, reluctantly, to leave White Fang behind, believing that the wolf-dog will never be able to adapt to life in civilized California. White Fang, however, can sense his master's intentions, and returns to his grief-stricken behavior of refusing to eat. Finally, Scott relents, and takes White Fang home with him.", "analysis": ". This chapter reintroduces the theme of intelligence and reason. The chapter yields \"indisputable evidence\" that White Fang is, so to speak, being \"re-humanized\"-that is, he is recovering from the irrational ferocity to which Beauty Smith had reduced him. advertisement In this respect, the chapter serves as a reversal of IV.4, for the present chapter makes numerous references to White Fang's capacity to think: for instance, \"White Fang had already sensed . He now reasoned it\"; and Matt's comment, \"I'm blamed if I can see how he works it out.\" Work it out White Fang does, however, demonstrating that he is, in fact, capable of adapting to civilization . As Scott gave White Fang a chance in IV.5, so he gives him another chance here by taking him back to California."}

It was in the air. White Fang sensed the coming calamity, even before there was tangible evidence of it. In vague ways it was borne in upon him that a change was impending. He knew not how nor why, yet he got his feel of the oncoming event from the gods themselves. In ways subtler than they knew, they betrayed their intentions to the wolf-dog that haunted the cabin-stoop, and that, though he never came inside the cabin, knew what went on inside their brains. "Listen to that, will you!" the dog-musher exclaimed at supper one night. Weedon Scott listened. Through the door came a low, anxious whine, like a sobbing under the breath that had just grown audible. Then came the long sniff, as White Fang reassured himself that his god was still inside and had not yet taken himself off in mysterious and solitary flight. "I do believe that wolf's on to you," the dog-musher said. Weedon Scott looked across at his companion with eyes that almost pleaded, though this was given the lie by his words. "What the devil can I do with a wolf in California?" he demanded. "That's what I say," Matt answered. "What the devil can you do with a wolf in California?" But this did not satisfy Weedon Scott. The other seemed to be judging him in a non-committal sort of way. "White man's dogs would have no show against him," Scott went on. "He'd kill them on sight. If he didn't bankrupt me with damage suits, the authorities would take him away from me and electrocute him." "He's a downright murderer, I know," was the dog-musher's comment. Weedon Scott looked at him suspiciously. "It would never do," he said decisively. "It would never do!" Matt concurred. "Why you'd have to hire a man 'specially to take care of 'm." The other's suspicion was allayed. He nodded cheerfully. In the silence that followed, the low, half-sobbing whine was heard at the door and then the long, questing sniff. "There's no denyin' he thinks a hell of a lot of you," Matt said. The other glared at him in sudden wrath. "Damn it all, man! I know my own mind and what's best!" "I'm agreein' with you, only . . . " "Only what?" Scott snapped out. "Only . . . " the dog-musher began softly, then changed his mind and betrayed a rising anger of his own. "Well, you needn't get so all-fired het up about it. Judgin' by your actions one'd think you didn't know your own mind." Weedon Scott debated with himself for a while, and then said more gently: "You are right, Matt. I don't know my own mind, and that's what's the trouble." "Why, it would be rank ridiculousness for me to take that dog along," he broke out after another pause. "I'm agreein' with you," was Matt's answer, and again his employer was not quite satisfied with him. "But how in the name of the great Sardanapolis he knows you're goin' is what gets me," the dog-musher continued innocently. "It's beyond me, Matt," Scott answered, with a mournful shake of the head. Then came the day when, through the open cabin door, White Fang saw the fatal grip on the floor and the love-master packing things into it. Also, there were comings and goings, and the erstwhile placid atmosphere of the cabin was vexed with strange perturbations and unrest. Here was indubitable evidence. White Fang had already scented it. He now reasoned it. His god was preparing for another flight. And since he had not taken him with him before, so, now, he could look to be left behind. That night he lifted the long wolf-howl. As he had howled, in his puppy days, when he fled back from the Wild to the village to find it vanished and naught but a rubbish-heap to mark the site of Grey Beaver's tepee, so now he pointed his muzzle to the cold stars and told to them his woe. Inside the cabin the two men had just gone to bed. "He's gone off his food again," Matt remarked from his bunk. There was a grunt from Weedon Scott's bunk, and a stir of blankets. "From the way he cut up the other time you went away, I wouldn't wonder this time but what he died." The blankets in the other bunk stirred irritably. "Oh, shut up!" Scott cried out through the darkness. "You nag worse than a woman." "I'm agreein' with you," the dog-musher answered, and Weedon Scott was not quite sure whether or not the other had snickered. The next day White Fang's anxiety and restlessness were even more pronounced. He dogged his master's heels whenever he left the cabin, and haunted the front stoop when he remained inside. Through the open door he could catch glimpses of the luggage on the floor. The grip had been joined by two large canvas bags and a box. Matt was rolling the master's blankets and fur robe inside a small tarpaulin. White Fang whined as he watched the operation. Later on two Indians arrived. He watched them closely as they shouldered the luggage and were led off down the hill by Matt, who carried the bedding and the grip. But White Fang did not follow them. The master was still in the cabin. After a time, Matt returned. The master came to the door and called White Fang inside. "You poor devil," he said gently, rubbing White Fang's ears and tapping his spine. "I'm hitting the long trail, old man, where you cannot follow. Now give me a growl--the last, good, good-bye growl." But White Fang refused to growl. Instead, and after a wistful, searching look, he snuggled in, burrowing his head out of sight between the master's arm and body. "There she blows!" Matt cried. From the Yukon arose the hoarse bellowing of a river steamboat. "You've got to cut it short. Be sure and lock the front door. I'll go out the back. Get a move on!" The two doors slammed at the same moment, and Weedon Scott waited for Matt to come around to the front. From inside the door came a low whining and sobbing. Then there were long, deep-drawn sniffs. "You must take good care of him, Matt," Scott said, as they started down the hill. "Write and let me know how he gets along." "Sure," the dog-musher answered. "But listen to that, will you!" Both men stopped. White Fang was howling as dogs howl when their masters lie dead. He was voicing an utter woe, his cry bursting upward in great heart-breaking rushes, dying down into quavering misery, and bursting upward again with a rush upon rush of grief. The _Aurora_ was the first steamboat of the year for the Outside, and her decks were jammed with prosperous adventurers and broken gold seekers, all equally as mad to get to the Outside as they had been originally to get to the Inside. Near the gang-plank, Scott was shaking hands with Matt, who was preparing to go ashore. But Matt's hand went limp in the other's grasp as his gaze shot past and remained fixed on something behind him. Scott turned to see. Sitting on the deck several feet away and watching wistfully was White Fang. The dog-musher swore softly, in awe-stricken accents. Scott could only look in wonder. "Did you lock the front door?" Matt demanded. The other nodded, and asked, "How about the back?" "You just bet I did," was the fervent reply. White Fang flattened his ears ingratiatingly, but remained where he was, making no attempt to approach. "I'll have to take 'm ashore with me." Matt made a couple of steps toward White Fang, but the latter slid away from him. The dog-musher made a rush of it, and White Fang dodged between the legs of a group of men. Ducking, turning, doubling, he slid about the deck, eluding the other's efforts to capture him. But when the love-master spoke, White Fang came to him with prompt obedience. "Won't come to the hand that's fed 'm all these months," the dog-musher muttered resentfully. "And you--you ain't never fed 'm after them first days of gettin' acquainted. I'm blamed if I can see how he works it out that you're the boss." Scott, who had been patting White Fang, suddenly bent closer and pointed out fresh-made cuts on his muzzle, and a gash between the eyes. Matt bent over and passed his hand along White Fang's belly. "We plumb forgot the window. He's all cut an' gouged underneath. Must 'a' butted clean through it, b'gosh!" But Weedon Scott was not listening. He was thinking rapidly. The _Aurora's_ whistle hooted a final announcement of departure. Men were scurrying down the gang-plank to the shore. Matt loosened the bandana from his own neck and started to put it around White Fang's. Scott grasped the dog-musher's hand. "Good-bye, Matt, old man. About the wolf--you needn't write. You see, I've . . . !" "What!" the dog-musher exploded. "You don't mean to say . . .?" "The very thing I mean. Here's your bandana. I'll write to you about him." Matt paused halfway down the gang-plank. "He'll never stand the climate!" he shouted back. "Unless you clip 'm in warm weather!" The gang-plank was hauled in, and the _Aurora_ swung out from the bank. Weedon Scott waved a last good-bye. Then he turned and bent over White Fang, standing by his side. "Now growl, damn you, growl," he said, as he patted the responsive head and rubbed the flattening ears.

V.1 The Long Trail

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-long-trail

With the turn of the year, the gold-rushers are "as mad to get to the Outside as they had been originally to get to the Inside," and Weedon Scott is among those planning to leave. He intends, reluctantly, to leave White Fang behind, believing that the wolf-dog will never be able to adapt to life in civilized California. White Fang, however, can sense his master's intentions, and returns to his grief-stricken behavior of refusing to eat. Finally, Scott relents, and takes White Fang home with him.

. This chapter reintroduces the theme of intelligence and reason. The chapter yields "indisputable evidence" that White Fang is, so to speak, being "re-humanized"-that is, he is recovering from the irrational ferocity to which Beauty Smith had reduced him. advertisement In this respect, the chapter serves as a reversal of IV.4, for the present chapter makes numerous references to White Fang's capacity to think: for instance, "White Fang had already sensed . He now reasoned it"; and Matt's comment, "I'm blamed if I can see how he works it out." Work it out White Fang does, however, demonstrating that he is, in fact, capable of adapting to civilization . As Scott gave White Fang a chance in IV.5, so he gives him another chance here by taking him back to California.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/22.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_22_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 5.chapter 2

part 5, chapter 2 the southland

{"name": "V.2 The Southland", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-southland", "summary": "San Francisco impresses itself upon White Fang as the ultimate expression of man's power that he has yet experienced. Scott disembarks with White Fang and takes the wolf-dog home to the house of Scott's father, a distinguished judge. There, White Fang must learn to distinguish Scott's family's loving embraces from hostile attacks on his master, and where he must learn to relate not only to Scott's family and servants, but also to Scott's other dogs. Most prominent among these other dogs is Collie, a female sheepdog, whose instinctual fear of wolves and the Wild leads her to give White Fang a hostile reception-a hostility to which White Fang, based on his instincts against attacking females, does not respond in kind.", "analysis": ". Even so late in the novel, White Fang is still learning-and therefore still growing and still living. London implicitly mirrors White Fang's acclamation to San Francisco to his earlier acclamation to the Indian camp: in both instances, White Fang had to learn to balance his instincts with the law of his \"gods.\" For example, in dealing with Collie, White Fang must obey his primal instinct to avoid attacking females , but he must also repress his instinct to defend Scott when Scott's family embraces him. London also shows how different animals' instincts can come into conflict, by discussing Collie's instinctual fear of wolves: \"being a sheepdog, her instinctive fear of the Wild, and especially of the wolf, was unusually keen.\" London thus establishes Collie as being in a similar situation as is White Fang: both animals are facing the need to learn and adapt. London may be implying that this task is a necessary ingredient in life."}

White Fang landed from the steamer in San Francisco. He was appalled. Deep in him, below any reasoning process or act of consciousness, he had associated power with godhead. And never had the white men seemed such marvellous gods as now, when he trod the slimy pavement of San Francisco. The log cabins he had known were replaced by towering buildings. The streets were crowded with perils--waggons, carts, automobiles; great, straining horses pulling huge trucks; and monstrous cable and electric cars hooting and clanging through the midst, screeching their insistent menace after the manner of the lynxes he had known in the northern woods. All this was the manifestation of power. Through it all, behind it all, was man, governing and controlling, expressing himself, as of old, by his mastery over matter. It was colossal, stunning. White Fang was awed. Fear sat upon him. As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his smallness and puniness on the day he first came in from the Wild to the village of Grey Beaver, so now, in his full-grown stature and pride of strength, he was made to feel small and puny. And there were so many gods! He was made dizzy by the swarming of them. The thunder of the streets smote upon his ears. He was bewildered by the tremendous and endless rush and movement of things. As never before, he felt his dependence on the love-master, close at whose heels he followed, no matter what happened never losing sight of him. But White Fang was to have no more than a nightmare vision of the city--an experience that was like a bad dream, unreal and terrible, that haunted him for long after in his dreams. He was put into a baggage-car by the master, chained in a corner in the midst of heaped trunks and valises. Here a squat and brawny god held sway, with much noise, hurling trunks and boxes about, dragging them in through the door and tossing them into the piles, or flinging them out of the door, smashing and crashing, to other gods who awaited them. And here, in this inferno of luggage, was White Fang deserted by the master. Or at least White Fang thought he was deserted, until he smelled out the master's canvas clothes-bags alongside of him, and proceeded to mount guard over them. "'Bout time you come," growled the god of the car, an hour later, when Weedon Scott appeared at the door. "That dog of yourn won't let me lay a finger on your stuff." White Fang emerged from the car. He was astonished. The nightmare city was gone. The car had been to him no more than a room in a house, and when he had entered it the city had been all around him. In the interval the city had disappeared. The roar of it no longer dinned upon his ears. Before him was smiling country, streaming with sunshine, lazy with quietude. But he had little time to marvel at the transformation. He accepted it as he accepted all the unaccountable doings and manifestations of the gods. It was their way. There was a carriage waiting. A man and a woman approached the master. The woman's arms went out and clutched the master around the neck--a hostile act! The next moment Weedon Scott had torn loose from the embrace and closed with White Fang, who had become a snarling, raging demon. "It's all right, mother," Scott was saying as he kept tight hold of White Fang and placated him. "He thought you were going to injure me, and he wouldn't stand for it. It's all right. It's all right. He'll learn soon enough." "And in the meantime I may be permitted to love my son when his dog is not around," she laughed, though she was pale and weak from the fright. She looked at White Fang, who snarled and bristled and glared malevolently. "He'll have to learn, and he shall, without postponement," Scott said. He spoke softly to White Fang until he had quieted him, then his voice became firm. "Down, sir! Down with you!" This had been one of the things taught him by the master, and White Fang obeyed, though he lay down reluctantly and sullenly. "Now, mother." Scott opened his arms to her, but kept his eyes on White Fang. "Down!" he warned. "Down!" White Fang, bristling silently, half-crouching as he rose, sank back and watched the hostile act repeated. But no harm came of it, nor of the embrace from the strange man-god that followed. Then the clothes-bags were taken into the carriage, the strange gods and the love-master followed, and White Fang pursued, now running vigilantly behind, now bristling up to the running horses and warning them that he was there to see that no harm befell the god they dragged so swiftly across the earth. At the end of fifteen minutes, the carriage swung in through a stone gateway and on between a double row of arched and interlacing walnut trees. On either side stretched lawns, their broad sweep broken here and there by great sturdy-limbed oaks. In the near distance, in contrast with the young-green of the tended grass, sunburnt hay-fields showed tan and gold; while beyond were the tawny hills and upland pastures. From the head of the lawn, on the first soft swell from the valley-level, looked down the deep-porched, many-windowed house. Little opportunity was given White Fang to see all this. Hardly had the carriage entered the grounds, when he was set upon by a sheep-dog, bright- eyed, sharp-muzzled, righteously indignant and angry. It was between him and the master, cutting him off. White Fang snarled no warning, but his hair bristled as he made his silent and deadly rush. This rush was never completed. He halted with awkward abruptness, with stiff fore-legs bracing himself against his momentum, almost sitting down on his haunches, so desirous was he of avoiding contact with the dog he was in the act of attacking. It was a female, and the law of his kind thrust a barrier between. For him to attack her would require nothing less than a violation of his instinct. But with the sheep-dog it was otherwise. Being a female, she possessed no such instinct. On the other hand, being a sheep-dog, her instinctive fear of the Wild, and especially of the wolf, was unusually keen. White Fang was to her a wolf, the hereditary marauder who had preyed upon her flocks from the time sheep were first herded and guarded by some dim ancestor of hers. And so, as he abandoned his rush at her and braced himself to avoid the contact, she sprang upon him. He snarled involuntarily as he felt her teeth in his shoulder, but beyond this made no offer to hurt her. He backed away, stiff-legged with self-consciousness, and tried to go around her. He dodged this way and that, and curved and turned, but to no purpose. She remained always between him and the way he wanted to go. "Here, Collie!" called the strange man in the carriage. Weedon Scott laughed. "Never mind, father. It is good discipline. White Fang will have to learn many things, and it's just as well that he begins now. He'll adjust himself all right." The carriage drove on, and still Collie blocked White Fang's way. He tried to outrun her by leaving the drive and circling across the lawn but she ran on the inner and smaller circle, and was always there, facing him with her two rows of gleaming teeth. Back he circled, across the drive to the other lawn, and again she headed him off. The carriage was bearing the master away. White Fang caught glimpses of it disappearing amongst the trees. The situation was desperate. He essayed another circle. She followed, running swiftly. And then, suddenly, he turned upon her. It was his old fighting trick. Shoulder to shoulder, he struck her squarely. Not only was she overthrown. So fast had she been running that she rolled along, now on her back, now on her side, as she struggled to stop, clawing gravel with her feet and crying shrilly her hurt pride and indignation. White Fang did not wait. The way was clear, and that was all he had wanted. She took after him, never ceasing her outcry. It was the straightaway now, and when it came to real running, White Fang could teach her things. She ran frantically, hysterically, straining to the utmost, advertising the effort she was making with every leap: and all the time White Fang slid smoothly away from her silently, without effort, gliding like a ghost over the ground. As he rounded the house to the _porte-cochere_, he came upon the carriage. It had stopped, and the master was alighting. At this moment, still running at top speed, White Fang became suddenly aware of an attack from the side. It was a deer-hound rushing upon him. White Fang tried to face it. But he was going too fast, and the hound was too close. It struck him on the side; and such was his forward momentum and the unexpectedness of it, White Fang was hurled to the ground and rolled clear over. He came out of the tangle a spectacle of malignancy, ears flattened back, lips writhing, nose wrinkling, his teeth clipping together as the fangs barely missed the hound's soft throat. The master was running up, but was too far away; and it was Collie that saved the hound's life. Before White Fang could spring in and deliver the fatal stroke, and just as he was in the act of springing in, Collie arrived. She had been out-manoeuvred and out-run, to say nothing of her having been unceremoniously tumbled in the gravel, and her arrival was like that of a tornado--made up of offended dignity, justifiable wrath, and instinctive hatred for this marauder from the Wild. She struck White Fang at right angles in the midst of his spring, and again he was knocked off his feet and rolled over. The next moment the master arrived, and with one hand held White Fang, while the father called off the dogs. "I say, this is a pretty warm reception for a poor lone wolf from the Arctic," the master said, while White Fang calmed down under his caressing hand. "In all his life he's only been known once to go off his feet, and here he's been rolled twice in thirty seconds." The carriage had driven away, and other strange gods had appeared from out the house. Some of these stood respectfully at a distance; but two of them, women, perpetrated the hostile act of clutching the master around the neck. White Fang, however, was beginning to tolerate this act. No harm seemed to come of it, while the noises the gods made were certainly not threatening. These gods also made overtures to White Fang, but he warned them off with a snarl, and the master did likewise with word of mouth. At such times White Fang leaned in close against the master's legs and received reassuring pats on the head. The hound, under the command, "Dick! Lie down, sir!" had gone up the steps and lain down to one side of the porch, still growling and keeping a sullen watch on the intruder. Collie had been taken in charge by one of the woman-gods, who held arms around her neck and petted and caressed her; but Collie was very much perplexed and worried, whining and restless, outraged by the permitted presence of this wolf and confident that the gods were making a mistake. All the gods started up the steps to enter the house. White Fang followed closely at the master's heels. Dick, on the porch, growled, and White Fang, on the steps, bristled and growled back. "Take Collie inside and leave the two of them to fight it out," suggested Scott's father. "After that they'll be friends." "Then White Fang, to show his friendship, will have to be chief mourner at the funeral," laughed the master. The elder Scott looked incredulously, first at White Fang, then at Dick, and finally at his son. "You mean . . .?" Weedon nodded his head. "I mean just that. You'd have a dead Dick inside one minute--two minutes at the farthest." He turned to White Fang. "Come on, you wolf. It's you that'll have to come inside." White Fang walked stiff-legged up the steps and across the porch, with tail rigidly erect, keeping his eyes on Dick to guard against a flank attack, and at the same time prepared for whatever fierce manifestation of the unknown that might pounce out upon him from the interior of the house. But no thing of fear pounced out, and when he had gained the inside he scouted carefully around, looking at it and finding it not. Then he lay down with a contented grunt at the master's feet, observing all that went on, ever ready to spring to his feet and fight for life with the terrors he felt must lurk under the trap-roof of the dwelling.

V.2 The Southland

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-southland

San Francisco impresses itself upon White Fang as the ultimate expression of man's power that he has yet experienced. Scott disembarks with White Fang and takes the wolf-dog home to the house of Scott's father, a distinguished judge. There, White Fang must learn to distinguish Scott's family's loving embraces from hostile attacks on his master, and where he must learn to relate not only to Scott's family and servants, but also to Scott's other dogs. Most prominent among these other dogs is Collie, a female sheepdog, whose instinctual fear of wolves and the Wild leads her to give White Fang a hostile reception-a hostility to which White Fang, based on his instincts against attacking females, does not respond in kind.

. Even so late in the novel, White Fang is still learning-and therefore still growing and still living. London implicitly mirrors White Fang's acclamation to San Francisco to his earlier acclamation to the Indian camp: in both instances, White Fang had to learn to balance his instincts with the law of his "gods." For example, in dealing with Collie, White Fang must obey his primal instinct to avoid attacking females , but he must also repress his instinct to defend Scott when Scott's family embraces him. London also shows how different animals' instincts can come into conflict, by discussing Collie's instinctual fear of wolves: "being a sheepdog, her instinctive fear of the Wild, and especially of the wolf, was unusually keen." London thus establishes Collie as being in a similar situation as is White Fang: both animals are facing the need to learn and adapt. London may be implying that this task is a necessary ingredient in life.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/23.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_23_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 5.chapter 3

part 5, chapter 3 the god's domain

{"name": "V.3 The God's Domain", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-gods-domain", "summary": "As White Fang must adapt to life at Sierra Vista, so must the Scotts' other dogs adapt to him. Collie especially is in no hurry to accept him, for she is fighting against her sheepdog instincts: \"Woven into her being was the memory of countless crimes he and his had perpetrated against her ancestry. Not in a day nor a generation were the ravaged sheepfolds to be forgotten.\" Collie exploits White Fang's instinctual deference to the female to persecute him-in gentler ways than did Lip-lip, to be sure -yet persecution all the same. At the same time, he is learning to receive expressions of affection from the Scott family. He must also, however, learn to negotiate another series of laws and restraints. When White Fang comes across a chicken who has escaped from the coop, he yields to instinct, attacking it, eating it, and enjoying it. Scott must teach him not to eat the chickens. The rest of the family, particularly Judge Scott, is dubious that the wolf-dog can learn this lesson-but learn it he does, eventually able to stay in the chicken coop without attacking any of the fowl. On the other hand, on one visit to San Jose, Weedon Scott eventually gives White Fang license to attack dogs who abuse him. White Fang kills three such dogs-and receives fearful respect from the residents, and their dogs, thereafter.", "analysis": ". This chapter makes another point in London's ongoing analysis of human life and society by way of focusing on animal life and society: \"Life in the Northland\"-that is, the Wild-\"was simplicity itself when compared with the complicated affairs of Sierra Vista. \" Readers will want to note the definition of civilization that London offers in this chapter, perhaps not without a touch of irony and good humor: \"Here he was compelled to violate his instinct of self-preservation, and violate it he did, for he was becoming tame and qualifying himself for civilization. \" London's point may well be that to be civilized, human beings must voluntarily check their instincts-even their instinct to self-preservation, in order to form a mutually beneficial society, where the good of the self is balanced with the good of others. The chapter also further elaborates on the motif of hands that London highlighted in III.5. There, White Fang feared and hated human hands, and for good reason; here, he must learn to overcome that ingrained hatred in order to coexist with the \"god's\" children. And, indeed, the wolf-dog does eventually allow himself to be petted, but he never completely gives himself emotionally to any human but Weedon Scott. In White Fang's relationship with Weedon Scott, we see, more clearly than anywhere else in the book, the proper and beneficial balance of \"nature\" and \"nurture.\" White Fang \"obeyed his natural impulses until they ran him counter to some law\"-instinct and experience now exist in harmony, and the element that has allowed them to do so is love: Scott's love for White Fang, and White Fang's love for Scott. Finally, readers may choose to note Collie's instinctual, genetic aversion to White Fang. Clearly, London is offering a rational and realistic treatment of a sheepdog's natural dislike of a wolf, a domesticated animal's inherent mistrust of an animal from the Wild. Yet the language London uses can, for modern readers at any rate, evoke the recognition of the language in which irrational and unfair prejudices among humans are often cloaked: holding one accountable for the \"crimes. perpetrated\" by one's forebears, for example, or nursing ancient grudges . Again, London is not painting animals, who cannot be expected to know any better, as prejudicial; but modern readers may find in London's language a caution for human beings, who must be expected to know better! The dynamic may be one further example of London's comparisons of humans and animals throughout the book."}

Not only was White Fang adaptable by nature, but he had travelled much, and knew the meaning and necessity of adjustment. Here, in Sierra Vista, which was the name of Judge Scott's place, White Fang quickly began to make himself at home. He had no further serious trouble with the dogs. They knew more about the ways of the Southland gods than did he, and in their eyes he had qualified when he accompanied the gods inside the house. Wolf that he was, and unprecedented as it was, the gods had sanctioned his presence, and they, the dogs of the gods, could only recognise this sanction. Dick, perforce, had to go through a few stiff formalities at first, after which he calmly accepted White Fang as an addition to the premises. Had Dick had his way, they would have been good friends; but White Fang was averse to friendship. All he asked of other dogs was to be let alone. His whole life he had kept aloof from his kind, and he still desired to keep aloof. Dick's overtures bothered him, so he snarled Dick away. In the north he had learned the lesson that he must let the master's dogs alone, and he did not forget that lesson now. But he insisted on his own privacy and self-seclusion, and so thoroughly ignored Dick that that good-natured creature finally gave him up and scarcely took as much interest in him as in the hitching-post near the stable. Not so with Collie. While she accepted him because it was the mandate of the gods, that was no reason that she should leave him in peace. Woven into her being was the memory of countless crimes he and his had perpetrated against her ancestry. Not in a day nor a generation were the ravaged sheepfolds to be forgotten. All this was a spur to her, pricking her to retaliation. She could not fly in the face of the gods who permitted him, but that did not prevent her from making life miserable for him in petty ways. A feud, ages old, was between them, and she, for one, would see to it that he was reminded. So Collie took advantage of her sex to pick upon White Fang and maltreat him. His instinct would not permit him to attack her, while her persistence would not permit him to ignore her. When she rushed at him he turned his fur-protected shoulder to her sharp teeth and walked away stiff-legged and stately. When she forced him too hard, he was compelled to go about in a circle, his shoulder presented to her, his head turned from her, and on his face and in his eyes a patient and bored expression. Sometimes, however, a nip on his hind-quarters hastened his retreat and made it anything but stately. But as a rule he managed to maintain a dignity that was almost solemnity. He ignored her existence whenever it was possible, and made it a point to keep out of her way. When he saw or heard her coming, he got up and walked off. There was much in other matters for White Fang to learn. Life in the Northland was simplicity itself when compared with the complicated affairs of Sierra Vista. First of all, he had to learn the family of the master. In a way he was prepared to do this. As Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch had belonged to Grey Beaver, sharing his food, his fire, and his blankets, so now, at Sierra Vista, belonged to the love-master all the denizens of the house. But in this matter there was a difference, and many differences. Sierra Vista was a far vaster affair than the tepee of Grey Beaver. There were many persons to be considered. There was Judge Scott, and there was his wife. There were the master's two sisters, Beth and Mary. There was his wife, Alice, and then there were his children, Weedon and Maud, toddlers of four and six. There was no way for anybody to tell him about all these people, and of blood-ties and relationship he knew nothing whatever and never would be capable of knowing. Yet he quickly worked it out that all of them belonged to the master. Then, by observation, whenever opportunity offered, by study of action, speech, and the very intonations of the voice, he slowly learned the intimacy and the degree of favour they enjoyed with the master. And by this ascertained standard, White Fang treated them accordingly. What was of value to the master he valued; what was dear to the master was to be cherished by White Fang and guarded carefully. Thus it was with the two children. All his life he had disliked children. He hated and feared their hands. The lessons were not tender that he had learned of their tyranny and cruelty in the days of the Indian villages. When Weedon and Maud had first approached him, he growled warningly and looked malignant. A cuff from the master and a sharp word had then compelled him to permit their caresses, though he growled and growled under their tiny hands, and in the growl there was no crooning note. Later, he observed that the boy and girl were of great value in the master's eyes. Then it was that no cuff nor sharp word was necessary before they could pat him. Yet White Fang was never effusively affectionate. He yielded to the master's children with an ill but honest grace, and endured their fooling as one would endure a painful operation. When he could no longer endure, he would get up and stalk determinedly away from them. But after a time, he grew even to like the children. Still he was not demonstrative. He would not go up to them. On the other hand, instead of walking away at sight of them, he waited for them to come to him. And still later, it was noticed that a pleased light came into his eyes when he saw them approaching, and that he looked after them with an appearance of curious regret when they left him for other amusements. All this was a matter of development, and took time. Next in his regard, after the children, was Judge Scott. There were two reasons, possibly, for this. First, he was evidently a valuable possession of the master's, and next, he was undemonstrative. White Fang liked to lie at his feet on the wide porch when he read the newspaper, from time to time favouring White Fang with a look or a word--untroublesome tokens that he recognised White Fang's presence and existence. But this was only when the master was not around. When the master appeared, all other beings ceased to exist so far as White Fang was concerned. White Fang allowed all the members of the family to pet him and make much of him; but he never gave to them what he gave to the master. No caress of theirs could put the love-croon into his throat, and, try as they would, they could never persuade him into snuggling against them. This expression of abandon and surrender, of absolute trust, he reserved for the master alone. In fact, he never regarded the members of the family in any other light than possessions of the love-master. Also White Fang had early come to differentiate between the family and the servants of the household. The latter were afraid of him, while he merely refrained from attacking them. This because he considered that they were likewise possessions of the master. Between White Fang and them existed a neutrality and no more. They cooked for the master and washed the dishes and did other things just as Matt had done up in the Klondike. They were, in short, appurtenances of the household. Outside the household there was even more for White Fang to learn. The master's domain was wide and complex, yet it had its metes and bounds. The land itself ceased at the county road. Outside was the common domain of all gods--the roads and streets. Then inside other fences were the particular domains of other gods. A myriad laws governed all these things and determined conduct; yet he did not know the speech of the gods, nor was there any way for him to learn save by experience. He obeyed his natural impulses until they ran him counter to some law. When this had been done a few times, he learned the law and after that observed it. But most potent in his education was the cuff of the master's hand, the censure of the master's voice. Because of White Fang's very great love, a cuff from the master hurt him far more than any beating Grey Beaver or Beauty Smith had ever given him. They had hurt only the flesh of him; beneath the flesh the spirit had still raged, splendid and invincible. But with the master the cuff was always too light to hurt the flesh. Yet it went deeper. It was an expression of the master's disapproval, and White Fang's spirit wilted under it. In point of fact, the cuff was rarely administered. The master's voice was sufficient. By it White Fang knew whether he did right or not. By it he trimmed his conduct and adjusted his actions. It was the compass by which he steered and learned to chart the manners of a new land and life. In the Northland, the only domesticated animal was the dog. All other animals lived in the Wild, and were, when not too formidable, lawful spoil for any dog. All his days White Fang had foraged among the live things for food. It did not enter his head that in the Southland it was otherwise. But this he was to learn early in his residence in Santa Clara Valley. Sauntering around the corner of the house in the early morning, he came upon a chicken that had escaped from the chicken-yard. White Fang's natural impulse was to eat it. A couple of bounds, a flash of teeth and a frightened squawk, and he had scooped in the adventurous fowl. It was farm-bred and fat and tender; and White Fang licked his chops and decided that such fare was good. Later in the day, he chanced upon another stray chicken near the stables. One of the grooms ran to the rescue. He did not know White Fang's breed, so for weapon he took a light buggy-whip. At the first cut of the whip, White Fang left the chicken for the man. A club might have stopped White Fang, but not a whip. Silently, without flinching, he took a second cut in his forward rush, and as he leaped for the throat the groom cried out, "My God!" and staggered backward. He dropped the whip and shielded his throat with his arms. In consequence, his forearm was ripped open to the bone. The man was badly frightened. It was not so much White Fang's ferocity as it was his silence that unnerved the groom. Still protecting his throat and face with his torn and bleeding arm, he tried to retreat to the barn. And it would have gone hard with him had not Collie appeared on the scene. As she had saved Dick's life, she now saved the groom's. She rushed upon White Fang in frenzied wrath. She had been right. She had known better than the blundering gods. All her suspicions were justified. Here was the ancient marauder up to his old tricks again. The groom escaped into the stables, and White Fang backed away before Collie's wicked teeth, or presented his shoulder to them and circled round and round. But Collie did not give over, as was her wont, after a decent interval of chastisement. On the contrary, she grew more excited and angry every moment, until, in the end, White Fang flung dignity to the winds and frankly fled away from her across the fields. "He'll learn to leave chickens alone," the master said. "But I can't give him the lesson until I catch him in the act." Two nights later came the act, but on a more generous scale than the master had anticipated. White Fang had observed closely the chicken-yards and the habits of the chickens. In the night-time, after they had gone to roost, he climbed to the top of a pile of newly hauled lumber. From there he gained the roof of a chicken-house, passed over the ridgepole and dropped to the ground inside. A moment later he was inside the house, and the slaughter began. In the morning, when the master came out on to the porch, fifty white Leghorn hens, laid out in a row by the groom, greeted his eyes. He whistled to himself, softly, first with surprise, and then, at the end, with admiration. His eyes were likewise greeted by White Fang, but about the latter there were no signs of shame nor guilt. He carried himself with pride, as though, forsooth, he had achieved a deed praiseworthy and meritorious. There was about him no consciousness of sin. The master's lips tightened as he faced the disagreeable task. Then he talked harshly to the unwitting culprit, and in his voice there was nothing but godlike wrath. Also, he held White Fang's nose down to the slain hens, and at the same time cuffed him soundly. White Fang never raided a chicken-roost again. It was against the law, and he had learned it. Then the master took him into the chicken-yards. White Fang's natural impulse, when he saw the live food fluttering about him and under his very nose, was to spring upon it. He obeyed the impulse, but was checked by the master's voice. They continued in the yards for half an hour. Time and again the impulse surged over White Fang, and each time, as he yielded to it, he was checked by the master's voice. Thus it was he learned the law, and ere he left the domain of the chickens, he had learned to ignore their existence. "You can never cure a chicken-killer." Judge Scott shook his head sadly at luncheon table, when his son narrated the lesson he had given White Fang. "Once they've got the habit and the taste of blood . . ." Again he shook his head sadly. But Weedon Scott did not agree with his father. "I'll tell you what I'll do," he challenged finally. "I'll lock White Fang in with the chickens all afternoon." "But think of the chickens," objected the judge. "And furthermore," the son went on, "for every chicken he kills, I'll pay you one dollar gold coin of the realm." "But you should penalise father, too," interpose Beth. Her sister seconded her, and a chorus of approval arose from around the table. Judge Scott nodded his head in agreement. "All right." Weedon Scott pondered for a moment. "And if, at the end of the afternoon White Fang hasn't harmed a chicken, for every ten minutes of the time he has spent in the yard, you will have to say to him, gravely and with deliberation, just as if you were sitting on the bench and solemnly passing judgment, 'White Fang, you are smarter than I thought.'" From hidden points of vantage the family watched the performance. But it was a fizzle. Locked in the yard and there deserted by the master, White Fang lay down and went to sleep. Once he got up and walked over to the trough for a drink of water. The chickens he calmly ignored. So far as he was concerned they did not exist. At four o'clock he executed a running jump, gained the roof of the chicken-house and leaped to the ground outside, whence he sauntered gravely to the house. He had learned the law. And on the porch, before the delighted family, Judge Scott, face to face with White Fang, said slowly and solemnly, sixteen times, "White Fang, you are smarter than I thought." But it was the multiplicity of laws that befuddled White Fang and often brought him into disgrace. He had to learn that he must not touch the chickens that belonged to other gods. Then there were cats, and rabbits, and turkeys; all these he must let alone. In fact, when he had but partly learned the law, his impression was that he must leave all live things alone. Out in the back-pasture, a quail could flutter up under his nose unharmed. All tense and trembling with eagerness and desire, he mastered his instinct and stood still. He was obeying the will of the gods. And then, one day, again out in the back-pasture, he saw Dick start a jackrabbit and run it. The master himself was looking on and did not interfere. Nay, he encouraged White Fang to join in the chase. And thus he learned that there was no taboo on jackrabbits. In the end he worked out the complete law. Between him and all domestic animals there must be no hostilities. If not amity, at least neutrality must obtain. But the other animals--the squirrels, and quail, and cottontails, were creatures of the Wild who had never yielded allegiance to man. They were the lawful prey of any dog. It was only the tame that the gods protected, and between the tame deadly strife was not permitted. The gods held the power of life and death over their subjects, and the gods were jealous of their power. Life was complex in the Santa Clara Valley after the simplicities of the Northland. And the chief thing demanded by these intricacies of civilisation was control, restraint--a poise of self that was as delicate as the fluttering of gossamer wings and at the same time as rigid as steel. Life had a thousand faces, and White Fang found he must meet them all--thus, when he went to town, in to San Jose, running behind the carriage or loafing about the streets when the carriage stopped. Life flowed past him, deep and wide and varied, continually impinging upon his senses, demanding of him instant and endless adjustments and correspondences, and compelling him, almost always, to suppress his natural impulses. There were butcher-shops where meat hung within reach. This meat he must not touch. There were cats at the houses the master visited that must be let alone. And there were dogs everywhere that snarled at him and that he must not attack. And then, on the crowded sidewalks there were persons innumerable whose attention he attracted. They would stop and look at him, point him out to one another, examine him, talk of him, and, worst of all, pat him. And these perilous contacts from all these strange hands he must endure. Yet this endurance he achieved. Furthermore, he got over being awkward and self-conscious. In a lofty way he received the attentions of the multitudes of strange gods. With condescension he accepted their condescension. On the other hand, there was something about him that prevented great familiarity. They patted him on the head and passed on, contented and pleased with their own daring. But it was not all easy for White Fang. Running behind the carriage in the outskirts of San Jose, he encountered certain small boys who made a practice of flinging stones at him. Yet he knew that it was not permitted him to pursue and drag them down. Here he was compelled to violate his instinct of self-preservation, and violate it he did, for he was becoming tame and qualifying himself for civilisation. Nevertheless, White Fang was not quite satisfied with the arrangement. He had no abstract ideas about justice and fair play. But there is a certain sense of equity that resides in life, and it was this sense in him that resented the unfairness of his being permitted no defence against the stone-throwers. He forgot that in the covenant entered into between him and the gods they were pledged to care for him and defend him. But one day the master sprang from the carriage, whip in hand, and gave the stone-throwers a thrashing. After that they threw stones no more, and White Fang understood and was satisfied. One other experience of similar nature was his. On the way to town, hanging around the saloon at the cross-roads, were three dogs that made a practice of rushing out upon him when he went by. Knowing his deadly method of fighting, the master had never ceased impressing upon White Fang the law that he must not fight. As a result, having learned the lesson well, White Fang was hard put whenever he passed the cross-roads saloon. After the first rush, each time, his snarl kept the three dogs at a distance but they trailed along behind, yelping and bickering and insulting him. This endured for some time. The men at the saloon even urged the dogs on to attack White Fang. One day they openly sicked the dogs on him. The master stopped the carriage. "Go to it," he said to White Fang. But White Fang could not believe. He looked at the master, and he looked at the dogs. Then he looked back eagerly and questioningly at the master. The master nodded his head. "Go to them, old fellow. Eat them up." White Fang no longer hesitated. He turned and leaped silently among his enemies. All three faced him. There was a great snarling and growling, a clashing of teeth and a flurry of bodies. The dust of the road arose in a cloud and screened the battle. But at the end of several minutes two dogs were struggling in the dirt and the third was in full flight. He leaped a ditch, went through a rail fence, and fled across a field. White Fang followed, sliding over the ground in wolf fashion and with wolf speed, swiftly and without noise, and in the centre of the field he dragged down and slew the dog. With this triple killing his main troubles with dogs ceased. The word went up and down the valley, and men saw to it that their dogs did not molest the Fighting Wolf.

V.3 The God's Domain

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-gods-domain

As White Fang must adapt to life at Sierra Vista, so must the Scotts' other dogs adapt to him. Collie especially is in no hurry to accept him, for she is fighting against her sheepdog instincts: "Woven into her being was the memory of countless crimes he and his had perpetrated against her ancestry. Not in a day nor a generation were the ravaged sheepfolds to be forgotten." Collie exploits White Fang's instinctual deference to the female to persecute him-in gentler ways than did Lip-lip, to be sure -yet persecution all the same. At the same time, he is learning to receive expressions of affection from the Scott family. He must also, however, learn to negotiate another series of laws and restraints. When White Fang comes across a chicken who has escaped from the coop, he yields to instinct, attacking it, eating it, and enjoying it. Scott must teach him not to eat the chickens. The rest of the family, particularly Judge Scott, is dubious that the wolf-dog can learn this lesson-but learn it he does, eventually able to stay in the chicken coop without attacking any of the fowl. On the other hand, on one visit to San Jose, Weedon Scott eventually gives White Fang license to attack dogs who abuse him. White Fang kills three such dogs-and receives fearful respect from the residents, and their dogs, thereafter.

. This chapter makes another point in London's ongoing analysis of human life and society by way of focusing on animal life and society: "Life in the Northland"-that is, the Wild-"was simplicity itself when compared with the complicated affairs of Sierra Vista. " Readers will want to note the definition of civilization that London offers in this chapter, perhaps not without a touch of irony and good humor: "Here he was compelled to violate his instinct of self-preservation, and violate it he did, for he was becoming tame and qualifying himself for civilization. " London's point may well be that to be civilized, human beings must voluntarily check their instincts-even their instinct to self-preservation, in order to form a mutually beneficial society, where the good of the self is balanced with the good of others. The chapter also further elaborates on the motif of hands that London highlighted in III.5. There, White Fang feared and hated human hands, and for good reason; here, he must learn to overcome that ingrained hatred in order to coexist with the "god's" children. And, indeed, the wolf-dog does eventually allow himself to be petted, but he never completely gives himself emotionally to any human but Weedon Scott. In White Fang's relationship with Weedon Scott, we see, more clearly than anywhere else in the book, the proper and beneficial balance of "nature" and "nurture." White Fang "obeyed his natural impulses until they ran him counter to some law"-instinct and experience now exist in harmony, and the element that has allowed them to do so is love: Scott's love for White Fang, and White Fang's love for Scott. Finally, readers may choose to note Collie's instinctual, genetic aversion to White Fang. Clearly, London is offering a rational and realistic treatment of a sheepdog's natural dislike of a wolf, a domesticated animal's inherent mistrust of an animal from the Wild. Yet the language London uses can, for modern readers at any rate, evoke the recognition of the language in which irrational and unfair prejudices among humans are often cloaked: holding one accountable for the "crimes. perpetrated" by one's forebears, for example, or nursing ancient grudges . Again, London is not painting animals, who cannot be expected to know any better, as prejudicial; but modern readers may find in London's language a caution for human beings, who must be expected to know better! The dynamic may be one further example of London's comparisons of humans and animals throughout the book.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/24.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_24_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 5.chapter 4

part 5, chapter 4 the call of kind

{"name": "V.4 The Call of Kind", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-call-of-kind", "summary": "As much as White Fang continues to adapt to life at Sierra Vista, he never completely loses his quality as an outsider. He does not associate with the dogs, who still regard him warily and with fear. All except Collie, that is, who continues to hound him. White Fang accompanies Weedon Scott when Scott goes horseback riding. On one such outing, Scott is injured when his steed rears in fright, throwing him to the ground and breaking his leg. Scott sternly orders White Fang to go home which, only reluctantly and once he realizes that it truly is his master's will, White Fang does. Once back at the house, he manages to bark-one of only two times in his life that he does so. Scott's wife is the first to realize that White Fang's bark is related to Weedon's absence. The family is able to go to him and help him, and White Fang's place in the family, already firm, is even further secured. His domestication appears complete when, at the chapter's end, he leaves Scott on a horseback riding trip to follow Collie, who lures him into the woods to mate.", "analysis": ". This chapter establishes sleep as a thematic motif. We are told that \"the wolf in merely slept,\" meaning that he is growing increasingly domesticated. The sleep is a welcome contrast to the fierce struggle for life that White Fang has known up to now. \"Sleep\" functions as a symbol for rest, for peace. London also uses this penultimate chapter to further detail White Fang's domestication. He marks one shift toward that end by reintroducing language of logic and reason; note, for instance, how White Fang comes to regard Collie with \"philosophic tolerance. \" The allusion to the sophisticated thought of philosophy does not, of course, mean that White Fang has literally become a great thinker; rather, it underscores his increasing progress toward civilization, for philosophy has always been judged one of civilization's great achievements. Laughter emerges as another great achievement of White Fang's in this chapter. The wolf-dog learns to play-which, in the context of the narrative, means to abandon himself to the love he feels toward Weedon Scott. The fact that play is an expression of love is made clear when the narrative informs us that White Fang reserves \"romping\" for Scott alone. Further, White Fang learns to bark-that is, to communicate. He only does so twice in his life, but those two times are enough and, indeed, the first time saves his master's life . Finally, White Fang becomes a father by mating with Collie. This final evidence of the wolf-dog's \"taming\" is also, however, one of the bold ways in which the power of life and the power of love are identified in the novel-not that Collie and White Fang feel the emotion of advertisement love for each other, but that the act of love between the two animals begets more life to be loved and nurtured. Collie and White Fang's pups will be new \"clay,\" to borrow language from earlier in the novel, and they will have the chance to experience care and kindness that White Fang was for so long denied. And the act of love that Collie and White Fang share does, as London's text makes explicit, unite them with the great procession of life that has gone before: \"White Fang ran with Collie, as his mother, Kiche, and old One Eye had run.\""}

The months came and went. There was plenty of food and no work in the Southland, and White Fang lived fat and prosperous and happy. Not alone was he in the geographical Southland, for he was in the Southland of life. Human kindness was like a sun shining upon him, and he flourished like a flower planted in good soil. And yet he remained somehow different from other dogs. He knew the law even better than did the dogs that had known no other life, and he observed the law more punctiliously; but still there was about him a suggestion of lurking ferocity, as though the Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept. He never chummed with other dogs. Lonely he had lived, so far as his kind was concerned, and lonely he would continue to live. In his puppyhood, under the persecution of Lip-lip and the puppy-pack, and in his fighting days with Beauty Smith, he had acquired a fixed aversion for dogs. The natural course of his life had been diverted, and, recoiling from his kind, he had clung to the human. Besides, all Southland dogs looked upon him with suspicion. He aroused in them their instinctive fear of the Wild, and they greeted him always with snarl and growl and belligerent hatred. He, on the other hand, learned that it was not necessary to use his teeth upon them. His naked fangs and writhing lips were uniformly efficacious, rarely failing to send a bellowing on-rushing dog back on its haunches. But there was one trial in White Fang's life--Collie. She never gave him a moment's peace. She was not so amenable to the law as he. She defied all efforts of the master to make her become friends with White Fang. Ever in his ears was sounding her sharp and nervous snarl. She had never forgiven him the chicken-killing episode, and persistently held to the belief that his intentions were bad. She found him guilty before the act, and treated him accordingly. She became a pest to him, like a policeman following him around the stable and the hounds, and, if he even so much as glanced curiously at a pigeon or chicken, bursting into an outcry of indignation and wrath. His favourite way of ignoring her was to lie down, with his head on his fore-paws, and pretend sleep. This always dumfounded and silenced her. With the exception of Collie, all things went well with White Fang. He had learned control and poise, and he knew the law. He achieved a staidness, and calmness, and philosophic tolerance. He no longer lived in a hostile environment. Danger and hurt and death did not lurk everywhere about him. In time, the unknown, as a thing of terror and menace ever impending, faded away. Life was soft and easy. It flowed along smoothly, and neither fear nor foe lurked by the way. He missed the snow without being aware of it. "An unduly long summer," would have been his thought had he thought about it; as it was, he merely missed the snow in a vague, subconscious way. In the same fashion, especially in the heat of summer when he suffered from the sun, he experienced faint longings for the Northland. Their only effect upon him, however, was to make him uneasy and restless without his knowing what was the matter. White Fang had never been very demonstrative. Beyond his snuggling and the throwing of a crooning note into his love-growl, he had no way of expressing his love. Yet it was given him to discover a third way. He had always been susceptible to the laughter of the gods. Laughter had affected him with madness, made him frantic with rage. But he did not have it in him to be angry with the love-master, and when that god elected to laugh at him in a good-natured, bantering way, he was nonplussed. He could feel the pricking and stinging of the old anger as it strove to rise up in him, but it strove against love. He could not be angry; yet he had to do something. At first he was dignified, and the master laughed the harder. Then he tried to be more dignified, and the master laughed harder than before. In the end, the master laughed him out of his dignity. His jaws slightly parted, his lips lifted a little, and a quizzical expression that was more love than humour came into his eyes. He had learned to laugh. Likewise he learned to romp with the master, to be tumbled down and rolled over, and be the victim of innumerable rough tricks. In return he feigned anger, bristling and growling ferociously, and clipping his teeth together in snaps that had all the seeming of deadly intention. But he never forgot himself. Those snaps were always delivered on the empty air. At the end of such a romp, when blow and cuff and snap and snarl were fast and furious, they would break off suddenly and stand several feet apart, glaring at each other. And then, just as suddenly, like the sun rising on a stormy sea, they would begin to laugh. This would always culminate with the master's arms going around White Fang's neck and shoulders while the latter crooned and growled his love-song. But nobody else ever romped with White Fang. He did not permit it. He stood on his dignity, and when they attempted it, his warning snarl and bristling mane were anything but playful. That he allowed the master these liberties was no reason that he should be a common dog, loving here and loving there, everybody's property for a romp and good time. He loved with single heart and refused to cheapen himself or his love. The master went out on horseback a great deal, and to accompany him was one of White Fang's chief duties in life. In the Northland he had evidenced his fealty by toiling in the harness; but there were no sleds in the Southland, nor did dogs pack burdens on their backs. So he rendered fealty in the new way, by running with the master's horse. The longest day never played White Fang out. His was the gait of the wolf, smooth, tireless and effortless, and at the end of fifty miles he would come in jauntily ahead of the horse. It was in connection with the riding, that White Fang achieved one other mode of expression--remarkable in that he did it but twice in all his life. The first time occurred when the master was trying to teach a spirited thoroughbred the method of opening and closing gates without the rider's dismounting. Time and again and many times he ranged the horse up to the gate in the effort to close it and each time the horse became frightened and backed and plunged away. It grew more nervous and excited every moment. When it reared, the master put the spurs to it and made it drop its fore-legs back to earth, whereupon it would begin kicking with its hind-legs. White Fang watched the performance with increasing anxiety until he could contain himself no longer, when he sprang in front of the horse and barked savagely and warningly. Though he often tried to bark thereafter, and the master encouraged him, he succeeded only once, and then it was not in the master's presence. A scamper across the pasture, a jackrabbit rising suddenly under the horse's feet, a violent sheer, a stumble, a fall to earth, and a broken leg for the master, was the cause of it. White Fang sprang in a rage at the throat of the offending horse, but was checked by the master's voice. "Home! Go home!" the master commanded when he had ascertained his injury. White Fang was disinclined to desert him. The master thought of writing a note, but searched his pockets vainly for pencil and paper. Again he commanded White Fang to go home. The latter regarded him wistfully, started away, then returned and whined softly. The master talked to him gently but seriously, and he cocked his ears, and listened with painful intentness. "That's all right, old fellow, you just run along home," ran the talk. "Go on home and tell them what's happened to me. Home with you, you wolf. Get along home!" White Fang knew the meaning of "home," and though he did not understand the remainder of the master's language, he knew it was his will that he should go home. He turned and trotted reluctantly away. Then he stopped, undecided, and looked back over his shoulder. "Go home!" came the sharp command, and this time he obeyed. The family was on the porch, taking the cool of the afternoon, when White Fang arrived. He came in among them, panting, covered with dust. "Weedon's back," Weedon's mother announced. The children welcomed White Fang with glad cries and ran to meet him. He avoided them and passed down the porch, but they cornered him against a rocking-chair and the railing. He growled and tried to push by them. Their mother looked apprehensively in their direction. "I confess, he makes me nervous around the children," she said. "I have a dread that he will turn upon them unexpectedly some day." Growling savagely, White Fang sprang out of the corner, overturning the boy and the girl. The mother called them to her and comforted them, telling them not to bother White Fang. "A wolf is a wolf!" commented Judge Scott. "There is no trusting one." "But he is not all wolf," interposed Beth, standing for her brother in his absence. "You have only Weedon's opinion for that," rejoined the judge. "He merely surmises that there is some strain of dog in White Fang; but as he will tell you himself, he knows nothing about it. As for his appearance--" He did not finish his sentence. White Fang stood before him, growling fiercely. "Go away! Lie down, sir!" Judge Scott commanded. White Fang turned to the love-master's wife. She screamed with fright as he seized her dress in his teeth and dragged on it till the frail fabric tore away. By this time he had become the centre of interest. He had ceased from his growling and stood, head up, looking into their faces. His throat worked spasmodically, but made no sound, while he struggled with all his body, convulsed with the effort to rid himself of the incommunicable something that strained for utterance. "I hope he is not going mad," said Weedon's mother. "I told Weedon that I was afraid the warm climate would not agree with an Arctic animal." "He's trying to speak, I do believe," Beth announced. At this moment speech came to White Fang, rushing up in a great burst of barking. "Something has happened to Weedon," his wife said decisively. They were all on their feet now, and White Fang ran down the steps, looking back for them to follow. For the second and last time in his life he had barked and made himself understood. After this event he found a warmer place in the hearts of the Sierra Vista people, and even the groom whose arm he had slashed admitted that he was a wise dog even if he was a wolf. Judge Scott still held to the same opinion, and proved it to everybody's dissatisfaction by measurements and descriptions taken from the encyclopaedia and various works on natural history. The days came and went, streaming their unbroken sunshine over the Santa Clara Valley. But as they grew shorter and White Fang's second winter in the Southland came on, he made a strange discovery. Collie's teeth were no longer sharp. There was a playfulness about her nips and a gentleness that prevented them from really hurting him. He forgot that she had made life a burden to him, and when she disported herself around him he responded solemnly, striving to be playful and becoming no more than ridiculous. One day she led him off on a long chase through the back-pasture land into the woods. It was the afternoon that the master was to ride, and White Fang knew it. The horse stood saddled and waiting at the door. White Fang hesitated. But there was that in him deeper than all the law he had learned, than the customs that had moulded him, than his love for the master, than the very will to live of himself; and when, in the moment of his indecision, Collie nipped him and scampered off, he turned and followed after. The master rode alone that day; and in the woods, side by side, White Fang ran with Collie, as his mother, Kiche, and old One Eye had run long years before in the silent Northland forest.

V.4 The Call of Kind

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-call-of-kind

As much as White Fang continues to adapt to life at Sierra Vista, he never completely loses his quality as an outsider. He does not associate with the dogs, who still regard him warily and with fear. All except Collie, that is, who continues to hound him. White Fang accompanies Weedon Scott when Scott goes horseback riding. On one such outing, Scott is injured when his steed rears in fright, throwing him to the ground and breaking his leg. Scott sternly orders White Fang to go home which, only reluctantly and once he realizes that it truly is his master's will, White Fang does. Once back at the house, he manages to bark-one of only two times in his life that he does so. Scott's wife is the first to realize that White Fang's bark is related to Weedon's absence. The family is able to go to him and help him, and White Fang's place in the family, already firm, is even further secured. His domestication appears complete when, at the chapter's end, he leaves Scott on a horseback riding trip to follow Collie, who lures him into the woods to mate.

. This chapter establishes sleep as a thematic motif. We are told that "the wolf in merely slept," meaning that he is growing increasingly domesticated. The sleep is a welcome contrast to the fierce struggle for life that White Fang has known up to now. "Sleep" functions as a symbol for rest, for peace. London also uses this penultimate chapter to further detail White Fang's domestication. He marks one shift toward that end by reintroducing language of logic and reason; note, for instance, how White Fang comes to regard Collie with "philosophic tolerance. " The allusion to the sophisticated thought of philosophy does not, of course, mean that White Fang has literally become a great thinker; rather, it underscores his increasing progress toward civilization, for philosophy has always been judged one of civilization's great achievements. Laughter emerges as another great achievement of White Fang's in this chapter. The wolf-dog learns to play-which, in the context of the narrative, means to abandon himself to the love he feels toward Weedon Scott. The fact that play is an expression of love is made clear when the narrative informs us that White Fang reserves "romping" for Scott alone. Further, White Fang learns to bark-that is, to communicate. He only does so twice in his life, but those two times are enough and, indeed, the first time saves his master's life . Finally, White Fang becomes a father by mating with Collie. This final evidence of the wolf-dog's "taming" is also, however, one of the bold ways in which the power of life and the power of love are identified in the novel-not that Collie and White Fang feel the emotion of advertisement love for each other, but that the act of love between the two animals begets more life to be loved and nurtured. Collie and White Fang's pups will be new "clay," to borrow language from earlier in the novel, and they will have the chance to experience care and kindness that White Fang was for so long denied. And the act of love that Collie and White Fang share does, as London's text makes explicit, unite them with the great procession of life that has gone before: "White Fang ran with Collie, as his mother, Kiche, and old One Eye had run."

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/25.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/White Fang/section_25_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 5.chapter 5

part 5, chapter 5 the sleeping wolf

{"name": "V.5 The Sleeping Wolf", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-sleeping-wolf", "summary": "The chapter begins with a flashback: we learn about Jim Hall, a vicious prisoner who years before had been sentenced to serve five decades' jail time by Judge Scott . In so doing, Judge Scott had unwittingly played a part in a police conspiracy against Hall. Now, Hall has escaped. He makes his way to Sierra Vista to take revenge on the judge who sent him to prison. He breaks into the house by night, only to meet with White Fang, who savagely attacks the dangerous intruder. White Fang kills Hall, but it very nearly costs the wolf-dog his own life. The family keeps an anxious vigil while White Fang struggles, one more time, to survive. But survive he does. He is given the name \"Blessed Wolf\" by Judge Scott when he revives. White Fang rises, goes to Collie, and meets her pups, the litter he has fathered. Content, he rests \"with half-shut, patient eyes, drowsing in the sun.\" .", "analysis": ". In some ways, this final chapter of White Fang could be construed as anti-climactic. Surely, readers have never before heard of Jim Hall; he makes an abrupt, artistically inelegant entrance into the plot at this point. And, just as surely, the arc of White Fang's character has been virtually all but finished at the close of the previous chapter, as life reasserts itself when White Fang and Collie go off into the woods to mate. The narrator has told us that \"the wolf in merely slept\" . And yet that phrase indicates that there is more of White Fang's story to be told. It subtly introduces the foundation for this chapter, which serves to illustrate that the wolf-i.e., the Wild, the savagery that was instilled into White Fang through the \"nurture\" of Gray Beaver and Beauty Smith-is still a part of and coexists with the tame dog he has become under the love of Weedon Scott. This final chapter, then, gives readers a chance to see the two dichotomous sides of White Fang's character fully reconciled, fully integrated. As White Fang remembers his experiences as he is on the verge of death, we readers take the journey with him again, marveling at how \"nature\" and \"nurture\" have combined to produce this fierce yet loving animal, this magnificent creature. Perhaps his \"clay\" could and should have been molded differently, but at this point we sense that White Fang is as he is content to be: surrounded by loving \"gods\" and, not fully asleep, but \"drowsing\" with eyes that are only \"half-shut.\" In other words, he is at peace, and this chapter gives us another chance to see advertisement that peace for ourselves. It thus serves an important narrative and emotional function, and provides a fitting conclusion to the book. White Fang's \"resurrection\" leaves readers with a strong affirmation of the power of life: \"White Fang had come straight from the Wild, where the weak perish early and shelter is vouchsafed to none. A constitution of iron and the vitality of the Wild were White Fang's inheritance, and he clung to life. with the tenacity of old.\""}

It was about this time that the newspapers were full of the daring escape of a convict from San Quentin prison. He was a ferocious man. He had been ill-made in the making. He had not been born right, and he had not been helped any by the moulding he had received at the hands of society. The hands of society are harsh, and this man was a striking sample of its handiwork. He was a beast--a human beast, it is true, but nevertheless so terrible a beast that he can best be characterised as carnivorous. In San Quentin prison he had proved incorrigible. Punishment failed to break his spirit. He could die dumb-mad and fighting to the last, but he could not live and be beaten. The more fiercely he fought, the more harshly society handled him, and the only effect of harshness was to make him fiercer. Strait-jackets, starvation, and beatings and clubbings were the wrong treatment for Jim Hall; but it was the treatment he received. It was the treatment he had received from the time he was a little pulpy boy in a San Francisco slum--soft clay in the hands of society and ready to be formed into something. It was during Jim Hall's third term in prison that he encountered a guard that was almost as great a beast as he. The guard treated him unfairly, lied about him to the warden, lost his credits, persecuted him. The difference between them was that the guard carried a bunch of keys and a revolver. Jim Hall had only his naked hands and his teeth. But he sprang upon the guard one day and used his teeth on the other's throat just like any jungle animal. After this, Jim Hall went to live in the incorrigible cell. He lived there three years. The cell was of iron, the floor, the walls, the roof. He never left this cell. He never saw the sky nor the sunshine. Day was a twilight and night was a black silence. He was in an iron tomb, buried alive. He saw no human face, spoke to no human thing. When his food was shoved in to him, he growled like a wild animal. He hated all things. For days and nights he bellowed his rage at the universe. For weeks and months he never made a sound, in the black silence eating his very soul. He was a man and a monstrosity, as fearful a thing of fear as ever gibbered in the visions of a maddened brain. And then, one night, he escaped. The warders said it was impossible, but nevertheless the cell was empty, and half in half out of it lay the body of a dead guard. Two other dead guards marked his trail through the prison to the outer walls, and he had killed with his hands to avoid noise. He was armed with the weapons of the slain guards--a live arsenal that fled through the hills pursued by the organised might of society. A heavy price of gold was upon his head. Avaricious farmers hunted him with shot-guns. His blood might pay off a mortgage or send a son to college. Public-spirited citizens took down their rifles and went out after him. A pack of bloodhounds followed the way of his bleeding feet. And the sleuth-hounds of the law, the paid fighting animals of society, with telephone, and telegraph, and special train, clung to his trail night and day. Sometimes they came upon him, and men faced him like heroes, or stampeded through barbed-wire fences to the delight of the commonwealth reading the account at the breakfast table. It was after such encounters that the dead and wounded were carted back to the towns, and their places filled by men eager for the man-hunt. And then Jim Hall disappeared. The bloodhounds vainly quested on the lost trail. Inoffensive ranchers in remote valleys were held up by armed men and compelled to identify themselves. While the remains of Jim Hall were discovered on a dozen mountain-sides by greedy claimants for blood- money. In the meantime the newspapers were read at Sierra Vista, not so much with interest as with anxiety. The women were afraid. Judge Scott pooh- poohed and laughed, but not with reason, for it was in his last days on the bench that Jim Hall had stood before him and received sentence. And in open court-room, before all men, Jim Hall had proclaimed that the day would come when he would wreak vengeance on the Judge that sentenced him. For once, Jim Hall was right. He was innocent of the crime for which he was sentenced. It was a case, in the parlance of thieves and police, of "rail-roading." Jim Hall was being "rail-roaded" to prison for a crime he had not committed. Because of the two prior convictions against him, Judge Scott imposed upon him a sentence of fifty years. Judge Scott did not know all things, and he did not know that he was party to a police conspiracy, that the evidence was hatched and perjured, that Jim Hall was guiltless of the crime charged. And Jim Hall, on the other hand, did not know that Judge Scott was merely ignorant. Jim Hall believed that the judge knew all about it and was hand in glove with the police in the perpetration of the monstrous injustice. So it was, when the doom of fifty years of living death was uttered by Judge Scott, that Jim Hall, hating all things in the society that misused him, rose up and raged in the court-room until dragged down by half a dozen of his blue- coated enemies. To him, Judge Scott was the keystone in the arch of injustice, and upon Judge Scott he emptied the vials of his wrath and hurled the threats of his revenge yet to come. Then Jim Hall went to his living death . . . and escaped. Of all this White Fang knew nothing. But between him and Alice, the master's wife, there existed a secret. Each night, after Sierra Vista had gone to bed, she rose and let in White Fang to sleep in the big hall. Now White Fang was not a house-dog, nor was he permitted to sleep in the house; so each morning, early, she slipped down and let him out before the family was awake. On one such night, while all the house slept, White Fang awoke and lay very quietly. And very quietly he smelled the air and read the message it bore of a strange god's presence. And to his ears came sounds of the strange god's movements. White Fang burst into no furious outcry. It was not his way. The strange god walked softly, but more softly walked White Fang, for he had no clothes to rub against the flesh of his body. He followed silently. In the Wild he had hunted live meat that was infinitely timid, and he knew the advantage of surprise. The strange god paused at the foot of the great staircase and listened, and White Fang was as dead, so without movement was he as he watched and waited. Up that staircase the way led to the love-master and to the love- master's dearest possessions. White Fang bristled, but waited. The strange god's foot lifted. He was beginning the ascent. Then it was that White Fang struck. He gave no warning, with no snarl anticipated his own action. Into the air he lifted his body in the spring that landed him on the strange god's back. White Fang clung with his fore-paws to the man's shoulders, at the same time burying his fangs into the back of the man's neck. He clung on for a moment, long enough to drag the god over backward. Together they crashed to the floor. White Fang leaped clear, and, as the man struggled to rise, was in again with the slashing fangs. Sierra Vista awoke in alarm. The noise from downstairs was as that of a score of battling fiends. There were revolver shots. A man's voice screamed once in horror and anguish. There was a great snarling and growling, and over all arose a smashing and crashing of furniture and glass. But almost as quickly as it had arisen, the commotion died away. The struggle had not lasted more than three minutes. The frightened household clustered at the top of the stairway. From below, as from out an abyss of blackness, came up a gurgling sound, as of air bubbling through water. Sometimes this gurgle became sibilant, almost a whistle. But this, too, quickly died down and ceased. Then naught came up out of the blackness save a heavy panting of some creature struggling sorely for air. Weedon Scott pressed a button, and the staircase and downstairs hall were flooded with light. Then he and Judge Scott, revolvers in hand, cautiously descended. There was no need for this caution. White Fang had done his work. In the midst of the wreckage of overthrown and smashed furniture, partly on his side, his face hidden by an arm, lay a man. Weedon Scott bent over, removed the arm and turned the man's face upward. A gaping throat explained the manner of his death. "Jim Hall," said Judge Scott, and father and son looked significantly at each other. Then they turned to White Fang. He, too, was lying on his side. His eyes were closed, but the lids slightly lifted in an effort to look at them as they bent over him, and the tail was perceptibly agitated in a vain effort to wag. Weedon Scott patted him, and his throat rumbled an acknowledging growl. But it was a weak growl at best, and it quickly ceased. His eyelids drooped and went shut, and his whole body seemed to relax and flatten out upon the floor. "He's all in, poor devil," muttered the master. "We'll see about that," asserted the Judge, as he started for the telephone. "Frankly, he has one chance in a thousand," announced the surgeon, after he had worked an hour and a half on White Fang. Dawn was breaking through the windows and dimming the electric lights. With the exception of the children, the whole family was gathered about the surgeon to hear his verdict. "One broken hind-leg," he went on. "Three broken ribs, one at least of which has pierced the lungs. He has lost nearly all the blood in his body. There is a large likelihood of internal injuries. He must have been jumped upon. To say nothing of three bullet holes clear through him. One chance in a thousand is really optimistic. He hasn't a chance in ten thousand." "But he mustn't lose any chance that might be of help to him," Judge Scott exclaimed. "Never mind expense. Put him under the X-ray--anything. Weedon, telegraph at once to San Francisco for Doctor Nichols. No reflection on you, doctor, you understand; but he must have the advantage of every chance." The surgeon smiled indulgently. "Of course I understand. He deserves all that can be done for him. He must be nursed as you would nurse a human being, a sick child. And don't forget what I told you about temperature. I'll be back at ten o'clock again." White Fang received the nursing. Judge Scott's suggestion of a trained nurse was indignantly clamoured down by the girls, who themselves undertook the task. And White Fang won out on the one chance in ten thousand denied him by the surgeon. The latter was not to be censured for his misjudgment. All his life he had tended and operated on the soft humans of civilisation, who lived sheltered lives and had descended out of many sheltered generations. Compared with White Fang, they were frail and flabby, and clutched life without any strength in their grip. White Fang had come straight from the Wild, where the weak perish early and shelter is vouchsafed to none. In neither his father nor his mother was there any weakness, nor in the generations before them. A constitution of iron and the vitality of the Wild were White Fang's inheritance, and he clung to life, the whole of him and every part of him, in spirit and in flesh, with the tenacity that of old belonged to all creatures. Bound down a prisoner, denied even movement by the plaster casts and bandages, White Fang lingered out the weeks. He slept long hours and dreamed much, and through his mind passed an unending pageant of Northland visions. All the ghosts of the past arose and were with him. Once again he lived in the lair with Kiche, crept trembling to the knees of Grey Beaver to tender his allegiance, ran for his life before Lip-lip and all the howling bedlam of the puppy-pack. He ran again through the silence, hunting his living food through the months of famine; and again he ran at the head of the team, the gut-whips of Mit-sah and Grey Beaver snapping behind, their voices crying "Ra! Raa!" when they came to a narrow passage and the team closed together like a fan to go through. He lived again all his days with Beauty Smith and the fights he had fought. At such times he whimpered and snarled in his sleep, and they that looked on said that his dreams were bad. But there was one particular nightmare from which he suffered--the clanking, clanging monsters of electric cars that were to him colossal screaming lynxes. He would lie in a screen of bushes, watching for a squirrel to venture far enough out on the ground from its tree-refuge. Then, when he sprang out upon it, it would transform itself into an electric car, menacing and terrible, towering over him like a mountain, screaming and clanging and spitting fire at him. It was the same when he challenged the hawk down out of the sky. Down out of the blue it would rush, as it dropped upon him changing itself into the ubiquitous electric car. Or again, he would be in the pen of Beauty Smith. Outside the pen, men would be gathering, and he knew that a fight was on. He watched the door for his antagonist to enter. The door would open, and thrust in upon him would come the awful electric car. A thousand times this occurred, and each time the terror it inspired was as vivid and great as ever. Then came the day when the last bandage and the last plaster cast were taken off. It was a gala day. All Sierra Vista was gathered around. The master rubbed his ears, and he crooned his love-growl. The master's wife called him the "Blessed Wolf," which name was taken up with acclaim and all the women called him the Blessed Wolf. He tried to rise to his feet, and after several attempts fell down from weakness. He had lain so long that his muscles had lost their cunning, and all the strength had gone out of them. He felt a little shame because of his weakness, as though, forsooth, he were failing the gods in the service he owed them. Because of this he made heroic efforts to arise and at last he stood on his four legs, tottering and swaying back and forth. "The Blessed Wolf!" chorused the women. Judge Scott surveyed them triumphantly. "Out of your own mouths be it," he said. "Just as I contended right along. No mere dog could have done what he did. He's a wolf." "A Blessed Wolf," amended the Judge's wife. "Yes, Blessed Wolf," agreed the Judge. "And henceforth that shall be my name for him." "He'll have to learn to walk again," said the surgeon; "so he might as well start in right now. It won't hurt him. Take him outside." And outside he went, like a king, with all Sierra Vista about him and tending on him. He was very weak, and when he reached the lawn he lay down and rested for a while. Then the procession started on, little spurts of strength coming into White Fang's muscles as he used them and the blood began to surge through them. The stables were reached, and there in the doorway, lay Collie, a half-dozen pudgy puppies playing about her in the sun. White Fang looked on with a wondering eye. Collie snarled warningly at him, and he was careful to keep his distance. The master with his toe helped one sprawling puppy toward him. He bristled suspiciously, but the master warned him that all was well. Collie, clasped in the arms of one of the women, watched him jealously and with a snarl warned him that all was not well. The puppy sprawled in front of him. He cocked his ears and watched it curiously. Then their noses touched, and he felt the warm little tongue of the puppy on his jowl. White Fang's tongue went out, he knew not why, and he licked the puppy's face. Hand-clapping and pleased cries from the gods greeted the performance. He was surprised, and looked at them in a puzzled way. Then his weakness asserted itself, and he lay down, his ears cocked, his head on one side, as he watched the puppy. The other puppies came sprawling toward him, to Collie's great disgust; and he gravely permitted them to clamber and tumble over him. At first, amid the applause of the gods, he betrayed a trifle of his old self-consciousness and awkwardness. This passed away as the puppies' antics and mauling continued, and he lay with half-shut patient eyes, drowsing in the sun.

V.5 The Sleeping Wolf

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212220229/https://www.novelguide.com/white-fang/summaries/the-sleeping-wolf

The chapter begins with a flashback: we learn about Jim Hall, a vicious prisoner who years before had been sentenced to serve five decades' jail time by Judge Scott . In so doing, Judge Scott had unwittingly played a part in a police conspiracy against Hall. Now, Hall has escaped. He makes his way to Sierra Vista to take revenge on the judge who sent him to prison. He breaks into the house by night, only to meet with White Fang, who savagely attacks the dangerous intruder. White Fang kills Hall, but it very nearly costs the wolf-dog his own life. The family keeps an anxious vigil while White Fang struggles, one more time, to survive. But survive he does. He is given the name "Blessed Wolf" by Judge Scott when he revives. White Fang rises, goes to Collie, and meets her pups, the litter he has fathered. Content, he rests "with half-shut, patient eyes, drowsing in the sun." .

. In some ways, this final chapter of White Fang could be construed as anti-climactic. Surely, readers have never before heard of Jim Hall; he makes an abrupt, artistically inelegant entrance into the plot at this point. And, just as surely, the arc of White Fang's character has been virtually all but finished at the close of the previous chapter, as life reasserts itself when White Fang and Collie go off into the woods to mate. The narrator has told us that "the wolf in merely slept" . And yet that phrase indicates that there is more of White Fang's story to be told. It subtly introduces the foundation for this chapter, which serves to illustrate that the wolf-i.e., the Wild, the savagery that was instilled into White Fang through the "nurture" of Gray Beaver and Beauty Smith-is still a part of and coexists with the tame dog he has become under the love of Weedon Scott. This final chapter, then, gives readers a chance to see the two dichotomous sides of White Fang's character fully reconciled, fully integrated. As White Fang remembers his experiences as he is on the verge of death, we readers take the journey with him again, marveling at how "nature" and "nurture" have combined to produce this fierce yet loving animal, this magnificent creature. Perhaps his "clay" could and should have been molded differently, but at this point we sense that White Fang is as he is content to be: surrounded by loving "gods" and, not fully asleep, but "drowsing" with eyes that are only "half-shut." In other words, he is at peace, and this chapter gives us another chance to see advertisement that peace for ourselves. It thus serves an important narrative and emotional function, and provides a fitting conclusion to the book. White Fang's "resurrection" leaves readers with a strong affirmation of the power of life: "White Fang had come straight from the Wild, where the weak perish early and shelter is vouchsafed to none. A constitution of iron and the vitality of the Wild were White Fang's inheritance, and he clung to life. with the tenacity of old."

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/03.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_2_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 1.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang09.html", "summary": "The next day none of the dogs has disappeared, which puts Bill in a better mood. They again set out on their journey, but the sled turns over and is jammed between a tree trunk and a huge rock. When they unharness the dogs to straighten out the tangle, they see One Ear sneaking past them towards the she-wolf, who is playfully luring him into the pack of wolves. Bill prepares his gun, but the wolves are too far away to shoot. Bill sets out after them, fires his last three cartridges, and is overwhelmed by the pack, along with One Ear. Henry is now left to fend for himself and his remaining two dogs. The wolves, unafraid and unhesitating, pursue him. Fire is the only thing he has to keep them away. He spends sleepless nights, throwing fire brands at the wolves every time they get too close. Henry heaves the coffin up into a tree so that the wolves cannot get to it. He prepares himself for longer days, but he lives with paranoia, constantly fearing an attack from the wolves. The she-wolf continues to be the boldest of all, getting very close to Henry. In fact, she comes so close that he singes her fur, much to his satisfaction. The chances for his survival seem remote to Henry. He has resigned himself to the terrifying situation. When the wolves attack, trying to eat him alive, he successfully fights them off with burning coals. In exhaustion, he finally dozes. When he wakes up, he learns that his two remaining dogs have been devoured by the wolves. However, the wolves are gone and he is surrounded by about a dozen men. By a miracle, Henry has survived his Northland Wild ordeal.", "analysis": ""}

The day began auspiciously. They had lost no dogs during the night, and they swung out upon the trail and into the silence, the darkness, and the cold with spirits that were fairly light. Bill seemed to have forgotten his forebodings of the previous night, and even waxed facetious with the dogs when, at midday, they overturned the sled on a bad piece of trail. It was an awkward mix-up. The sled was upside down and jammed between a tree-trunk and a huge rock, and they were forced to unharness the dogs in order to straighten out the tangle. The two men were bent over the sled and trying to right it, when Henry observed One Ear sidling away. "Here, you, One Ear!" he cried, straightening up and turning around on the dog. But One Ear broke into a run across the snow, his traces trailing behind him. And there, out in the snow of their back track, was the she-wolf waiting for him. As he neared her, he became suddenly cautious. He slowed down to an alert and mincing walk and then stopped. He regarded her carefully and dubiously, yet desirefully. She seemed to smile at him, showing her teeth in an ingratiating rather than a menacing way. She moved toward him a few steps, playfully, and then halted. One Ear drew near to her, still alert and cautious, his tail and ears in the air, his head held high. He tried to sniff noses with her, but she retreated playfully and coyly. Every advance on his part was accompanied by a corresponding retreat on her part. Step by step she was luring him away from the security of his human companionship. Once, as though a warning had in vague ways flitted through his intelligence, he turned his head and looked back at the overturned sled, at his team-mates, and at the two men who were calling to him. But whatever idea was forming in his mind, was dissipated by the she-wolf, who advanced upon him, sniffed noses with him for a fleeting instant, and then resumed her coy retreat before his renewed advances. In the meantime, Bill had bethought himself of the rifle. But it was jammed beneath the overturned sled, and by the time Henry had helped him to right the load, One Ear and the she-wolf were too close together and the distance too great to risk a shot. Too late One Ear learned his mistake. Before they saw the cause, the two men saw him turn and start to run back toward them. Then, approaching at right angles to the trail and cutting off his retreat they saw a dozen wolves, lean and grey, bounding across the snow. On the instant, the she- wolf's coyness and playfulness disappeared. With a snarl she sprang upon One Ear. He thrust her off with his shoulder, and, his retreat cut off and still intent on regaining the sled, he altered his course in an attempt to circle around to it. More wolves were appearing every moment and joining in the chase. The she-wolf was one leap behind One Ear and holding her own. "Where are you goin'?" Henry suddenly demanded, laying his hand on his partner's arm. Bill shook it off. "I won't stand it," he said. "They ain't a-goin' to get any more of our dogs if I can help it." Gun in hand, he plunged into the underbrush that lined the side of the trail. His intention was apparent enough. Taking the sled as the centre of the circle that One Ear was making, Bill planned to tap that circle at a point in advance of the pursuit. With his rifle, in the broad daylight, it might be possible for him to awe the wolves and save the dog. "Say, Bill!" Henry called after him. "Be careful! Don't take no chances!" Henry sat down on the sled and watched. There was nothing else for him to do. Bill had already gone from sight; but now and again, appearing and disappearing amongst the underbrush and the scattered clumps of spruce, could be seen One Ear. Henry judged his case to be hopeless. The dog was thoroughly alive to its danger, but it was running on the outer circle while the wolf-pack was running on the inner and shorter circle. It was vain to think of One Ear so outdistancing his pursuers as to be able to cut across their circle in advance of them and to regain the sled. The different lines were rapidly approaching a point. Somewhere out there in the snow, screened from his sight by trees and thickets, Henry knew that the wolf-pack, One Ear, and Bill were coming together. All too quickly, far more quickly than he had expected, it happened. He heard a shot, then two shots, in rapid succession, and he knew that Bill's ammunition was gone. Then he heard a great outcry of snarls and yelps. He recognised One Ear's yell of pain and terror, and he heard a wolf-cry that bespoke a stricken animal. And that was all. The snarls ceased. The yelping died away. Silence settled down again over the lonely land. He sat for a long while upon the sled. There was no need for him to go and see what had happened. He knew it as though it had taken place before his eyes. Once, he roused with a start and hastily got the axe out from underneath the lashings. But for some time longer he sat and brooded, the two remaining dogs crouching and trembling at his feet. At last he arose in a weary manner, as though all the resilience had gone out of his body, and proceeded to fasten the dogs to the sled. He passed a rope over his shoulder, a man-trace, and pulled with the dogs. He did not go far. At the first hint of darkness he hastened to make a camp, and he saw to it that he had a generous supply of firewood. He fed the dogs, cooked and ate his supper, and made his bed close to the fire. But he was not destined to enjoy that bed. Before his eyes closed the wolves had drawn too near for safety. It no longer required an effort of the vision to see them. They were all about him and the fire, in a narrow circle, and he could see them plainly in the firelight lying down, sitting up, crawling forward on their bellies, or slinking back and forth. They even slept. Here and there he could see one curled up in the snow like a dog, taking the sleep that was now denied himself. He kept the fire brightly blazing, for he knew that it alone intervened between the flesh of his body and their hungry fangs. His two dogs stayed close by him, one on either side, leaning against him for protection, crying and whimpering, and at times snarling desperately when a wolf approached a little closer than usual. At such moments, when his dogs snarled, the whole circle would be agitated, the wolves coming to their feet and pressing tentatively forward, a chorus of snarls and eager yelps rising about him. Then the circle would lie down again, and here and there a wolf would resume its broken nap. But this circle had a continuous tendency to draw in upon him. Bit by bit, an inch at a time, with here a wolf bellying forward, and there a wolf bellying forward, the circle would narrow until the brutes were almost within springing distance. Then he would seize brands from the fire and hurl them into the pack. A hasty drawing back always resulted, accompanied by angry yelps and frightened snarls when a well-aimed brand struck and scorched a too daring animal. Morning found the man haggard and worn, wide-eyed from want of sleep. He cooked breakfast in the darkness, and at nine o'clock, when, with the coming of daylight, the wolf-pack drew back, he set about the task he had planned through the long hours of the night. Chopping down young saplings, he made them cross-bars of a scaffold by lashing them high up to the trunks of standing trees. Using the sled-lashing for a heaving rope, and with the aid of the dogs, he hoisted the coffin to the top of the scaffold. "They got Bill, an' they may get me, but they'll sure never get you, young man," he said, addressing the dead body in its tree-sepulchre. Then he took the trail, the lightened sled bounding along behind the willing dogs; for they, too, knew that safety lay open in the gaining of Fort McGurry. The wolves were now more open in their pursuit, trotting sedately behind and ranging along on either side, their red tongues lolling out, their lean sides showing the undulating ribs with every movement. They were very lean, mere skin-bags stretched over bony frames, with strings for muscles--so lean that Henry found it in his mind to marvel that they still kept their feet and did not collapse forthright in the snow. He did not dare travel until dark. At midday, not only did the sun warm the southern horizon, but it even thrust its upper rim, pale and golden, above the sky-line. He received it as a sign. The days were growing longer. The sun was returning. But scarcely had the cheer of its light departed, than he went into camp. There were still several hours of grey daylight and sombre twilight, and he utilised them in chopping an enormous supply of fire-wood. With night came horror. Not only were the starving wolves growing bolder, but lack of sleep was telling upon Henry. He dozed despite himself, crouching by the fire, the blankets about his shoulders, the axe between his knees, and on either side a dog pressing close against him. He awoke once and saw in front of him, not a dozen feet away, a big grey wolf, one of the largest of the pack. And even as he looked, the brute deliberately stretched himself after the manner of a lazy dog, yawning full in his face and looking upon him with a possessive eye, as if, in truth, he were merely a delayed meal that was soon to be eaten. This certitude was shown by the whole pack. Fully a score he could count, staring hungrily at him or calmly sleeping in the snow. They reminded him of children gathered about a spread table and awaiting permission to begin to eat. And he was the food they were to eat! He wondered how and when the meal would begin. As he piled wood on the fire he discovered an appreciation of his own body which he had never felt before. He watched his moving muscles and was interested in the cunning mechanism of his fingers. By the light of the fire he crooked his fingers slowly and repeatedly now one at a time, now all together, spreading them wide or making quick gripping movements. He studied the nail-formation, and prodded the finger-tips, now sharply, and again softly, gauging the while the nerve-sensations produced. It fascinated him, and he grew suddenly fond of this subtle flesh of his that worked so beautifully and smoothly and delicately. Then he would cast a glance of fear at the wolf-circle drawn expectantly about him, and like a blow the realisation would strike him that this wonderful body of his, this living flesh, was no more than so much meat, a quest of ravenous animals, to be torn and slashed by their hungry fangs, to be sustenance to them as the moose and the rabbit had often been sustenance to him. He came out of a doze that was half nightmare, to see the red-hued she- wolf before him. She was not more than half a dozen feet away sitting in the snow and wistfully regarding him. The two dogs were whimpering and snarling at his feet, but she took no notice of them. She was looking at the man, and for some time he returned her look. There was nothing threatening about her. She looked at him merely with a great wistfulness, but he knew it to be the wistfulness of an equally great hunger. He was the food, and the sight of him excited in her the gustatory sensations. Her mouth opened, the saliva drooled forth, and she licked her chops with the pleasure of anticipation. A spasm of fear went through him. He reached hastily for a brand to throw at her. But even as he reached, and before his fingers had closed on the missile, she sprang back into safety; and he knew that she was used to having things thrown at her. She had snarled as she sprang away, baring her white fangs to their roots, all her wistfulness vanishing, being replaced by a carnivorous malignity that made him shudder. He glanced at the hand that held the brand, noticing the cunning delicacy of the fingers that gripped it, how they adjusted themselves to all the inequalities of the surface, curling over and under and about the rough wood, and one little finger, too close to the burning portion of the brand, sensitively and automatically writhing back from the hurtful heat to a cooler gripping-place; and in the same instant he seemed to see a vision of those same sensitive and delicate fingers being crushed and torn by the white teeth of the she-wolf. Never had he been so fond of this body of his as now when his tenure of it was so precarious. All night, with burning brands, he fought off the hungry pack. When he dozed despite himself, the whimpering and snarling of the dogs aroused him. Morning came, but for the first time the light of day failed to scatter the wolves. The man waited in vain for them to go. They remained in a circle about him and his fire, displaying an arrogance of possession that shook his courage born of the morning light. He made one desperate attempt to pull out on the trail. But the moment he left the protection of the fire, the boldest wolf leaped for him, but leaped short. He saved himself by springing back, the jaws snapping together a scant six inches from his thigh. The rest of the pack was now up and surging upon him, and a throwing of firebrands right and left was necessary to drive them back to a respectful distance. Even in the daylight he did not dare leave the fire to chop fresh wood. Twenty feet away towered a huge dead spruce. He spent half the day extending his campfire to the tree, at any moment a half dozen burning faggots ready at hand to fling at his enemies. Once at the tree, he studied the surrounding forest in order to fell the tree in the direction of the most firewood. The night was a repetition of the night before, save that the need for sleep was becoming overpowering. The snarling of his dogs was losing its efficacy. Besides, they were snarling all the time, and his benumbed and drowsy senses no longer took note of changing pitch and intensity. He awoke with a start. The she-wolf was less than a yard from him. Mechanically, at short range, without letting go of it, he thrust a brand full into her open and snarling mouth. She sprang away, yelling with pain, and while he took delight in the smell of burning flesh and hair, he watched her shaking her head and growling wrathfully a score of feet away. But this time, before he dozed again, he tied a burning pine-knot to his right hand. His eyes were closed but few minutes when the burn of the flame on his flesh awakened him. For several hours he adhered to this programme. Every time he was thus awakened he drove back the wolves with flying brands, replenished the fire, and rearranged the pine-knot on his hand. All worked well, but there came a time when he fastened the pine- knot insecurely. As his eyes closed it fell away from his hand. He dreamed. It seemed to him that he was in Fort McGurry. It was warm and comfortable, and he was playing cribbage with the Factor. Also, it seemed to him that the fort was besieged by wolves. They were howling at the very gates, and sometimes he and the Factor paused from the game to listen and laugh at the futile efforts of the wolves to get in. And then, so strange was the dream, there was a crash. The door was burst open. He could see the wolves flooding into the big living-room of the fort. They were leaping straight for him and the Factor. With the bursting open of the door, the noise of their howling had increased tremendously. This howling now bothered him. His dream was merging into something else--he knew not what; but through it all, following him, persisted the howling. And then he awoke to find the howling real. There was a great snarling and yelping. The wolves were rushing him. They were all about him and upon him. The teeth of one had closed upon his arm. Instinctively he leaped into the fire, and as he leaped, he felt the sharp slash of teeth that tore through the flesh of his leg. Then began a fire fight. His stout mittens temporarily protected his hands, and he scooped live coals into the air in all directions, until the campfire took on the semblance of a volcano. But it could not last long. His face was blistering in the heat, his eyebrows and lashes were singed off, and the heat was becoming unbearable to his feet. With a flaming brand in each hand, he sprang to the edge of the fire. The wolves had been driven back. On every side, wherever the live coals had fallen, the snow was sizzling, and every little while a retiring wolf, with wild leap and snort and snarl, announced that one such live coal had been stepped upon. Flinging his brands at the nearest of his enemies, the man thrust his smouldering mittens into the snow and stamped about to cool his feet. His two dogs were missing, and he well knew that they had served as a course in the protracted meal which had begun days before with Fatty, the last course of which would likely be himself in the days to follow. "You ain't got me yet!" he cried, savagely shaking his fist at the hungry beasts; and at the sound of his voice the whole circle was agitated, there was a general snarl, and the she-wolf slid up close to him across the snow and watched him with hungry wistfulness. He set to work to carry out a new idea that had come to him. He extended the fire into a large circle. Inside this circle he crouched, his sleeping outfit under him as a protection against the melting snow. When he had thus disappeared within his shelter of flame, the whole pack came curiously to the rim of the fire to see what had become of him. Hitherto they had been denied access to the fire, and they now settled down in a close-drawn circle, like so many dogs, blinking and yawning and stretching their lean bodies in the unaccustomed warmth. Then the she- wolf sat down, pointed her nose at a star, and began to howl. One by one the wolves joined her, till the whole pack, on haunches, with noses pointed skyward, was howling its hunger cry. Dawn came, and daylight. The fire was burning low. The fuel had run out, and there was need to get more. The man attempted to step out of his circle of flame, but the wolves surged to meet him. Burning brands made them spring aside, but they no longer sprang back. In vain he strove to drive them back. As he gave up and stumbled inside his circle, a wolf leaped for him, missed, and landed with all four feet in the coals. It cried out with terror, at the same time snarling, and scrambled back to cool its paws in the snow. The man sat down on his blankets in a crouching position. His body leaned forward from the hips. His shoulders, relaxed and drooping, and his head on his knees advertised that he had given up the struggle. Now and again he raised his head to note the dying down of the fire. The circle of flame and coals was breaking into segments with openings in between. These openings grew in size, the segments diminished. "I guess you can come an' get me any time," he mumbled. "Anyway, I'm goin' to sleep." Once he awakened, and in an opening in the circle, directly in front of him, he saw the she-wolf gazing at him. Again he awakened, a little later, though it seemed hours to him. A mysterious change had taken place--so mysterious a change that he was shocked wider awake. Something had happened. He could not understand at first. Then he discovered it. The wolves were gone. Remained only the trampled snow to show how closely they had pressed him. Sleep was welling up and gripping him again, his head was sinking down upon his knees, when he roused with a sudden start. There were cries of men, and churn of sleds, the creaking of harnesses, and the eager whimpering of straining dogs. Four sleds pulled in from the river bed to the camp among the trees. Half a dozen men were about the man who crouched in the centre of the dying fire. They were shaking and prodding him into consciousness. He looked at them like a drunken man and maundered in strange, sleepy speech. "Red she-wolf. . . . Come in with the dogs at feedin' time. . . . First she ate the dog-food. . . . Then she ate the dogs. . . . An' after that she ate Bill. . . . " "Where's Lord Alfred?" one of the men bellowed in his ear, shaking him roughly. He shook his head slowly. "No, she didn't eat him. . . . He's roostin' in a tree at the last camp." "Dead?" the man shouted. "An' in a box," Henry answered. He jerked his shoulder petulantly away from the grip of his questioner. "Say, you lemme alone. . . . I'm jes' plump tuckered out. . . . Goo' night, everybody." His eyes fluttered and went shut. His chin fell forward on his chest. And even as they eased him down upon the blankets his snores were rising on the frosty air. But there was another sound. Far and faint it was, in the remote distance, the cry of the hungry wolf-pack as it took the trail of other meat than the man it had just missed. PART II

chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang09.html

The next day none of the dogs has disappeared, which puts Bill in a better mood. They again set out on their journey, but the sled turns over and is jammed between a tree trunk and a huge rock. When they unharness the dogs to straighten out the tangle, they see One Ear sneaking past them towards the she-wolf, who is playfully luring him into the pack of wolves. Bill prepares his gun, but the wolves are too far away to shoot. Bill sets out after them, fires his last three cartridges, and is overwhelmed by the pack, along with One Ear. Henry is now left to fend for himself and his remaining two dogs. The wolves, unafraid and unhesitating, pursue him. Fire is the only thing he has to keep them away. He spends sleepless nights, throwing fire brands at the wolves every time they get too close. Henry heaves the coffin up into a tree so that the wolves cannot get to it. He prepares himself for longer days, but he lives with paranoia, constantly fearing an attack from the wolves. The she-wolf continues to be the boldest of all, getting very close to Henry. In fact, she comes so close that he singes her fur, much to his satisfaction. The chances for his survival seem remote to Henry. He has resigned himself to the terrifying situation. When the wolves attack, trying to eat him alive, he successfully fights them off with burning coals. In exhaustion, he finally dozes. When he wakes up, he learns that his two remaining dogs have been devoured by the wolves. However, the wolves are gone and he is surrounded by about a dozen men. By a miracle, Henry has survived his Northland Wild ordeal.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_3_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 2.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang10.html", "summary": "This chapter concentrates on the activities of the wolf pack, and the story is told from the perspective of the she-wolf. She is the leader of the pack along with a large gray wolf, a three year-old, and an old, one-eyed wolf seeking to assist her. Her three companions are her suitors, each trying his best to gain her favor. The weaker members of the pack, the very old and the very young, are led by the stronger members. Even though all the wolves are extremely thin, their energy seems inexhaustible. They cover a number of miles each day, traveling in light and dark. They hunt and kill a moose, whose eight hundred pounds of flesh feed the pack of forty wolves. The pack grows smaller and crosses into the lake country to the east, still led by the she-wolf. She constantly bites at her three male companions, who patiently tolerate her behavior. Finally, however, a fight breaks out among the three males, and the three-year-old is killed by the large gray wolf and the one-eyed wolf. The she-wolf is proud of inspiring this battle. Later, the gray wolf is also killed, and the one-eyed wolf is received kindly by the she-wolf. They mate, and the she-wolf begins to look for a safe place for her litter. They travel together across the country and down to the Mackenzie River, where they meet other wolves who want to join the pack. The one-eyed wolf will not permit newcomers. At one point the wolves encounter a group of Indians. The she-wolf is familiar with humans and is tempted to return to them, but she heads back to the woods. Next, they encounter a snow rabbit tied to a tree, and the one-eyed wolf is surprised at its speed. He is not able to catch it since it springs with the movement of the plant that holds it. The she-wolf is familiar with the Indians hunting snares, and carefully gnaws off the head of the rabbit without being ensnared.", "analysis": ""}

It was the she-wolf who had first caught the sound of men's voices and the whining of the sled-dogs; and it was the she-wolf who was first to spring away from the cornered man in his circle of dying flame. The pack had been loath to forego the kill it had hunted down, and it lingered for several minutes, making sure of the sounds, and then it, too, sprang away on the trail made by the she-wolf. Running at the forefront of the pack was a large grey wolf--one of its several leaders. It was he who directed the pack's course on the heels of the she-wolf. It was he who snarled warningly at the younger members of the pack or slashed at them with his fangs when they ambitiously tried to pass him. And it was he who increased the pace when he sighted the she-wolf, now trotting slowly across the snow. She dropped in alongside by him, as though it were her appointed position, and took the pace of the pack. He did not snarl at her, nor show his teeth, when any leap of hers chanced to put her in advance of him. On the contrary, he seemed kindly disposed toward her--too kindly to suit her, for he was prone to run near to her, and when he ran too near it was she who snarled and showed her teeth. Nor was she above slashing his shoulder sharply on occasion. At such times he betrayed no anger. He merely sprang to the side and ran stiffly ahead for several awkward leaps, in carriage and conduct resembling an abashed country swain. This was his one trouble in the running of the pack; but she had other troubles. On her other side ran a gaunt old wolf, grizzled and marked with the scars of many battles. He ran always on her right side. The fact that he had but one eye, and that the left eye, might account for this. He, also, was addicted to crowding her, to veering toward her till his scarred muzzle touched her body, or shoulder, or neck. As with the running mate on the left, she repelled these attentions with her teeth; but when both bestowed their attentions at the same time she was roughly jostled, being compelled, with quick snaps to either side, to drive both lovers away and at the same time to maintain her forward leap with the pack and see the way of her feet before her. At such times her running mates flashed their teeth and growled threateningly across at each other. They might have fought, but even wooing and its rivalry waited upon the more pressing hunger-need of the pack. After each repulse, when the old wolf sheered abruptly away from the sharp-toothed object of his desire, he shouldered against a young three- year-old that ran on his blind right side. This young wolf had attained his full size; and, considering the weak and famished condition of the pack, he possessed more than the average vigour and spirit. Nevertheless, he ran with his head even with the shoulder of his one-eyed elder. When he ventured to run abreast of the older wolf (which was seldom), a snarl and a snap sent him back even with the shoulder again. Sometimes, however, he dropped cautiously and slowly behind and edged in between the old leader and the she-wolf. This was doubly resented, even triply resented. When she snarled her displeasure, the old leader would whirl on the three-year-old. Sometimes she whirled with him. And sometimes the young leader on the left whirled, too. At such times, confronted by three sets of savage teeth, the young wolf stopped precipitately, throwing himself back on his haunches, with fore- legs stiff, mouth menacing, and mane bristling. This confusion in the front of the moving pack always caused confusion in the rear. The wolves behind collided with the young wolf and expressed their displeasure by administering sharp nips on his hind-legs and flanks. He was laying up trouble for himself, for lack of food and short tempers went together; but with the boundless faith of youth he persisted in repeating the manoeuvre every little while, though it never succeeded in gaining anything for him but discomfiture. Had there been food, love-making and fighting would have gone on apace, and the pack-formation would have been broken up. But the situation of the pack was desperate. It was lean with long-standing hunger. It ran below its ordinary speed. At the rear limped the weak members, the very young and the very old. At the front were the strongest. Yet all were more like skeletons than full-bodied wolves. Nevertheless, with the exception of the ones that limped, the movements of the animals were effortless and tireless. Their stringy muscles seemed founts of inexhaustible energy. Behind every steel-like contraction of a muscle, lay another steel-like contraction, and another, and another, apparently without end. They ran many miles that day. They ran through the night. And the next day found them still running. They were running over the surface of a world frozen and dead. No life stirred. They alone moved through the vast inertness. They alone were alive, and they sought for other things that were alive in order that they might devour them and continue to live. They crossed low divides and ranged a dozen small streams in a lower-lying country before their quest was rewarded. Then they came upon moose. It was a big bull they first found. Here was meat and life, and it was guarded by no mysterious fires nor flying missiles of flame. Splay hoofs and palmated antlers they knew, and they flung their customary patience and caution to the wind. It was a brief fight and fierce. The big bull was beset on every side. He ripped them open or split their skulls with shrewdly driven blows of his great hoofs. He crushed them and broke them on his large horns. He stamped them into the snow under him in the wallowing struggle. But he was foredoomed, and he went down with the she-wolf tearing savagely at his throat, and with other teeth fixed everywhere upon him, devouring him alive, before ever his last struggles ceased or his last damage had been wrought. There was food in plenty. The bull weighed over eight hundred pounds--fully twenty pounds of meat per mouth for the forty-odd wolves of the pack. But if they could fast prodigiously, they could feed prodigiously, and soon a few scattered bones were all that remained of the splendid live brute that had faced the pack a few hours before. There was now much resting and sleeping. With full stomachs, bickering and quarrelling began among the younger males, and this continued through the few days that followed before the breaking-up of the pack. The famine was over. The wolves were now in the country of game, and though they still hunted in pack, they hunted more cautiously, cutting out heavy cows or crippled old bulls from the small moose-herds they ran across. There came a day, in this land of plenty, when the wolf-pack split in half and went in different directions. The she-wolf, the young leader on her left, and the one-eyed elder on her right, led their half of the pack down to the Mackenzie River and across into the lake country to the east. Each day this remnant of the pack dwindled. Two by two, male and female, the wolves were deserting. Occasionally a solitary male was driven out by the sharp teeth of his rivals. In the end there remained only four: the she-wolf, the young leader, the one-eyed one, and the ambitious three- year-old. The she-wolf had by now developed a ferocious temper. Her three suitors all bore the marks of her teeth. Yet they never replied in kind, never defended themselves against her. They turned their shoulders to her most savage slashes, and with wagging tails and mincing steps strove to placate her wrath. But if they were all mildness toward her, they were all fierceness toward one another. The three-year-old grew too ambitious in his fierceness. He caught the one-eyed elder on his blind side and ripped his ear into ribbons. Though the grizzled old fellow could see only on one side, against the youth and vigour of the other he brought into play the wisdom of long years of experience. His lost eye and his scarred muzzle bore evidence to the nature of his experience. He had survived too many battles to be in doubt for a moment about what to do. The battle began fairly, but it did not end fairly. There was no telling what the outcome would have been, for the third wolf joined the elder, and together, old leader and young leader, they attacked the ambitious three-year-old and proceeded to destroy him. He was beset on either side by the merciless fangs of his erstwhile comrades. Forgotten were the days they had hunted together, the game they had pulled down, the famine they had suffered. That business was a thing of the past. The business of love was at hand--ever a sterner and crueller business than that of food-getting. And in the meanwhile, the she-wolf, the cause of it all, sat down contentedly on her haunches and watched. She was even pleased. This was her day--and it came not often--when manes bristled, and fang smote fang or ripped and tore the yielding flesh, all for the possession of her. And in the business of love the three-year-old, who had made this his first adventure upon it, yielded up his life. On either side of his body stood his two rivals. They were gazing at the she-wolf, who sat smiling in the snow. But the elder leader was wise, very wise, in love even as in battle. The younger leader turned his head to lick a wound on his shoulder. The curve of his neck was turned toward his rival. With his one eye the elder saw the opportunity. He darted in low and closed with his fangs. It was a long, ripping slash, and deep as well. His teeth, in passing, burst the wall of the great vein of the throat. Then he leaped clear. The young leader snarled terribly, but his snarl broke midmost into a tickling cough. Bleeding and coughing, already stricken, he sprang at the elder and fought while life faded from him, his legs going weak beneath him, the light of day dulling on his eyes, his blows and springs falling shorter and shorter. And all the while the she-wolf sat on her haunches and smiled. She was made glad in vague ways by the battle, for this was the love-making of the Wild, the sex-tragedy of the natural world that was tragedy only to those that died. To those that survived it was not tragedy, but realisation and achievement. When the young leader lay in the snow and moved no more, One Eye stalked over to the she-wolf. His carriage was one of mingled triumph and caution. He was plainly expectant of a rebuff, and he was just as plainly surprised when her teeth did not flash out at him in anger. For the first time she met him with a kindly manner. She sniffed noses with him, and even condescended to leap about and frisk and play with him in quite puppyish fashion. And he, for all his grey years and sage experience, behaved quite as puppyishly and even a little more foolishly. Forgotten already were the vanquished rivals and the love-tale red-written on the snow. Forgotten, save once, when old One Eye stopped for a moment to lick his stiffening wounds. Then it was that his lips half writhed into a snarl, and the hair of his neck and shoulders involuntarily bristled, while he half crouched for a spring, his claws spasmodically clutching into the snow-surface for firmer footing. But it was all forgotten the next moment, as he sprang after the she-wolf, who was coyly leading him a chase through the woods. After that they ran side by side, like good friends who have come to an understanding. The days passed by, and they kept together, hunting their meat and killing and eating it in common. After a time the she-wolf began to grow restless. She seemed to be searching for something that she could not find. The hollows under fallen trees seemed to attract her, and she spent much time nosing about among the larger snow-piled crevices in the rocks and in the caves of overhanging banks. Old One Eye was not interested at all, but he followed her good-naturedly in her quest, and when her investigations in particular places were unusually protracted, he would lie down and wait until she was ready to go on. They did not remain in one place, but travelled across country until they regained the Mackenzie River, down which they slowly went, leaving it often to hunt game along the small streams that entered it, but always returning to it again. Sometimes they chanced upon other wolves, usually in pairs; but there was no friendliness of intercourse displayed on either side, no gladness at meeting, no desire to return to the pack-formation. Several times they encountered solitary wolves. These were always males, and they were pressingly insistent on joining with One Eye and his mate. This he resented, and when she stood shoulder to shoulder with him, bristling and showing her teeth, the aspiring solitary ones would back off, turn-tail, and continue on their lonely way. One moonlight night, running through the quiet forest, One Eye suddenly halted. His muzzle went up, his tail stiffened, and his nostrils dilated as he scented the air. One foot also he held up, after the manner of a dog. He was not satisfied, and he continued to smell the air, striving to understand the message borne upon it to him. One careless sniff had satisfied his mate, and she trotted on to reassure him. Though he followed her, he was still dubious, and he could not forbear an occasional halt in order more carefully to study the warning. She crept out cautiously on the edge of a large open space in the midst of the trees. For some time she stood alone. Then One Eye, creeping and crawling, every sense on the alert, every hair radiating infinite suspicion, joined her. They stood side by side, watching and listening and smelling. To their ears came the sounds of dogs wrangling and scuffling, the guttural cries of men, the sharper voices of scolding women, and once the shrill and plaintive cry of a child. With the exception of the huge bulks of the skin-lodges, little could be seen save the flames of the fire, broken by the movements of intervening bodies, and the smoke rising slowly on the quiet air. But to their nostrils came the myriad smells of an Indian camp, carrying a story that was largely incomprehensible to One Eye, but every detail of which the she-wolf knew. She was strangely stirred, and sniffed and sniffed with an increasing delight. But old One Eye was doubtful. He betrayed his apprehension, and started tentatively to go. She turned and touched his neck with her muzzle in a reassuring way, then regarded the camp again. A new wistfulness was in her face, but it was not the wistfulness of hunger. She was thrilling to a desire that urged her to go forward, to be in closer to that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men. One Eye moved impatiently beside her; her unrest came back upon her, and she knew again her pressing need to find the thing for which she searched. She turned and trotted back into the forest, to the great relief of One Eye, who trotted a little to the fore until they were well within the shelter of the trees. As they slid along, noiseless as shadows, in the moonlight, they came upon a run-way. Both noses went down to the footprints in the snow. These footprints were very fresh. One Eye ran ahead cautiously, his mate at his heels. The broad pads of their feet were spread wide and in contact with the snow were like velvet. One Eye caught sight of a dim movement of white in the midst of the white. His sliding gait had been deceptively swift, but it was as nothing to the speed at which he now ran. Before him was bounding the faint patch of white he had discovered. They were running along a narrow alley flanked on either side by a growth of young spruce. Through the trees the mouth of the alley could be seen, opening out on a moonlit glade. Old One Eye was rapidly overhauling the fleeing shape of white. Bound by bound he gained. Now he was upon it. One leap more and his teeth would be sinking into it. But that leap was never made. High in the air, and straight up, soared the shape of white, now a struggling snowshoe rabbit that leaped and bounded, executing a fantastic dance there above him in the air and never once returning to earth. One Eye sprang back with a snort of sudden fright, then shrank down to the snow and crouched, snarling threats at this thing of fear he did not understand. But the she-wolf coolly thrust past him. She poised for a moment, then sprang for the dancing rabbit. She, too, soared high, but not so high as the quarry, and her teeth clipped emptily together with a metallic snap. She made another leap, and another. Her mate had slowly relaxed from his crouch and was watching her. He now evinced displeasure at her repeated failures, and himself made a mighty spring upward. His teeth closed upon the rabbit, and he bore it back to earth with him. But at the same time there was a suspicious crackling movement beside him, and his astonished eye saw a young spruce sapling bending down above him to strike him. His jaws let go their grip, and he leaped backward to escape this strange danger, his lips drawn back from his fangs, his throat snarling, every hair bristling with rage and fright. And in that moment the sapling reared its slender length upright and the rabbit soared dancing in the air again. The she-wolf was angry. She sank her fangs into her mate's shoulder in reproof; and he, frightened, unaware of what constituted this new onslaught, struck back ferociously and in still greater fright, ripping down the side of the she-wolf's muzzle. For him to resent such reproof was equally unexpected to her, and she sprang upon him in snarling indignation. Then he discovered his mistake and tried to placate her. But she proceeded to punish him roundly, until he gave over all attempts at placation, and whirled in a circle, his head away from her, his shoulders receiving the punishment of her teeth. In the meantime the rabbit danced above them in the air. The she-wolf sat down in the snow, and old One Eye, now more in fear of his mate than of the mysterious sapling, again sprang for the rabbit. As he sank back with it between his teeth, he kept his eye on the sapling. As before, it followed him back to earth. He crouched down under the impending blow, his hair bristling, but his teeth still keeping tight hold of the rabbit. But the blow did not fall. The sapling remained bent above him. When he moved it moved, and he growled at it through his clenched jaws; when he remained still, it remained still, and he concluded it was safer to continue remaining still. Yet the warm blood of the rabbit tasted good in his mouth. It was his mate who relieved him from the quandary in which he found himself. She took the rabbit from him, and while the sapling swayed and teetered threateningly above her she calmly gnawed off the rabbit's head. At once the sapling shot up, and after that gave no more trouble, remaining in the decorous and perpendicular position in which nature had intended it to grow. Then, between them, the she-wolf and One Eye devoured the game which the mysterious sapling had caught for them. There were other run-ways and alleys where rabbits were hanging in the air, and the wolf-pair prospected them all, the she-wolf leading the way, old One Eye following and observant, learning the method of robbing snares--a knowledge destined to stand him in good stead in the days to come.

chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang10.html

This chapter concentrates on the activities of the wolf pack, and the story is told from the perspective of the she-wolf. She is the leader of the pack along with a large gray wolf, a three year-old, and an old, one-eyed wolf seeking to assist her. Her three companions are her suitors, each trying his best to gain her favor. The weaker members of the pack, the very old and the very young, are led by the stronger members. Even though all the wolves are extremely thin, their energy seems inexhaustible. They cover a number of miles each day, traveling in light and dark. They hunt and kill a moose, whose eight hundred pounds of flesh feed the pack of forty wolves. The pack grows smaller and crosses into the lake country to the east, still led by the she-wolf. She constantly bites at her three male companions, who patiently tolerate her behavior. Finally, however, a fight breaks out among the three males, and the three-year-old is killed by the large gray wolf and the one-eyed wolf. The she-wolf is proud of inspiring this battle. Later, the gray wolf is also killed, and the one-eyed wolf is received kindly by the she-wolf. They mate, and the she-wolf begins to look for a safe place for her litter. They travel together across the country and down to the Mackenzie River, where they meet other wolves who want to join the pack. The one-eyed wolf will not permit newcomers. At one point the wolves encounter a group of Indians. The she-wolf is familiar with humans and is tempted to return to them, but she heads back to the woods. Next, they encounter a snow rabbit tied to a tree, and the one-eyed wolf is surprised at its speed. He is not able to catch it since it springs with the movement of the plant that holds it. The she-wolf is familiar with the Indians hunting snares, and carefully gnaws off the head of the rabbit without being ensnared.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_4_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 2.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang11.html", "summary": "The she-wolf and One Eye hang about the Indian camp for two days until a bullet is fired into the forest and they are forced to leave. She finally finds a good place to have her cubs. It is a small cave above a stream that flows into the Mackenzie in the summer; the stream is now frozen. The she-wolf settles into the cave while One Eye keeps watch at the entrance. Hungry, he goes hunting and stays out for eight hours without any success. He returns to find a litter of cubs, which the she-wolf is carefully guarding, for fear that One Eye will devour them. One Eye, instead, feels a strong paternal instinct. He goes hunting again and catches a ptarmigan ; he does not eat it, but saves it for his family. Then he comes across a porcupine that has been injured by a lynx. He eats the ptarmigan and carries the porcupine home to a warm reception by the she-wolf.", "analysis": ""}

For two days the she-wolf and One Eye hung about the Indian camp. He was worried and apprehensive, yet the camp lured his mate and she was loath to depart. But when, one morning, the air was rent with the report of a rifle close at hand, and a bullet smashed against a tree trunk several inches from One Eye's head, they hesitated no more, but went off on a long, swinging lope that put quick miles between them and the danger. They did not go far--a couple of days' journey. The she-wolf's need to find the thing for which she searched had now become imperative. She was getting very heavy, and could run but slowly. Once, in the pursuit of a rabbit, which she ordinarily would have caught with ease, she gave over and lay down and rested. One Eye came to her; but when he touched her neck gently with his muzzle she snapped at him with such quick fierceness that he tumbled over backward and cut a ridiculous figure in his effort to escape her teeth. Her temper was now shorter than ever; but he had become more patient than ever and more solicitous. And then she found the thing for which she sought. It was a few miles up a small stream that in the summer time flowed into the Mackenzie, but that then was frozen over and frozen down to its rocky bottom--a dead stream of solid white from source to mouth. The she-wolf was trotting wearily along, her mate well in advance, when she came upon the overhanging, high clay-bank. She turned aside and trotted over to it. The wear and tear of spring storms and melting snows had underwashed the bank and in one place had made a small cave out of a narrow fissure. She paused at the mouth of the cave and looked the wall over carefully. Then, on one side and the other, she ran along the base of the wall to where its abrupt bulk merged from the softer-lined landscape. Returning to the cave, she entered its narrow mouth. For a short three feet she was compelled to crouch, then the walls widened and rose higher in a little round chamber nearly six feet in diameter. The roof barely cleared her head. It was dry and cosey. She inspected it with painstaking care, while One Eye, who had returned, stood in the entrance and patiently watched her. She dropped her head, with her nose to the ground and directed toward a point near to her closely bunched feet, and around this point she circled several times; then, with a tired sigh that was almost a grunt, she curled her body in, relaxed her legs, and dropped down, her head toward the entrance. One Eye, with pointed, interested ears, laughed at her, and beyond, outlined against the white light, she could see the brush of his tail waving good-naturedly. Her own ears, with a snuggling movement, laid their sharp points backward and down against the head for a moment, while her mouth opened and her tongue lolled peaceably out, and in this way she expressed that she was pleased and satisfied. One Eye was hungry. Though he lay down in the entrance and slept, his sleep was fitful. He kept awaking and cocking his ears at the bright world without, where the April sun was blazing across the snow. When he dozed, upon his ears would steal the faint whispers of hidden trickles of running water, and he would rouse and listen intently. The sun had come back, and all the awakening Northland world was calling to him. Life was stirring. The feel of spring was in the air, the feel of growing life under the snow, of sap ascending in the trees, of buds bursting the shackles of the frost. He cast anxious glances at his mate, but she showed no desire to get up. He looked outside, and half a dozen snow-birds fluttered across his field of vision. He started to get up, then looked back to his mate again, and settled down and dozed. A shrill and minute singing stole upon his hearing. Once, and twice, he sleepily brushed his nose with his paw. Then he woke up. There, buzzing in the air at the tip of his nose, was a lone mosquito. It was a full-grown mosquito, one that had lain frozen in a dry log all winter and that had now been thawed out by the sun. He could resist the call of the world no longer. Besides, he was hungry. He crawled over to his mate and tried to persuade her to get up. But she only snarled at him, and he walked out alone into the bright sunshine to find the snow-surface soft under foot and the travelling difficult. He went up the frozen bed of the stream, where the snow, shaded by the trees, was yet hard and crystalline. He was gone eight hours, and he came back through the darkness hungrier than when he had started. He had found game, but he had not caught it. He had broken through the melting snow crust, and wallowed, while the snowshoe rabbits had skimmed along on top lightly as ever. He paused at the mouth of the cave with a sudden shock of suspicion. Faint, strange sounds came from within. They were sounds not made by his mate, and yet they were remotely familiar. He bellied cautiously inside and was met by a warning snarl from the she-wolf. This he received without perturbation, though he obeyed it by keeping his distance; but he remained interested in the other sounds--faint, muffled sobbings and slubberings. His mate warned him irritably away, and he curled up and slept in the entrance. When morning came and a dim light pervaded the lair, he again sought after the source of the remotely familiar sounds. There was a new note in his mate's warning snarl. It was a jealous note, and he was very careful in keeping a respectful distance. Nevertheless, he made out, sheltering between her legs against the length of her body, five strange little bundles of life, very feeble, very helpless, making tiny whimpering noises, with eyes that did not open to the light. He was surprised. It was not the first time in his long and successful life that this thing had happened. It had happened many times, yet each time it was as fresh a surprise as ever to him. His mate looked at him anxiously. Every little while she emitted a low growl, and at times, when it seemed to her he approached too near, the growl shot up in her throat to a sharp snarl. Of her own experience she had no memory of the thing happening; but in her instinct, which was the experience of all the mothers of wolves, there lurked a memory of fathers that had eaten their new-born and helpless progeny. It manifested itself as a fear strong within her, that made her prevent One Eye from more closely inspecting the cubs he had fathered. But there was no danger. Old One Eye was feeling the urge of an impulse, that was, in turn, an instinct that had come down to him from all the fathers of wolves. He did not question it, nor puzzle over it. It was there, in the fibre of his being; and it was the most natural thing in the world that he should obey it by turning his back on his new-born family and by trotting out and away on the meat-trail whereby he lived. Five or six miles from the lair, the stream divided, its forks going off among the mountains at a right angle. Here, leading up the left fork, he came upon a fresh track. He smelled it and found it so recent that he crouched swiftly, and looked in the direction in which it disappeared. Then he turned deliberately and took the right fork. The footprint was much larger than the one his own feet made, and he knew that in the wake of such a trail there was little meat for him. Half a mile up the right fork, his quick ears caught the sound of gnawing teeth. He stalked the quarry and found it to be a porcupine, standing upright against a tree and trying his teeth on the bark. One Eye approached carefully but hopelessly. He knew the breed, though he had never met it so far north before; and never in his long life had porcupine served him for a meal. But he had long since learned that there was such a thing as Chance, or Opportunity, and he continued to draw near. There was never any telling what might happen, for with live things events were somehow always happening differently. The porcupine rolled itself into a ball, radiating long, sharp needles in all directions that defied attack. In his youth One Eye had once sniffed too near a similar, apparently inert ball of quills, and had the tail flick out suddenly in his face. One quill he had carried away in his muzzle, where it had remained for weeks, a rankling flame, until it finally worked out. So he lay down, in a comfortable crouching position, his nose fully a foot away, and out of the line of the tail. Thus he waited, keeping perfectly quiet. There was no telling. Something might happen. The porcupine might unroll. There might be opportunity for a deft and ripping thrust of paw into the tender, unguarded belly. But at the end of half an hour he arose, growled wrathfully at the motionless ball, and trotted on. He had waited too often and futilely in the past for porcupines to unroll, to waste any more time. He continued up the right fork. The day wore along, and nothing rewarded his hunt. The urge of his awakened instinct of fatherhood was strong upon him. He must find meat. In the afternoon he blundered upon a ptarmigan. He came out of a thicket and found himself face to face with the slow-witted bird. It was sitting on a log, not a foot beyond the end of his nose. Each saw the other. The bird made a startled rise, but he struck it with his paw, and smashed it down to earth, then pounced upon it, and caught it in his teeth as it scuttled across the snow trying to rise in the air again. As his teeth crunched through the tender flesh and fragile bones, he began naturally to eat. Then he remembered, and, turning on the back- track, started for home, carrying the ptarmigan in his mouth. A mile above the forks, running velvet-footed as was his custom, a gliding shadow that cautiously prospected each new vista of the trail, he came upon later imprints of the large tracks he had discovered in the early morning. As the track led his way, he followed, prepared to meet the maker of it at every turn of the stream. He slid his head around a corner of rock, where began an unusually large bend in the stream, and his quick eyes made out something that sent him crouching swiftly down. It was the maker of the track, a large female lynx. She was crouching as he had crouched once that day, in front of her the tight-rolled ball of quills. If he had been a gliding shadow before, he now became the ghost of such a shadow, as he crept and circled around, and came up well to leeward of the silent, motionless pair. He lay down in the snow, depositing the ptarmigan beside him, and with eyes peering through the needles of a low-growing spruce he watched the play of life before him--the waiting lynx and the waiting porcupine, each intent on life; and, such was the curiousness of the game, the way of life for one lay in the eating of the other, and the way of life for the other lay in being not eaten. While old One Eye, the wolf crouching in the covert, played his part, too, in the game, waiting for some strange freak of Chance, that might help him on the meat-trail which was his way of life. Half an hour passed, an hour; and nothing happened. The ball of quills might have been a stone for all it moved; the lynx might have been frozen to marble; and old One Eye might have been dead. Yet all three animals were keyed to a tenseness of living that was almost painful, and scarcely ever would it come to them to be more alive than they were then in their seeming petrifaction. One Eye moved slightly and peered forth with increased eagerness. Something was happening. The porcupine had at last decided that its enemy had gone away. Slowly, cautiously, it was unrolling its ball of impregnable armour. It was agitated by no tremor of anticipation. Slowly, slowly, the bristling ball straightened out and lengthened. One Eye watching, felt a sudden moistness in his mouth and a drooling of saliva, involuntary, excited by the living meat that was spreading itself like a repast before him. Not quite entirely had the porcupine unrolled when it discovered its enemy. In that instant the lynx struck. The blow was like a flash of light. The paw, with rigid claws curving like talons, shot under the tender belly and came back with a swift ripping movement. Had the porcupine been entirely unrolled, or had it not discovered its enemy a fraction of a second before the blow was struck, the paw would have escaped unscathed; but a side-flick of the tail sank sharp quills into it as it was withdrawn. Everything had happened at once--the blow, the counter-blow, the squeal of agony from the porcupine, the big cat's squall of sudden hurt and astonishment. One Eye half arose in his excitement, his ears up, his tail straight out and quivering behind him. The lynx's bad temper got the best of her. She sprang savagely at the thing that had hurt her. But the porcupine, squealing and grunting, with disrupted anatomy trying feebly to roll up into its ball-protection, flicked out its tail again, and again the big cat squalled with hurt and astonishment. Then she fell to backing away and sneezing, her nose bristling with quills like a monstrous pin-cushion. She brushed her nose with her paws, trying to dislodge the fiery darts, thrust it into the snow, and rubbed it against twigs and branches, and all the time leaping about, ahead, sidewise, up and down, in a frenzy of pain and fright. She sneezed continually, and her stub of a tail was doing its best toward lashing about by giving quick, violent jerks. She quit her antics, and quieted down for a long minute. One Eye watched. And even he could not repress a start and an involuntary bristling of hair along his back when she suddenly leaped, without warning, straight up in the air, at the same time emitting a long and most terrible squall. Then she sprang away, up the trail, squalling with every leap she made. It was not until her racket had faded away in the distance and died out that One Eye ventured forth. He walked as delicately as though all the snow were carpeted with porcupine quills, erect and ready to pierce the soft pads of his feet. The porcupine met his approach with a furious squealing and a clashing of its long teeth. It had managed to roll up in a ball again, but it was not quite the old compact ball; its muscles were too much torn for that. It had been ripped almost in half, and was still bleeding profusely. One Eye scooped out mouthfuls of the blood-soaked snow, and chewed and tasted and swallowed. This served as a relish, and his hunger increased mightily; but he was too old in the world to forget his caution. He waited. He lay down and waited, while the porcupine grated its teeth and uttered grunts and sobs and occasional sharp little squeals. In a little while, One Eye noticed that the quills were drooping and that a great quivering had set up. The quivering came to an end suddenly. There was a final defiant clash of the long teeth. Then all the quills drooped quite down, and the body relaxed and moved no more. With a nervous, shrinking paw, One Eye stretched out the porcupine to its full length and turned it over on its back. Nothing had happened. It was surely dead. He studied it intently for a moment, then took a careful grip with his teeth and started off down the stream, partly carrying, partly dragging the porcupine, with head turned to the side so as to avoid stepping on the prickly mass. He recollected something, dropped the burden, and trotted back to where he had left the ptarmigan. He did not hesitate a moment. He knew clearly what was to be done, and this he did by promptly eating the ptarmigan. Then he returned and took up his burden. When he dragged the result of his day's hunt into the cave, the she-wolf inspected it, turned her muzzle to him, and lightly licked him on the neck. But the next instant she was warning him away from the cubs with a snarl that was less harsh than usual and that was more apologetic than menacing. Her instinctive fear of the father of her progeny was toning down. He was behaving as a wolf-father should, and manifesting no unholy desire to devour the young lives she had brought into the world.

chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang11.html

The she-wolf and One Eye hang about the Indian camp for two days until a bullet is fired into the forest and they are forced to leave. She finally finds a good place to have her cubs. It is a small cave above a stream that flows into the Mackenzie in the summer; the stream is now frozen. The she-wolf settles into the cave while One Eye keeps watch at the entrance. Hungry, he goes hunting and stays out for eight hours without any success. He returns to find a litter of cubs, which the she-wolf is carefully guarding, for fear that One Eye will devour them. One Eye, instead, feels a strong paternal instinct. He goes hunting again and catches a ptarmigan ; he does not eat it, but saves it for his family. Then he comes across a porcupine that has been injured by a lynx. He eats the ptarmigan and carries the porcupine home to a warm reception by the she-wolf.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_5_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 2.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang11.html", "summary": "Aptly titled The Gray Cub, the chapter is devoted to describing one of the litter of five, comprised of two females and three males. The gray, male cub is the most striking of the new wolves. His coat is gray, like that of a true wolf, whereas his siblings have inherited their mothers red hue. This cub is also a smart creature, more inquisitive than the others. All five want to explore the wall of light, towards which they crawl, only to be pushed back by their mother. The gray cub soon learns to distinguish between nudges that are rebukes and crushing paws that serve to hurt. He also learns how to inflict hurt and how to avoid being hurt. During his cubhood, he watches his parents take careful care of him. He also watches as all his siblings are lost to starvation. When his father stops visiting them, the she-wolf knows he has been killed by the lynx in a fight. In turn, she carefully avoids the territory where the lynx is taking care of her litter of kittens, for the she-wolf is powerless to fight her and win by herself.", "analysis": ""}

He was different from his brothers and sisters. Their hair already betrayed the reddish hue inherited from their mother, the she-wolf; while he alone, in this particular, took after his father. He was the one little grey cub of the litter. He had bred true to the straight wolf- stock--in fact, he had bred true to old One Eye himself, physically, with but a single exception, and that was he had two eyes to his father's one. The grey cub's eyes had not been open long, yet already he could see with steady clearness. And while his eyes were still closed, he had felt, tasted, and smelled. He knew his two brothers and his two sisters very well. He had begun to romp with them in a feeble, awkward way, and even to squabble, his little throat vibrating with a queer rasping noise (the forerunner of the growl), as he worked himself into a passion. And long before his eyes had opened he had learned by touch, taste, and smell to know his mother--a fount of warmth and liquid food and tenderness. She possessed a gentle, caressing tongue that soothed him when it passed over his soft little body, and that impelled him to snuggle close against her and to doze off to sleep. Most of the first month of his life had been passed thus in sleeping; but now he could see quite well, and he stayed awake for longer periods of time, and he was coming to learn his world quite well. His world was gloomy; but he did not know that, for he knew no other world. It was dim- lighted; but his eyes had never had to adjust themselves to any other light. His world was very small. Its limits were the walls of the lair; but as he had no knowledge of the wide world outside, he was never oppressed by the narrow confines of his existence. But he had early discovered that one wall of his world was different from the rest. This was the mouth of the cave and the source of light. He had discovered that it was different from the other walls long before he had any thoughts of his own, any conscious volitions. It had been an irresistible attraction before ever his eyes opened and looked upon it. The light from it had beat upon his sealed lids, and the eyes and the optic nerves had pulsated to little, sparklike flashes, warm-coloured and strangely pleasing. The life of his body, and of every fibre of his body, the life that was the very substance of his body and that was apart from his own personal life, had yearned toward this light and urged his body toward it in the same way that the cunning chemistry of a plant urges it toward the sun. Always, in the beginning, before his conscious life dawned, he had crawled toward the mouth of the cave. And in this his brothers and sisters were one with him. Never, in that period, did any of them crawl toward the dark corners of the back-wall. The light drew them as if they were plants; the chemistry of the life that composed them demanded the light as a necessity of being; and their little puppet-bodies crawled blindly and chemically, like the tendrils of a vine. Later on, when each developed individuality and became personally conscious of impulsions and desires, the attraction of the light increased. They were always crawling and sprawling toward it, and being driven back from it by their mother. It was in this way that the grey cub learned other attributes of his mother than the soft, soothing tongue. In his insistent crawling toward the light, he discovered in her a nose that with a sharp nudge administered rebuke, and later, a paw, that crushed him down and rolled him over and over with swift, calculating stroke. Thus he learned hurt; and on top of it he learned to avoid hurt, first, by not incurring the risk of it; and second, when he had incurred the risk, by dodging and by retreating. These were conscious actions, and were the results of his first generalisations upon the world. Before that he had recoiled automatically from hurt, as he had crawled automatically toward the light. After that he recoiled from hurt because he _knew_ that it was hurt. He was a fierce little cub. So were his brothers and sisters. It was to be expected. He was a carnivorous animal. He came of a breed of meat- killers and meat-eaters. His father and mother lived wholly upon meat. The milk he had sucked with his first flickering life, was milk transformed directly from meat, and now, at a month old, when his eyes had been open for but a week, he was beginning himself to eat meat--meat half-digested by the she-wolf and disgorged for the five growing cubs that already made too great demand upon her breast. But he was, further, the fiercest of the litter. He could make a louder rasping growl than any of them. His tiny rages were much more terrible than theirs. It was he that first learned the trick of rolling a fellow- cub over with a cunning paw-stroke. And it was he that first gripped another cub by the ear and pulled and tugged and growled through jaws tight-clenched. And certainly it was he that caused the mother the most trouble in keeping her litter from the mouth of the cave. The fascination of the light for the grey cub increased from day to day. He was perpetually departing on yard-long adventures toward the cave's entrance, and as perpetually being driven back. Only he did not know it for an entrance. He did not know anything about entrances--passages whereby one goes from one place to another place. He did not know any other place, much less of a way to get there. So to him the entrance of the cave was a wall--a wall of light. As the sun was to the outside dweller, this wall was to him the sun of his world. It attracted him as a candle attracts a moth. He was always striving to attain it. The life that was so swiftly expanding within him, urged him continually toward the wall of light. The life that was within him knew that it was the one way out, the way he was predestined to tread. But he himself did not know anything about it. He did not know there was any outside at all. There was one strange thing about this wall of light. His father (he had already come to recognise his father as the one other dweller in the world, a creature like his mother, who slept near the light and was a bringer of meat)--his father had a way of walking right into the white far wall and disappearing. The grey cub could not understand this. Though never permitted by his mother to approach that wall, he had approached the other walls, and encountered hard obstruction on the end of his tender nose. This hurt. And after several such adventures, he left the walls alone. Without thinking about it, he accepted this disappearing into the wall as a peculiarity of his father, as milk and half-digested meat were peculiarities of his mother. In fact, the grey cub was not given to thinking--at least, to the kind of thinking customary of men. His brain worked in dim ways. Yet his conclusions were as sharp and distinct as those achieved by men. He had a method of accepting things, without questioning the why and wherefore. In reality, this was the act of classification. He was never disturbed over why a thing happened. How it happened was sufficient for him. Thus, when he had bumped his nose on the back-wall a few times, he accepted that he would not disappear into walls. In the same way he accepted that his father could disappear into walls. But he was not in the least disturbed by desire to find out the reason for the difference between his father and himself. Logic and physics were no part of his mental make- up. Like most creatures of the Wild, he early experienced famine. There came a time when not only did the meat-supply cease, but the milk no longer came from his mother's breast. At first, the cubs whimpered and cried, but for the most part they slept. It was not long before they were reduced to a coma of hunger. There were no more spats and squabbles, no more tiny rages nor attempts at growling; while the adventures toward the far white wall ceased altogether. The cubs slept, while the life that was in them flickered and died down. One Eye was desperate. He ranged far and wide, and slept but little in the lair that had now become cheerless and miserable. The she-wolf, too, left her litter and went out in search of meat. In the first days after the birth of the cubs, One Eye had journeyed several times back to the Indian camp and robbed the rabbit snares; but, with the melting of the snow and the opening of the streams, the Indian camp had moved away, and that source of supply was closed to him. When the grey cub came back to life and again took interest in the far white wall, he found that the population of his world had been reduced. Only one sister remained to him. The rest were gone. As he grew stronger, he found himself compelled to play alone, for the sister no longer lifted her head nor moved about. His little body rounded out with the meat he now ate; but the food had come too late for her. She slept continuously, a tiny skeleton flung round with skin in which the flame flickered lower and lower and at last went out. Then there came a time when the grey cub no longer saw his father appearing and disappearing in the wall nor lying down asleep in the entrance. This had happened at the end of a second and less severe famine. The she-wolf knew why One Eye never came back, but there was no way by which she could tell what she had seen to the grey cub. Hunting herself for meat, up the left fork of the stream where lived the lynx, she had followed a day-old trail of One Eye. And she had found him, or what remained of him, at the end of the trail. There were many signs of the battle that had been fought, and of the lynx's withdrawal to her lair after having won the victory. Before she went away, the she-wolf had found this lair, but the signs told her that the lynx was inside, and she had not dared to venture in. After that, the she-wolf in her hunting avoided the left fork. For she knew that in the lynx's lair was a litter of kittens, and she knew the lynx for a fierce, bad-tempered creature and a terrible fighter. It was all very well for half a dozen wolves to drive a lynx, spitting and bristling, up a tree; but it was quite a different matter for a lone wolf to encounter a lynx--especially when the lynx was known to have a litter of hungry kittens at her back. But the Wild is the Wild, and motherhood is motherhood, at all times fiercely protective whether in the Wild or out of it; and the time was to come when the she-wolf, for her grey cub's sake, would venture the left fork, and the lair in the rocks, and the lynx's wrath.

chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang11.html

Aptly titled The Gray Cub, the chapter is devoted to describing one of the litter of five, comprised of two females and three males. The gray, male cub is the most striking of the new wolves. His coat is gray, like that of a true wolf, whereas his siblings have inherited their mothers red hue. This cub is also a smart creature, more inquisitive than the others. All five want to explore the wall of light, towards which they crawl, only to be pushed back by their mother. The gray cub soon learns to distinguish between nudges that are rebukes and crushing paws that serve to hurt. He also learns how to inflict hurt and how to avoid being hurt. During his cubhood, he watches his parents take careful care of him. He also watches as all his siblings are lost to starvation. When his father stops visiting them, the she-wolf knows he has been killed by the lynx in a fight. In turn, she carefully avoids the territory where the lynx is taking care of her litter of kittens, for the she-wolf is powerless to fight her and win by herself.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/07.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_6_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 2.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang12.html", "summary": "The She-wolf now leaves her cub alone more often to go on her hunting expeditions. It has been impressed upon him that he should not set foot outside the cave. Since instinct is developing in him, he accepts fear as one of the restrictions of life, and he does not go near the mouth of the cave. Once he hears a strange sniffing at the cave, which comes from a wolverine. His mother arrives in time to protect him. One day the cub goes out into the open, rolls down the slope, is dazzled by the light, and starts crying like any frightened puppy. When he finally gains a foothold, he goes on to explore the grassy area that surrounds him. He is frightened by a squirrel and a woodpecker. He comes across a ptarmigan nest, eats the babies , and dares to fight the mother ptarmigan, injuring her. A hawk interrupts the battle, which the ptarmigan seemed to be winning, and kills the bird. The cub then falls into a river. He struggles towards land, swimming for the first time, but is carried downstream where he is safely deposited. He also comes across a weasel with whom he starts a fight. He would have been killed by the mother weasel had it not been for the timely intervention of his own mother. When she kills the weasel, they eat it together.", "analysis": ""}

By the time his mother began leaving the cave on hunting expeditions, the cub had learned well the law that forbade his approaching the entrance. Not only had this law been forcibly and many times impressed on him by his mother's nose and paw, but in him the instinct of fear was developing. Never, in his brief cave-life, had he encountered anything of which to be afraid. Yet fear was in him. It had come down to him from a remote ancestry through a thousand thousand lives. It was a heritage he had received directly from One Eye and the she-wolf; but to them, in turn, it had been passed down through all the generations of wolves that had gone before. Fear!--that legacy of the Wild which no animal may escape nor exchange for pottage. So the grey cub knew fear, though he knew not the stuff of which fear was made. Possibly he accepted it as one of the restrictions of life. For he had already learned that there were such restrictions. Hunger he had known; and when he could not appease his hunger he had felt restriction. The hard obstruction of the cave-wall, the sharp nudge of his mother's nose, the smashing stroke of her paw, the hunger unappeased of several famines, had borne in upon him that all was not freedom in the world, that to life there were limitations and restraints. These limitations and restraints were laws. To be obedient to them was to escape hurt and make for happiness. He did not reason the question out in this man fashion. He merely classified the things that hurt and the things that did not hurt. And after such classification he avoided the things that hurt, the restrictions and restraints, in order to enjoy the satisfactions and the remunerations of life. Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother, and in obedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear, he kept away from the mouth of the cave. It remained to him a white wall of light. When his mother was absent, he slept most of the time, while during the intervals that he was awake he kept very quiet, suppressing the whimpering cries that tickled in his throat and strove for noise. Once, lying awake, he heard a strange sound in the white wall. He did not know that it was a wolverine, standing outside, all a-trembling with its own daring, and cautiously scenting out the contents of the cave. The cub knew only that the sniff was strange, a something unclassified, therefore unknown and terrible--for the unknown was one of the chief elements that went into the making of fear. The hair bristled upon the grey cub's back, but it bristled silently. How was he to know that this thing that sniffed was a thing at which to bristle? It was not born of any knowledge of his, yet it was the visible expression of the fear that was in him, and for which, in his own life, there was no accounting. But fear was accompanied by another instinct--that of concealment. The cub was in a frenzy of terror, yet he lay without movement or sound, frozen, petrified into immobility, to all appearances dead. His mother, coming home, growled as she smelt the wolverine's track, and bounded into the cave and licked and nozzled him with undue vehemence of affection. And the cub felt that somehow he had escaped a great hurt. But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which was growth. Instinct and law demanded of him obedience. But growth demanded disobedience. His mother and fear impelled him to keep away from the white wall. Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for light. So there was no damming up the tide of life that was rising within him--rising with every mouthful of meat he swallowed, with every breath he drew. In the end, one day, fear and obedience were swept away by the rush of life, and the cub straddled and sprawled toward the entrance. Unlike any other wall with which he had had experience, this wall seemed to recede from him as he approached. No hard surface collided with the tender little nose he thrust out tentatively before him. The substance of the wall seemed as permeable and yielding as light. And as condition, in his eyes, had the seeming of form, so he entered into what had been wall to him and bathed in the substance that composed it. It was bewildering. He was sprawling through solidity. And ever the light grew brighter. Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on. Suddenly he found himself at the mouth of the cave. The wall, inside which he had thought himself, as suddenly leaped back before him to an immeasurable distance. The light had become painfully bright. He was dazzled by it. Likewise he was made dizzy by this abrupt and tremendous extension of space. Automatically, his eyes were adjusting themselves to the brightness, focusing themselves to meet the increased distance of objects. At first, the wall had leaped beyond his vision. He now saw it again; but it had taken upon itself a remarkable remoteness. Also, its appearance had changed. It was now a variegated wall, composed of the trees that fringed the stream, the opposing mountain that towered above the trees, and the sky that out-towered the mountain. A great fear came upon him. This was more of the terrible unknown. He crouched down on the lip of the cave and gazed out on the world. He was very much afraid. Because it was unknown, it was hostile to him. Therefore the hair stood up on end along his back and his lips wrinkled weakly in an attempt at a ferocious and intimidating snarl. Out of his puniness and fright he challenged and menaced the whole wide world. Nothing happened. He continued to gaze, and in his interest he forgot to snarl. Also, he forgot to be afraid. For the time, fear had been routed by growth, while growth had assumed the guise of curiosity. He began to notice near objects--an open portion of the stream that flashed in the sun, the blasted pine-tree that stood at the base of the slope, and the slope itself, that ran right up to him and ceased two feet beneath the lip of the cave on which he crouched. Now the grey cub had lived all his days on a level floor. He had never experienced the hurt of a fall. He did not know what a fall was. So he stepped boldly out upon the air. His hind-legs still rested on the cave- lip, so he fell forward head downward. The earth struck him a harsh blow on the nose that made him yelp. Then he began rolling down the slope, over and over. He was in a panic of terror. The unknown had caught him at last. It had gripped savagely hold of him and was about to wreak upon him some terrific hurt. Growth was now routed by fear, and he ki-yi'd like any frightened puppy. The unknown bore him on he knew not to what frightful hurt, and he yelped and ki-yi'd unceasingly. This was a different proposition from crouching in frozen fear while the unknown lurked just alongside. Now the unknown had caught tight hold of him. Silence would do no good. Besides, it was not fear, but terror, that convulsed him. But the slope grew more gradual, and its base was grass-covered. Here the cub lost momentum. When at last he came to a stop, he gave one last agonised yell and then a long, whimpering wail. Also, and quite as a matter of course, as though in his life he had already made a thousand toilets, he proceeded to lick away the dry clay that soiled him. After that he sat up and gazed about him, as might the first man of the earth who landed upon Mars. The cub had broken through the wall of the world, the unknown had let go its hold of him, and here he was without hurt. But the first man on Mars would have experienced less unfamiliarity than did he. Without any antecedent knowledge, without any warning whatever that such existed, he found himself an explorer in a totally new world. Now that the terrible unknown had let go of him, he forgot that the unknown had any terrors. He was aware only of curiosity in all the things about him. He inspected the grass beneath him, the moss-berry plant just beyond, and the dead trunk of the blasted pine that stood on the edge of an open space among the trees. A squirrel, running around the base of the trunk, came full upon him, and gave him a great fright. He cowered down and snarled. But the squirrel was as badly scared. It ran up the tree, and from a point of safety chattered back savagely. This helped the cub's courage, and though the woodpecker he next encountered gave him a start, he proceeded confidently on his way. Such was his confidence, that when a moose-bird impudently hopped up to him, he reached out at it with a playful paw. The result was a sharp peck on the end of his nose that made him cower down and ki-yi. The noise he made was too much for the moose-bird, who sought safety in flight. But the cub was learning. His misty little mind had already made an unconscious classification. There were live things and things not alive. Also, he must watch out for the live things. The things not alive remained always in one place, but the live things moved about, and there was no telling what they might do. The thing to expect of them was the unexpected, and for this he must be prepared. He travelled very clumsily. He ran into sticks and things. A twig that he thought a long way off, would the next instant hit him on the nose or rake along his ribs. There were inequalities of surface. Sometimes he overstepped and stubbed his nose. Quite as often he understepped and stubbed his feet. Then there were the pebbles and stones that turned under him when he trod upon them; and from them he came to know that the things not alive were not all in the same state of stable equilibrium as was his cave--also, that small things not alive were more liable than large things to fall down or turn over. But with every mishap he was learning. The longer he walked, the better he walked. He was adjusting himself. He was learning to calculate his own muscular movements, to know his physical limitations, to measure distances between objects, and between objects and himself. His was the luck of the beginner. Born to be a hunter of meat (though he did not know it), he blundered upon meat just outside his own cave-door on his first foray into the world. It was by sheer blundering that he chanced upon the shrewdly hidden ptarmigan nest. He fell into it. He had essayed to walk along the trunk of a fallen pine. The rotten bark gave way under his feet, and with a despairing yelp he pitched down the rounded crescent, smashed through the leafage and stalks of a small bush, and in the heart of the bush, on the ground, fetched up in the midst of seven ptarmigan chicks. They made noises, and at first he was frightened at them. Then he perceived that they were very little, and he became bolder. They moved. He placed his paw on one, and its movements were accelerated. This was a source of enjoyment to him. He smelled it. He picked it up in his mouth. It struggled and tickled his tongue. At the same time he was made aware of a sensation of hunger. His jaws closed together. There was a crunching of fragile bones, and warm blood ran in his mouth. The taste of it was good. This was meat, the same as his mother gave him, only it was alive between his teeth and therefore better. So he ate the ptarmigan. Nor did he stop till he had devoured the whole brood. Then he licked his chops in quite the same way his mother did, and began to crawl out of the bush. He encountered a feathered whirlwind. He was confused and blinded by the rush of it and the beat of angry wings. He hid his head between his paws and yelped. The blows increased. The mother ptarmigan was in a fury. Then he became angry. He rose up, snarling, striking out with his paws. He sank his tiny teeth into one of the wings and pulled and tugged sturdily. The ptarmigan struggled against him, showering blows upon him with her free wing. It was his first battle. He was elated. He forgot all about the unknown. He no longer was afraid of anything. He was fighting, tearing at a live thing that was striking at him. Also, this live thing was meat. The lust to kill was on him. He had just destroyed little live things. He would now destroy a big live thing. He was too busy and happy to know that he was happy. He was thrilling and exulting in ways new to him and greater to him than any he had known before. He held on to the wing and growled between his tight-clenched teeth. The ptarmigan dragged him out of the bush. When she turned and tried to drag him back into the bush's shelter, he pulled her away from it and on into the open. And all the time she was making outcry and striking with her free wing, while feathers were flying like a snow-fall. The pitch to which he was aroused was tremendous. All the fighting blood of his breed was up in him and surging through him. This was living, though he did not know it. He was realising his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made--killing meat and battling to kill it. He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do. After a time, the ptarmigan ceased her struggling. He still held her by the wing, and they lay on the ground and looked at each other. He tried to growl threateningly, ferociously. She pecked on his nose, which by now, what of previous adventures was sore. He winced but held on. She pecked him again and again. From wincing he went to whimpering. He tried to back away from her, oblivious to the fact that by his hold on her he dragged her after him. A rain of pecks fell on his ill-used nose. The flood of fight ebbed down in him, and, releasing his prey, he turned tail and scampered on across the open in inglorious retreat. He lay down to rest on the other side of the open, near the edge of the bushes, his tongue lolling out, his chest heaving and panting, his nose still hurting him and causing him to continue his whimper. But as he lay there, suddenly there came to him a feeling as of something terrible impending. The unknown with all its terrors rushed upon him, and he shrank back instinctively into the shelter of the bush. As he did so, a draught of air fanned him, and a large, winged body swept ominously and silently past. A hawk, driving down out of the blue, had barely missed him. While he lay in the bush, recovering from his fright and peering fearfully out, the mother-ptarmigan on the other side of the open space fluttered out of the ravaged nest. It was because of her loss that she paid no attention to the winged bolt of the sky. But the cub saw, and it was a warning and a lesson to him--the swift downward swoop of the hawk, the short skim of its body just above the ground, the strike of its talons in the body of the ptarmigan, the ptarmigan's squawk of agony and fright, and the hawk's rush upward into the blue, carrying the ptarmigan away with it It was a long time before the cub left its shelter. He had learned much. Live things were meat. They were good to eat. Also, live things when they were large enough, could give hurt. It was better to eat small live things like ptarmigan chicks, and to let alone large live things like ptarmigan hens. Nevertheless he felt a little prick of ambition, a sneaking desire to have another battle with that ptarmigan hen--only the hawk had carried her away. Maybe there were other ptarmigan hens. He would go and see. He came down a shelving bank to the stream. He had never seen water before. The footing looked good. There were no inequalities of surface. He stepped boldly out on it; and went down, crying with fear, into the embrace of the unknown. It was cold, and he gasped, breathing quickly. The water rushed into his lungs instead of the air that had always accompanied his act of breathing. The suffocation he experienced was like the pang of death. To him it signified death. He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything. He came to the surface, and the sweet air rushed into his open mouth. He did not go down again. Quite as though it had been a long-established custom of his he struck out with all his legs and began to swim. The near bank was a yard away; but he had come up with his back to it, and the first thing his eyes rested upon was the opposite bank, toward which he immediately began to swim. The stream was a small one, but in the pool it widened out to a score of feet. Midway in the passage, the current picked up the cub and swept him downstream. He was caught in the miniature rapid at the bottom of the pool. Here was little chance for swimming. The quiet water had become suddenly angry. Sometimes he was under, sometimes on top. At all times he was in violent motion, now being turned over or around, and again, being smashed against a rock. And with every rock he struck, he yelped. His progress was a series of yelps, from which might have been adduced the number of rocks he encountered. Below the rapid was a second pool, and here, captured by the eddy, he was gently borne to the bank, and as gently deposited on a bed of gravel. He crawled frantically clear of the water and lay down. He had learned some more about the world. Water was not alive. Yet it moved. Also, it looked as solid as the earth, but was without any solidity at all. His conclusion was that things were not always what they appeared to be. The cub's fear of the unknown was an inherited distrust, and it had now been strengthened by experience. Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust of appearances. He would have to learn the reality of a thing before he could put his faith into it. One other adventure was destined for him that day. He had recollected that there was such a thing in the world as his mother. And then there came to him a feeling that he wanted her more than all the rest of the things in the world. Not only was his body tired with the adventures it had undergone, but his little brain was equally tired. In all the days he had lived it had not worked so hard as on this one day. Furthermore, he was sleepy. So he started out to look for the cave and his mother, feeling at the same time an overwhelming rush of loneliness and helplessness. He was sprawling along between some bushes, when he heard a sharp intimidating cry. There was a flash of yellow before his eyes. He saw a weasel leaping swiftly away from him. It was a small live thing, and he had no fear. Then, before him, at his feet, he saw an extremely small live thing, only several inches long, a young weasel, that, like himself, had disobediently gone out adventuring. It tried to retreat before him. He turned it over with his paw. It made a queer, grating noise. The next moment the flash of yellow reappeared before his eyes. He heard again the intimidating cry, and at the same instant received a sharp blow on the side of the neck and felt the sharp teeth of the mother-weasel cut into his flesh. While he yelped and ki-yi'd and scrambled backward, he saw the mother- weasel leap upon her young one and disappear with it into the neighbouring thicket. The cut of her teeth in his neck still hurt, but his feelings were hurt more grievously, and he sat down and weakly whimpered. This mother-weasel was so small and so savage. He was yet to learn that for size and weight the weasel was the most ferocious, vindictive, and terrible of all the killers of the Wild. But a portion of this knowledge was quickly to be his. He was still whimpering when the mother-weasel reappeared. She did not rush him, now that her young one was safe. She approached more cautiously, and the cub had full opportunity to observe her lean, snakelike body, and her head, erect, eager, and snake-like itself. Her sharp, menacing cry sent the hair bristling along his back, and he snarled warningly at her. She came closer and closer. There was a leap, swifter than his unpractised sight, and the lean, yellow body disappeared for a moment out of the field of his vision. The next moment she was at his throat, her teeth buried in his hair and flesh. At first he snarled and tried to fight; but he was very young, and this was only his first day in the world, and his snarl became a whimper, his fight a struggle to escape. The weasel never relaxed her hold. She hung on, striving to press down with her teeth to the great vein where his life-blood bubbled. The weasel was a drinker of blood, and it was ever her preference to drink from the throat of life itself. The grey cub would have died, and there would have been no story to write about him, had not the she-wolf come bounding through the bushes. The weasel let go the cub and flashed at the she-wolf's throat, missing, but getting a hold on the jaw instead. The she-wolf flirted her head like the snap of a whip, breaking the weasel's hold and flinging it high in the air. And, still in the air, the she-wolf's jaws closed on the lean, yellow body, and the weasel knew death between the crunching teeth. The cub experienced another access of affection on the part of his mother. Her joy at finding him seemed even greater than his joy at being found. She nozzled him and caressed him and licked the cuts made in him by the weasel's teeth. Then, between them, mother and cub, they ate the blood-drinker, and after that went back to the cave and slept.

chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang12.html

The She-wolf now leaves her cub alone more often to go on her hunting expeditions. It has been impressed upon him that he should not set foot outside the cave. Since instinct is developing in him, he accepts fear as one of the restrictions of life, and he does not go near the mouth of the cave. Once he hears a strange sniffing at the cave, which comes from a wolverine. His mother arrives in time to protect him. One day the cub goes out into the open, rolls down the slope, is dazzled by the light, and starts crying like any frightened puppy. When he finally gains a foothold, he goes on to explore the grassy area that surrounds him. He is frightened by a squirrel and a woodpecker. He comes across a ptarmigan nest, eats the babies , and dares to fight the mother ptarmigan, injuring her. A hawk interrupts the battle, which the ptarmigan seemed to be winning, and kills the bird. The cub then falls into a river. He struggles towards land, swimming for the first time, but is carried downstream where he is safely deposited. He also comes across a weasel with whom he starts a fight. He would have been killed by the mother weasel had it not been for the timely intervention of his own mother. When she kills the weasel, they eat it together.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/08.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_7_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 2.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang13.html", "summary": "After his adventure, the cub rests for two days before setting out again. This time he encounters the baby weasel and devours it with relish. He also finds his way back to the cave easily when he is tired. In sharpening his own skills, he tries to follow the example of his mother. However, as he grows older, the she-wolf grows impatient with him. Since food is short, the cub now goes hunting in deadly earnest, not just for the joy of it. Failure encourages him further, and he carefully hunts for squirrels, woodmice, and birds. He even challenges the hawk. The she-wolf eventually brings him the meat of a lynx cub. She herself has devoured the rest of the litter. She is later challenged to a fight by the mother lynx, and the cub participates. After a long fight, the lynx is finally killed and eaten by mother and son. Although the cub is hurt by the lynx, he is rather proud of his feat. He is also proud to accompany his mother on the hunt, where he learns the principle of eat or be eaten, the basic law of the survival of the fittest.", "analysis": ""}

The cub's development was rapid. He rested for two days, and then ventured forth from the cave again. It was on this adventure that he found the young weasel whose mother he had helped eat, and he saw to it that the young weasel went the way of its mother. But on this trip he did not get lost. When he grew tired, he found his way back to the cave and slept. And every day thereafter found him out and ranging a wider area. He began to get accurate measurement of his strength and his weakness, and to know when to be bold and when to be cautious. He found it expedient to be cautious all the time, except for the rare moments, when, assured of his own intrepidity, he abandoned himself to petty rages and lusts. He was always a little demon of fury when he chanced upon a stray ptarmigan. Never did he fail to respond savagely to the chatter of the squirrel he had first met on the blasted pine. While the sight of a moose-bird almost invariably put him into the wildest of rages; for he never forgot the peck on the nose he had received from the first of that ilk he encountered. But there were times when even a moose-bird failed to affect him, and those were times when he felt himself to be in danger from some other prowling meat hunter. He never forgot the hawk, and its moving shadow always sent him crouching into the nearest thicket. He no longer sprawled and straddled, and already he was developing the gait of his mother, slinking and furtive, apparently without exertion, yet sliding along with a swiftness that was as deceptive as it was imperceptible. In the matter of meat, his luck had been all in the beginning. The seven ptarmigan chicks and the baby weasel represented the sum of his killings. His desire to kill strengthened with the days, and he cherished hungry ambitions for the squirrel that chattered so volubly and always informed all wild creatures that the wolf-cub was approaching. But as birds flew in the air, squirrels could climb trees, and the cub could only try to crawl unobserved upon the squirrel when it was on the ground. The cub entertained a great respect for his mother. She could get meat, and she never failed to bring him his share. Further, she was unafraid of things. It did not occur to him that this fearlessness was founded upon experience and knowledge. Its effect on him was that of an impression of power. His mother represented power; and as he grew older he felt this power in the sharper admonishment of her paw; while the reproving nudge of her nose gave place to the slash of her fangs. For this, likewise, he respected his mother. She compelled obedience from him, and the older he grew the shorter grew her temper. Famine came again, and the cub with clearer consciousness knew once more the bite of hunger. The she-wolf ran herself thin in the quest for meat. She rarely slept any more in the cave, spending most of her time on the meat-trail, and spending it vainly. This famine was not a long one, but it was severe while it lasted. The cub found no more milk in his mother's breast, nor did he get one mouthful of meat for himself. Before, he had hunted in play, for the sheer joyousness of it; now he hunted in deadly earnestness, and found nothing. Yet the failure of it accelerated his development. He studied the habits of the squirrel with greater carefulness, and strove with greater craft to steal upon it and surprise it. He studied the wood-mice and tried to dig them out of their burrows; and he learned much about the ways of moose-birds and woodpeckers. And there came a day when the hawk's shadow did not drive him crouching into the bushes. He had grown stronger and wiser, and more confident. Also, he was desperate. So he sat on his haunches, conspicuously in an open space, and challenged the hawk down out of the sky. For he knew that there, floating in the blue above him, was meat, the meat his stomach yearned after so insistently. But the hawk refused to come down and give battle, and the cub crawled away into a thicket and whimpered his disappointment and hunger. The famine broke. The she-wolf brought home meat. It was strange meat, different from any she had ever brought before. It was a lynx kitten, partly grown, like the cub, but not so large. And it was all for him. His mother had satisfied her hunger elsewhere; though he did not know that it was the rest of the lynx litter that had gone to satisfy her. Nor did he know the desperateness of her deed. He knew only that the velvet- furred kitten was meat, and he ate and waxed happier with every mouthful. A full stomach conduces to inaction, and the cub lay in the cave, sleeping against his mother's side. He was aroused by her snarling. Never had he heard her snarl so terribly. Possibly in her whole life it was the most terrible snarl she ever gave. There was reason for it, and none knew it better than she. A lynx's lair is not despoiled with impunity. In the full glare of the afternoon light, crouching in the entrance of the cave, the cub saw the lynx-mother. The hair rippled up along his back at the sight. Here was fear, and it did not require his instinct to tell him of it. And if sight alone were not sufficient, the cry of rage the intruder gave, beginning with a snarl and rushing abruptly upward into a hoarse screech, was convincing enough in itself. The cub felt the prod of the life that was in him, and stood up and snarled valiantly by his mother's side. But she thrust him ignominiously away and behind her. Because of the low-roofed entrance the lynx could not leap in, and when she made a crawling rush of it the she-wolf sprang upon her and pinned her down. The cub saw little of the battle. There was a tremendous snarling and spitting and screeching. The two animals threshed about, the lynx ripping and tearing with her claws and using her teeth as well, while the she-wolf used her teeth alone. Once, the cub sprang in and sank his teeth into the hind leg of the lynx. He clung on, growling savagely. Though he did not know it, by the weight of his body he clogged the action of the leg and thereby saved his mother much damage. A change in the battle crushed him under both their bodies and wrenched loose his hold. The next moment the two mothers separated, and, before they rushed together again, the lynx lashed out at the cub with a huge fore-paw that ripped his shoulder open to the bone and sent him hurtling sidewise against the wall. Then was added to the uproar the cub's shrill yelp of pain and fright. But the fight lasted so long that he had time to cry himself out and to experience a second burst of courage; and the end of the battle found him again clinging to a hind-leg and furiously growling between his teeth. The lynx was dead. But the she-wolf was very weak and sick. At first she caressed the cub and licked his wounded shoulder; but the blood she had lost had taken with it her strength, and for all of a day and a night she lay by her dead foe's side, without movement, scarcely breathing. For a week she never left the cave, except for water, and then her movements were slow and painful. At the end of that time the lynx was devoured, while the she-wolf's wounds had healed sufficiently to permit her to take the meat-trail again. The cub's shoulder was stiff and sore, and for some time he limped from the terrible slash he had received. But the world now seemed changed. He went about in it with greater confidence, with a feeling of prowess that had not been his in the days before the battle with the lynx. He had looked upon life in a more ferocious aspect; he had fought; he had buried his teeth in the flesh of a foe; and he had survived. And because of all this, he carried himself more boldly, with a touch of defiance that was new in him. He was no longer afraid of minor things, and much of his timidity had vanished, though the unknown never ceased to press upon him with its mysteries and terrors, intangible and ever-menacing. He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw much of the killing of meat and began to play his part in it. And in his own dim way he learned the law of meat. There were two kinds of life--his own kind and the other kind. His own kind included his mother and himself. The other kind included all live things that moved. But the other kind was divided. One portion was what his own kind killed and ate. This portion was composed of the non-killers and the small killers. The other portion killed and ate his own kind, or was killed and eaten by his own kind. And out of this classification arose the law. The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. Life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten. The law was: EAT OR BE EATEN. He did not formulate the law in clear, set terms and moralise about it. He did not even think the law; he merely lived the law without thinking about it at all. He saw the law operating around him on every side. He had eaten the ptarmigan chicks. The hawk had eaten the ptarmigan-mother. The hawk would also have eaten him. Later, when he had grown more formidable, he wanted to eat the hawk. He had eaten the lynx kitten. The lynx-mother would have eaten him had she not herself been killed and eaten. And so it went. The law was being lived about him by all live things, and he himself was part and parcel of the law. He was a killer. His only food was meat, live meat, that ran away swiftly before him, or flew into the air, or climbed trees, or hid in the ground, or faced him and fought with him, or turned the tables and ran after him. Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life as a voracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless, planless, endless. But the cub did not think in man-fashion. He did not look at things with wide vision. He was single-purposed, and entertained but one thought or desire at a time. Besides the law of meat, there were a myriad other and lesser laws for him to learn and obey. The world was filled with surprise. The stir of the life that was in him, the play of his muscles, was an unending happiness. To run down meat was to experience thrills and elations. His rages and battles were pleasures. Terror itself, and the mystery of the unknown, led to his living. And there were easements and satisfactions. To have a full stomach, to doze lazily in the sunshine--such things were remuneration in full for his ardours and toils, while his ardours and tolls were in themselves self-remunerative. They were expressions of life, and life is always happy when it is expressing itself. So the cub had no quarrel with his hostile environment. He was very much alive, very happy, and very proud of himself. PART III

chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang13.html

After his adventure, the cub rests for two days before setting out again. This time he encounters the baby weasel and devours it with relish. He also finds his way back to the cave easily when he is tired. In sharpening his own skills, he tries to follow the example of his mother. However, as he grows older, the she-wolf grows impatient with him. Since food is short, the cub now goes hunting in deadly earnest, not just for the joy of it. Failure encourages him further, and he carefully hunts for squirrels, woodmice, and birds. He even challenges the hawk. The she-wolf eventually brings him the meat of a lynx cub. She herself has devoured the rest of the litter. She is later challenged to a fight by the mother lynx, and the cub participates. After a long fight, the lynx is finally killed and eaten by mother and son. Although the cub is hurt by the lynx, he is rather proud of his feat. He is also proud to accompany his mother on the hunt, where he learns the principle of eat or be eaten, the basic law of the survival of the fittest.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/09.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_8_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 3.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang14.html", "summary": "This chapter deals with the cubs first encounter with humans. The cub runs down to the stream to drink, and there he notices five creatures he has never seen before. His first instinct is that of fear, yet he does not run away. One of the men approaches the cub and reaches down to seize him, but the cub bites him, for which he receives a blow to his head, causing the cub to cry. When he receives another blow, the she-wolf comes running. One of the Indians calls the she-wolf Kiche, and she submits immediately, much to the cubs dismay. Kiche is the offspring of a wolf father and a dog mother, who was owned by Gray Beavers brother. Kiche ran away from the Indians during the famine a year ago, and since then, she has been with the wolves. Salmon Tongue, Three Eagles, and Gray Beaver decide to take White Fang and Kiche to their camp. Meanwhile, the rest of their clan arrives with their dogs, who do not accept White Fang. Kiche is kept tied, but White Fang is allowed to roam. As he explores the place, he comes across Lip-lip, another puppy, who becomes an instant and constant enemy. When the two pups fight, White Fang is injured and retreats to Kiche, who licks his wounds. When he goes back to exploring, he approaches Gray Beaver, who is making a fire. White Fang burns his nose and tongue when he goes to smell the flames. He yelps pathetically, which causes laughter in the camp. White Fang is ashamed and goes back to his mothers side.", "analysis": ""}

The cub came upon it suddenly. It was his own fault. He had been careless. He had left the cave and run down to the stream to drink. It might have been that he took no notice because he was heavy with sleep. (He had been out all night on the meat-trail, and had but just then awakened.) And his carelessness might have been due to the familiarity of the trail to the pool. He had travelled it often, and nothing had ever happened on it. He went down past the blasted pine, crossed the open space, and trotted in amongst the trees. Then, at the same instant, he saw and smelt. Before him, sitting silently on their haunches, were five live things, the like of which he had never seen before. It was his first glimpse of mankind. But at the sight of him the five men did not spring to their feet, nor show their teeth, nor snarl. They did not move, but sat there, silent and ominous. Nor did the cub move. Every instinct of his nature would have impelled him to dash wildly away, had there not suddenly and for the first time arisen in him another and counter instinct. A great awe descended upon him. He was beaten down to movelessness by an overwhelming sense of his own weakness and littleness. Here was mastery and power, something far and away beyond him. The cub had never seen man, yet the instinct concerning man was his. In dim ways he recognised in man the animal that had fought itself to primacy over the other animals of the Wild. Not alone out of his own eyes, but out of the eyes of all his ancestors was the cub now looking upon man--out of eyes that had circled in the darkness around countless winter camp-fires, that had peered from safe distances and from the hearts of thickets at the strange, two-legged animal that was lord over living things. The spell of the cub's heritage was upon him, the fear and the respect born of the centuries of struggle and the accumulated experience of the generations. The heritage was too compelling for a wolf that was only a cub. Had he been full-grown, he would have run away. As it was, he cowered down in a paralysis of fear, already half proffering the submission that his kind had proffered from the first time a wolf came in to sit by man's fire and be made warm. One of the Indians arose and walked over to him and stooped above him. The cub cowered closer to the ground. It was the unknown, objectified at last, in concrete flesh and blood, bending over him and reaching down to seize hold of him. His hair bristled involuntarily; his lips writhed back and his little fangs were bared. The hand, poised like doom above him, hesitated, and the man spoke laughing, "_Wabam wabisca ip pit tah_." ("Look! The white fangs!") The other Indians laughed loudly, and urged the man on to pick up the cub. As the hand descended closer and closer, there raged within the cub a battle of the instincts. He experienced two great impulsions--to yield and to fight. The resulting action was a compromise. He did both. He yielded till the hand almost touched him. Then he fought, his teeth flashing in a snap that sank them into the hand. The next moment he received a clout alongside the head that knocked him over on his side. Then all fight fled out of him. His puppyhood and the instinct of submission took charge of him. He sat up on his haunches and ki-yi'd. But the man whose hand he had bitten was angry. The cub received a clout on the other side of his head. Whereupon he sat up and ki-yi'd louder than ever. The four Indians laughed more loudly, while even the man who had been bitten began to laugh. They surrounded the cub and laughed at him, while he wailed out his terror and his hurt. In the midst of it, he heard something. The Indians heard it too. But the cub knew what it was, and with a last, long wail that had in it more of triumph than grief, he ceased his noise and waited for the coming of his mother, of his ferocious and indomitable mother who fought and killed all things and was never afraid. She was snarling as she ran. She had heard the cry of her cub and was dashing to save him. She bounded in amongst them, her anxious and militant motherhood making her anything but a pretty sight. But to the cub the spectacle of her protective rage was pleasing. He uttered a glad little cry and bounded to meet her, while the man-animals went back hastily several steps. The she-wolf stood over against her cub, facing the men, with bristling hair, a snarl rumbling deep in her throat. Her face was distorted and malignant with menace, even the bridge of the nose wrinkling from tip to eyes so prodigious was her snarl. Then it was that a cry went up from one of the men. "Kiche!" was what he uttered. It was an exclamation of surprise. The cub felt his mother wilting at the sound. "Kiche!" the man cried again, this time with sharpness and authority. And then the cub saw his mother, the she-wolf, the fearless one, crouching down till her belly touched the ground, whimpering, wagging her tail, making peace signs. The cub could not understand. He was appalled. The awe of man rushed over him again. His instinct had been true. His mother verified it. She, too, rendered submission to the man- animals. The man who had spoken came over to her. He put his hand upon her head, and she only crouched closer. She did not snap, nor threaten to snap. The other men came up, and surrounded her, and felt her, and pawed her, which actions she made no attempt to resent. They were greatly excited, and made many noises with their mouths. These noises were not indication of danger, the cub decided, as he crouched near his mother still bristling from time to time but doing his best to submit. "It is not strange," an Indian was saying. "Her father was a wolf. It is true, her mother was a dog; but did not my brother tie her out in the woods all of three nights in the mating season? Therefore was the father of Kiche a wolf." "It is a year, Grey Beaver, since she ran away," spoke a second Indian. "It is not strange, Salmon Tongue," Grey Beaver answered. "It was the time of the famine, and there was no meat for the dogs." "She has lived with the wolves," said a third Indian. "So it would seem, Three Eagles," Grey Beaver answered, laying his hand on the cub; "and this be the sign of it." The cub snarled a little at the touch of the hand, and the hand flew back to administer a clout. Whereupon the cub covered its fangs, and sank down submissively, while the hand, returning, rubbed behind his ears, and up and down his back. "This be the sign of it," Grey Beaver went on. "It is plain that his mother is Kiche. But his father was a wolf. Wherefore is there in him little dog and much wolf. His fangs be white, and White Fang shall be his name. I have spoken. He is my dog. For was not Kiche my brother's dog? And is not my brother dead?" The cub, who had thus received a name in the world, lay and watched. For a time the man-animals continued to make their mouth-noises. Then Grey Beaver took a knife from a sheath that hung around his neck, and went into the thicket and cut a stick. White Fang watched him. He notched the stick at each end and in the notches fastened strings of raw-hide. One string he tied around the throat of Kiche. Then he led her to a small pine, around which he tied the other string. White Fang followed and lay down beside her. Salmon Tongue's hand reached out to him and rolled him over on his back. Kiche looked on anxiously. White Fang felt fear mounting in him again. He could not quite suppress a snarl, but he made no offer to snap. The hand, with fingers crooked and spread apart, rubbed his stomach in a playful way and rolled him from side to side. It was ridiculous and ungainly, lying there on his back with legs sprawling in the air. Besides, it was a position of such utter helplessness that White Fang's whole nature revolted against it. He could do nothing to defend himself. If this man- animal intended harm, White Fang knew that he could not escape it. How could he spring away with his four legs in the air above him? Yet submission made him master his fear, and he only growled softly. This growl he could not suppress; nor did the man-animal resent it by giving him a blow on the head. And furthermore, such was the strangeness of it, White Fang experienced an unaccountable sensation of pleasure as the hand rubbed back and forth. When he was rolled on his side he ceased to growl, when the fingers pressed and prodded at the base of his ears the pleasurable sensation increased; and when, with a final rub and scratch, the man left him alone and went away, all fear had died out of White Fang. He was to know fear many times in his dealing with man; yet it was a token of the fearless companionship with man that was ultimately to be his. After a time, White Fang heard strange noises approaching. He was quick in his classification, for he knew them at once for man-animal noises. A few minutes later the remainder of the tribe, strung out as it was on the march, trailed in. There were more men and many women and children, forty souls of them, and all heavily burdened with camp equipage and outfit. Also there were many dogs; and these, with the exception of the part-grown puppies, were likewise burdened with camp outfit. On their backs, in bags that fastened tightly around underneath, the dogs carried from twenty to thirty pounds of weight. White Fang had never seen dogs before, but at sight of them he felt that they were his own kind, only somehow different. But they displayed little difference from the wolf when they discovered the cub and his mother. There was a rush. White Fang bristled and snarled and snapped in the face of the open-mouthed oncoming wave of dogs, and went down and under them, feeling the sharp slash of teeth in his body, himself biting and tearing at the legs and bellies above him. There was a great uproar. He could hear the snarl of Kiche as she fought for him; and he could hear the cries of the man-animals, the sound of clubs striking upon bodies, and the yelps of pain from the dogs so struck. Only a few seconds elapsed before he was on his feet again. He could now see the man-animals driving back the dogs with clubs and stones, defending him, saving him from the savage teeth of his kind that somehow was not his kind. And though there was no reason in his brain for a clear conception of so abstract a thing as justice, nevertheless, in his own way, he felt the justice of the man-animals, and he knew them for what they were--makers of law and executors of law. Also, he appreciated the power with which they administered the law. Unlike any animals he had ever encountered, they did not bite nor claw. They enforced their live strength with the power of dead things. Dead things did their bidding. Thus, sticks and stones, directed by these strange creatures, leaped through the air like living things, inflicting grievous hurts upon the dogs. To his mind this was power unusual, power inconceivable and beyond the natural, power that was godlike. White Fang, in the very nature of him, could never know anything about gods; at the best he could know only things that were beyond knowing--but the wonder and awe that he had of these man-animals in ways resembled what would be the wonder and awe of man at sight of some celestial creature, on a mountain top, hurling thunderbolts from either hand at an astonished world. The last dog had been driven back. The hubbub died down. And White Fang licked his hurts and meditated upon this, his first taste of pack-cruelty and his introduction to the pack. He had never dreamed that his own kind consisted of more than One Eye, his mother, and himself. They had constituted a kind apart, and here, abruptly, he had discovered many more creatures apparently of his own kind. And there was a subconscious resentment that these, his kind, at first sight had pitched upon him and tried to destroy him. In the same way he resented his mother being tied with a stick, even though it was done by the superior man-animals. It savoured of the trap, of bondage. Yet of the trap and of bondage he knew nothing. Freedom to roam and run and lie down at will, had been his heritage; and here it was being infringed upon. His mother's movements were restricted to the length of a stick, and by the length of that same stick was he restricted, for he had not yet got beyond the need of his mother's side. He did not like it. Nor did he like it when the man-animals arose and went on with their march; for a tiny man-animal took the other end of the stick and led Kiche captive behind him, and behind Kiche followed White Fang, greatly perturbed and worried by this new adventure he had entered upon. They went down the valley of the stream, far beyond White Fang's widest ranging, until they came to the end of the valley, where the stream ran into the Mackenzie River. Here, where canoes were cached on poles high in the air and where stood fish-racks for the drying of fish, camp was made; and White Fang looked on with wondering eyes. The superiority of these man-animals increased with every moment. There was their mastery over all these sharp-fanged dogs. It breathed of power. But greater than that, to the wolf-cub, was their mastery over things not alive; their capacity to communicate motion to unmoving things; their capacity to change the very face of the world. It was this last that especially affected him. The elevation of frames of poles caught his eye; yet this in itself was not so remarkable, being done by the same creatures that flung sticks and stones to great distances. But when the frames of poles were made into tepees by being covered with cloth and skins, White Fang was astounded. It was the colossal bulk of them that impressed him. They arose around him, on every side, like some monstrous quick-growing form of life. They occupied nearly the whole circumference of his field of vision. He was afraid of them. They loomed ominously above him; and when the breeze stirred them into huge movements, he cowered down in fear, keeping his eyes warily upon them, and prepared to spring away if they attempted to precipitate themselves upon him. But in a short while his fear of the tepees passed away. He saw the women and children passing in and out of them without harm, and he saw the dogs trying often to get into them, and being driven away with sharp words and flying stones. After a time, he left Kiche's side and crawled cautiously toward the wall of the nearest tepee. It was the curiosity of growth that urged him on--the necessity of learning and living and doing that brings experience. The last few inches to the wall of the tepee were crawled with painful slowness and precaution. The day's events had prepared him for the unknown to manifest itself in most stupendous and unthinkable ways. At last his nose touched the canvas. He waited. Nothing happened. Then he smelled the strange fabric, saturated with the man-smell. He closed on the canvas with his teeth and gave a gentle tug. Nothing happened, though the adjacent portions of the tepee moved. He tugged harder. There was a greater movement. It was delightful. He tugged still harder, and repeatedly, until the whole tepee was in motion. Then the sharp cry of a squaw inside sent him scampering back to Kiche. But after that he was afraid no more of the looming bulks of the tepees. A moment later he was straying away again from his mother. Her stick was tied to a peg in the ground and she could not follow him. A part-grown puppy, somewhat larger and older than he, came toward him slowly, with ostentatious and belligerent importance. The puppy's name, as White Fang was afterward to hear him called, was Lip-lip. He had had experience in puppy fights and was already something of a bully. Lip-lip was White Fang's own kind, and, being only a puppy, did not seem dangerous; so White Fang prepared to meet him in a friendly spirit. But when the stranger's walk became stiff-legged and his lips lifted clear of his teeth, White Fang stiffened too, and answered with lifted lips. They half circled about each other, tentatively, snarling and bristling. This lasted several minutes, and White Fang was beginning to enjoy it, as a sort of game. But suddenly, with remarkable swiftness, Lip-lip leaped in, delivering a slashing snap, and leaped away again. The snap had taken effect on the shoulder that had been hurt by the lynx and that was still sore deep down near the bone. The surprise and hurt of it brought a yelp out of White Fang; but the next moment, in a rush of anger, he was upon Lip-lip and snapping viciously. But Lip-lip had lived his life in camp and had fought many puppy fights. Three times, four times, and half a dozen times, his sharp little teeth scored on the newcomer, until White Fang, yelping shamelessly, fled to the protection of his mother. It was the first of the many fights he was to have with Lip-lip, for they were enemies from the start, born so, with natures destined perpetually to clash. Kiche licked White Fang soothingly with her tongue, and tried to prevail upon him to remain with her. But his curiosity was rampant, and several minutes later he was venturing forth on a new quest. He came upon one of the man-animals, Grey Beaver, who was squatting on his hams and doing something with sticks and dry moss spread before him on the ground. White Fang came near to him and watched. Grey Beaver made mouth-noises which White Fang interpreted as not hostile, so he came still nearer. Women and children were carrying more sticks and branches to Grey Beaver. It was evidently an affair of moment. White Fang came in until he touched Grey Beaver's knee, so curious was he, and already forgetful that this was a terrible man-animal. Suddenly he saw a strange thing like mist beginning to arise from the sticks and moss beneath Grey Beaver's hands. Then, amongst the sticks themselves, appeared a live thing, twisting and turning, of a colour like the colour of the sun in the sky. White Fang knew nothing about fire. It drew him as the light, in the mouth of the cave had drawn him in his early puppyhood. He crawled the several steps toward the flame. He heard Grey Beaver chuckle above him, and he knew the sound was not hostile. Then his nose touched the flame, and at the same instant his little tongue went out to it. For a moment he was paralysed. The unknown, lurking in the midst of the sticks and moss, was savagely clutching him by the nose. He scrambled backward, bursting out in an astonished explosion of ki-yi's. At the sound, Kiche leaped snarling to the end of her stick, and there raged terribly because she could not come to his aid. But Grey Beaver laughed loudly, and slapped his thighs, and told the happening to all the rest of the camp, till everybody was laughing uproariously. But White Fang sat on his haunches and ki-yi'd and ki-yi'd, a forlorn and pitiable little figure in the midst of the man-animals. It was the worst hurt he had ever known. Both nose and tongue had been scorched by the live thing, sun-coloured, that had grown up under Grey Beaver's hands. He cried and cried interminably, and every fresh wail was greeted by bursts of laughter on the part of the man-animals. He tried to soothe his nose with his tongue, but the tongue was burnt too, and the two hurts coming together produced greater hurt; whereupon he cried more hopelessly and helplessly than ever. And then shame came to him. He knew laughter and the meaning of it. It is not given us to know how some animals know laughter, and know when they are being laughed at; but it was this same way that White Fang knew it. And he felt shame that the man-animals should be laughing at him. He turned and fled away, not from the hurt of the fire, but from the laughter that sank even deeper, and hurt in the spirit of him. And he fled to Kiche, raging at the end of her stick like an animal gone mad--to Kiche, the one creature in the world who was not laughing at him. Twilight drew down and night came on, and White Fang lay by his mother's side. His nose and tongue still hurt, but he was perplexed by a greater trouble. He was homesick. He felt a vacancy in him, a need for the hush and quietude of the stream and the cave in the cliff. Life had become too populous. There were so many of the man-animals, men, women, and children, all making noises and irritations. And there were the dogs, ever squabbling and bickering, bursting into uproars and creating confusions. The restful loneliness of the only life he had known was gone. Here the very air was palpitant with life. It hummed and buzzed unceasingly. Continually changing its intensity and abruptly variant in pitch, it impinged on his nerves and senses, made him nervous and restless and worried him with a perpetual imminence of happening. He watched the man-animals coming and going and moving about the camp. In fashion distantly resembling the way men look upon the gods they create, so looked White Fang upon the man-animals before him. They were superior creatures, of a verity, gods. To his dim comprehension they were as much wonder-workers as gods are to men. They were creatures of mastery, possessing all manner of unknown and impossible potencies, overlords of the alive and the not alive--making obey that which moved, imparting movement to that which did not move, and making life, sun-coloured and biting life, to grow out of dead moss and wood. They were fire-makers! They were gods.

chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang14.html

This chapter deals with the cubs first encounter with humans. The cub runs down to the stream to drink, and there he notices five creatures he has never seen before. His first instinct is that of fear, yet he does not run away. One of the men approaches the cub and reaches down to seize him, but the cub bites him, for which he receives a blow to his head, causing the cub to cry. When he receives another blow, the she-wolf comes running. One of the Indians calls the she-wolf Kiche, and she submits immediately, much to the cubs dismay. Kiche is the offspring of a wolf father and a dog mother, who was owned by Gray Beavers brother. Kiche ran away from the Indians during the famine a year ago, and since then, she has been with the wolves. Salmon Tongue, Three Eagles, and Gray Beaver decide to take White Fang and Kiche to their camp. Meanwhile, the rest of their clan arrives with their dogs, who do not accept White Fang. Kiche is kept tied, but White Fang is allowed to roam. As he explores the place, he comes across Lip-lip, another puppy, who becomes an instant and constant enemy. When the two pups fight, White Fang is injured and retreats to Kiche, who licks his wounds. When he goes back to exploring, he approaches Gray Beaver, who is making a fire. White Fang burns his nose and tongue when he goes to smell the flames. He yelps pathetically, which causes laughter in the camp. White Fang is ashamed and goes back to his mothers side.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_9_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 3.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang15.html", "summary": "White Fang has completely given himself up to the mercy of the man-animals, his gods. He learns the nature of the Indians and their sense of justice and power. He learns to avoid the mothers of half-grown puppies, due to a few bad experiences with them. He still fights with Lip-lip and is defeated every time. Once, he lures Lip-lip towards Kiche, who, although tied, leaps upon him and injures him badly. White Fang, too, sinks his teeth into Lip-lips hind leg. Kiche is released by Gray Beaver. Mother and son are now together, much to Lip-lips disappointment. White Fang tries to entice his mother into the woods but fails, for Kiche is comfortable in the camp. White Fang inevitably follows her there. However, Kiche is soon sent away with another Indian, Three Eagles, as payment for a debt that Gray Beaver owes him. A strip of scarlet cloth, a bearskin, twenty cartridges, and Kiche will go with Three Eagles up the Mackenzie River to the Great Slave Lake. White Fang follows Kiche into the water and heads after the canoe, but a blow from Three Eagles forces him back. Ignoring Gray Beavers calls, he continues to swim behind the canoe. Gray Beaver pursues White Fang in a canoe, overtakes him, lifts him by the nape of his neck, and beats him. White Fang bites back, only to be beaten harder. He learns an important lesson; never bite a human. Ashore, he is bitten by Lip-lip, who is beaten by Gray Beaver. White Fang limps behind Gray Beaver to the Indian village, where he must learn to adjust a life without his mother. As time passes, he still yearns for Kiche, but he grows comfortable in camp.", "analysis": ""}

The days were thronged with experience for White Fang. During the time that Kiche was tied by the stick, he ran about over all the camp, inquiring, investigating, learning. He quickly came to know much of the ways of the man-animals, but familiarity did not breed contempt. The more he came to know them, the more they vindicated their superiority, the more they displayed their mysterious powers, the greater loomed their god-likeness. To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouch at man's feet, this grief has never come. Unlike man, whose gods are of the unseen and the overguessed, vapours and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power, intangible out-croppings of self into the realm of spirit--unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to the fire find their gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and their existence. No effort of faith is necessary to believe in such a god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god. There is no getting away from it. There it stands, on its two hind-legs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds when it is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh. And so it was with White Fang. The man-animals were gods unmistakable and unescapable. As his mother, Kiche, had rendered her allegiance to them at the first cry of her name, so he was beginning to render his allegiance. He gave them the trail as a privilege indubitably theirs. When they walked, he got out of their way. When they called, he came. When they threatened, he cowered down. When they commanded him to go, he went away hurriedly. For behind any wish of theirs was power to enforce that wish, power that hurt, power that expressed itself in clouts and clubs, in flying stones and stinging lashes of whips. He belonged to them as all dogs belonged to them. His actions were theirs to command. His body was theirs to maul, to stamp upon, to tolerate. Such was the lesson that was quickly borne in upon him. It came hard, going as it did, counter to much that was strong and dominant in his own nature; and, while he disliked it in the learning of it, unknown to himself he was learning to like it. It was a placing of his destiny in another's hands, a shifting of the responsibilities of existence. This in itself was compensation, for it is always easier to lean upon another than to stand alone. But it did not all happen in a day, this giving over of himself, body and soul, to the man-animals. He could not immediately forego his wild heritage and his memories of the Wild. There were days when he crept to the edge of the forest and stood and listened to something calling him far and away. And always he returned, restless and uncomfortable, to whimper softly and wistfully at Kiche's side and to lick her face with eager, questioning tongue. White Fang learned rapidly the ways of the camp. He knew the injustice and greediness of the older dogs when meat or fish was thrown out to be eaten. He came to know that men were more just, children more cruel, and women more kindly and more likely to toss him a bit of meat or bone. And after two or three painful adventures with the mothers of part-grown puppies, he came into the knowledge that it was always good policy to let such mothers alone, to keep away from them as far as possible, and to avoid them when he saw them coming. But the bane of his life was Lip-lip. Larger, older, and stronger, Lip- lip had selected White Fang for his special object of persecution. While Fang fought willingly enough, but he was outclassed. His enemy was too big. Lip-lip became a nightmare to him. Whenever he ventured away from his mother, the bully was sure to appear, trailing at his heels, snarling at him, picking upon him, and watchful of an opportunity, when no man- animal was near, to spring upon him and force a fight. As Lip-lip invariably won, he enjoyed it hugely. It became his chief delight in life, as it became White Fang's chief torment. But the effect upon White Fang was not to cow him. Though he suffered most of the damage and was always defeated, his spirit remained unsubdued. Yet a bad effect was produced. He became malignant and morose. His temper had been savage by birth, but it became more savage under this unending persecution. The genial, playful, puppyish side of him found little expression. He never played and gambolled about with the other puppies of the camp. Lip-lip would not permit it. The moment White Fang appeared near them, Lip-lip was upon him, bullying and hectoring him, or fighting with him until he had driven him away. The effect of all this was to rob White Fang of much of his puppyhood and to make him in his comportment older than his age. Denied the outlet, through play, of his energies, he recoiled upon himself and developed his mental processes. He became cunning; he had idle time in which to devote himself to thoughts of trickery. Prevented from obtaining his share of meat and fish when a general feed was given to the camp-dogs, he became a clever thief. He had to forage for himself, and he foraged well, though he was oft-times a plague to the squaws in consequence. He learned to sneak about camp, to be crafty, to know what was going on everywhere, to see and to hear everything and to reason accordingly, and successfully to devise ways and means of avoiding his implacable persecutor. It was early in the days of his persecution that he played his first really big crafty game and got therefrom his first taste of revenge. As Kiche, when with the wolves, had lured out to destruction dogs from the camps of men, so White Fang, in manner somewhat similar, lured Lip-lip into Kiche's avenging jaws. Retreating before Lip-lip, White Fang made an indirect flight that led in and out and around the various tepees of the camp. He was a good runner, swifter than any puppy of his size, and swifter than Lip-lip. But he did not run his best in this chase. He barely held his own, one leap ahead of his pursuer. Lip-lip, excited by the chase and by the persistent nearness of his victim, forgot caution and locality. When he remembered locality, it was too late. Dashing at top speed around a tepee, he ran full tilt into Kiche lying at the end of her stick. He gave one yelp of consternation, and then her punishing jaws closed upon him. She was tied, but he could not get away from her easily. She rolled him off his legs so that he could not run, while she repeatedly ripped and slashed him with her fangs. When at last he succeeded in rolling clear of her, he crawled to his feet, badly dishevelled, hurt both in body and in spirit. His hair was standing out all over him in tufts where her teeth had mauled. He stood where he had arisen, opened his mouth, and broke out the long, heart-broken puppy wail. But even this he was not allowed to complete. In the middle of it, White Fang, rushing in, sank his teeth into Lip-lip's hind leg. There was no fight left in Lip-lip, and he ran away shamelessly, his victim hot on his heels and worrying him all the way back to his own tepee. Here the squaws came to his aid, and White Fang, transformed into a raging demon, was finally driven off only by a fusillade of stones. Came the day when Grey Beaver, deciding that the liability of her running away was past, released Kiche. White Fang was delighted with his mother's freedom. He accompanied her joyfully about the camp; and, so long as he remained close by her side, Lip-lip kept a respectful distance. White Fang even bristled up to him and walked stiff-legged, but Lip-lip ignored the challenge. He was no fool himself, and whatever vengeance he desired to wreak, he could wait until he caught White Fang alone. Later on that day, Kiche and White Fang strayed into the edge of the woods next to the camp. He had led his mother there, step by step, and now when she stopped, he tried to inveigle her farther. The stream, the lair, and the quiet woods were calling to him, and he wanted her to come. He ran on a few steps, stopped, and looked back. She had not moved. He whined pleadingly, and scurried playfully in and out of the underbrush. He ran back to her, licked her face, and ran on again. And still she did not move. He stopped and regarded her, all of an intentness and eagerness, physically expressed, that slowly faded out of him as she turned her head and gazed back at the camp. There was something calling to him out there in the open. His mother heard it too. But she heard also that other and louder call, the call of the fire and of man--the call which has been given alone of all animals to the wolf to answer, to the wolf and the wild-dog, who are brothers. Kiche turned and slowly trotted back toward camp. Stronger than the physical restraint of the stick was the clutch of the camp upon her. Unseen and occultly, the gods still gripped with their power and would not let her go. White Fang sat down in the shadow of a birch and whimpered softly. There was a strong smell of pine, and subtle wood fragrances filled the air, reminding him of his old life of freedom before the days of his bondage. But he was still only a part-grown puppy, and stronger than the call either of man or of the Wild was the call of his mother. All the hours of his short life he had depended upon her. The time was yet to come for independence. So he arose and trotted forlornly back to camp, pausing once, and twice, to sit down and whimper and to listen to the call that still sounded in the depths of the forest. In the Wild the time of a mother with her young is short; but under the dominion of man it is sometimes even shorter. Thus it was with White Fang. Grey Beaver was in the debt of Three Eagles. Three Eagles was going away on a trip up the Mackenzie to the Great Slave Lake. A strip of scarlet cloth, a bearskin, twenty cartridges, and Kiche, went to pay the debt. White Fang saw his mother taken aboard Three Eagles' canoe, and tried to follow her. A blow from Three Eagles knocked him backward to the land. The canoe shoved off. He sprang into the water and swam after it, deaf to the sharp cries of Grey Beaver to return. Even a man- animal, a god, White Fang ignored, such was the terror he was in of losing his mother. But gods are accustomed to being obeyed, and Grey Beaver wrathfully launched a canoe in pursuit. When he overtook White Fang, he reached down and by the nape of the neck lifted him clear of the water. He did not deposit him at once in the bottom of the canoe. Holding him suspended with one hand, with the other hand he proceeded to give him a beating. And it _was_ a beating. His hand was heavy. Every blow was shrewd to hurt; and he delivered a multitude of blows. Impelled by the blows that rained upon him, now from this side, now from that, White Fang swung back and forth like an erratic and jerky pendulum. Varying were the emotions that surged through him. At first, he had known surprise. Then came a momentary fear, when he yelped several times to the impact of the hand. But this was quickly followed by anger. His free nature asserted itself, and he showed his teeth and snarled fearlessly in the face of the wrathful god. This but served to make the god more wrathful. The blows came faster, heavier, more shrewd to hurt. Grey Beaver continued to beat, White Fang continued to snarl. But this could not last for ever. One or the other must give over, and that one was White Fang. Fear surged through him again. For the first time he was being really man-handled. The occasional blows of sticks and stones he had previously experienced were as caresses compared with this. He broke down and began to cry and yelp. For a time each blow brought a yelp from him; but fear passed into terror, until finally his yelps were voiced in unbroken succession, unconnected with the rhythm of the punishment. At last Grey Beaver withheld his hand. White Fang, hanging limply, continued to cry. This seemed to satisfy his master, who flung him down roughly in the bottom of the canoe. In the meantime the canoe had drifted down the stream. Grey Beaver picked up the paddle. White Fang was in his way. He spurned him savagely with his foot. In that moment White Fang's free nature flashed forth again, and he sank his teeth into the moccasined foot. The beating that had gone before was as nothing compared with the beating he now received. Grey Beaver's wrath was terrible; likewise was White Fang's fright. Not only the hand, but the hard wooden paddle was used upon him; and he was bruised and sore in all his small body when he was again flung down in the canoe. Again, and this time with purpose, did Grey Beaver kick him. White Fang did not repeat his attack on the foot. He had learned another lesson of his bondage. Never, no matter what the circumstance, must he dare to bite the god who was lord and master over him; the body of the lord and master was sacred, not to be defiled by the teeth of such as he. That was evidently the crime of crimes, the one offence there was no condoning nor overlooking. When the canoe touched the shore, White Fang lay whimpering and motionless, waiting the will of Grey Beaver. It was Grey Beaver's will that he should go ashore, for ashore he was flung, striking heavily on his side and hurting his bruises afresh. He crawled tremblingly to his feet and stood whimpering. Lip-lip, who had watched the whole proceeding from the bank, now rushed upon him, knocking him over and sinking his teeth into him. White Fang was too helpless to defend himself, and it would have gone hard with him had not Grey Beaver's foot shot out, lifting Lip-lip into the air with its violence so that he smashed down to earth a dozen feet away. This was the man-animal's justice; and even then, in his own pitiable plight, White Fang experienced a little grateful thrill. At Grey Beaver's heels he limped obediently through the village to the tepee. And so it came that White Fang learned that the right to punish was something the gods reserved for themselves and denied to the lesser creatures under them. That night, when all was still, White Fang remembered his mother and sorrowed for her. He sorrowed too loudly and woke up Grey Beaver, who beat him. After that he mourned gently when the gods were around. But sometimes, straying off to the edge of the woods by himself, he gave vent to his grief, and cried it out with loud whimperings and wailings. It was during this period that he might have harkened to the memories of the lair and the stream and run back to the Wild. But the memory of his mother held him. As the hunting man-animals went out and came back, so she would come back to the village some time. So he remained in his bondage waiting for her. But it was not altogether an unhappy bondage. There was much to interest him. Something was always happening. There was no end to the strange things these gods did, and he was always curious to see. Besides, he was learning how to get along with Grey Beaver. Obedience, rigid, undeviating obedience, was what was exacted of him; and in return he escaped beatings and his existence was tolerated. Nay, Grey Beaver himself sometimes tossed him a piece of meat, and defended him against the other dogs in the eating of it. And such a piece of meat was of value. It was worth more, in some strange way, then a dozen pieces of meat from the hand of a squaw. Grey Beaver never petted nor caressed. Perhaps it was the weight of his hand, perhaps his justice, perhaps the sheer power of him, and perhaps it was all these things that influenced White Fang; for a certain tie of attachment was forming between him and his surly lord. Insidiously, and by remote ways, as well as by the power of stick and stone and clout of hand, were the shackles of White Fang's bondage being riveted upon him. The qualities in his kind that in the beginning made it possible for them to come in to the fires of men, were qualities capable of development. They were developing in him, and the camp-life, replete with misery as it was, was secretly endearing itself to him all the time. But White Fang was unaware of it. He knew only grief for the loss of Kiche, hope for her return, and a hungry yearning for the free life that had been his.

chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang15.html

White Fang has completely given himself up to the mercy of the man-animals, his gods. He learns the nature of the Indians and their sense of justice and power. He learns to avoid the mothers of half-grown puppies, due to a few bad experiences with them. He still fights with Lip-lip and is defeated every time. Once, he lures Lip-lip towards Kiche, who, although tied, leaps upon him and injures him badly. White Fang, too, sinks his teeth into Lip-lips hind leg. Kiche is released by Gray Beaver. Mother and son are now together, much to Lip-lips disappointment. White Fang tries to entice his mother into the woods but fails, for Kiche is comfortable in the camp. White Fang inevitably follows her there. However, Kiche is soon sent away with another Indian, Three Eagles, as payment for a debt that Gray Beaver owes him. A strip of scarlet cloth, a bearskin, twenty cartridges, and Kiche will go with Three Eagles up the Mackenzie River to the Great Slave Lake. White Fang follows Kiche into the water and heads after the canoe, but a blow from Three Eagles forces him back. Ignoring Gray Beavers calls, he continues to swim behind the canoe. Gray Beaver pursues White Fang in a canoe, overtakes him, lifts him by the nape of his neck, and beats him. White Fang bites back, only to be beaten harder. He learns an important lesson; never bite a human. Ashore, he is bitten by Lip-lip, who is beaten by Gray Beaver. White Fang limps behind Gray Beaver to the Indian village, where he must learn to adjust a life without his mother. As time passes, he still yearns for Kiche, but he grows comfortable in camp.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_10_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 3.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang16.html", "summary": "White Fangs fights with Lip-lip continue to rage as furiously as ever. He makes a reputation for himself as being the most wicked dog in camp. He can also snarl more terribly than any other dog, a skill he uses to his advantage. Both humans and animals hate him. He is always mixed up in squabbles over stolen meat. He is also totally on his own, for no dog ever backs him. White Fang, however, never hesitates to leave his teeth marks on any of the other dogs. In fact, he learns to fight very effectively and efficiently, even when he is outnumbered. He also learns to attack without warning, catching his enemy off guard. One day he kills one of the camp dogs on the edge of the woods. Gray Beaver refuses to listen to the protests of Indians over the killing. White Fang is his dog. Because of White Fangs ferocity, no dog is left alone, for fear of his attacks. His favorite trick is to lose his trail in the water, hide from his enemy, and attack in a surprising manner. Although the strength of the pack lies in its size, White Fang manages to gain the upper hand. The dogs know that he can kill the leader of a pack before the other dogs arrive. By this point he has learned to obey the strong and oppress the weak.", "analysis": ""}

Lip-lip continued so to darken his days that White Fang became wickeder and more ferocious than it was his natural right to be. Savageness was a part of his make-up, but the savageness thus developed exceeded his make- up. He acquired a reputation for wickedness amongst the man-animals themselves. Wherever there was trouble and uproar in camp, fighting and squabbling or the outcry of a squaw over a bit of stolen meat, they were sure to find White Fang mixed up in it and usually at the bottom of it. They did not bother to look after the causes of his conduct. They saw only the effects, and the effects were bad. He was a sneak and a thief, a mischief-maker, a fomenter of trouble; and irate squaws told him to his face, the while he eyed them alert and ready to dodge any quick-flung missile, that he was a wolf and worthless and bound to come to an evil end. He found himself an outcast in the midst of the populous camp. All the young dogs followed Lip-lip's lead. There was a difference between White Fang and them. Perhaps they sensed his wild-wood breed, and instinctively felt for him the enmity that the domestic dog feels for the wolf. But be that as it may, they joined with Lip-lip in the persecution. And, once declared against him, they found good reason to continue declared against him. One and all, from time to time, they felt his teeth; and to his credit, he gave more than he received. Many of them he could whip in single fight; but single fight was denied him. The beginning of such a fight was a signal for all the young dogs in camp to come running and pitch upon him. Out of this pack-persecution he learned two important things: how to take care of himself in a mass-fight against him--and how, on a single dog, to inflict the greatest amount of damage in the briefest space of time. To keep one's feet in the midst of the hostile mass meant life, and this he learnt well. He became cat-like in his ability to stay on his feet. Even grown dogs might hurtle him backward or sideways with the impact of their heavy bodies; and backward or sideways he would go, in the air or sliding on the ground, but always with his legs under him and his feet downward to the mother earth. When dogs fight, there are usually preliminaries to the actual combat--snarlings and bristlings and stiff-legged struttings. But White Fang learned to omit these preliminaries. Delay meant the coming against him of all the young dogs. He must do his work quickly and get away. So he learnt to give no warning of his intention. He rushed in and snapped and slashed on the instant, without notice, before his foe could prepare to meet him. Thus he learned how to inflict quick and severe damage. Also he learned the value of surprise. A dog, taken off its guard, its shoulder slashed open or its ear ripped in ribbons before it knew what was happening, was a dog half whipped. Furthermore, it was remarkably easy to overthrow a dog taken by surprise; while a dog, thus overthrown, invariably exposed for a moment the soft underside of its neck--the vulnerable point at which to strike for its life. White Fang knew this point. It was a knowledge bequeathed to him directly from the hunting generation of wolves. So it was that White Fang's method when he took the offensive, was: first to find a young dog alone; second, to surprise it and knock it off its feet; and third, to drive in with his teeth at the soft throat. Being but partly grown his jaws had not yet become large enough nor strong enough to make his throat-attack deadly; but many a young dog went around camp with a lacerated throat in token of White Fang's intention. And one day, catching one of his enemies alone on the edge of the woods, he managed, by repeatedly overthrowing him and attacking the throat, to cut the great vein and let out the life. There was a great row that night. He had been observed, the news had been carried to the dead dog's master, the squaws remembered all the instances of stolen meat, and Grey Beaver was beset by many angry voices. But he resolutely held the door of his tepee, inside which he had placed the culprit, and refused to permit the vengeance for which his tribespeople clamoured. White Fang became hated by man and dog. During this period of his development he never knew a moment's security. The tooth of every dog was against him, the hand of every man. He was greeted with snarls by his kind, with curses and stones by his gods. He lived tensely. He was always keyed up, alert for attack, wary of being attacked, with an eye for sudden and unexpected missiles, prepared to act precipitately and coolly, to leap in with a flash of teeth, or to leap away with a menacing snarl. As for snarling he could snarl more terribly than any dog, young or old, in camp. The intent of the snarl is to warn or frighten, and judgment is required to know when it should be used. White Fang knew how to make it and when to make it. Into his snarl he incorporated all that was vicious, malignant, and horrible. With nose serrulated by continuous spasms, hair bristling in recurrent waves, tongue whipping out like a red snake and whipping back again, ears flattened down, eyes gleaming hatred, lips wrinkled back, and fangs exposed and dripping, he could compel a pause on the part of almost any assailant. A temporary pause, when taken off his guard, gave him the vital moment in which to think and determine his action. But often a pause so gained lengthened out until it evolved into a complete cessation from the attack. And before more than one of the grown dogs White Fang's snarl enabled him to beat an honourable retreat. An outcast himself from the pack of the part-grown dogs, his sanguinary methods and remarkable efficiency made the pack pay for its persecution of him. Not permitted himself to run with the pack, the curious state of affairs obtained that no member of the pack could run outside the pack. White Fang would not permit it. What of his bushwhacking and waylaying tactics, the young dogs were afraid to run by themselves. With the exception of Lip-lip, they were compelled to hunch together for mutual protection against the terrible enemy they had made. A puppy alone by the river bank meant a puppy dead or a puppy that aroused the camp with its shrill pain and terror as it fled back from the wolf-cub that had waylaid it. But White Fang's reprisals did not cease, even when the young dogs had learned thoroughly that they must stay together. He attacked them when he caught them alone, and they attacked him when they were bunched. The sight of him was sufficient to start them rushing after him, at which times his swiftness usually carried him into safety. But woe the dog that outran his fellows in such pursuit! White Fang had learned to turn suddenly upon the pursuer that was ahead of the pack and thoroughly to rip him up before the pack could arrive. This occurred with great frequency, for, once in full cry, the dogs were prone to forget themselves in the excitement of the chase, while White Fang never forgot himself. Stealing backward glances as he ran, he was always ready to whirl around and down the overzealous pursuer that outran his fellows. Young dogs are bound to play, and out of the exigencies of the situation they realised their play in this mimic warfare. Thus it was that the hunt of White Fang became their chief game--a deadly game, withal, and at all times a serious game. He, on the other hand, being the fastest-footed, was unafraid to venture anywhere. During the period that he waited vainly for his mother to come back, he led the pack many a wild chase through the adjacent woods. But the pack invariably lost him. Its noise and outcry warned him of its presence, while he ran alone, velvet- footed, silently, a moving shadow among the trees after the manner of his father and mother before him. Further he was more directly connected with the Wild than they; and he knew more of its secrets and stratagems. A favourite trick of his was to lose his trail in running water and then lie quietly in a near-by thicket while their baffled cries arose around him. Hated by his kind and by mankind, indomitable, perpetually warred upon and himself waging perpetual war, his development was rapid and one-sided. This was no soil for kindliness and affection to blossom in. Of such things he had not the faintest glimmering. The code he learned was to obey the strong and to oppress the weak. Grey Beaver was a god, and strong. Therefore White Fang obeyed him. But the dog younger or smaller than himself was weak, a thing to be destroyed. His development was in the direction of power. In order to face the constant danger of hurt and even of destruction, his predatory and protective faculties were unduly developed. He became quicker of movement than the other dogs, swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with ironlike muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel, more ferocious, and more intelligent. He had to become all these things, else he would not have held his own nor survive the hostile environment in which he found himself.

chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang16.html

White Fangs fights with Lip-lip continue to rage as furiously as ever. He makes a reputation for himself as being the most wicked dog in camp. He can also snarl more terribly than any other dog, a skill he uses to his advantage. Both humans and animals hate him. He is always mixed up in squabbles over stolen meat. He is also totally on his own, for no dog ever backs him. White Fang, however, never hesitates to leave his teeth marks on any of the other dogs. In fact, he learns to fight very effectively and efficiently, even when he is outnumbered. He also learns to attack without warning, catching his enemy off guard. One day he kills one of the camp dogs on the edge of the woods. Gray Beaver refuses to listen to the protests of Indians over the killing. White Fang is his dog. Because of White Fangs ferocity, no dog is left alone, for fear of his attacks. His favorite trick is to lose his trail in the water, hide from his enemy, and attack in a surprising manner. Although the strength of the pack lies in its size, White Fang manages to gain the upper hand. The dogs know that he can kill the leader of a pack before the other dogs arrive. By this point he has learned to obey the strong and oppress the weak.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_11_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 3.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang16.html", "summary": "With the arrival of autumn, the days grow shorter, and it is getting colder. When the camp members prepare to leave for another place, White Fang escapes into the forest. He enjoys the freedom of the wild for a while, but soon finds himself lonely and scared and longing for the comfort of the camp. In truth, he has lost the knack of hunting and is even scared by a trees shadow. Afraid and desperate, he returns to the camp but finds the Indians have gone. He wails loudly with apprehension. The next morning, White Fang plunges into the forest and follows the stream down to the riverbank. Following the rivers course, White Fang runs for thirty hours. He finally arrives hungry and tired at the new Indian camp. White Fang joins them around the fire, gets his share of meat, and eats it contentedly.", "analysis": ""}

In the fall of the year, when the days were shortening and the bite of the frost was coming into the air, White Fang got his chance for liberty. For several days there had been a great hubbub in the village. The summer camp was being dismantled, and the tribe, bag and baggage, was preparing to go off to the fall hunting. White Fang watched it all with eager eyes, and when the tepees began to come down and the canoes were loading at the bank, he understood. Already the canoes were departing, and some had disappeared down the river. Quite deliberately he determined to stay behind. He waited his opportunity to slink out of camp to the woods. Here, in the running stream where ice was beginning to form, he hid his trail. Then he crawled into the heart of a dense thicket and waited. The time passed by, and he slept intermittently for hours. Then he was aroused by Grey Beaver's voice calling him by name. There were other voices. White Fang could hear Grey Beaver's squaw taking part in the search, and Mit-sah, who was Grey Beaver's son. White Fang trembled with fear, and though the impulse came to crawl out of his hiding-place, he resisted it. After a time the voices died away, and some time after that he crept out to enjoy the success of his undertaking. Darkness was coming on, and for a while he played about among the trees, pleasuring in his freedom. Then, and quite suddenly, he became aware of loneliness. He sat down to consider, listening to the silence of the forest and perturbed by it. That nothing moved nor sounded, seemed ominous. He felt the lurking of danger, unseen and unguessed. He was suspicious of the looming bulks of the trees and of the dark shadows that might conceal all manner of perilous things. Then it was cold. Here was no warm side of a tepee against which to snuggle. The frost was in his feet, and he kept lifting first one fore- foot and then the other. He curved his bushy tail around to cover them, and at the same time he saw a vision. There was nothing strange about it. Upon his inward sight was impressed a succession of memory-pictures. He saw the camp again, the tepees, and the blaze of the fires. He heard the shrill voices of the women, the gruff basses of the men, and the snarling of the dogs. He was hungry, and he remembered pieces of meat and fish that had been thrown him. Here was no meat, nothing but a threatening and inedible silence. His bondage had softened him. Irresponsibility had weakened him. He had forgotten how to shift for himself. The night yawned about him. His senses, accustomed to the hum and bustle of the camp, used to the continuous impact of sights and sounds, were now left idle. There was nothing to do, nothing to see nor hear. They strained to catch some interruption of the silence and immobility of nature. They were appalled by inaction and by the feel of something terrible impending. He gave a great start of fright. A colossal and formless something was rushing across the field of his vision. It was a tree-shadow flung by the moon, from whose face the clouds had been brushed away. Reassured, he whimpered softly; then he suppressed the whimper for fear that it might attract the attention of the lurking dangers. A tree, contracting in the cool of the night, made a loud noise. It was directly above him. He yelped in his fright. A panic seized him, and he ran madly toward the village. He knew an overpowering desire for the protection and companionship of man. In his nostrils was the smell of the camp-smoke. In his ears the camp-sounds and cries were ringing loud. He passed out of the forest and into the moonlit open where were no shadows nor darknesses. But no village greeted his eyes. He had forgotten. The village had gone away. His wild flight ceased abruptly. There was no place to which to flee. He slunk forlornly through the deserted camp, smelling the rubbish-heaps and the discarded rags and tags of the gods. He would have been glad for the rattle of stones about him, flung by an angry squaw, glad for the hand of Grey Beaver descending upon him in wrath; while he would have welcomed with delight Lip-lip and the whole snarling, cowardly pack. He came to where Grey Beaver's tepee had stood. In the centre of the space it had occupied, he sat down. He pointed his nose at the moon. His throat was afflicted by rigid spasms, his mouth opened, and in a heart- broken cry bubbled up his loneliness and fear, his grief for Kiche, all his past sorrows and miseries as well as his apprehension of sufferings and dangers to come. It was the long wolf-howl, full-throated and mournful, the first howl he had ever uttered. The coming of daylight dispelled his fears but increased his loneliness. The naked earth, which so shortly before had been so populous, thrust his loneliness more forcibly upon him. It did not take him long to make up his mind. He plunged into the forest and followed the river bank down the stream. All day he ran. He did not rest. He seemed made to run on forever. His iron-like body ignored fatigue. And even after fatigue came, his heritage of endurance braced him to endless endeavour and enabled him to drive his complaining body onward. Where the river swung in against precipitous bluffs, he climbed the high mountains behind. Rivers and streams that entered the main river he forded or swam. Often he took to the rim-ice that was beginning to form, and more than once he crashed through and struggled for life in the icy current. Always he was on the lookout for the trail of the gods where it might leave the river and proceed inland. White Fang was intelligent beyond the average of his kind; yet his mental vision was not wide enough to embrace the other bank of the Mackenzie. What if the trail of the gods led out on that side? It never entered his head. Later on, when he had travelled more and grown older and wiser and come to know more of trails and rivers, it might be that he could grasp and apprehend such a possibility. But that mental power was yet in the future. Just now he ran blindly, his own bank of the Mackenzie alone entering into his calculations. All night he ran, blundering in the darkness into mishaps and obstacles that delayed but did not daunt. By the middle of the second day he had been running continuously for thirty hours, and the iron of his flesh was giving out. It was the endurance of his mind that kept him going. He had not eaten in forty hours, and he was weak with hunger. The repeated drenchings in the icy water had likewise had their effect on him. His handsome coat was draggled. The broad pads of his feet were bruised and bleeding. He had begun to limp, and this limp increased with the hours. To make it worse, the light of the sky was obscured and snow began to fall--a raw, moist, melting, clinging snow, slippery under foot, that hid from him the landscape he traversed, and that covered over the inequalities of the ground so that the way of his feet was more difficult and painful. Grey Beaver had intended camping that night on the far bank of the Mackenzie, for it was in that direction that the hunting lay. But on the near bank, shortly before dark, a moose coming down to drink, had been espied by Kloo-kooch, who was Grey Beaver's squaw. Now, had not the moose come down to drink, had not Mit-sah been steering out of the course because of the snow, had not Kloo-kooch sighted the moose, and had not Grey Beaver killed it with a lucky shot from his rifle, all subsequent things would have happened differently. Grey Beaver would not have camped on the near side of the Mackenzie, and White Fang would have passed by and gone on, either to die or to find his way to his wild brothers and become one of them--a wolf to the end of his days. Night had fallen. The snow was flying more thickly, and White Fang, whimpering softly to himself as he stumbled and limped along, came upon a fresh trail in the snow. So fresh was it that he knew it immediately for what it was. Whining with eagerness, he followed back from the river bank and in among the trees. The camp-sounds came to his ears. He saw the blaze of the fire, Kloo-kooch cooking, and Grey Beaver squatting on his hams and mumbling a chunk of raw tallow. There was fresh meat in camp! White Fang expected a beating. He crouched and bristled a little at the thought of it. Then he went forward again. He feared and disliked the beating he knew to be waiting for him. But he knew, further, that the comfort of the fire would be his, the protection of the gods, the companionship of the dogs--the last, a companionship of enmity, but none the less a companionship and satisfying to his gregarious needs. He came cringing and crawling into the firelight. Grey Beaver saw him, and stopped munching the tallow. White Fang crawled slowly, cringing and grovelling in the abjectness of his abasement and submission. He crawled straight toward Grey Beaver, every inch of his progress becoming slower and more painful. At last he lay at the master's feet, into whose possession he now surrendered himself, voluntarily, body and soul. Of his own choice, he came in to sit by man's fire and to be ruled by him. White Fang trembled, waiting for the punishment to fall upon him. There was a movement of the hand above him. He cringed involuntarily under the expected blow. It did not fall. He stole a glance upward. Grey Beaver was breaking the lump of tallow in half! Grey Beaver was offering him one piece of the tallow! Very gently and somewhat suspiciously, he first smelled the tallow and then proceeded to eat it. Grey Beaver ordered meat to be brought to him, and guarded him from the other dogs while he ate. After that, grateful and content, White Fang lay at Grey Beaver's feet, gazing at the fire that warmed him, blinking and dozing, secure in the knowledge that the morrow would find him, not wandering forlorn through bleak forest-stretches, but in the camp of the man-animals, with the gods to whom he had given himself and upon whom he was now dependent.

chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang16.html

With the arrival of autumn, the days grow shorter, and it is getting colder. When the camp members prepare to leave for another place, White Fang escapes into the forest. He enjoys the freedom of the wild for a while, but soon finds himself lonely and scared and longing for the comfort of the camp. In truth, he has lost the knack of hunting and is even scared by a trees shadow. Afraid and desperate, he returns to the camp but finds the Indians have gone. He wails loudly with apprehension. The next morning, White Fang plunges into the forest and follows the stream down to the riverbank. Following the rivers course, White Fang runs for thirty hours. He finally arrives hungry and tired at the new Indian camp. White Fang joins them around the fire, gets his share of meat, and eats it contentedly.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_12_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 3.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang17.html", "summary": "In this chapter, White Fang is being trained as a sled-dog. Gray Beaver, Kloo-kooch, and Mit-sah go on a journey up the Mackenzie River. Gray Beaver drives a sled drawn by dogs that he has traded or borrowed. Mit-sah, who is learning to drive and train the dogs, drives a smaller sled drawn by puppies. The sled carries nearly two hundred pounds of gear and food. White Fang has a moss-stuffed collar put around his neck; it is connected by two pulling traces to a scarp that passes around his neck and over his back. A long rope, by which he pulls the sled, is fastened to this. There are seven puppies in the team, some nine and ten months old; White Fang is eight months old. The sled that he pulls is one that does not move over the snow easily, helping to distribute the weight. Also, the ropes of varying lengths prevent the dogs from actually attacking the dogs in front of them. Lip-lip is at the end of the longest rope, leading the team, a fact that enrages the other puppies behind him, making them chase him and increasing the overall speed. What further enrages the other dogs is that Mit-sah favors Lip-lip over them. White Fang does well as a sled dog even though he still fights with the other puppies when he can. Usually, however, he is too busy working. His team pulls the sled for months until they reach a village at the Great Slave Lake. There, White Fang eats some chips of frozen moose meat that a village boy has been chopping. The boy tries to beat White Fang, who in turn bites him. The boys family is angry, but Gray Beaver defends him. The village boys come after Mit-sah, but they are also bitten by White Fang. It is obvious that he has learned to guard property, protect his master, and attack thieving strangers.", "analysis": ""}

When December was well along, Grey Beaver went on a journey up the Mackenzie. Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch went with him. One sled he drove himself, drawn by dogs he had traded for or borrowed. A second and smaller sled was driven by Mit-sah, and to this was harnessed a team of puppies. It was more of a toy affair than anything else, yet it was the delight of Mit-sah, who felt that he was beginning to do a man's work in the world. Also, he was learning to drive dogs and to train dogs; while the puppies themselves were being broken in to the harness. Furthermore, the sled was of some service, for it carried nearly two hundred pounds of outfit and food. White Fang had seen the camp-dogs toiling in the harness, so that he did not resent overmuch the first placing of the harness upon himself. About his neck was put a moss-stuffed collar, which was connected by two pulling-traces to a strap that passed around his chest and over his back. It was to this that was fastened the long rope by which he pulled at the sled. There were seven puppies in the team. The others had been born earlier in the year and were nine and ten months old, while White Fang was only eight months old. Each dog was fastened to the sled by a single rope. No two ropes were of the same length, while the difference in length between any two ropes was at least that of a dog's body. Every rope was brought to a ring at the front end of the sled. The sled itself was without runners, being a birch-bark toboggan, with upturned forward end to keep it from ploughing under the snow. This construction enabled the weight of the sled and load to be distributed over the largest snow-surface; for the snow was crystal-powder and very soft. Observing the same principle of widest distribution of weight, the dogs at the ends of their ropes radiated fan-fashion from the nose of the sled, so that no dog trod in another's footsteps. There was, furthermore, another virtue in the fan-formation. The ropes of varying length prevented the dogs attacking from the rear those that ran in front of them. For a dog to attack another, it would have to turn upon one at a shorter rope. In which case it would find itself face to face with the dog attacked, and also it would find itself facing the whip of the driver. But the most peculiar virtue of all lay in the fact that the dog that strove to attack one in front of him must pull the sled faster, and that the faster the sled travelled, the faster could the dog attacked run away. Thus, the dog behind could never catch up with the one in front. The faster he ran, the faster ran the one he was after, and the faster ran all the dogs. Incidentally, the sled went faster, and thus, by cunning indirection, did man increase his mastery over the beasts. Mit-sah resembled his father, much of whose grey wisdom he possessed. In the past he had observed Lip-lip's persecution of White Fang; but at that time Lip-lip was another man's dog, and Mit-sah had never dared more than to shy an occasional stone at him. But now Lip-lip was his dog, and he proceeded to wreak his vengeance on him by putting him at the end of the longest rope. This made Lip-lip the leader, and was apparently an honour! but in reality it took away from him all honour, and instead of being bully and master of the pack, he now found himself hated and persecuted by the pack. Because he ran at the end of the longest rope, the dogs had always the view of him running away before them. All that they saw of him was his bushy tail and fleeing hind legs--a view far less ferocious and intimidating than his bristling mane and gleaming fangs. Also, dogs being so constituted in their mental ways, the sight of him running away gave desire to run after him and a feeling that he ran away from them. The moment the sled started, the team took after Lip-lip in a chase that extended throughout the day. At first he had been prone to turn upon his pursuers, jealous of his dignity and wrathful; but at such times Mit-sah would throw the stinging lash of the thirty-foot cariboo-gut whip into his face and compel him to turn tail and run on. Lip-lip might face the pack, but he could not face that whip, and all that was left him to do was to keep his long rope taut and his flanks ahead of the teeth of his mates. But a still greater cunning lurked in the recesses of the Indian mind. To give point to unending pursuit of the leader, Mit-sah favoured him over the other dogs. These favours aroused in them jealousy and hatred. In their presence Mit-sah would give him meat and would give it to him only. This was maddening to them. They would rage around just outside the throwing-distance of the whip, while Lip-lip devoured the meat and Mit- sah protected him. And when there was no meat to give, Mit-sah would keep the team at a distance and make believe to give meat to Lip-lip. White Fang took kindly to the work. He had travelled a greater distance than the other dogs in the yielding of himself to the rule of the gods, and he had learned more thoroughly the futility of opposing their will. In addition, the persecution he had suffered from the pack had made the pack less to him in the scheme of things, and man more. He had not learned to be dependent on his kind for companionship. Besides, Kiche was well-nigh forgotten; and the chief outlet of expression that remained to him was in the allegiance he tendered the gods he had accepted as masters. So he worked hard, learned discipline, and was obedient. Faithfulness and willingness characterised his toil. These are essential traits of the wolf and the wild-dog when they have become domesticated, and these traits White Fang possessed in unusual measure. A companionship did exist between White Fang and the other dogs, but it was one of warfare and enmity. He had never learned to play with them. He knew only how to fight, and fight with them he did, returning to them a hundred-fold the snaps and slashes they had given him in the days when Lip-lip was leader of the pack. But Lip-lip was no longer leader--except when he fled away before his mates at the end of his rope, the sled bounding along behind. In camp he kept close to Mit-sah or Grey Beaver or Kloo-kooch. He did not dare venture away from the gods, for now the fangs of all dogs were against him, and he tasted to the dregs the persecution that had been White Fang's. With the overthrow of Lip-lip, White Fang could have become leader of the pack. But he was too morose and solitary for that. He merely thrashed his team-mates. Otherwise he ignored them. They got out of his way when he came along; nor did the boldest of them ever dare to rob him of his meat. On the contrary, they devoured their own meat hurriedly, for fear that he would take it away from them. White Fang knew the law well: _to oppress the weak and obey the strong_. He ate his share of meat as rapidly as he could. And then woe the dog that had not yet finished! A snarl and a flash of fangs, and that dog would wail his indignation to the uncomforting stars while White Fang finished his portion for him. Every little while, however, one dog or another would flame up in revolt and be promptly subdued. Thus White Fang was kept in training. He was jealous of the isolation in which he kept himself in the midst of the pack, and he fought often to maintain it. But such fights were of brief duration. He was too quick for the others. They were slashed open and bleeding before they knew what had happened, were whipped almost before they had begun to fight. As rigid as the sled-discipline of the gods, was the discipline maintained by White Fang amongst his fellows. He never allowed them any latitude. He compelled them to an unremitting respect for him. They might do as they pleased amongst themselves. That was no concern of his. But it _was_ his concern that they leave him alone in his isolation, get out of his way when he elected to walk among them, and at all times acknowledge his mastery over them. A hint of stiff-leggedness on their part, a lifted lip or a bristle of hair, and he would be upon them, merciless and cruel, swiftly convincing them of the error of their way. He was a monstrous tyrant. His mastery was rigid as steel. He oppressed the weak with a vengeance. Not for nothing had he been exposed to the pitiless struggles for life in the day of his cubhood, when his mother and he, alone and unaided, held their own and survived in the ferocious environment of the Wild. And not for nothing had he learned to walk softly when superior strength went by. He oppressed the weak, but he respected the strong. And in the course of the long journey with Grey Beaver he walked softly indeed amongst the full-grown dogs in the camps of the strange man-animals they encountered. The months passed by. Still continued the journey of Grey Beaver. White Fang's strength was developed by the long hours on trail and the steady toil at the sled; and it would have seemed that his mental development was well-nigh complete. He had come to know quite thoroughly the world in which he lived. His outlook was bleak and materialistic. The world as he saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, a world in which caresses and affection and the bright sweetnesses of the spirit did not exist. He had no affection for Grey Beaver. True, he was a god, but a most savage god. White Fang was glad to acknowledge his lordship, but it was a lordship based upon superior intelligence and brute strength. There was something in the fibre of White Fang's being that made his lordship a thing to be desired, else he would not have come back from the Wild when he did to tender his allegiance. There were deeps in his nature which had never been sounded. A kind word, a caressing touch of the hand, on the part of Grey Beaver, might have sounded these deeps; but Grey Beaver did not caress, nor speak kind words. It was not his way. His primacy was savage, and savagely he ruled, administering justice with a club, punishing transgression with the pain of a blow, and rewarding merit, not by kindness, but by withholding a blow. So White Fang knew nothing of the heaven a man's hand might contain for him. Besides, he did not like the hands of the man-animals. He was suspicious of them. It was true that they sometimes gave meat, but more often they gave hurt. Hands were things to keep away from. They hurled stones, wielded sticks and clubs and whips, administered slaps and clouts, and, when they touched him, were cunning to hurt with pinch and twist and wrench. In strange villages he had encountered the hands of the children and learned that they were cruel to hurt. Also, he had once nearly had an eye poked out by a toddling papoose. From these experiences he became suspicious of all children. He could not tolerate them. When they came near with their ominous hands, he got up. It was in a village at the Great Slave Lake, that, in the course of resenting the evil of the hands of the man-animals, he came to modify the law that he had learned from Grey Beaver: namely, that the unpardonable crime was to bite one of the gods. In this village, after the custom of all dogs in all villages, White Fang went foraging, for food. A boy was chopping frozen moose-meat with an axe, and the chips were flying in the snow. White Fang, sliding by in quest of meat, stopped and began to eat the chips. He observed the boy lay down the axe and take up a stout club. White Fang sprang clear, just in time to escape the descending blow. The boy pursued him, and he, a stranger in the village, fled between two tepees to find himself cornered against a high earth bank. There was no escape for White Fang. The only way out was between the two tepees, and this the boy guarded. Holding his club prepared to strike, he drew in on his cornered quarry. White Fang was furious. He faced the boy, bristling and snarling, his sense of justice outraged. He knew the law of forage. All the wastage of meat, such as the frozen chips, belonged to the dog that found it. He had done no wrong, broken no law, yet here was this boy preparing to give him a beating. White Fang scarcely knew what happened. He did it in a surge of rage. And he did it so quickly that the boy did not know either. All the boy knew was that he had in some unaccountable way been overturned into the snow, and that his club-hand had been ripped wide open by White Fang's teeth. But White Fang knew that he had broken the law of the gods. He had driven his teeth into the sacred flesh of one of them, and could expect nothing but a most terrible punishment. He fled away to Grey Beaver, behind whose protecting legs he crouched when the bitten boy and the boy's family came, demanding vengeance. But they went away with vengeance unsatisfied. Grey Beaver defended White Fang. So did Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch. White Fang, listening to the wordy war and watching the angry gestures, knew that his act was justified. And so it came that he learned there were gods and gods. There were his gods, and there were other gods, and between them there was a difference. Justice or injustice, it was all the same, he must take all things from the hands of his own gods. But he was not compelled to take injustice from the other gods. It was his privilege to resent it with his teeth. And this also was a law of the gods. Before the day was out, White Fang was to learn more about this law. Mit- sah, alone, gathering firewood in the forest, encountered the boy that had been bitten. With him were other boys. Hot words passed. Then all the boys attacked Mit-sah. It was going hard with him. Blows were raining upon him from all sides. White Fang looked on at first. This was an affair of the gods, and no concern of his. Then he realised that this was Mit-sah, one of his own particular gods, who was being maltreated. It was no reasoned impulse that made White Fang do what he then did. A mad rush of anger sent him leaping in amongst the combatants. Five minutes later the landscape was covered with fleeing boys, many of whom dripped blood upon the snow in token that White Fang's teeth had not been idle. When Mit-sah told the story in camp, Grey Beaver ordered meat to be given to White Fang. He ordered much meat to be given, and White Fang, gorged and sleepy by the fire, knew that the law had received its verification. It was in line with these experiences that White Fang came to learn the law of property and the duty of the defence of property. From the protection of his god's body to the protection of his god's possessions was a step, and this step he made. What was his god's was to be defended against all the world--even to the extent of biting other gods. Not only was such an act sacrilegious in its nature, but it was fraught with peril. The gods were all-powerful, and a dog was no match against them; yet White Fang learned to face them, fiercely belligerent and unafraid. Duty rose above fear, and thieving gods learned to leave Grey Beaver's property alone. One thing, in this connection, White Fang quickly learnt, and that was that a thieving god was usually a cowardly god and prone to run away at the sounding of the alarm. Also, he learned that but brief time elapsed between his sounding of the alarm and Grey Beaver coming to his aid. He came to know that it was not fear of him that drove the thief away, but fear of Grey Beaver. White Fang did not give the alarm by barking. He never barked. His method was to drive straight at the intruder, and to sink his teeth in if he could. Because he was morose and solitary, having nothing to do with the other dogs, he was unusually fitted to guard his master's property; and in this he was encouraged and trained by Grey Beaver. One result of this was to make White Fang more ferocious and indomitable, and more solitary. The months went by, binding stronger and stronger the covenant between dog and man. This was the ancient covenant that the first wolf that came in from the Wild entered into with man. And, like all succeeding wolves and wild dogs that had done likewise, White Fang worked the covenant out for himself. The terms were simple. For the possession of a flesh-and- blood god, he exchanged his own liberty. Food and fire, protection and companionship, were some of the things he received from the god. In return, he guarded the god's property, defended his body, worked for him, and obeyed him. The possession of a god implies service. White Fang's was a service of duty and awe, but not of love. He did not know what love was. He had no experience of love. Kiche was a remote memory. Besides, not only had he abandoned the Wild and his kind when he gave himself up to man, but the terms of the covenant were such that if ever he met Kiche again he would not desert his god to go with her. His allegiance to man seemed somehow a law of his being greater than the love of liberty, of kind and kin.

chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang17.html

In this chapter, White Fang is being trained as a sled-dog. Gray Beaver, Kloo-kooch, and Mit-sah go on a journey up the Mackenzie River. Gray Beaver drives a sled drawn by dogs that he has traded or borrowed. Mit-sah, who is learning to drive and train the dogs, drives a smaller sled drawn by puppies. The sled carries nearly two hundred pounds of gear and food. White Fang has a moss-stuffed collar put around his neck; it is connected by two pulling traces to a scarp that passes around his neck and over his back. A long rope, by which he pulls the sled, is fastened to this. There are seven puppies in the team, some nine and ten months old; White Fang is eight months old. The sled that he pulls is one that does not move over the snow easily, helping to distribute the weight. Also, the ropes of varying lengths prevent the dogs from actually attacking the dogs in front of them. Lip-lip is at the end of the longest rope, leading the team, a fact that enrages the other puppies behind him, making them chase him and increasing the overall speed. What further enrages the other dogs is that Mit-sah favors Lip-lip over them. White Fang does well as a sled dog even though he still fights with the other puppies when he can. Usually, however, he is too busy working. His team pulls the sled for months until they reach a village at the Great Slave Lake. There, White Fang eats some chips of frozen moose meat that a village boy has been chopping. The boy tries to beat White Fang, who in turn bites him. The boys family is angry, but Gray Beaver defends him. The village boys come after Mit-sah, but they are also bitten by White Fang. It is obvious that he has learned to guard property, protect his master, and attack thieving strangers.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_13_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 3.chapter 6

chapter 6

{"name": "chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang18.html", "summary": "Spring arrives, and Gray Beaver finishes the journey. White Fang is one year old, and next to Lip-lip, he is the largest yearling. He continues to have his battles with other dogs. When he fights with Baseek over a piece of shinbone, White Fang rips Baseeks right ear and wounds him on the shoulder. Baseek, old and weak, gives up. In mid-summer, White Fang encounters Kiche, who has now forgotten him and has had a new litter. She hovers protectively around her litter, trying to drive White Fang away. When White Fang is three years old, there is a great famine in the land. Only the strong will survive, for the Indians eat the weaker dogs. The Indians also eat the soft-tanned leather of their moccasins and mittens to fill their stomachs. White Fang escapes into the forest to hunt on his own, at times robbing rabbit snares and at times capturing small game, like squirrels and woodmice. At the end of the famine, White Fang meets Lip-lip, with whom he fights until Lip-lip is killed. He then returns to the village and is received warmly and given plenty of fish.", "analysis": ""}

The spring of the year was at hand when Grey Beaver finished his long journey. It was April, and White Fang was a year old when he pulled into the home villages and was loosed from the harness by Mit-sah. Though a long way from his full growth, White Fang, next to Lip-lip, was the largest yearling in the village. Both from his father, the wolf, and from Kiche, he had inherited stature and strength, and already he was measuring up alongside the full-grown dogs. But he had not yet grown compact. His body was slender and rangy, and his strength more stringy than massive. His coat was the true wolf-grey, and to all appearances he was true wolf himself. The quarter-strain of dog he had inherited from Kiche had left no mark on him physically, though it had played its part in his mental make-up. He wandered through the village, recognising with staid satisfaction the various gods he had known before the long journey. Then there were the dogs, puppies growing up like himself, and grown dogs that did not look so large and formidable as the memory pictures he retained of them. Also, he stood less in fear of them than formerly, stalking among them with a certain careless ease that was as new to him as it was enjoyable. There was Baseek, a grizzled old fellow that in his younger days had but to uncover his fangs to send White Fang cringing and crouching to the right about. From him White Fang had learned much of his own insignificance; and from him he was now to learn much of the change and development that had taken place in himself. While Baseek had been growing weaker with age, White Fang had been growing stronger with youth. It was at the cutting-up of a moose, fresh-killed, that White Fang learned of the changed relations in which he stood to the dog-world. He had got for himself a hoof and part of the shin-bone, to which quite a bit of meat was attached. Withdrawn from the immediate scramble of the other dogs--in fact out of sight behind a thicket--he was devouring his prize, when Baseek rushed in upon him. Before he knew what he was doing, he had slashed the intruder twice and sprung clear. Baseek was surprised by the other's temerity and swiftness of attack. He stood, gazing stupidly across at White Fang, the raw, red shin-bone between them. Baseek was old, and already he had come to know the increasing valour of the dogs it had been his wont to bully. Bitter experiences these, which, perforce, he swallowed, calling upon all his wisdom to cope with them. In the old days he would have sprung upon White Fang in a fury of righteous wrath. But now his waning powers would not permit such a course. He bristled fiercely and looked ominously across the shin-bone at White Fang. And White Fang, resurrecting quite a deal of the old awe, seemed to wilt and to shrink in upon himself and grow small, as he cast about in his mind for a way to beat a retreat not too inglorious. And right here Baseek erred. Had he contented himself with looking fierce and ominous, all would have been well. White Fang, on the verge of retreat, would have retreated, leaving the meat to him. But Baseek did not wait. He considered the victory already his and stepped forward to the meat. As he bent his head carelessly to smell it, White Fang bristled slightly. Even then it was not too late for Baseek to retrieve the situation. Had he merely stood over the meat, head up and glowering, White Fang would ultimately have slunk away. But the fresh meat was strong in Baseek's nostrils, and greed urged him to take a bite of it. This was too much for White Fang. Fresh upon his months of mastery over his own team-mates, it was beyond his self-control to stand idly by while another devoured the meat that belonged to him. He struck, after his custom, without warning. With the first slash, Baseek's right ear was ripped into ribbons. He was astounded at the suddenness of it. But more things, and most grievous ones, were happening with equal suddenness. He was knocked off his feet. His throat was bitten. While he was struggling to his feet the young dog sank teeth twice into his shoulder. The swiftness of it was bewildering. He made a futile rush at White Fang, clipping the empty air with an outraged snap. The next moment his nose was laid open, and he was staggering backward away from the meat. The situation was now reversed. White Fang stood over the shin-bone, bristling and menacing, while Baseek stood a little way off, preparing to retreat. He dared not risk a fight with this young lightning-flash, and again he knew, and more bitterly, the enfeeblement of oncoming age. His attempt to maintain his dignity was heroic. Calmly turning his back upon young dog and shin-bone, as though both were beneath his notice and unworthy of his consideration, he stalked grandly away. Nor, until well out of sight, did he stop to lick his bleeding wounds. The effect on White Fang was to give him a greater faith in himself, and a greater pride. He walked less softly among the grown dogs; his attitude toward them was less compromising. Not that he went out of his way looking for trouble. Far from it. But upon his way he demanded consideration. He stood upon his right to go his way unmolested and to give trail to no dog. He had to be taken into account, that was all. He was no longer to be disregarded and ignored, as was the lot of puppies, and as continued to be the lot of the puppies that were his team-mates. They got out of the way, gave trail to the grown dogs, and gave up meat to them under compulsion. But White Fang, uncompanionable, solitary, morose, scarcely looking to right or left, redoubtable, forbidding of aspect, remote and alien, was accepted as an equal by his puzzled elders. They quickly learned to leave him alone, neither venturing hostile acts nor making overtures of friendliness. If they left him alone, he left them alone--a state of affairs that they found, after a few encounters, to be pre-eminently desirable. In midsummer White Fang had an experience. Trotting along in his silent way to investigate a new tepee which had been erected on the edge of the village while he was away with the hunters after moose, he came full upon Kiche. He paused and looked at her. He remembered her vaguely, but he _remembered_ her, and that was more than could be said for her. She lifted her lip at him in the old snarl of menace, and his memory became clear. His forgotten cubhood, all that was associated with that familiar snarl, rushed back to him. Before he had known the gods, she had been to him the centre-pin of the universe. The old familiar feelings of that time came back upon him, surged up within him. He bounded towards her joyously, and she met him with shrewd fangs that laid his cheek open to the bone. He did not understand. He backed away, bewildered and puzzled. But it was not Kiche's fault. A wolf-mother was not made to remember her cubs of a year or so before. So she did not remember White Fang. He was a strange animal, an intruder; and her present litter of puppies gave her the right to resent such intrusion. One of the puppies sprawled up to White Fang. They were half-brothers, only they did not know it. White Fang sniffed the puppy curiously, whereupon Kiche rushed upon him, gashing his face a second time. He backed farther away. All the old memories and associations died down again and passed into the grave from which they had been resurrected. He looked at Kiche licking her puppy and stopping now and then to snarl at him. She was without value to him. He had learned to get along without her. Her meaning was forgotten. There was no place for her in his scheme of things, as there was no place for him in hers. He was still standing, stupid and bewildered, the memories forgotten, wondering what it was all about, when Kiche attacked him a third time, intent on driving him away altogether from the vicinity. And White Fang allowed himself to be driven away. This was a female of his kind, and it was a law of his kind that the males must not fight the females. He did not know anything about this law, for it was no generalisation of the mind, not a something acquired by experience of the world. He knew it as a secret prompting, as an urge of instinct--of the same instinct that made him howl at the moon and stars of nights, and that made him fear death and the unknown. The months went by. White Fang grew stronger, heavier, and more compact, while his character was developing along the lines laid down by his heredity and his environment. His heredity was a life-stuff that may be likened to clay. It possessed many possibilities, was capable of being moulded into many different forms. Environment served to model the clay, to give it a particular form. Thus, had White Fang never come in to the fires of man, the Wild would have moulded him into a true wolf. But the gods had given him a different environment, and he was moulded into a dog that was rather wolfish, but that was a dog and not a wolf. And so, according to the clay of his nature and the pressure of his surroundings, his character was being moulded into a certain particular shape. There was no escaping it. He was becoming more morose, more uncompanionable, more solitary, more ferocious; while the dogs were learning more and more that it was better to be at peace with him than at war, and Grey Beaver was coming to prize him more greatly with the passage of each day. White Fang, seeming to sum up strength in all his qualities, nevertheless suffered from one besetting weakness. He could not stand being laughed at. The laughter of men was a hateful thing. They might laugh among themselves about anything they pleased except himself, and he did not mind. But the moment laughter was turned upon him he would fly into a most terrible rage. Grave, dignified, sombre, a laugh made him frantic to ridiculousness. It so outraged him and upset him that for hours he would behave like a demon. And woe to the dog that at such times ran foul of him. He knew the law too well to take it out of Grey Beaver; behind Grey Beaver were a club and godhead. But behind the dogs there was nothing but space, and into this space they flew when White Fang came on the scene, made mad by laughter. In the third year of his life there came a great famine to the Mackenzie Indians. In the summer the fish failed. In the winter the cariboo forsook their accustomed track. Moose were scarce, the rabbits almost disappeared, hunting and preying animals perished. Denied their usual food-supply, weakened by hunger, they fell upon and devoured one another. Only the strong survived. White Fang's gods were always hunting animals. The old and the weak of them died of hunger. There was wailing in the village, where the women and children went without in order that what little they had might go into the bellies of the lean and hollow-eyed hunters who trod the forest in the vain pursuit of meat. To such extremity were the gods driven that they ate the soft-tanned leather of their mocassins and mittens, while the dogs ate the harnesses off their backs and the very whip-lashes. Also, the dogs ate one another, and also the gods ate the dogs. The weakest and the more worthless were eaten first. The dogs that still lived, looked on and understood. A few of the boldest and wisest forsook the fires of the gods, which had now become a shambles, and fled into the forest, where, in the end, they starved to death or were eaten by wolves. In this time of misery, White Fang, too, stole away into the woods. He was better fitted for the life than the other dogs, for he had the training of his cubhood to guide him. Especially adept did he become in stalking small living things. He would lie concealed for hours, following every movement of a cautious tree-squirrel, waiting, with a patience as huge as the hunger he suffered from, until the squirrel ventured out upon the ground. Even then, White Fang was not premature. He waited until he was sure of striking before the squirrel could gain a tree-refuge. Then, and not until then, would he flash from his hiding- place, a grey projectile, incredibly swift, never failing its mark--the fleeing squirrel that fled not fast enough. Successful as he was with squirrels, there was one difficulty that prevented him from living and growing fat on them. There were not enough squirrels. So he was driven to hunt still smaller things. So acute did his hunger become at times that he was not above rooting out wood-mice from their burrows in the ground. Nor did he scorn to do battle with a weasel as hungry as himself and many times more ferocious. In the worst pinches of the famine he stole back to the fires of the gods. But he did not go into the fires. He lurked in the forest, avoiding discovery and robbing the snares at the rare intervals when game was caught. He even robbed Grey Beaver's snare of a rabbit at a time when Grey Beaver staggered and tottered through the forest, sitting down often to rest, what of weakness and of shortness of breath. One day White Fang encountered a young wolf, gaunt and scrawny, loose- jointed with famine. Had he not been hungry himself, White Fang might have gone with him and eventually found his way into the pack amongst his wild brethren. As it was, he ran the young wolf down and killed and ate him. Fortune seemed to favour him. Always, when hardest pressed for food, he found something to kill. Again, when he was weak, it was his luck that none of the larger preying animals chanced upon him. Thus, he was strong from the two days' eating a lynx had afforded him when the hungry wolf- pack ran full tilt upon him. It was a long, cruel chase, but he was better nourished than they, and in the end outran them. And not only did he outrun them, but, circling widely back on his track, he gathered in one of his exhausted pursuers. After that he left that part of the country and journeyed over to the valley wherein he had been born. Here, in the old lair, he encountered Kiche. Up to her old tricks, she, too, had fled the inhospitable fires of the gods and gone back to her old refuge to give birth to her young. Of this litter but one remained alive when White Fang came upon the scene, and this one was not destined to live long. Young life had little chance in such a famine. Kiche's greeting of her grown son was anything but affectionate. But White Fang did not mind. He had outgrown his mother. So he turned tail philosophically and trotted on up the stream. At the forks he took the turning to the left, where he found the lair of the lynx with whom his mother and he had fought long before. Here, in the abandoned lair, he settled down and rested for a day. During the early summer, in the last days of the famine, he met Lip-lip, who had likewise taken to the woods, where he had eked out a miserable existence. White Fang came upon him unexpectedly. Trotting in opposite directions along the base of a high bluff, they rounded a corner of rock and found themselves face to face. They paused with instant alarm, and looked at each other suspiciously. White Fang was in splendid condition. His hunting had been good, and for a week he had eaten his fill. He was even gorged from his latest kill. But in the moment he looked at Lip-lip his hair rose on end all along his back. It was an involuntary bristling on his part, the physical state that in the past had always accompanied the mental state produced in him by Lip-lip's bullying and persecution. As in the past he had bristled and snarled at sight of Lip-lip, so now, and automatically, he bristled and snarled. He did not waste any time. The thing was done thoroughly and with despatch. Lip-lip essayed to back away, but White Fang struck him hard, shoulder to shoulder. Lip-lip was overthrown and rolled upon his back. White Fang's teeth drove into the scrawny throat. There was a death-struggle, during which White Fang walked around, stiff-legged and observant. Then he resumed his course and trotted on along the base of the bluff. One day, not long after, he came to the edge of the forest, where a narrow stretch of open land sloped down to the Mackenzie. He had been over this ground before, when it was bare, but now a village occupied it. Still hidden amongst the trees, he paused to study the situation. Sights and sounds and scents were familiar to him. It was the old village changed to a new place. But sights and sounds and smells were different from those he had last had when he fled away from it. There was no whimpering nor wailing. Contented sounds saluted his ear, and when he heard the angry voice of a woman he knew it to be the anger that proceeds from a full stomach. And there was a smell in the air of fish. There was food. The famine was gone. He came out boldly from the forest and trotted into camp straight to Grey Beaver's tepee. Grey Beaver was not there; but Kloo-kooch welcomed him with glad cries and the whole of a fresh-caught fish, and he lay down to wait Grey Beaver's coming. PART IV

chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang18.html

Spring arrives, and Gray Beaver finishes the journey. White Fang is one year old, and next to Lip-lip, he is the largest yearling. He continues to have his battles with other dogs. When he fights with Baseek over a piece of shinbone, White Fang rips Baseeks right ear and wounds him on the shoulder. Baseek, old and weak, gives up. In mid-summer, White Fang encounters Kiche, who has now forgotten him and has had a new litter. She hovers protectively around her litter, trying to drive White Fang away. When White Fang is three years old, there is a great famine in the land. Only the strong will survive, for the Indians eat the weaker dogs. The Indians also eat the soft-tanned leather of their moccasins and mittens to fill their stomachs. White Fang escapes into the forest to hunt on his own, at times robbing rabbit snares and at times capturing small game, like squirrels and woodmice. At the end of the famine, White Fang meets Lip-lip, with whom he fights until Lip-lip is killed. He then returns to the village and is received warmly and given plenty of fish.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_14_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 4.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang19.html", "summary": "White Fang is now the leader of the team, positioned at the longest end of the rope. He is not allowed to stop without orders. If he does so, the other dogs are permitted to attack him. The other dogs are jealous of his position and rage against White Fang, even when they are free; as expected, Mit-sah predictably bestows meat on White Fang in front of the others, making matters worse. The other dogs always band together because they fear that White Fang will attack them if they are alone. The wolf hates the other dogs equally. When White Fang is nearly five years old, Gray Beaver takes him on another journey along the Mackenzie, across the Rockies, and down the Porcupine to the Yukon. White Fang attacks the dogs in these places, too. His advantage as an attacker lies in the fact that he can judge time and distance correctly. White Fangs sled crosses the water-shed between the Mackenzie River and the Yukon in the late winter, and the spring is spent hunting in the Rockies. He later paddles down the stream to its junction with the Yukon under the Arctic Circle. Here stands the Old Hudsons Bay Company Fort. It is the summer of 1898, and the gold seekers are going up the Yukon to Dawson and Klondike. Gray Beaver profits tremendously through his trade of fur, gut-sewn mittens, and moccasins. At Fort Yukon, White Fang encounters his first white man. He is suspicious of their dogs, and fights them regularly. He realizes, however, that when he kills the dogs, the gods get angry at this. He cleverly launches a fatal attack on a dog and leaves it behind for the dogs to rip him apart. Upon seeing this, one man fires six shots and kills six dogs in the pack. White Fang walks freely away.", "analysis": ""}

Had there been in White Fang's nature any possibility, no matter how remote, of his ever coming to fraternise with his kind, such possibility was irretrievably destroyed when he was made leader of the sled-team. For now the dogs hated him--hated him for the extra meat bestowed upon him by Mit-sah; hated him for all the real and fancied favours he received; hated him for that he fled always at the head of the team, his waving brush of a tail and his perpetually retreating hind-quarters for ever maddening their eyes. And White Fang just as bitterly hated them back. Being sled-leader was anything but gratifying to him. To be compelled to run away before the yelling pack, every dog of which, for three years, he had thrashed and mastered, was almost more than he could endure. But endure it he must, or perish, and the life that was in him had no desire to perish out. The moment Mit-sah gave his order for the start, that moment the whole team, with eager, savage cries, sprang forward at White Fang. There was no defence for him. If he turned upon them, Mit-sah would throw the stinging lash of the whip into his face. Only remained to him to run away. He could not encounter that howling horde with his tail and hind-quarters. These were scarcely fit weapons with which to meet the many merciless fangs. So run away he did, violating his own nature and pride with every leap he made, and leaping all day long. One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself. Such a recoil is like that of a hair, made to grow out from the body, turning unnaturally upon the direction of its growth and growing into the body--a rankling, festering thing of hurt. And so with White Fang. Every urge of his being impelled him to spring upon the pack that cried at his heels, but it was the will of the gods that this should not be; and behind the will, to enforce it, was the whip of cariboo-gut with its biting thirty-foot lash. So White Fang could only eat his heart in bitterness and develop a hatred and malice commensurate with the ferocity and indomitability of his nature. If ever a creature was the enemy of its kind, White Fang was that creature. He asked no quarter, gave none. He was continually marred and scarred by the teeth of the pack, and as continually he left his own marks upon the pack. Unlike most leaders, who, when camp was made and the dogs were unhitched, huddled near to the gods for protection, White Fang disdained such protection. He walked boldly about the camp, inflicting punishment in the night for what he had suffered in the day. In the time before he was made leader of the team, the pack had learned to get out of his way. But now it was different. Excited by the day- long pursuit of him, swayed subconsciously by the insistent iteration on their brains of the sight of him fleeing away, mastered by the feeling of mastery enjoyed all day, the dogs could not bring themselves to give way to him. When he appeared amongst them, there was always a squabble. His progress was marked by snarl and snap and growl. The very atmosphere he breathed was surcharged with hatred and malice, and this but served to increase the hatred and malice within him. When Mit-sah cried out his command for the team to stop, White Fang obeyed. At first this caused trouble for the other dogs. All of them would spring upon the hated leader only to find the tables turned. Behind him would be Mit-sah, the great whip singing in his hand. So the dogs came to understand that when the team stopped by order, White Fang was to be let alone. But when White Fang stopped without orders, then it was allowed them to spring upon him and destroy him if they could. After several experiences, White Fang never stopped without orders. He learned quickly. It was in the nature of things, that he must learn quickly if he were to survive the unusually severe conditions under which life was vouchsafed him. But the dogs could never learn the lesson to leave him alone in camp. Each day, pursuing him and crying defiance at him, the lesson of the previous night was erased, and that night would have to be learned over again, to be as immediately forgotten. Besides, there was a greater consistence in their dislike of him. They sensed between themselves and him a difference of kind--cause sufficient in itself for hostility. Like him, they were domesticated wolves. But they had been domesticated for generations. Much of the Wild had been lost, so that to them the Wild was the unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing and ever warring. But to him, in appearance and action and impulse, still clung the Wild. He symbolised it, was its personification: so that when they showed their teeth to him they were defending themselves against the powers of destruction that lurked in the shadows of the forest and in the dark beyond the camp-fire. But there was one lesson the dogs did learn, and that was to keep together. White Fang was too terrible for any of them to face single- handed. They met him with the mass-formation, otherwise he would have killed them, one by one, in a night. As it was, he never had a chance to kill them. He might roll a dog off its feet, but the pack would be upon him before he could follow up and deliver the deadly throat-stroke. At the first hint of conflict, the whole team drew together and faced him. The dogs had quarrels among themselves, but these were forgotten when trouble was brewing with White Fang. On the other hand, try as they would, they could not kill White Fang. He was too quick for them, too formidable, too wise. He avoided tight places and always backed out of it when they bade fair to surround him. While, as for getting him off his feet, there was no dog among them capable of doing the trick. His feet clung to the earth with the same tenacity that he clung to life. For that matter, life and footing were synonymous in this unending warfare with the pack, and none knew it better than White Fang. So he became the enemy of his kind, domesticated wolves that they were, softened by the fires of man, weakened in the sheltering shadow of man's strength. White Fang was bitter and implacable. The clay of him was so moulded. He declared a vendetta against all dogs. And so terribly did he live this vendetta that Grey Beaver, fierce savage himself, could not but marvel at White Fang's ferocity. Never, he swore, had there been the like of this animal; and the Indians in strange villages swore likewise when they considered the tale of his killings amongst their dogs. When White Fang was nearly five years old, Grey Beaver took him on another great journey, and long remembered was the havoc he worked amongst the dogs of the many villages along the Mackenzie, across the Rockies, and down the Porcupine to the Yukon. He revelled in the vengeance he wreaked upon his kind. They were ordinary, unsuspecting dogs. They were not prepared for his swiftness and directness, for his attack without warning. They did not know him for what he was, a lightning-flash of slaughter. They bristled up to him, stiff-legged and challenging, while he, wasting no time on elaborate preliminaries, snapping into action like a steel spring, was at their throats and destroying them before they knew what was happening and while they were yet in the throes of surprise. He became an adept at fighting. He economised. He never wasted his strength, never tussled. He was in too quickly for that, and, if he missed, was out again too quickly. The dislike of the wolf for close quarters was his to an unusual degree. He could not endure a prolonged contact with another body. It smacked of danger. It made him frantic. He must be away, free, on his own legs, touching no living thing. It was the Wild still clinging to him, asserting itself through him. This feeling had been accentuated by the Ishmaelite life he had led from his puppyhood. Danger lurked in contacts. It was the trap, ever the trap, the fear of it lurking deep in the life of him, woven into the fibre of him. In consequence, the strange dogs he encountered had no chance against him. He eluded their fangs. He got them, or got away, himself untouched in either event. In the natural course of things there were exceptions to this. There were times when several dogs, pitching on to him, punished him before he could get away; and there were times when a single dog scored deeply on him. But these were accidents. In the main, so efficient a fighter had he become, he went his way unscathed. Another advantage he possessed was that of correctly judging time and distance. Not that he did this consciously, however. He did not calculate such things. It was all automatic. His eyes saw correctly, and the nerves carried the vision correctly to his brain. The parts of him were better adjusted than those of the average dog. They worked together more smoothly and steadily. His was a better, far better, nervous, mental, and muscular co-ordination. When his eyes conveyed to his brain the moving image of an action, his brain without conscious effort, knew the space that limited that action and the time required for its completion. Thus, he could avoid the leap of another dog, or the drive of its fangs, and at the same moment could seize the infinitesimal fraction of time in which to deliver his own attack. Body and brain, his was a more perfected mechanism. Not that he was to be praised for it. Nature had been more generous to him than to the average animal, that was all. It was in the summer that White Fang arrived at Fort Yukon. Grey Beaver had crossed the great watershed between Mackenzie and the Yukon in the late winter, and spent the spring in hunting among the western outlying spurs of the Rockies. Then, after the break-up of the ice on the Porcupine, he had built a canoe and paddled down that stream to where it effected its junction with the Yukon just under the Arctic circle. Here stood the old Hudson's Bay Company fort; and here were many Indians, much food, and unprecedented excitement. It was the summer of 1898, and thousands of gold-hunters were going up the Yukon to Dawson and the Klondike. Still hundreds of miles from their goal, nevertheless many of them had been on the way for a year, and the least any of them had travelled to get that far was five thousand miles, while some had come from the other side of the world. Here Grey Beaver stopped. A whisper of the gold-rush had reached his ears, and he had come with several bales of furs, and another of gut-sewn mittens and moccasins. He would not have ventured so long a trip had he not expected generous profits. But what he had expected was nothing to what he realised. His wildest dreams had not exceeded a hundred per cent. profit; he made a thousand per cent. And like a true Indian, he settled down to trade carefully and slowly, even if it took all summer and the rest of the winter to dispose of his goods. It was at Fort Yukon that White Fang saw his first white men. As compared with the Indians he had known, they were to him another race of beings, a race of superior gods. They impressed him as possessing superior power, and it is on power that godhead rests. White Fang did not reason it out, did not in his mind make the sharp generalisation that the white gods were more powerful. It was a feeling, nothing more, and yet none the less potent. As, in his puppyhood, the looming bulks of the tepees, man-reared, had affected him as manifestations of power, so was he affected now by the houses and the huge fort all of massive logs. Here was power. Those white gods were strong. They possessed greater mastery over matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among which was Grey Beaver. And yet Grey Beaver was as a child-god among these white- skinned ones. To be sure, White Fang only felt these things. He was not conscious of them. Yet it is upon feeling, more often than thinking, that animals act; and every act White Fang now performed was based upon the feeling that the white men were the superior gods. In the first place he was very suspicious of them. There was no telling what unknown terrors were theirs, what unknown hurts they could administer. He was curious to observe them, fearful of being noticed by them. For the first few hours he was content with slinking around and watching them from a safe distance. Then he saw that no harm befell the dogs that were near to them, and he came in closer. In turn he was an object of great curiosity to them. His wolfish appearance caught their eyes at once, and they pointed him out to one another. This act of pointing put White Fang on his guard, and when they tried to approach him he showed his teeth and backed away. Not one succeeded in laying a hand on him, and it was well that they did not. White Fang soon learned that very few of these gods--not more than a dozen--lived at this place. Every two or three days a steamer (another and colossal manifestation of power) came into the bank and stopped for several hours. The white men came from off these steamers and went away on them again. There seemed untold numbers of these white men. In the first day or so, he saw more of them than he had seen Indians in all his life; and as the days went by they continued to come up the river, stop, and then go on up the river out of sight. But if the white gods were all-powerful, their dogs did not amount to much. This White Fang quickly discovered by mixing with those that came ashore with their masters. They were irregular shapes and sizes. Some were short-legged--too short; others were long-legged--too long. They had hair instead of fur, and a few had very little hair at that. And none of them knew how to fight. As an enemy of his kind, it was in White Fang's province to fight with them. This he did, and he quickly achieved for them a mighty contempt. They were soft and helpless, made much noise, and floundered around clumsily trying to accomplish by main strength what he accomplished by dexterity and cunning. They rushed bellowing at him. He sprang to the side. They did not know what had become of him; and in that moment he struck them on the shoulder, rolling them off their feet and delivering his stroke at the throat. Sometimes this stroke was successful, and a stricken dog rolled in the dirt, to be pounced upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian dogs that waited. White Fang was wise. He had long since learned that the gods were made angry when their dogs were killed. The white men were no exception to this. So he was content, when he had overthrown and slashed wide the throat of one of their dogs, to drop back and let the pack go in and do the cruel finishing work. It was then that the white men rushed in, visiting their wrath heavily on the pack, while White Fang went free. He would stand off at a little distance and look on, while stones, clubs, axes, and all sorts of weapons fell upon his fellows. White Fang was very wise. But his fellows grew wise in their own way; and in this White Fang grew wise with them. They learned that it was when a steamer first tied to the bank that they had their fun. After the first two or three strange dogs had been downed and destroyed, the white men hustled their own animals back on board and wreaked savage vengeance on the offenders. One white man, having seen his dog, a setter, torn to pieces before his eyes, drew a revolver. He fired rapidly, six times, and six of the pack lay dead or dying--another manifestation of power that sank deep into White Fang's consciousness. White Fang enjoyed it all. He did not love his kind, and he was shrewd enough to escape hurt himself. At first, the killing of the white men's dogs had been a diversion. After a time it became his occupation. There was no work for him to do. Grey Beaver was busy trading and getting wealthy. So White Fang hung around the landing with the disreputable gang of Indian dogs, waiting for steamers. With the arrival of a steamer the fun began. After a few minutes, by the time the white men had got over their surprise, the gang scattered. The fun was over until the next steamer should arrive. But it can scarcely be said that White Fang was a member of the gang. He did not mingle with it, but remained aloof, always himself, and was even feared by it. It is true, he worked with it. He picked the quarrel with the strange dog while the gang waited. And when he had overthrown the strange dog the gang went in to finish it. But it is equally true that he then withdrew, leaving the gang to receive the punishment of the outraged gods. It did not require much exertion to pick these quarrels. All he had to do, when the strange dogs came ashore, was to show himself. When they saw him they rushed for him. It was their instinct. He was the Wild--the unknown, the terrible, the ever-menacing, the thing that prowled in the darkness around the fires of the primeval world when they, cowering close to the fires, were reshaping their instincts, learning to fear the Wild out of which they had come, and which they had deserted and betrayed. Generation by generation, down all the generations, had this fear of the Wild been stamped into their natures. For centuries the Wild had stood for terror and destruction. And during all this time free licence had been theirs, from their masters, to kill the things of the Wild. In doing this they had protected both themselves and the gods whose companionship they shared. And so, fresh from the soft southern world, these dogs, trotting down the gang-plank and out upon the Yukon shore had but to see White Fang to experience the irresistible impulse to rush upon him and destroy him. They might be town-reared dogs, but the instinctive fear of the Wild was theirs just the same. Not alone with their own eyes did they see the wolfish creature in the clear light of day, standing before them. They saw him with the eyes of their ancestors, and by their inherited memory they knew White Fang for the wolf, and they remembered the ancient feud. All of which served to make White Fang's days enjoyable. If the sight of him drove these strange dogs upon him, so much the better for him, so much the worse for them. They looked upon him as legitimate prey, and as legitimate prey he looked upon them. Not for nothing had he first seen the light of day in a lonely lair and fought his first fights with the ptarmigan, the weasel, and the lynx. And not for nothing had his puppyhood been made bitter by the persecution of Lip-lip and the whole puppy pack. It might have been otherwise, and he would then have been otherwise. Had Lip-lip not existed, he would have passed his puppyhood with the other puppies and grown up more doglike and with more liking for dogs. Had Grey Beaver possessed the plummet of affection and love, he might have sounded the deeps of White Fang's nature and brought up to the surface all manner of kindly qualities. But these things had not been so. The clay of White Fang had been moulded until he became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious, the enemy of all his kind.

chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang19.html

White Fang is now the leader of the team, positioned at the longest end of the rope. He is not allowed to stop without orders. If he does so, the other dogs are permitted to attack him. The other dogs are jealous of his position and rage against White Fang, even when they are free; as expected, Mit-sah predictably bestows meat on White Fang in front of the others, making matters worse. The other dogs always band together because they fear that White Fang will attack them if they are alone. The wolf hates the other dogs equally. When White Fang is nearly five years old, Gray Beaver takes him on another journey along the Mackenzie, across the Rockies, and down the Porcupine to the Yukon. White Fang attacks the dogs in these places, too. His advantage as an attacker lies in the fact that he can judge time and distance correctly. White Fangs sled crosses the water-shed between the Mackenzie River and the Yukon in the late winter, and the spring is spent hunting in the Rockies. He later paddles down the stream to its junction with the Yukon under the Arctic Circle. Here stands the Old Hudsons Bay Company Fort. It is the summer of 1898, and the gold seekers are going up the Yukon to Dawson and Klondike. Gray Beaver profits tremendously through his trade of fur, gut-sewn mittens, and moccasins. At Fort Yukon, White Fang encounters his first white man. He is suspicious of their dogs, and fights them regularly. He realizes, however, that when he kills the dogs, the gods get angry at this. He cleverly launches a fatal attack on a dog and leaves it behind for the dogs to rip him apart. Upon seeing this, one man fires six shots and kills six dogs in the pack. White Fang walks freely away.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/16.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_15_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 4.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang20.html", "summary": "A small number of white men, who call themselves Sour-doughs, live in Fort Yukon. They make their bread with sourdough starter, instead of baking powder or yeast. These men enjoy the sight of the newcomers dogs being mangled to death by White Fang and the other dogs. One man in particular, Beauty Smith, enjoys the fighting. He works for the people at the fort and has his eye on White Fang. He offers to buy White Fang from Gray Beaver, who is at first not willing. Beauty Smith then tempts Gray Beaver with liquor until he is addicted. Gray Beaver is then willing to sell White Fang for a few bottles of whiskey. Gray Beaver hands White Fang over to Beauty, but he escapes three times from captivity and returns to Gray Beaver, only to be betrayed and returned each time. Upon his return, he is beaten by Beauty for his disobedience. Finally, Gray Beaver, sober and bankrupt, leaves for the Mackenzie River, and White Fang cannot follow since he is tied with a chain. After one especially severe beating from Beauty, White Fang falls sick.", "analysis": ""}

A small number of white men lived in Fort Yukon. These men had been long in the country. They called themselves Sour-doughs, and took great pride in so classifying themselves. For other men, new in the land, they felt nothing but disdain. The men who came ashore from the steamers were newcomers. They were known as _chechaquos_, and they always wilted at the application of the name. They made their bread with baking-powder. This was the invidious distinction between them and the Sour-doughs, who, forsooth, made their bread from sour-dough because they had no baking- powder. All of which is neither here nor there. The men in the fort disdained the newcomers and enjoyed seeing them come to grief. Especially did they enjoy the havoc worked amongst the newcomers' dogs by White Fang and his disreputable gang. When a steamer arrived, the men of the fort made it a point always to come down to the bank and see the fun. They looked forward to it with as much anticipation as did the Indian dogs, while they were not slow to appreciate the savage and crafty part played by White Fang. But there was one man amongst them who particularly enjoyed the sport. He would come running at the first sound of a steamboat's whistle; and when the last fight was over and White Fang and the pack had scattered, he would return slowly to the fort, his face heavy with regret. Sometimes, when a soft southland dog went down, shrieking its death-cry under the fangs of the pack, this man would be unable to contain himself, and would leap into the air and cry out with delight. And always he had a sharp and covetous eye for White Fang. This man was called "Beauty" by the other men of the fort. No one knew his first name, and in general he was known in the country as Beauty Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his naming. He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly with him. He was a small man to begin with; and upon his meagre frame was deposited an even more strikingly meagre head. Its apex might be likened to a point. In fact, in his boyhood, before he had been named Beauty by his fellows, he had been called "Pinhead." Backward, from the apex, his head slanted down to his neck and forward it slanted uncompromisingly to meet a low and remarkably wide forehead. Beginning here, as though regretting her parsimony, Nature had spread his features with a lavish hand. His eyes were large, and between them was the distance of two eyes. His face, in relation to the rest of him, was prodigious. In order to discover the necessary area, Nature had given him an enormous prognathous jaw. It was wide and heavy, and protruded outward and down until it seemed to rest on his chest. Possibly this appearance was due to the weariness of the slender neck, unable properly to support so great a burden. This jaw gave the impression of ferocious determination. But something lacked. Perhaps it was from excess. Perhaps the jaw was too large. At any rate, it was a lie. Beauty Smith was known far and wide as the weakest of weak-kneed and snivelling cowards. To complete his description, his teeth were large and yellow, while the two eye-teeth, larger than their fellows, showed under his lean lips like fangs. His eyes were yellow and muddy, as though Nature had run short on pigments and squeezed together the dregs of all her tubes. It was the same with his hair, sparse and irregular of growth, muddy-yellow and dirty-yellow, rising on his head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected tufts and bunches, in appearance like clumped and wind-blown grain. In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it lay elsewhere. He was not responsible. The clay of him had been so moulded in the making. He did the cooking for the other men in the fort, the dish-washing and the drudgery. They did not despise him. Rather did they tolerate him in a broad human way, as one tolerates any creature evilly treated in the making. Also, they feared him. His cowardly rages made them dread a shot in the back or poison in their coffee. But somebody had to do the cooking, and whatever else his shortcomings, Beauty Smith could cook. This was the man that looked at White Fang, delighted in his ferocious prowess, and desired to possess him. He made overtures to White Fang from the first. White Fang began by ignoring him. Later on, when the overtures became more insistent, White Fang bristled and bared his teeth and backed away. He did not like the man. The feel of him was bad. He sensed the evil in him, and feared the extended hand and the attempts at soft-spoken speech. Because of all this, he hated the man. With the simpler creatures, good and bad are things simply understood. The good stands for all things that bring easement and satisfaction and surcease from pain. Therefore, the good is liked. The bad stands for all things that are fraught with discomfort, menace, and hurt, and is hated accordingly. White Fang's feel of Beauty Smith was bad. From the man's distorted body and twisted mind, in occult ways, like mists rising from malarial marshes, came emanations of the unhealth within. Not by reasoning, not by the five senses alone, but by other and remoter and uncharted senses, came the feeling to White Fang that the man was ominous with evil, pregnant with hurtfulness, and therefore a thing bad, and wisely to be hated. White Fang was in Grey Beaver's camp when Beauty Smith first visited it. At the faint sound of his distant feet, before he came in sight, White Fang knew who was coming and began to bristle. He had been lying down in an abandon of comfort, but he arose quickly, and, as the man arrived, slid away in true wolf-fashion to the edge of the camp. He did not know what they said, but he could see the man and Grey Beaver talking together. Once, the man pointed at him, and White Fang snarled back as though the hand were just descending upon him instead of being, as it was, fifty feet away. The man laughed at this; and White Fang slunk away to the sheltering woods, his head turned to observe as he glided softly over the ground. Grey Beaver refused to sell the dog. He had grown rich with his trading and stood in need of nothing. Besides, White Fang was a valuable animal, the strongest sled-dog he had ever owned, and the best leader. Furthermore, there was no dog like him on the Mackenzie nor the Yukon. He could fight. He killed other dogs as easily as men killed mosquitoes. (Beauty Smith's eyes lighted up at this, and he licked his thin lips with an eager tongue). No, White Fang was not for sale at any price. But Beauty Smith knew the ways of Indians. He visited Grey Beaver's camp often, and hidden under his coat was always a black bottle or so. One of the potencies of whisky is the breeding of thirst. Grey Beaver got the thirst. His fevered membranes and burnt stomach began to clamour for more and more of the scorching fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry by the unwonted stimulant, permitted him to go any length to obtain it. The money he had received for his furs and mittens and moccasins began to go. It went faster and faster, and the shorter his money-sack grew, the shorter grew his temper. In the end his money and goods and temper were all gone. Nothing remained to him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that grew more prodigious with every sober breath he drew. Then it was that Beauty Smith had talk with him again about the sale of White Fang; but this time the price offered was in bottles, not dollars, and Grey Beaver's ears were more eager to hear. "You ketch um dog you take um all right," was his last word. The bottles were delivered, but after two days. "You ketch um dog," were Beauty Smith's words to Grey Beaver. White Fang slunk into camp one evening and dropped down with a sigh of content. The dreaded white god was not there. For days his manifestations of desire to lay hands on him had been growing more insistent, and during that time White Fang had been compelled to avoid the camp. He did not know what evil was threatened by those insistent hands. He knew only that they did threaten evil of some sort, and that it was best for him to keep out of their reach. But scarcely had he lain down when Grey Beaver staggered over to him and tied a leather thong around his neck. He sat down beside White Fang, holding the end of the thong in his hand. In the other hand he held a bottle, which, from time to time, was inverted above his head to the accompaniment of gurgling noises. An hour of this passed, when the vibrations of feet in contact with the ground foreran the one who approached. White Fang heard it first, and he was bristling with recognition while Grey Beaver still nodded stupidly. White Fang tried to draw the thong softly out of his master's hand; but the relaxed fingers closed tightly and Grey Beaver roused himself. Beauty Smith strode into camp and stood over White Fang. He snarled softly up at the thing of fear, watching keenly the deportment of the hands. One hand extended outward and began to descend upon his head. His soft snarl grew tense and harsh. The hand continued slowly to descend, while he crouched beneath it, eyeing it malignantly, his snarl growing shorter and shorter as, with quickening breath, it approached its culmination. Suddenly he snapped, striking with his fangs like a snake. The hand was jerked back, and the teeth came together emptily with a sharp click. Beauty Smith was frightened and angry. Grey Beaver clouted White Fang alongside the head, so that he cowered down close to the earth in respectful obedience. White Fang's suspicious eyes followed every movement. He saw Beauty Smith go away and return with a stout club. Then the end of the thong was given over to him by Grey Beaver. Beauty Smith started to walk away. The thong grew taut. White Fang resisted it. Grey Beaver clouted him right and left to make him get up and follow. He obeyed, but with a rush, hurling himself upon the stranger who was dragging him away. Beauty Smith did not jump away. He had been waiting for this. He swung the club smartly, stopping the rush midway and smashing White Fang down upon the ground. Grey Beaver laughed and nodded approval. Beauty Smith tightened the thong again, and White Fang crawled limply and dizzily to his feet. He did not rush a second time. One smash from the club was sufficient to convince him that the white god knew how to handle it, and he was too wise to fight the inevitable. So he followed morosely at Beauty Smith's heels, his tail between his legs, yet snarling softly under his breath. But Beauty Smith kept a wary eye on him, and the club was held always ready to strike. At the fort Beauty Smith left him securely tied and went in to bed. White Fang waited an hour. Then he applied his teeth to the thong, and in the space of ten seconds was free. He had wasted no time with his teeth. There had been no useless gnawing. The thong was cut across, diagonally, almost as clean as though done by a knife. White Fang looked up at the fort, at the same time bristling and growling. Then he turned and trotted back to Grey Beaver's camp. He owed no allegiance to this strange and terrible god. He had given himself to Grey Beaver, and to Grey Beaver he considered he still belonged. But what had occurred before was repeated--with a difference. Grey Beaver again made him fast with a thong, and in the morning turned him over to Beauty Smith. And here was where the difference came in. Beauty Smith gave him a beating. Tied securely, White Fang could only rage futilely and endure the punishment. Club and whip were both used upon him, and he experienced the worst beating he had ever received in his life. Even the big beating given him in his puppyhood by Grey Beaver was mild compared with this. Beauty Smith enjoyed the task. He delighted in it. He gloated over his victim, and his eyes flamed dully, as he swung the whip or club and listened to White Fang's cries of pain and to his helpless bellows and snarls. For Beauty Smith was cruel in the way that cowards are cruel. Cringing and snivelling himself before the blows or angry speech of a man, he revenged himself, in turn, upon creatures weaker than he. All life likes power, and Beauty Smith was no exception. Denied the expression of power amongst his own kind, he fell back upon the lesser creatures and there vindicated the life that was in him. But Beauty Smith had not created himself, and no blame was to be attached to him. He had come into the world with a twisted body and a brute intelligence. This had constituted the clay of him, and it had not been kindly moulded by the world. White Fang knew why he was being beaten. When Grey Beaver tied the thong around his neck, and passed the end of the thong into Beauty Smith's keeping, White Fang knew that it was his god's will for him to go with Beauty Smith. And when Beauty Smith left him tied outside the fort, he knew that it was Beauty Smith's will that he should remain there. Therefore, he had disobeyed the will of both the gods, and earned the consequent punishment. He had seen dogs change owners in the past, and he had seen the runaways beaten as he was being beaten. He was wise, and yet in the nature of him there were forces greater than wisdom. One of these was fidelity. He did not love Grey Beaver, yet, even in the face of his will and his anger, he was faithful to him. He could not help it. This faithfulness was a quality of the clay that composed him. It was the quality that was peculiarly the possession of his kind; the quality that set apart his species from all other species; the quality that has enabled the wolf and the wild dog to come in from the open and be the companions of man. After the beating, White Fang was dragged back to the fort. But this time Beauty Smith left him tied with a stick. One does not give up a god easily, and so with White Fang. Grey Beaver was his own particular god, and, in spite of Grey Beaver's will, White Fang still clung to him and would not give him up. Grey Beaver had betrayed and forsaken him, but that had no effect upon him. Not for nothing had he surrendered himself body and soul to Grey Beaver. There had been no reservation on White Fang's part, and the bond was not to be broken easily. So, in the night, when the men in the fort were asleep, White Fang applied his teeth to the stick that held him. The wood was seasoned and dry, and it was tied so closely to his neck that he could scarcely get his teeth to it. It was only by the severest muscular exertion and neck- arching that he succeeded in getting the wood between his teeth, and barely between his teeth at that; and it was only by the exercise of an immense patience, extending through many hours, that he succeeded in gnawing through the stick. This was something that dogs were not supposed to do. It was unprecedented. But White Fang did it, trotting away from the fort in the early morning, with the end of the stick hanging to his neck. He was wise. But had he been merely wise he would not have gone back to Grey Beaver who had already twice betrayed him. But there was his faithfulness, and he went back to be betrayed yet a third time. Again he yielded to the tying of a thong around his neck by Grey Beaver, and again Beauty Smith came to claim him. And this time he was beaten even more severely than before. Grey Beaver looked on stolidly while the white man wielded the whip. He gave no protection. It was no longer his dog. When the beating was over White Fang was sick. A soft southland dog would have died under it, but not he. His school of life had been sterner, and he was himself of sterner stuff. He had too great vitality. His clutch on life was too strong. But he was very sick. At first he was unable to drag himself along, and Beauty Smith had to wait half-an-hour for him. And then, blind and reeling, he followed at Beauty Smith's heels back to the fort. But now he was tied with a chain that defied his teeth, and he strove in vain, by lunging, to draw the staple from the timber into which it was driven. After a few days, sober and bankrupt, Grey Beaver departed up the Porcupine on his long journey to the Mackenzie. White Fang remained on the Yukon, the property of a man more than half mad and all brute. But what is a dog to know in its consciousness of madness? To White Fang, Beauty Smith was a veritable, if terrible, god. He was a mad god at best, but White Fang knew nothing of madness; he knew only that he must submit to the will of this new master, obey his every whim and fancy.

chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang20.html

A small number of white men, who call themselves Sour-doughs, live in Fort Yukon. They make their bread with sourdough starter, instead of baking powder or yeast. These men enjoy the sight of the newcomers dogs being mangled to death by White Fang and the other dogs. One man in particular, Beauty Smith, enjoys the fighting. He works for the people at the fort and has his eye on White Fang. He offers to buy White Fang from Gray Beaver, who is at first not willing. Beauty Smith then tempts Gray Beaver with liquor until he is addicted. Gray Beaver is then willing to sell White Fang for a few bottles of whiskey. Gray Beaver hands White Fang over to Beauty, but he escapes three times from captivity and returns to Gray Beaver, only to be betrayed and returned each time. Upon his return, he is beaten by Beauty for his disobedience. Finally, Gray Beaver, sober and bankrupt, leaves for the Mackenzie River, and White Fang cannot follow since he is tied with a chain. After one especially severe beating from Beauty, White Fang falls sick.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_16_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 4.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang20.html", "summary": "White Fang is kept chained in a pen at the rear of the Fort, where Beauty provokes him and laughs at him, hoping to make White Fang even meaner. He is often removed from the pen and made to fight other dogs, including mastiffs, wolves, and huskies. White Fang invariably wins, no matter what kind of dog he faces. Sometimes he has to fight three dogs at once or a freshly caught wolf from the Wild. White Fangs constant victories make him a public figure. He is known as the Fighting wolf, and he is on exhibit in his cage all the time. Beauty Smith begins to make money at White Fangs expense. Whenever a fight is arranged, bets are taken. To make certain that White Fang wins, Beauty trains him in the wild. He releases him a few miles from town, usually at night to avoid police interference, and he must fight for survival. Back in captivity, White Fang is forced to fight wolves that have been trapped by Indians, for he has defeated all the available dogs. One time he fights a full-grown female lynx and defeats her.", "analysis": ""}

Under the tutelage of the mad god, White Fang became a fiend. He was kept chained in a pen at the rear of the fort, and here Beauty Smith teased and irritated and drove him wild with petty torments. The man early discovered White Fang's susceptibility to laughter, and made it a point after painfully tricking him, to laugh at him. This laughter was uproarious and scornful, and at the same time the god pointed his finger derisively at White Fang. At such times reason fled from White Fang, and in his transports of rage he was even more mad than Beauty Smith. Formerly, White Fang had been merely the enemy of his kind, withal a ferocious enemy. He now became the enemy of all things, and more ferocious than ever. To such an extent was he tormented, that he hated blindly and without the faintest spark of reason. He hated the chain that bound him, the men who peered in at him through the slats of the pen, the dogs that accompanied the men and that snarled malignantly at him in his helplessness. He hated the very wood of the pen that confined him. And, first, last, and most of all, he hated Beauty Smith. But Beauty Smith had a purpose in all that he did to White Fang. One day a number of men gathered about the pen. Beauty Smith entered, club in hand, and took the chain off from White Fang's neck. When his master had gone out, White Fang turned loose and tore around the pen, trying to get at the men outside. He was magnificently terrible. Fully five feet in length, and standing two and one-half feet at the shoulder, he far outweighed a wolf of corresponding size. From his mother he had inherited the heavier proportions of the dog, so that he weighed, without any fat and without an ounce of superfluous flesh, over ninety pounds. It was all muscle, bone, and sinew-fighting flesh in the finest condition. The door of the pen was being opened again. White Fang paused. Something unusual was happening. He waited. The door was opened wider. Then a huge dog was thrust inside, and the door was slammed shut behind him. White Fang had never seen such a dog (it was a mastiff); but the size and fierce aspect of the intruder did not deter him. Here was some thing, not wood nor iron, upon which to wreak his hate. He leaped in with a flash of fangs that ripped down the side of the mastiff's neck. The mastiff shook his head, growled hoarsely, and plunged at White Fang. But White Fang was here, there, and everywhere, always evading and eluding, and always leaping in and slashing with his fangs and leaping out again in time to escape punishment. The men outside shouted and applauded, while Beauty Smith, in an ecstasy of delight, gloated over the ripping and mangling performed by White Fang. There was no hope for the mastiff from the first. He was too ponderous and slow. In the end, while Beauty Smith beat White Fang back with a club, the mastiff was dragged out by its owner. Then there was a payment of bets, and money clinked in Beauty Smith's hand. White Fang came to look forward eagerly to the gathering of the men around his pen. It meant a fight; and this was the only way that was now vouchsafed him of expressing the life that was in him. Tormented, incited to hate, he was kept a prisoner so that there was no way of satisfying that hate except at the times his master saw fit to put another dog against him. Beauty Smith had estimated his powers well, for he was invariably the victor. One day, three dogs were turned in upon him in succession. Another day a full-grown wolf, fresh-caught from the Wild, was shoved in through the door of the pen. And on still another day two dogs were set against him at the same time. This was his severest fight, and though in the end he killed them both he was himself half killed in doing it. In the fall of the year, when the first snows were falling and mush-ice was running in the river, Beauty Smith took passage for himself and White Fang on a steamboat bound up the Yukon to Dawson. White Fang had now achieved a reputation in the land. As "the Fighting Wolf" he was known far and wide, and the cage in which he was kept on the steam-boat's deck was usually surrounded by curious men. He raged and snarled at them, or lay quietly and studied them with cold hatred. Why should he not hate them? He never asked himself the question. He knew only hate and lost himself in the passion of it. Life had become a hell to him. He had not been made for the close confinement wild beasts endure at the hands of men. And yet it was in precisely this way that he was treated. Men stared at him, poked sticks between the bars to make him snarl, and then laughed at him. They were his environment, these men, and they were moulding the clay of him into a more ferocious thing than had been intended by Nature. Nevertheless, Nature had given him plasticity. Where many another animal would have died or had its spirit broken, he adjusted himself and lived, and at no expense of the spirit. Possibly Beauty Smith, arch-fiend and tormentor, was capable of breaking White Fang's spirit, but as yet there were no signs of his succeeding. If Beauty Smith had in him a devil, White Fang had another; and the two of them raged against each other unceasingly. In the days before, White Fang had had the wisdom to cower down and submit to a man with a club in his hand; but this wisdom now left him. The mere sight of Beauty Smith was sufficient to send him into transports of fury. And when they came to close quarters, and he had been beaten back by the club, he went on growling and snarling, and showing his fangs. The last growl could never be extracted from him. No matter how terribly he was beaten, he had always another growl; and when Beauty Smith gave up and withdrew, the defiant growl followed after him, or White Fang sprang at the bars of the cage bellowing his hatred. When the steamboat arrived at Dawson, White Fang went ashore. But he still lived a public life, in a cage, surrounded by curious men. He was exhibited as "the Fighting Wolf," and men paid fifty cents in gold dust to see him. He was given no rest. Did he lie down to sleep, he was stirred up by a sharp stick--so that the audience might get its money's worth. In order to make the exhibition interesting, he was kept in a rage most of the time. But worse than all this, was the atmosphere in which he lived. He was regarded as the most fearful of wild beasts, and this was borne in to him through the bars of the cage. Every word, every cautious action, on the part of the men, impressed upon him his own terrible ferocity. It was so much added fuel to the flame of his fierceness. There could be but one result, and that was that his ferocity fed upon itself and increased. It was another instance of the plasticity of his clay, of his capacity for being moulded by the pressure of environment. In addition to being exhibited he was a professional fighting animal. At irregular intervals, whenever a fight could be arranged, he was taken out of his cage and led off into the woods a few miles from town. Usually this occurred at night, so as to avoid interference from the mounted police of the Territory. After a few hours of waiting, when daylight had come, the audience and the dog with which he was to fight arrived. In this manner it came about that he fought all sizes and breeds of dogs. It was a savage land, the men were savage, and the fights were usually to the death. Since White Fang continued to fight, it is obvious that it was the other dogs that died. He never knew defeat. His early training, when he fought with Lip-lip and the whole puppy-pack, stood him in good stead. There was the tenacity with which he clung to the earth. No dog could make him lose his footing. This was the favourite trick of the wolf breeds--to rush in upon him, either directly or with an unexpected swerve, in the hope of striking his shoulder and overthrowing him. Mackenzie hounds, Eskimo and Labrador dogs, huskies and Malemutes--all tried it on him, and all failed. He was never known to lose his footing. Men told this to one another, and looked each time to see it happen; but White Fang always disappointed them. Then there was his lightning quickness. It gave him a tremendous advantage over his antagonists. No matter what their fighting experience, they had never encountered a dog that moved so swiftly as he. Also to be reckoned with, was the immediateness of his attack. The average dog was accustomed to the preliminaries of snarling and bristling and growling, and the average dog was knocked off his feet and finished before he had begun to fight or recovered from his surprise. So often did this happen, that it became the custom to hold White Fang until the other dog went through its preliminaries, was good and ready, and even made the first attack. But greatest of all the advantages in White Fang's favour, was his experience. He knew more about fighting than did any of the dogs that faced him. He had fought more fights, knew how to meet more tricks and methods, and had more tricks himself, while his own method was scarcely to be improved upon. As the time went by, he had fewer and fewer fights. Men despaired of matching him with an equal, and Beauty Smith was compelled to pit wolves against him. These were trapped by the Indians for the purpose, and a fight between White Fang and a wolf was always sure to draw a crowd. Once, a full-grown female lynx was secured, and this time White Fang fought for his life. Her quickness matched his; her ferocity equalled his; while he fought with his fangs alone, and she fought with her sharp- clawed feet as well. But after the lynx, all fighting ceased for White Fang. There were no more animals with which to fight--at least, there was none considered worthy of fighting with him. So he remained on exhibition until spring, when one Tim Keenan, a faro-dealer, arrived in the land. With him came the first bull-dog that had ever entered the Klondike. That this dog and White Fang should come together was inevitable, and for a week the anticipated fight was the mainspring of conversation in certain quarters of the town.

chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang20.html

White Fang is kept chained in a pen at the rear of the Fort, where Beauty provokes him and laughs at him, hoping to make White Fang even meaner. He is often removed from the pen and made to fight other dogs, including mastiffs, wolves, and huskies. White Fang invariably wins, no matter what kind of dog he faces. Sometimes he has to fight three dogs at once or a freshly caught wolf from the Wild. White Fangs constant victories make him a public figure. He is known as the Fighting wolf, and he is on exhibit in his cage all the time. Beauty Smith begins to make money at White Fangs expense. Whenever a fight is arranged, bets are taken. To make certain that White Fang wins, Beauty trains him in the wild. He releases him a few miles from town, usually at night to avoid police interference, and he must fight for survival. Back in captivity, White Fang is forced to fight wolves that have been trapped by Indians, for he has defeated all the available dogs. One time he fights a full-grown female lynx and defeats her.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_17_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 4.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang21.html", "summary": "The chapter paints in great detail the fight between Cherokee, a bulldog owned by Tim Keenan, and White Fang. Neither is accustomed to fighting the type of dog he now faces, but both are good fighters. The crowd is with Cherokee, and White Fang does give in a couple of times, only to be enraged by Smith, who laughs and points at him. During the battle, White Fang is very badly mauled. Weedon Scott, a well-respected mining expert, enters the ring and tries to save White Fang. Threatening to turn Smith in to the authorities, Scott buys White Fang for three hundred dollars. Scotts assistant, Matt, helps him to separate the two dogs. Scott wrenches the jaws of the bull dog open with a revolver while Matt lifts White Fang out of the ring.", "analysis": ""}

Beauty Smith slipped the chain from his neck and stepped back. For once White Fang did not make an immediate attack. He stood still, ears pricked forward, alert and curious, surveying the strange animal that faced him. He had never seen such a dog before. Tim Keenan shoved the bull-dog forward with a muttered "Go to it." The animal waddled toward the centre of the circle, short and squat and ungainly. He came to a stop and blinked across at White Fang. There were cries from the crowd of, "Go to him, Cherokee! Sick 'm, Cherokee! Eat 'm up!" But Cherokee did not seem anxious to fight. He turned his head and blinked at the men who shouted, at the same time wagging his stump of a tail good-naturedly. He was not afraid, but merely lazy. Besides, it did not seem to him that it was intended he should fight with the dog he saw before him. He was not used to fighting with that kind of dog, and he was waiting for them to bring on the real dog. Tim Keenan stepped in and bent over Cherokee, fondling him on both sides of the shoulders with hands that rubbed against the grain of the hair and that made slight, pushing-forward movements. These were so many suggestions. Also, their effect was irritating, for Cherokee began to growl, very softly, deep down in his throat. There was a correspondence in rhythm between the growls and the movements of the man's hands. The growl rose in the throat with the culmination of each forward-pushing movement, and ebbed down to start up afresh with the beginning of the next movement. The end of each movement was the accent of the rhythm, the movement ending abruptly and the growling rising with a jerk. This was not without its effect on White Fang. The hair began to rise on his neck and across the shoulders. Tim Keenan gave a final shove forward and stepped back again. As the impetus that carried Cherokee forward died down, he continued to go forward of his own volition, in a swift, bow-legged run. Then White Fang struck. A cry of startled admiration went up. He had covered the distance and gone in more like a cat than a dog; and with the same cat-like swiftness he had slashed with his fangs and leaped clear. The bull-dog was bleeding back of one ear from a rip in his thick neck. He gave no sign, did not even snarl, but turned and followed after White Fang. The display on both sides, the quickness of the one and the steadiness of the other, had excited the partisan spirit of the crowd, and the men were making new bets and increasing original bets. Again, and yet again, White Fang sprang in, slashed, and got away untouched, and still his strange foe followed after him, without too great haste, not slowly, but deliberately and determinedly, in a businesslike sort of way. There was purpose in his method--something for him to do that he was intent upon doing and from which nothing could distract him. His whole demeanour, every action, was stamped with this purpose. It puzzled White Fang. Never had he seen such a dog. It had no hair protection. It was soft, and bled easily. There was no thick mat of fur to baffle White Fang's teeth as they were often baffled by dogs of his own breed. Each time that his teeth struck they sank easily into the yielding flesh, while the animal did not seem able to defend itself. Another disconcerting thing was that it made no outcry, such as he had been accustomed to with the other dogs he had fought. Beyond a growl or a grunt, the dog took its punishment silently. And never did it flag in its pursuit of him. Not that Cherokee was slow. He could turn and whirl swiftly enough, but White Fang was never there. Cherokee was puzzled, too. He had never fought before with a dog with which he could not close. The desire to close had always been mutual. But here was a dog that kept at a distance, dancing and dodging here and there and all about. And when it did get its teeth into him, it did not hold on but let go instantly and darted away again. But White Fang could not get at the soft underside of the throat. The bull-dog stood too short, while its massive jaws were an added protection. White Fang darted in and out unscathed, while Cherokee's wounds increased. Both sides of his neck and head were ripped and slashed. He bled freely, but showed no signs of being disconcerted. He continued his plodding pursuit, though once, for the moment baffled, he came to a full stop and blinked at the men who looked on, at the same time wagging his stump of a tail as an expression of his willingness to fight. In that moment White Fang was in upon him and out, in passing ripping his trimmed remnant of an ear. With a slight manifestation of anger, Cherokee took up the pursuit again, running on the inside of the circle White Fang was making, and striving to fasten his deadly grip on White Fang's throat. The bull-dog missed by a hair's-breadth, and cries of praise went up as White Fang doubled suddenly out of danger in the opposite direction. The time went by. White Fang still danced on, dodging and doubling, leaping in and out, and ever inflicting damage. And still the bull-dog, with grim certitude, toiled after him. Sooner or later he would accomplish his purpose, get the grip that would win the battle. In the meantime, he accepted all the punishment the other could deal him. His tufts of ears had become tassels, his neck and shoulders were slashed in a score of places, and his very lips were cut and bleeding--all from these lightning snaps that were beyond his foreseeing and guarding. Time and again White Fang had attempted to knock Cherokee off his feet; but the difference in their height was too great. Cherokee was too squat, too close to the ground. White Fang tried the trick once too often. The chance came in one of his quick doublings and counter-circlings. He caught Cherokee with head turned away as he whirled more slowly. His shoulder was exposed. White Fang drove in upon it: but his own shoulder was high above, while he struck with such force that his momentum carried him on across over the other's body. For the first time in his fighting history, men saw White Fang lose his footing. His body turned a half-somersault in the air, and he would have landed on his back had he not twisted, catlike, still in the air, in the effort to bring his feet to the earth. As it was, he struck heavily on his side. The next instant he was on his feet, but in that instant Cherokee's teeth closed on his throat. It was not a good grip, being too low down toward the chest; but Cherokee held on. White Fang sprang to his feet and tore wildly around, trying to shake off the bull-dog's body. It made him frantic, this clinging, dragging weight. It bound his movements, restricted his freedom. It was like the trap, and all his instinct resented it and revolted against it. It was a mad revolt. For several minutes he was to all intents insane. The basic life that was in him took charge of him. The will to exist of his body surged over him. He was dominated by this mere flesh-love of life. All intelligence was gone. It was as though he had no brain. His reason was unseated by the blind yearning of the flesh to exist and move, at all hazards to move, to continue to move, for movement was the expression of its existence. Round and round he went, whirling and turning and reversing, trying to shake off the fifty-pound weight that dragged at his throat. The bull- dog did little but keep his grip. Sometimes, and rarely, he managed to get his feet to the earth and for a moment to brace himself against White Fang. But the next moment his footing would be lost and he would be dragging around in the whirl of one of White Fang's mad gyrations. Cherokee identified himself with his instinct. He knew that he was doing the right thing by holding on, and there came to him certain blissful thrills of satisfaction. At such moments he even closed his eyes and allowed his body to be hurled hither and thither, willy-nilly, careless of any hurt that might thereby come to it. That did not count. The grip was the thing, and the grip he kept. White Fang ceased only when he had tired himself out. He could do nothing, and he could not understand. Never, in all his fighting, had this thing happened. The dogs he had fought with did not fight that way. With them it was snap and slash and get away, snap and slash and get away. He lay partly on his side, panting for breath. Cherokee still holding his grip, urged against him, trying to get him over entirely on his side. White Fang resisted, and he could feel the jaws shifting their grip, slightly relaxing and coming together again in a chewing movement. Each shift brought the grip closer to his throat. The bull-dog's method was to hold what he had, and when opportunity favoured to work in for more. Opportunity favoured when White Fang remained quiet. When White Fang struggled, Cherokee was content merely to hold on. The bulging back of Cherokee's neck was the only portion of his body that White Fang's teeth could reach. He got hold toward the base where the neck comes out from the shoulders; but he did not know the chewing method of fighting, nor were his jaws adapted to it. He spasmodically ripped and tore with his fangs for a space. Then a change in their position diverted him. The bull-dog had managed to roll him over on his back, and still hanging on to his throat, was on top of him. Like a cat, White Fang bowed his hind-quarters in, and, with the feet digging into his enemy's abdomen above him, he began to claw with long tearing-strokes. Cherokee might well have been disembowelled had he not quickly pivoted on his grip and got his body off of White Fang's and at right angles to it. There was no escaping that grip. It was like Fate itself, and as inexorable. Slowly it shifted up along the jugular. All that saved White Fang from death was the loose skin of his neck and the thick fur that covered it. This served to form a large roll in Cherokee's mouth, the fur of which well-nigh defied his teeth. But bit by bit, whenever the chance offered, he was getting more of the loose skin and fur in his mouth. The result was that he was slowly throttling White Fang. The latter's breath was drawn with greater and greater difficulty as the moments went by. It began to look as though the battle were over. The backers of Cherokee waxed jubilant and offered ridiculous odds. White Fang's backers were correspondingly depressed, and refused bets of ten to one and twenty to one, though one man was rash enough to close a wager of fifty to one. This man was Beauty Smith. He took a step into the ring and pointed his finger at White Fang. Then he began to laugh derisively and scornfully. This produced the desired effect. White Fang went wild with rage. He called up his reserves of strength, and gained his feet. As he struggled around the ring, the fifty pounds of his foe ever dragging on his throat, his anger passed on into panic. The basic life of him dominated him again, and his intelligence fled before the will of his flesh to live. Round and round and back again, stumbling and falling and rising, even uprearing at times on his hind-legs and lifting his foe clear of the earth, he struggled vainly to shake off the clinging death. At last he fell, toppling backward, exhausted; and the bull-dog promptly shifted his grip, getting in closer, mangling more and more of the fur- folded flesh, throttling White Fang more severely than ever. Shouts of applause went up for the victor, and there were many cries of "Cherokee!" "Cherokee!" To this Cherokee responded by vigorous wagging of the stump of his tail. But the clamour of approval did not distract him. There was no sympathetic relation between his tail and his massive jaws. The one might wag, but the others held their terrible grip on White Fang's throat. It was at this time that a diversion came to the spectators. There was a jingle of bells. Dog-mushers' cries were heard. Everybody, save Beauty Smith, looked apprehensively, the fear of the police strong upon them. But they saw, up the trail, and not down, two men running with sled and dogs. They were evidently coming down the creek from some prospecting trip. At sight of the crowd they stopped their dogs and came over and joined it, curious to see the cause of the excitement. The dog-musher wore a moustache, but the other, a taller and younger man, was smooth- shaven, his skin rosy from the pounding of his blood and the running in the frosty air. White Fang had practically ceased struggling. Now and again he resisted spasmodically and to no purpose. He could get little air, and that little grew less and less under the merciless grip that ever tightened. In spite of his armour of fur, the great vein of his throat would have long since been torn open, had not the first grip of the bull-dog been so low down as to be practically on the chest. It had taken Cherokee a long time to shift that grip upward, and this had also tended further to clog his jaws with fur and skin-fold. In the meantime, the abysmal brute in Beauty Smith had been rising into his brain and mastering the small bit of sanity that he possessed at best. When he saw White Fang's eyes beginning to glaze, he knew beyond doubt that the fight was lost. Then he broke loose. He sprang upon White Fang and began savagely to kick him. There were hisses from the crowd and cries of protest, but that was all. While this went on, and Beauty Smith continued to kick White Fang, there was a commotion in the crowd. The tall young newcomer was forcing his way through, shouldering men right and left without ceremony or gentleness. When he broke through into the ring, Beauty Smith was just in the act of delivering another kick. All his weight was on one foot, and he was in a state of unstable equilibrium. At that moment the newcomer's fist landed a smashing blow full in his face. Beauty Smith's remaining leg left the ground, and his whole body seemed to lift into the air as he turned over backward and struck the snow. The newcomer turned upon the crowd. "You cowards!" he cried. "You beasts!" He was in a rage himself--a sane rage. His grey eyes seemed metallic and steel-like as they flashed upon the crowd. Beauty Smith regained his feet and came toward him, sniffling and cowardly. The new-comer did not understand. He did not know how abject a coward the other was, and thought he was coming back intent on fighting. So, with a "You beast!" he smashed Beauty Smith over backward with a second blow in the face. Beauty Smith decided that the snow was the safest place for him, and lay where he had fallen, making no effort to get up. "Come on, Matt, lend a hand," the newcomer called the dog-musher, who had followed him into the ring. Both men bent over the dogs. Matt took hold of White Fang, ready to pull when Cherokee's jaws should be loosened. This the younger man endeavoured to accomplish by clutching the bulldog's jaws in his hands and trying to spread them. It was a vain undertaking. As he pulled and tugged and wrenched, he kept exclaiming with every expulsion of breath, "Beasts!" The crowd began to grow unruly, and some of the men were protesting against the spoiling of the sport; but they were silenced when the newcomer lifted his head from his work for a moment and glared at them. "You damn beasts!" he finally exploded, and went back to his task. "It's no use, Mr. Scott, you can't break 'm apart that way," Matt said at last. The pair paused and surveyed the locked dogs. "Ain't bleedin' much," Matt announced. "Ain't got all the way in yet." "But he's liable to any moment," Scott answered. "There, did you see that! He shifted his grip in a bit." The younger man's excitement and apprehension for White Fang was growing. He struck Cherokee about the head savagely again and again. But that did not loosen the jaws. Cherokee wagged the stump of his tail in advertisement that he understood the meaning of the blows, but that he knew he was himself in the right and only doing his duty by keeping his grip. "Won't some of you help?" Scott cried desperately at the crowd. But no help was offered. Instead, the crowd began sarcastically to cheer him on and showered him with facetious advice. "You'll have to get a pry," Matt counselled. The other reached into the holster at his hip, drew his revolver, and tried to thrust its muzzle between the bull-dog's jaws. He shoved, and shoved hard, till the grating of the steel against the locked teeth could be distinctly heard. Both men were on their knees, bending over the dogs. Tim Keenan strode into the ring. He paused beside Scott and touched him on the shoulder, saying ominously: "Don't break them teeth, stranger." "Then I'll break his neck," Scott retorted, continuing his shoving and wedging with the revolver muzzle. "I said don't break them teeth," the faro-dealer repeated more ominously than before. But if it was a bluff he intended, it did not work. Scott never desisted from his efforts, though he looked up coolly and asked: "Your dog?" The faro-dealer grunted. "Then get in here and break this grip." "Well, stranger," the other drawled irritatingly, "I don't mind telling you that's something I ain't worked out for myself. I don't know how to turn the trick." "Then get out of the way," was the reply, "and don't bother me. I'm busy." Tim Keenan continued standing over him, but Scott took no further notice of his presence. He had managed to get the muzzle in between the jaws on one side, and was trying to get it out between the jaws on the other side. This accomplished, he pried gently and carefully, loosening the jaws a bit at a time, while Matt, a bit at a time, extricated White Fang's mangled neck. "Stand by to receive your dog," was Scott's peremptory order to Cherokee's owner. The faro-dealer stooped down obediently and got a firm hold on Cherokee. "Now!" Scott warned, giving the final pry. The dogs were drawn apart, the bull-dog struggling vigorously. "Take him away," Scott commanded, and Tim Keenan dragged Cherokee back into the crowd. White Fang made several ineffectual efforts to get up. Once he gained his feet, but his legs were too weak to sustain him, and he slowly wilted and sank back into the snow. His eyes were half closed, and the surface of them was glassy. His jaws were apart, and through them the tongue protruded, draggled and limp. To all appearances he looked like a dog that had been strangled to death. Matt examined him. "Just about all in," he announced; "but he's breathin' all right." Beauty Smith had regained his feet and come over to look at White Fang. "Matt, how much is a good sled-dog worth?" Scott asked. The dog-musher, still on his knees and stooped over White Fang, calculated for a moment. "Three hundred dollars," he answered. "And how much for one that's all chewed up like this one?" Scott asked, nudging White Fang with his foot. "Half of that," was the dog-musher's judgment. Scott turned upon Beauty Smith. "Did you hear, Mr. Beast? I'm going to take your dog from you, and I'm going to give you a hundred and fifty for him." He opened his pocket-book and counted out the bills. Beauty Smith put his hands behind his back, refusing to touch the proffered money. "I ain't a-sellin'," he said. "Oh, yes you are," the other assured him. "Because I'm buying. Here's your money. The dog's mine." Beauty Smith, his hands still behind him, began to back away. Scott sprang toward him, drawing his fist back to strike. Beauty Smith cowered down in anticipation of the blow. "I've got my rights," he whimpered. "You've forfeited your rights to own that dog," was the rejoinder. "Are you going to take the money? or do I have to hit you again?" "All right," Beauty Smith spoke up with the alacrity of fear. "But I take the money under protest," he added. "The dog's a mint. I ain't a- goin' to be robbed. A man's got his rights." "Correct," Scott answered, passing the money over to him. "A man's got his rights. But you're not a man. You're a beast." "Wait till I get back to Dawson," Beauty Smith threatened. "I'll have the law on you." "If you open your mouth when you get back to Dawson, I'll have you run out of town. Understand?" Beauty Smith replied with a grunt. "Understand?" the other thundered with abrupt fierceness. "Yes," Beauty Smith grunted, shrinking away. "Yes what?" "Yes, sir," Beauty Smith snarled. "Look out! He'll bite!" some one shouted, and a guffaw of laughter went up. Scott turned his back on him, and returned to help the dog-musher, who was working over White Fang. Some of the men were already departing; others stood in groups, looking on and talking. Tim Keenan joined one of the groups. "Who's that mug?" he asked. "Weedon Scott," some one answered. "And who in hell is Weedon Scott?" the faro-dealer demanded. "Oh, one of them crackerjack minin' experts. He's in with all the big bugs. If you want to keep out of trouble, you'll steer clear of him, that's my talk. He's all hunky with the officials. The Gold Commissioner's a special pal of his." "I thought he must be somebody," was the faro-dealer's comment. "That's why I kept my hands offen him at the start."

chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang21.html

The chapter paints in great detail the fight between Cherokee, a bulldog owned by Tim Keenan, and White Fang. Neither is accustomed to fighting the type of dog he now faces, but both are good fighters. The crowd is with Cherokee, and White Fang does give in a couple of times, only to be enraged by Smith, who laughs and points at him. During the battle, White Fang is very badly mauled. Weedon Scott, a well-respected mining expert, enters the ring and tries to save White Fang. Threatening to turn Smith in to the authorities, Scott buys White Fang for three hundred dollars. Scotts assistant, Matt, helps him to separate the two dogs. Scott wrenches the jaws of the bull dog open with a revolver while Matt lifts White Fang out of the ring.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/19.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_18_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 4.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang21.html", "summary": "Scott, White Fangs new owner, and Matt, the dog-musher, repeatedly try to gain the trust of the wolf-dog, who constantly snarls at them and bristles at the end of his stretched chain. Scott reluctantly considers killing the ferocious White Fang, but Matt wants to give him a chance. He correctly guesses that White Fang has been a sled dog and suggests that he could again be used in a dog team. After two weeks White Fang is still as wild as ever, so Matt sets him free. Scott then throws him a piece of meat, which is grabbed by Major, one of Scotts other dogs. White Fang fatally wounds Major and bites Matt, who has tried to kick him. Scott tries to subdue the wolf-dog but is likewise bitten. Finally, Matt gets a gun to shoot White Fang. Just as he raises it to his shoulder, White Fang jumps out of the way to the side of the cabin. The men decide against killing White Fang.", "analysis": ""}

"It's hopeless," Weedon Scott confessed. He sat on the step of his cabin and stared at the dog-musher, who responded with a shrug that was equally hopeless. Together they looked at White Fang at the end of his stretched chain, bristling, snarling, ferocious, straining to get at the sled-dogs. Having received sundry lessons from Matt, said lessons being imparted by means of a club, the sled-dogs had learned to leave White Fang alone; and even then they were lying down at a distance, apparently oblivious of his existence. "It's a wolf and there's no taming it," Weedon Scott announced. "Oh, I don't know about that," Matt objected. "Might be a lot of dog in 'm, for all you can tell. But there's one thing I know sure, an' that there's no gettin' away from." The dog-musher paused and nodded his head confidentially at Moosehide Mountain. "Well, don't be a miser with what you know," Scott said sharply, after waiting a suitable length of time. "Spit it out. What is it?" The dog-musher indicated White Fang with a backward thrust of his thumb. "Wolf or dog, it's all the same--he's ben tamed 'ready." "No!" "I tell you yes, an' broke to harness. Look close there. D'ye see them marks across the chest?" "You're right, Matt. He was a sled-dog before Beauty Smith got hold of him." "And there's not much reason against his bein' a sled-dog again." "What d'ye think?" Scott queried eagerly. Then the hope died down as he added, shaking his head, "We've had him two weeks now, and if anything he's wilder than ever at the present moment." "Give 'm a chance," Matt counselled. "Turn 'm loose for a spell." The other looked at him incredulously. "Yes," Matt went on, "I know you've tried to, but you didn't take a club." "You try it then." The dog-musher secured a club and went over to the chained animal. White Fang watched the club after the manner of a caged lion watching the whip of its trainer. "See 'm keep his eye on that club," Matt said. "That's a good sign. He's no fool. Don't dast tackle me so long as I got that club handy. He's not clean crazy, sure." As the man's hand approached his neck, White Fang bristled and snarled and crouched down. But while he eyed the approaching hand, he at the same time contrived to keep track of the club in the other hand, suspended threateningly above him. Matt unsnapped the chain from the collar and stepped back. White Fang could scarcely realise that he was free. Many months had gone by since he passed into the possession of Beauty Smith, and in all that period he had never known a moment of freedom except at the times he had been loosed to fight with other dogs. Immediately after such fights he had always been imprisoned again. He did not know what to make of it. Perhaps some new devilry of the gods was about to be perpetrated on him. He walked slowly and cautiously, prepared to be assailed at any moment. He did not know what to do, it was all so unprecedented. He took the precaution to sheer off from the two watching gods, and walked carefully to the corner of the cabin. Nothing happened. He was plainly perplexed, and he came back again, pausing a dozen feet away and regarding the two men intently. "Won't he run away?" his new owner asked. Matt shrugged his shoulders. "Got to take a gamble. Only way to find out is to find out." "Poor devil," Scott murmured pityingly. "What he needs is some show of human kindness," he added, turning and going into the cabin. He came out with a piece of meat, which he tossed to White Fang. He sprang away from it, and from a distance studied it suspiciously. "Hi-yu, Major!" Matt shouted warningly, but too late. Major had made a spring for the meat. At the instant his jaws closed on it, White Fang struck him. He was overthrown. Matt rushed in, but quicker than he was White Fang. Major staggered to his feet, but the blood spouting from his throat reddened the snow in a widening path. "It's too bad, but it served him right," Scott said hastily. But Matt's foot had already started on its way to kick White Fang. There was a leap, a flash of teeth, a sharp exclamation. White Fang, snarling fiercely, scrambled backward for several yards, while Matt stooped and investigated his leg. "He got me all right," he announced, pointing to the torn trousers and undercloths, and the growing stain of red. "I told you it was hopeless, Matt," Scott said in a discouraged voice. "I've thought about it off and on, while not wanting to think of it. But we've come to it now. It's the only thing to do." As he talked, with reluctant movements he drew his revolver, threw open the cylinder, and assured himself of its contents. "Look here, Mr. Scott," Matt objected; "that dog's ben through hell. You can't expect 'm to come out a white an' shinin' angel. Give 'm time." "Look at Major," the other rejoined. The dog-musher surveyed the stricken dog. He had sunk down on the snow in the circle of his blood and was plainly in the last gasp. "Served 'm right. You said so yourself, Mr. Scott. He tried to take White Fang's meat, an' he's dead-O. That was to be expected. I wouldn't give two whoops in hell for a dog that wouldn't fight for his own meat." "But look at yourself, Matt. It's all right about the dogs, but we must draw the line somewhere." "Served me right," Matt argued stubbornly. "What'd I want to kick 'm for? You said yourself that he'd done right. Then I had no right to kick 'm." "It would be a mercy to kill him," Scott insisted. "He's untamable." "Now look here, Mr. Scott, give the poor devil a fightin' chance. He ain't had no chance yet. He's just come through hell, an' this is the first time he's ben loose. Give 'm a fair chance, an' if he don't deliver the goods, I'll kill 'm myself. There!" "God knows I don't want to kill him or have him killed," Scott answered, putting away the revolver. "We'll let him run loose and see what kindness can do for him. And here's a try at it." He walked over to White Fang and began talking to him gently and soothingly. "Better have a club handy," Matt warned. Scott shook his head and went on trying to win White Fang's confidence. White Fang was suspicious. Something was impending. He had killed this god's dog, bitten his companion god, and what else was to be expected than some terrible punishment? But in the face of it he was indomitable. He bristled and showed his teeth, his eyes vigilant, his whole body wary and prepared for anything. The god had no club, so he suffered him to approach quite near. The god's hand had come out and was descending upon his head. White Fang shrank together and grew tense as he crouched under it. Here was danger, some treachery or something. He knew the hands of the gods, their proved mastery, their cunning to hurt. Besides, there was his old antipathy to being touched. He snarled more menacingly, crouched still lower, and still the hand descended. He did not want to bite the hand, and he endured the peril of it until his instinct surged up in him, mastering him with its insatiable yearning for life. Weedon Scott had believed that he was quick enough to avoid any snap or slash. But he had yet to learn the remarkable quickness of White Fang, who struck with the certainty and swiftness of a coiled snake. Scott cried out sharply with surprise, catching his torn hand and holding it tightly in his other hand. Matt uttered a great oath and sprang to his side. White Fang crouched down, and backed away, bristling, showing his fangs, his eyes malignant with menace. Now he could expect a beating as fearful as any he had received from Beauty Smith. "Here! What are you doing?" Scott cried suddenly. Matt had dashed into the cabin and come out with a rifle. "Nothin'," he said slowly, with a careless calmness that was assumed, "only goin' to keep that promise I made. I reckon it's up to me to kill 'm as I said I'd do." "No you don't!" "Yes I do. Watch me." As Matt had pleaded for White Fang when he had been bitten, it was now Weedon Scott's turn to plead. "You said to give him a chance. Well, give it to him. We've only just started, and we can't quit at the beginning. It served me right, this time. And--look at him!" White Fang, near the corner of the cabin and forty feet away, was snarling with blood-curdling viciousness, not at Scott, but at the dog- musher. "Well, I'll be everlastingly gosh-swoggled!" was the dog-musher's expression of astonishment. "Look at the intelligence of him," Scott went on hastily. "He knows the meaning of firearms as well as you do. He's got intelligence and we've got to give that intelligence a chance. Put up the gun." "All right, I'm willin'," Matt agreed, leaning the rifle against the woodpile. "But will you look at that!" he exclaimed the next moment. White Fang had quieted down and ceased snarling. "This is worth investigatin'. Watch." Matt, reached for the rifle, and at the same moment White Fang snarled. He stepped away from the rifle, and White Fang's lifted lips descended, covering his teeth. "Now, just for fun." Matt took the rifle and began slowly to raise it to his shoulder. White Fang's snarling began with the movement, and increased as the movement approached its culmination. But the moment before the rifle came to a level on him, he leaped sidewise behind the corner of the cabin. Matt stood staring along the sights at the empty space of snow which had been occupied by White Fang. The dog-musher put the rifle down solemnly, then turned and looked at his employer. "I agree with you, Mr. Scott. That dog's too intelligent to kill."

chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang21.html

Scott, White Fangs new owner, and Matt, the dog-musher, repeatedly try to gain the trust of the wolf-dog, who constantly snarls at them and bristles at the end of his stretched chain. Scott reluctantly considers killing the ferocious White Fang, but Matt wants to give him a chance. He correctly guesses that White Fang has been a sled dog and suggests that he could again be used in a dog team. After two weeks White Fang is still as wild as ever, so Matt sets him free. Scott then throws him a piece of meat, which is grabbed by Major, one of Scotts other dogs. White Fang fatally wounds Major and bites Matt, who has tried to kick him. Scott tries to subdue the wolf-dog but is likewise bitten. Finally, Matt gets a gun to shoot White Fang. Just as he raises it to his shoulder, White Fang jumps out of the way to the side of the cabin. The men decide against killing White Fang.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/20.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_19_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 4.chapter 6

chapter 6

{"name": "chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang22.html", "summary": "Although Scott repeatedly tries to gain White Fang's confidence by speaking kind words and patting him gently, White Fang remains wary of him. Gradually, White Fang begins to accept Scott's spoken affection, but he still refuses to be touched or fed by the man. To build trust, Scott throws the pieces of meat, one by one, each landing closer. Cautiously, White Fang retrieves each piece until he is willing to eat from Scott's hand. Matt is highly surprised at the sight of Scott petting the wolf-dog, whose usual response is to snarl and leap backwards. As Scott continues to pet him, White Fang begins to enjoy the affection. He begins to protect Scott, guarding his property and leaping on any nighttime visitors. Soon White Fang learns to distinguish between footsteps so that he can tell the difference between thieves and honest men. White Fang easily proves his superiority to Scott's other dogs, who accept his leadership. He willingly returns to the dog team and becomes the leader of the Klondike sled runners, where he works in single file, on double traces. In late spring, Scott is called away, and White Fang refuses to eat, drink, or sleep. He becomes weak and lets the other dogs harass him. Matt writes Scott a letter informing him of White Fang's condition. As a result, Scott returns, and White Fang regains his health. One night as Matt and Scott are busy playing cribbage, White Fang nabs Beauty Smith in the dark. Apparently, the despicable man has come to steal White Fang, for he has a club and a steel chain with him.", "analysis": ""}

As White Fang watched Weedon Scott approach, he bristled and snarled to advertise that he would not submit to punishment. Twenty-four hours had passed since he had slashed open the hand that was now bandaged and held up by a sling to keep the blood out of it. In the past White Fang had experienced delayed punishments, and he apprehended that such a one was about to befall him. How could it be otherwise? He had committed what was to him sacrilege, sunk his fangs into the holy flesh of a god, and of a white-skinned superior god at that. In the nature of things, and of intercourse with gods, something terrible awaited him. The god sat down several feet away. White Fang could see nothing dangerous in that. When the gods administered punishment they stood on their legs. Besides, this god had no club, no whip, no firearm. And furthermore, he himself was free. No chain nor stick bound him. He could escape into safety while the god was scrambling to his feet. In the meantime he would wait and see. The god remained quiet, made no movement; and White Fang's snarl slowly dwindled to a growl that ebbed down in his throat and ceased. Then the god spoke, and at the first sound of his voice, the hair rose on White Fang's neck and the growl rushed up in his throat. But the god made no hostile movement, and went on calmly talking. For a time White Fang growled in unison with him, a correspondence of rhythm being established between growl and voice. But the god talked on interminably. He talked to White Fang as White Fang had never been talked to before. He talked softly and soothingly, with a gentleness that somehow, somewhere, touched White Fang. In spite of himself and all the pricking warnings of his instinct, White Fang began to have confidence in this god. He had a feeling of security that was belied by all his experience with men. After a long time, the god got up and went into the cabin. White Fang scanned him apprehensively when he came out. He had neither whip nor club nor weapon. Nor was his uninjured hand behind his back hiding something. He sat down as before, in the same spot, several feet away. He held out a small piece of meat. White Fang pricked his ears and investigated it suspiciously, managing to look at the same time both at the meat and the god, alert for any overt act, his body tense and ready to spring away at the first sign of hostility. Still the punishment delayed. The god merely held near to his nose a piece of meat. And about the meat there seemed nothing wrong. Still White Fang suspected; and though the meat was proffered to him with short inviting thrusts of the hand, he refused to touch it. The gods were all- wise, and there was no telling what masterful treachery lurked behind that apparently harmless piece of meat. In past experience, especially in dealing with squaws, meat and punishment had often been disastrously related. In the end, the god tossed the meat on the snow at White Fang's feet. He smelled the meat carefully; but he did not look at it. While he smelled it he kept his eyes on the god. Nothing happened. He took the meat into his mouth and swallowed it. Still nothing happened. The god was actually offering him another piece of meat. Again he refused to take it from the hand, and again it was tossed to him. This was repeated a number of times. But there came a time when the god refused to toss it. He kept it in his hand and steadfastly proffered it. The meat was good meat, and White Fang was hungry. Bit by bit, infinitely cautious, he approached the hand. At last the time came that he decided to eat the meat from the hand. He never took his eyes from the god, thrusting his head forward with ears flattened back and hair involuntarily rising and cresting on his neck. Also a low growl rumbled in his throat as warning that he was not to be trifled with. He ate the meat, and nothing happened. Piece by piece, he ate all the meat, and nothing happened. Still the punishment delayed. He licked his chops and waited. The god went on talking. In his voice was kindness--something of which White Fang had no experience whatever. And within him it aroused feelings which he had likewise never experienced before. He was aware of a certain strange satisfaction, as though some need were being gratified, as though some void in his being were being filled. Then again came the prod of his instinct and the warning of past experience. The gods were ever crafty, and they had unguessed ways of attaining their ends. Ah, he had thought so! There it came now, the god's hand, cunning to hurt, thrusting out at him, descending upon his head. But the god went on talking. His voice was soft and soothing. In spite of the menacing hand, the voice inspired confidence. And in spite of the assuring voice, the hand inspired distrust. White Fang was torn by conflicting feelings, impulses. It seemed he would fly to pieces, so terrible was the control he was exerting, holding together by an unwonted indecision the counter- forces that struggled within him for mastery. He compromised. He snarled and bristled and flattened his ears. But he neither snapped nor sprang away. The hand descended. Nearer and nearer it came. It touched the ends of his upstanding hair. He shrank down under it. It followed down after him, pressing more closely against him. Shrinking, almost shivering, he still managed to hold himself together. It was a torment, this hand that touched him and violated his instinct. He could not forget in a day all the evil that had been wrought him at the hands of men. But it was the will of the god, and he strove to submit. The hand lifted and descended again in a patting, caressing movement. This continued, but every time the hand lifted, the hair lifted under it. And every time the hand descended, the ears flattened down and a cavernous growl surged in his throat. White Fang growled and growled with insistent warning. By this means he announced that he was prepared to retaliate for any hurt he might receive. There was no telling when the god's ulterior motive might be disclosed. At any moment that soft, confidence-inspiring voice might break forth in a roar of wrath, that gentle and caressing hand transform itself into a vice-like grip to hold him helpless and administer punishment. But the god talked on softly, and ever the hand rose and fell with non- hostile pats. White Fang experienced dual feelings. It was distasteful to his instinct. It restrained him, opposed the will of him toward personal liberty. And yet it was not physically painful. On the contrary, it was even pleasant, in a physical way. The patting movement slowly and carefully changed to a rubbing of the ears about their bases, and the physical pleasure even increased a little. Yet he continued to fear, and he stood on guard, expectant of unguessed evil, alternately suffering and enjoying as one feeling or the other came uppermost and swayed him. "Well, I'll be gosh-swoggled!" So spoke Matt, coming out of the cabin, his sleeves rolled up, a pan of dirty dish-water in his hands, arrested in the act of emptying the pan by the sight of Weedon Scott patting White Fang. At the instant his voice broke the silence, White Fang leaped back, snarling savagely at him. Matt regarded his employer with grieved disapproval. "If you don't mind my expressin' my feelin's, Mr. Scott, I'll make free to say you're seventeen kinds of a damn fool an' all of 'em different, an' then some." Weedon Scott smiled with a superior air, gained his feet, and walked over to White Fang. He talked soothingly to him, but not for long, then slowly put out his hand, rested it on White Fang's head, and resumed the interrupted patting. White Fang endured it, keeping his eyes fixed suspiciously, not upon the man that patted him, but upon the man that stood in the doorway. "You may be a number one, tip-top minin' expert, all right all right," the dog-musher delivered himself oracularly, "but you missed the chance of your life when you was a boy an' didn't run off an' join a circus." White Fang snarled at the sound of his voice, but this time did not leap away from under the hand that was caressing his head and the back of his neck with long, soothing strokes. It was the beginning of the end for White Fang--the ending of the old life and the reign of hate. A new and incomprehensibly fairer life was dawning. It required much thinking and endless patience on the part of Weedon Scott to accomplish this. And on the part of White Fang it required nothing less than a revolution. He had to ignore the urges and promptings of instinct and reason, defy experience, give the lie to life itself. Life, as he had known it, not only had had no place in it for much that he now did; but all the currents had gone counter to those to which he now abandoned himself. In short, when all things were considered, he had to achieve an orientation far vaster than the one he had achieved at the time he came voluntarily in from the Wild and accepted Grey Beaver as his lord. At that time he was a mere puppy, soft from the making, without form, ready for the thumb of circumstance to begin its work upon him. But now it was different. The thumb of circumstance had done its work only too well. By it he had been formed and hardened into the Fighting Wolf, fierce and implacable, unloving and unlovable. To accomplish the change was like a reflux of being, and this when the plasticity of youth was no longer his; when the fibre of him had become tough and knotty; when the warp and the woof of him had made of him an adamantine texture, harsh and unyielding; when the face of his spirit had become iron and all his instincts and axioms had crystallised into set rules, cautions, dislikes, and desires. Yet again, in this new orientation, it was the thumb of circumstance that pressed and prodded him, softening that which had become hard and remoulding it into fairer form. Weedon Scott was in truth this thumb. He had gone to the roots of White Fang's nature, and with kindness touched to life potencies that had languished and well-nigh perished. One such potency was _love_. It took the place of _like_, which latter had been the highest feeling that thrilled him in his intercourse with the gods. But this love did not come in a day. It began with _like_ and out of it slowly developed. White Fang did not run away, though he was allowed to remain loose, because he liked this new god. This was certainly better than the life he had lived in the cage of Beauty Smith, and it was necessary that he should have some god. The lordship of man was a need of his nature. The seal of his dependence on man had been set upon him in that early day when he turned his back on the Wild and crawled to Grey Beaver's feet to receive the expected beating. This seal had been stamped upon him again, and ineradicably, on his second return from the Wild, when the long famine was over and there was fish once more in the village of Grey Beaver. And so, because he needed a god and because he preferred Weedon Scott to Beauty Smith, White Fang remained. In acknowledgment of fealty, he proceeded to take upon himself the guardianship of his master's property. He prowled about the cabin while the sled-dogs slept, and the first night- visitor to the cabin fought him off with a club until Weedon Scott came to the rescue. But White Fang soon learned to differentiate between thieves and honest men, to appraise the true value of step and carriage. The man who travelled, loud-stepping, the direct line to the cabin door, he let alone--though he watched him vigilantly until the door opened and he received the endorsement of the master. But the man who went softly, by circuitous ways, peering with caution, seeking after secrecy--that was the man who received no suspension of judgment from White Fang, and who went away abruptly, hurriedly, and without dignity. Weedon Scott had set himself the task of redeeming White Fang--or rather, of redeeming mankind from the wrong it had done White Fang. It was a matter of principle and conscience. He felt that the ill done White Fang was a debt incurred by man and that it must be paid. So he went out of his way to be especially kind to the Fighting Wolf. Each day he made it a point to caress and pet White Fang, and to do it at length. At first suspicious and hostile, White Fang grew to like this petting. But there was one thing that he never outgrew--his growling. Growl he would, from the moment the petting began till it ended. But it was a growl with a new note in it. A stranger could not hear this note, and to such a stranger the growling of White Fang was an exhibition of primordial savagery, nerve-racking and blood-curdling. But White Fang's throat had become harsh-fibred from the making of ferocious sounds through the many years since his first little rasp of anger in the lair of his cubhood, and he could not soften the sounds of that throat now to express the gentleness he felt. Nevertheless, Weedon Scott's ear and sympathy were fine enough to catch the new note all but drowned in the fierceness--the note that was the faintest hint of a croon of content and that none but he could hear. As the days went by, the evolution of _like_ into _love_ was accelerated. White Fang himself began to grow aware of it, though in his consciousness he knew not what love was. It manifested itself to him as a void in his being--a hungry, aching, yearning void that clamoured to be filled. It was a pain and an unrest; and it received easement only by the touch of the new god's presence. At such times love was joy to him, a wild, keen- thrilling satisfaction. But when away from his god, the pain and the unrest returned; the void in him sprang up and pressed against him with its emptiness, and the hunger gnawed and gnawed unceasingly. White Fang was in the process of finding himself. In spite of the maturity of his years and of the savage rigidity of the mould that had formed him, his nature was undergoing an expansion. There was a burgeoning within him of strange feelings and unwonted impulses. His old code of conduct was changing. In the past he had liked comfort and surcease from pain, disliked discomfort and pain, and he had adjusted his actions accordingly. But now it was different. Because of this new feeling within him, he ofttimes elected discomfort and pain for the sake of his god. Thus, in the early morning, instead of roaming and foraging, or lying in a sheltered nook, he would wait for hours on the cheerless cabin-stoop for a sight of the god's face. At night, when the god returned home, White Fang would leave the warm sleeping-place he had burrowed in the snow in order to receive the friendly snap of fingers and the word of greeting. Meat, even meat itself, he would forego to be with his god, to receive a caress from him or to accompany him down into the town. _Like_ had been replaced by _love_. And love was the plummet dropped down into the deeps of him where like had never gone. And responsive out of his deeps had come the new thing--love. That which was given unto him did he return. This was a god indeed, a love-god, a warm and radiant god, in whose light White Fang's nature expanded as a flower expands under the sun. But White Fang was not demonstrative. He was too old, too firmly moulded, to become adept at expressing himself in new ways. He was too self-possessed, too strongly poised in his own isolation. Too long had he cultivated reticence, aloofness, and moroseness. He had never barked in his life, and he could not now learn to bark a welcome when his god approached. He was never in the way, never extravagant nor foolish in the expression of his love. He never ran to meet his god. He waited at a distance; but he always waited, was always there. His love partook of the nature of worship, dumb, inarticulate, a silent adoration. Only by the steady regard of his eyes did he express his love, and by the unceasing following with his eyes of his god's every movement. Also, at times, when his god looked at him and spoke to him, he betrayed an awkward self-consciousness, caused by the struggle of his love to express itself and his physical inability to express it. He learned to adjust himself in many ways to his new mode of life. It was borne in upon him that he must let his master's dogs alone. Yet his dominant nature asserted itself, and he had first to thrash them into an acknowledgment of his superiority and leadership. This accomplished, he had little trouble with them. They gave trail to him when he came and went or walked among them, and when he asserted his will they obeyed. In the same way, he came to tolerate Matt--as a possession of his master. His master rarely fed him. Matt did that, it was his business; yet White Fang divined that it was his master's food he ate and that it was his master who thus fed him vicariously. Matt it was who tried to put him into the harness and make him haul sled with the other dogs. But Matt failed. It was not until Weedon Scott put the harness on White Fang and worked him, that he understood. He took it as his master's will that Matt should drive him and work him just as he drove and worked his master's other dogs. Different from the Mackenzie toboggans were the Klondike sleds with runners under them. And different was the method of driving the dogs. There was no fan-formation of the team. The dogs worked in single file, one behind another, hauling on double traces. And here, in the Klondike, the leader was indeed the leader. The wisest as well as strongest dog was the leader, and the team obeyed him and feared him. That White Fang should quickly gain this post was inevitable. He could not be satisfied with less, as Matt learned after much inconvenience and trouble. White Fang picked out the post for himself, and Matt backed his judgment with strong language after the experiment had been tried. But, though he worked in the sled in the day, White Fang did not forego the guarding of his master's property in the night. Thus he was on duty all the time, ever vigilant and faithful, the most valuable of all the dogs. "Makin' free to spit out what's in me," Matt said one day, "I beg to state that you was a wise guy all right when you paid the price you did for that dog. You clean swindled Beauty Smith on top of pushin' his face in with your fist." A recrudescence of anger glinted in Weedon Scott's grey eyes, and he muttered savagely, "The beast!" In the late spring a great trouble came to White Fang. Without warning, the love-master disappeared. There had been warning, but White Fang was unversed in such things and did not understand the packing of a grip. He remembered afterwards that his packing had preceded the master's disappearance; but at the time he suspected nothing. That night he waited for the master to return. At midnight the chill wind that blew drove him to shelter at the rear of the cabin. There he drowsed, only half asleep, his ears keyed for the first sound of the familiar step. But, at two in the morning, his anxiety drove him out to the cold front stoop, where he crouched, and waited. But no master came. In the morning the door opened and Matt stepped outside. White Fang gazed at him wistfully. There was no common speech by which he might learn what he wanted to know. The days came and went, but never the master. White Fang, who had never known sickness in his life, became sick. He became very sick, so sick that Matt was finally compelled to bring him inside the cabin. Also, in writing to his employer, Matt devoted a postscript to White Fang. Weedon Scott reading the letter down in Circle City, came upon the following: "That dam wolf won't work. Won't eat. Aint got no spunk left. All the dogs is licking him. Wants to know what has become of you, and I don't know how to tell him. Mebbe he is going to die." It was as Matt had said. White Fang had ceased eating, lost heart, and allowed every dog of the team to thrash him. In the cabin he lay on the floor near the stove, without interest in food, in Matt, nor in life. Matt might talk gently to him or swear at him, it was all the same; he never did more than turn his dull eyes upon the man, then drop his head back to its customary position on his fore-paws. And then, one night, Matt, reading to himself with moving lips and mumbled sounds, was startled by a low whine from White Fang. He had got upon his feet, his ears cocked towards the door, and he was listening intently. A moment later, Matt heard a footstep. The door opened, and Weedon Scott stepped in. The two men shook hands. Then Scott looked around the room. "Where's the wolf?" he asked. Then he discovered him, standing where he had been lying, near to the stove. He had not rushed forward after the manner of other dogs. He stood, watching and waiting. "Holy smoke!" Matt exclaimed. "Look at 'm wag his tail!" Weedon Scott strode half across the room toward him, at the same time calling him. White Fang came to him, not with a great bound, yet quickly. He was awakened from self-consciousness, but as he drew near, his eyes took on a strange expression. Something, an incommunicable vastness of feeling, rose up into his eyes as a light and shone forth. "He never looked at me that way all the time you was gone!" Matt commented. Weedon Scott did not hear. He was squatting down on his heels, face to face with White Fang and petting him--rubbing at the roots of the ears, making long caressing strokes down the neck to the shoulders, tapping the spine gently with the balls of his fingers. And White Fang was growling responsively, the crooning note of the growl more pronounced than ever. But that was not all. What of his joy, the great love in him, ever surging and struggling to express itself, succeeded in finding a new mode of expression. He suddenly thrust his head forward and nudged his way in between the master's arm and body. And here, confined, hidden from view all except his ears, no longer growling, he continued to nudge and snuggle. The two men looked at each other. Scott's eyes were shining. "Gosh!" said Matt in an awe-stricken voice. A moment later, when he had recovered himself, he said, "I always insisted that wolf was a dog. Look at 'm!" With the return of the love-master, White Fang's recovery was rapid. Two nights and a day he spent in the cabin. Then he sallied forth. The sled- dogs had forgotten his prowess. They remembered only the latest, which was his weakness and sickness. At the sight of him as he came out of the cabin, they sprang upon him. "Talk about your rough-houses," Matt murmured gleefully, standing in the doorway and looking on. "Give 'm hell, you wolf! Give 'm hell!--an' then some!" White Fang did not need the encouragement. The return of the love-master was enough. Life was flowing through him again, splendid and indomitable. He fought from sheer joy, finding in it an expression of much that he felt and that otherwise was without speech. There could be but one ending. The team dispersed in ignominious defeat, and it was not until after dark that the dogs came sneaking back, one by one, by meekness and humility signifying their fealty to White Fang. Having learned to snuggle, White Fang was guilty of it often. It was the final word. He could not go beyond it. The one thing of which he had always been particularly jealous was his head. He had always disliked to have it touched. It was the Wild in him, the fear of hurt and of the trap, that had given rise to the panicky impulses to avoid contacts. It was the mandate of his instinct that that head must be free. And now, with the love-master, his snuggling was the deliberate act of putting himself into a position of hopeless helplessness. It was an expression of perfect confidence, of absolute self-surrender, as though he said: "I put myself into thy hands. Work thou thy will with me." One night, not long after the return, Scott and Matt sat at a game of cribbage preliminary to going to bed. "Fifteen-two, fifteen-four an' a pair makes six," Matt was pegging up, when there was an outcry and sound of snarling without. They looked at each other as they started to rise to their feet. "The wolf's nailed somebody," Matt said. A wild scream of fear and anguish hastened them. "Bring a light!" Scott shouted, as he sprang outside. Matt followed with the lamp, and by its light they saw a man lying on his back in the snow. His arms were folded, one above the other, across his face and throat. Thus he was trying to shield himself from White Fang's teeth. And there was need for it. White Fang was in a rage, wickedly making his attack on the most vulnerable spot. From shoulder to wrist of the crossed arms, the coat-sleeve, blue flannel shirt and undershirt were ripped in rags, while the arms themselves were terribly slashed and streaming blood. All this the two men saw in the first instant. The next instant Weedon Scott had White Fang by the throat and was dragging him clear. White Fang struggled and snarled, but made no attempt to bite, while he quickly quieted down at a sharp word from the master. Matt helped the man to his feet. As he arose he lowered his crossed arms, exposing the bestial face of Beauty Smith. The dog-musher let go of him precipitately, with action similar to that of a man who has picked up live fire. Beauty Smith blinked in the lamplight and looked about him. He caught sight of White Fang and terror rushed into his face. At the same moment Matt noticed two objects lying in the snow. He held the lamp close to them, indicating them with his toe for his employer's benefit--a steel dog-chain and a stout club. Weedon Scott saw and nodded. Not a word was spoken. The dog-musher laid his hand on Beauty Smith's shoulder and faced him to the right about. No word needed to be spoken. Beauty Smith started. In the meantime the love-master was patting White Fang and talking to him. "Tried to steal you, eh? And you wouldn't have it! Well, well, he made a mistake, didn't he?" "Must 'a' thought he had hold of seventeen devils," the dog-musher sniggered. White Fang, still wrought up and bristling, growled and growled, the hair slowly lying down, the crooning note remote and dim, but growing in his throat. PART V

chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang22.html

Although Scott repeatedly tries to gain White Fang's confidence by speaking kind words and patting him gently, White Fang remains wary of him. Gradually, White Fang begins to accept Scott's spoken affection, but he still refuses to be touched or fed by the man. To build trust, Scott throws the pieces of meat, one by one, each landing closer. Cautiously, White Fang retrieves each piece until he is willing to eat from Scott's hand. Matt is highly surprised at the sight of Scott petting the wolf-dog, whose usual response is to snarl and leap backwards. As Scott continues to pet him, White Fang begins to enjoy the affection. He begins to protect Scott, guarding his property and leaping on any nighttime visitors. Soon White Fang learns to distinguish between footsteps so that he can tell the difference between thieves and honest men. White Fang easily proves his superiority to Scott's other dogs, who accept his leadership. He willingly returns to the dog team and becomes the leader of the Klondike sled runners, where he works in single file, on double traces. In late spring, Scott is called away, and White Fang refuses to eat, drink, or sleep. He becomes weak and lets the other dogs harass him. Matt writes Scott a letter informing him of White Fang's condition. As a result, Scott returns, and White Fang regains his health. One night as Matt and Scott are busy playing cribbage, White Fang nabs Beauty Smith in the dark. Apparently, the despicable man has come to steal White Fang, for he has a club and a steel chain with him.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/21.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_20_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 5.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang23.html", "summary": "In this chapter, Weedon Scott prepares to leave for California, his home, knowing he must leave White Fang behind. White Fang senses the impending separation and refuses to eat again. Scott is concerned about the wolf-dog, but he is afraid he will never be tame enough to live in California. The day Scott is to leave, White Fang is at his heels all the time. Two Indians come and pick up the luggage and take it to the steamboat, Aurora, which is packed with adventurers and gold seekers. Scott then departs, locking White Fang in the cabin until he has safely sailed away. White Fang, however, breaks free through the window and later appears on board the ship. Scott, seeing such devotion, finally decides to take him along, despite Matt's warning that the California climate will not suit White Fang.", "analysis": ""}

It was in the air. White Fang sensed the coming calamity, even before there was tangible evidence of it. In vague ways it was borne in upon him that a change was impending. He knew not how nor why, yet he got his feel of the oncoming event from the gods themselves. In ways subtler than they knew, they betrayed their intentions to the wolf-dog that haunted the cabin-stoop, and that, though he never came inside the cabin, knew what went on inside their brains. "Listen to that, will you!" the dog-musher exclaimed at supper one night. Weedon Scott listened. Through the door came a low, anxious whine, like a sobbing under the breath that had just grown audible. Then came the long sniff, as White Fang reassured himself that his god was still inside and had not yet taken himself off in mysterious and solitary flight. "I do believe that wolf's on to you," the dog-musher said. Weedon Scott looked across at his companion with eyes that almost pleaded, though this was given the lie by his words. "What the devil can I do with a wolf in California?" he demanded. "That's what I say," Matt answered. "What the devil can you do with a wolf in California?" But this did not satisfy Weedon Scott. The other seemed to be judging him in a non-committal sort of way. "White man's dogs would have no show against him," Scott went on. "He'd kill them on sight. If he didn't bankrupt me with damage suits, the authorities would take him away from me and electrocute him." "He's a downright murderer, I know," was the dog-musher's comment. Weedon Scott looked at him suspiciously. "It would never do," he said decisively. "It would never do!" Matt concurred. "Why you'd have to hire a man 'specially to take care of 'm." The other's suspicion was allayed. He nodded cheerfully. In the silence that followed, the low, half-sobbing whine was heard at the door and then the long, questing sniff. "There's no denyin' he thinks a hell of a lot of you," Matt said. The other glared at him in sudden wrath. "Damn it all, man! I know my own mind and what's best!" "I'm agreein' with you, only . . . " "Only what?" Scott snapped out. "Only . . . " the dog-musher began softly, then changed his mind and betrayed a rising anger of his own. "Well, you needn't get so all-fired het up about it. Judgin' by your actions one'd think you didn't know your own mind." Weedon Scott debated with himself for a while, and then said more gently: "You are right, Matt. I don't know my own mind, and that's what's the trouble." "Why, it would be rank ridiculousness for me to take that dog along," he broke out after another pause. "I'm agreein' with you," was Matt's answer, and again his employer was not quite satisfied with him. "But how in the name of the great Sardanapolis he knows you're goin' is what gets me," the dog-musher continued innocently. "It's beyond me, Matt," Scott answered, with a mournful shake of the head. Then came the day when, through the open cabin door, White Fang saw the fatal grip on the floor and the love-master packing things into it. Also, there were comings and goings, and the erstwhile placid atmosphere of the cabin was vexed with strange perturbations and unrest. Here was indubitable evidence. White Fang had already scented it. He now reasoned it. His god was preparing for another flight. And since he had not taken him with him before, so, now, he could look to be left behind. That night he lifted the long wolf-howl. As he had howled, in his puppy days, when he fled back from the Wild to the village to find it vanished and naught but a rubbish-heap to mark the site of Grey Beaver's tepee, so now he pointed his muzzle to the cold stars and told to them his woe. Inside the cabin the two men had just gone to bed. "He's gone off his food again," Matt remarked from his bunk. There was a grunt from Weedon Scott's bunk, and a stir of blankets. "From the way he cut up the other time you went away, I wouldn't wonder this time but what he died." The blankets in the other bunk stirred irritably. "Oh, shut up!" Scott cried out through the darkness. "You nag worse than a woman." "I'm agreein' with you," the dog-musher answered, and Weedon Scott was not quite sure whether or not the other had snickered. The next day White Fang's anxiety and restlessness were even more pronounced. He dogged his master's heels whenever he left the cabin, and haunted the front stoop when he remained inside. Through the open door he could catch glimpses of the luggage on the floor. The grip had been joined by two large canvas bags and a box. Matt was rolling the master's blankets and fur robe inside a small tarpaulin. White Fang whined as he watched the operation. Later on two Indians arrived. He watched them closely as they shouldered the luggage and were led off down the hill by Matt, who carried the bedding and the grip. But White Fang did not follow them. The master was still in the cabin. After a time, Matt returned. The master came to the door and called White Fang inside. "You poor devil," he said gently, rubbing White Fang's ears and tapping his spine. "I'm hitting the long trail, old man, where you cannot follow. Now give me a growl--the last, good, good-bye growl." But White Fang refused to growl. Instead, and after a wistful, searching look, he snuggled in, burrowing his head out of sight between the master's arm and body. "There she blows!" Matt cried. From the Yukon arose the hoarse bellowing of a river steamboat. "You've got to cut it short. Be sure and lock the front door. I'll go out the back. Get a move on!" The two doors slammed at the same moment, and Weedon Scott waited for Matt to come around to the front. From inside the door came a low whining and sobbing. Then there were long, deep-drawn sniffs. "You must take good care of him, Matt," Scott said, as they started down the hill. "Write and let me know how he gets along." "Sure," the dog-musher answered. "But listen to that, will you!" Both men stopped. White Fang was howling as dogs howl when their masters lie dead. He was voicing an utter woe, his cry bursting upward in great heart-breaking rushes, dying down into quavering misery, and bursting upward again with a rush upon rush of grief. The _Aurora_ was the first steamboat of the year for the Outside, and her decks were jammed with prosperous adventurers and broken gold seekers, all equally as mad to get to the Outside as they had been originally to get to the Inside. Near the gang-plank, Scott was shaking hands with Matt, who was preparing to go ashore. But Matt's hand went limp in the other's grasp as his gaze shot past and remained fixed on something behind him. Scott turned to see. Sitting on the deck several feet away and watching wistfully was White Fang. The dog-musher swore softly, in awe-stricken accents. Scott could only look in wonder. "Did you lock the front door?" Matt demanded. The other nodded, and asked, "How about the back?" "You just bet I did," was the fervent reply. White Fang flattened his ears ingratiatingly, but remained where he was, making no attempt to approach. "I'll have to take 'm ashore with me." Matt made a couple of steps toward White Fang, but the latter slid away from him. The dog-musher made a rush of it, and White Fang dodged between the legs of a group of men. Ducking, turning, doubling, he slid about the deck, eluding the other's efforts to capture him. But when the love-master spoke, White Fang came to him with prompt obedience. "Won't come to the hand that's fed 'm all these months," the dog-musher muttered resentfully. "And you--you ain't never fed 'm after them first days of gettin' acquainted. I'm blamed if I can see how he works it out that you're the boss." Scott, who had been patting White Fang, suddenly bent closer and pointed out fresh-made cuts on his muzzle, and a gash between the eyes. Matt bent over and passed his hand along White Fang's belly. "We plumb forgot the window. He's all cut an' gouged underneath. Must 'a' butted clean through it, b'gosh!" But Weedon Scott was not listening. He was thinking rapidly. The _Aurora's_ whistle hooted a final announcement of departure. Men were scurrying down the gang-plank to the shore. Matt loosened the bandana from his own neck and started to put it around White Fang's. Scott grasped the dog-musher's hand. "Good-bye, Matt, old man. About the wolf--you needn't write. You see, I've . . . !" "What!" the dog-musher exploded. "You don't mean to say . . .?" "The very thing I mean. Here's your bandana. I'll write to you about him." Matt paused halfway down the gang-plank. "He'll never stand the climate!" he shouted back. "Unless you clip 'm in warm weather!" The gang-plank was hauled in, and the _Aurora_ swung out from the bank. Weedon Scott waved a last good-bye. Then he turned and bent over White Fang, standing by his side. "Now growl, damn you, growl," he said, as he patted the responsive head and rubbed the flattening ears.

chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang23.html

In this chapter, Weedon Scott prepares to leave for California, his home, knowing he must leave White Fang behind. White Fang senses the impending separation and refuses to eat again. Scott is concerned about the wolf-dog, but he is afraid he will never be tame enough to live in California. The day Scott is to leave, White Fang is at his heels all the time. Two Indians come and pick up the luggage and take it to the steamboat, Aurora, which is packed with adventurers and gold seekers. Scott then departs, locking White Fang in the cabin until he has safely sailed away. White Fang, however, breaks free through the window and later appears on board the ship. Scott, seeing such devotion, finally decides to take him along, despite Matt's warning that the California climate will not suit White Fang.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/22.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_21_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 5.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang23.html", "summary": "When White Fang reaches San Francisco, he is chained in a cage and put on a baggage cart; he is amazed at the sight of the tall buildings, crowded streets, and horse carts. When they arrive at Scott's country home, they are greeted by Scott's mother, who warmly embraces her son. White Fang sees this as a hostile act and starts to snarl at Scott's mother. Scott has to control the wolf-dog. When White Fang finally goes off to explore his new home, he encounters Collie, the indignant sheepdog, and is attacked by the deerhound, Dick. These animals have no reason to fear White Fang.", "analysis": ""}

White Fang landed from the steamer in San Francisco. He was appalled. Deep in him, below any reasoning process or act of consciousness, he had associated power with godhead. And never had the white men seemed such marvellous gods as now, when he trod the slimy pavement of San Francisco. The log cabins he had known were replaced by towering buildings. The streets were crowded with perils--waggons, carts, automobiles; great, straining horses pulling huge trucks; and monstrous cable and electric cars hooting and clanging through the midst, screeching their insistent menace after the manner of the lynxes he had known in the northern woods. All this was the manifestation of power. Through it all, behind it all, was man, governing and controlling, expressing himself, as of old, by his mastery over matter. It was colossal, stunning. White Fang was awed. Fear sat upon him. As in his cubhood he had been made to feel his smallness and puniness on the day he first came in from the Wild to the village of Grey Beaver, so now, in his full-grown stature and pride of strength, he was made to feel small and puny. And there were so many gods! He was made dizzy by the swarming of them. The thunder of the streets smote upon his ears. He was bewildered by the tremendous and endless rush and movement of things. As never before, he felt his dependence on the love-master, close at whose heels he followed, no matter what happened never losing sight of him. But White Fang was to have no more than a nightmare vision of the city--an experience that was like a bad dream, unreal and terrible, that haunted him for long after in his dreams. He was put into a baggage-car by the master, chained in a corner in the midst of heaped trunks and valises. Here a squat and brawny god held sway, with much noise, hurling trunks and boxes about, dragging them in through the door and tossing them into the piles, or flinging them out of the door, smashing and crashing, to other gods who awaited them. And here, in this inferno of luggage, was White Fang deserted by the master. Or at least White Fang thought he was deserted, until he smelled out the master's canvas clothes-bags alongside of him, and proceeded to mount guard over them. "'Bout time you come," growled the god of the car, an hour later, when Weedon Scott appeared at the door. "That dog of yourn won't let me lay a finger on your stuff." White Fang emerged from the car. He was astonished. The nightmare city was gone. The car had been to him no more than a room in a house, and when he had entered it the city had been all around him. In the interval the city had disappeared. The roar of it no longer dinned upon his ears. Before him was smiling country, streaming with sunshine, lazy with quietude. But he had little time to marvel at the transformation. He accepted it as he accepted all the unaccountable doings and manifestations of the gods. It was their way. There was a carriage waiting. A man and a woman approached the master. The woman's arms went out and clutched the master around the neck--a hostile act! The next moment Weedon Scott had torn loose from the embrace and closed with White Fang, who had become a snarling, raging demon. "It's all right, mother," Scott was saying as he kept tight hold of White Fang and placated him. "He thought you were going to injure me, and he wouldn't stand for it. It's all right. It's all right. He'll learn soon enough." "And in the meantime I may be permitted to love my son when his dog is not around," she laughed, though she was pale and weak from the fright. She looked at White Fang, who snarled and bristled and glared malevolently. "He'll have to learn, and he shall, without postponement," Scott said. He spoke softly to White Fang until he had quieted him, then his voice became firm. "Down, sir! Down with you!" This had been one of the things taught him by the master, and White Fang obeyed, though he lay down reluctantly and sullenly. "Now, mother." Scott opened his arms to her, but kept his eyes on White Fang. "Down!" he warned. "Down!" White Fang, bristling silently, half-crouching as he rose, sank back and watched the hostile act repeated. But no harm came of it, nor of the embrace from the strange man-god that followed. Then the clothes-bags were taken into the carriage, the strange gods and the love-master followed, and White Fang pursued, now running vigilantly behind, now bristling up to the running horses and warning them that he was there to see that no harm befell the god they dragged so swiftly across the earth. At the end of fifteen minutes, the carriage swung in through a stone gateway and on between a double row of arched and interlacing walnut trees. On either side stretched lawns, their broad sweep broken here and there by great sturdy-limbed oaks. In the near distance, in contrast with the young-green of the tended grass, sunburnt hay-fields showed tan and gold; while beyond were the tawny hills and upland pastures. From the head of the lawn, on the first soft swell from the valley-level, looked down the deep-porched, many-windowed house. Little opportunity was given White Fang to see all this. Hardly had the carriage entered the grounds, when he was set upon by a sheep-dog, bright- eyed, sharp-muzzled, righteously indignant and angry. It was between him and the master, cutting him off. White Fang snarled no warning, but his hair bristled as he made his silent and deadly rush. This rush was never completed. He halted with awkward abruptness, with stiff fore-legs bracing himself against his momentum, almost sitting down on his haunches, so desirous was he of avoiding contact with the dog he was in the act of attacking. It was a female, and the law of his kind thrust a barrier between. For him to attack her would require nothing less than a violation of his instinct. But with the sheep-dog it was otherwise. Being a female, she possessed no such instinct. On the other hand, being a sheep-dog, her instinctive fear of the Wild, and especially of the wolf, was unusually keen. White Fang was to her a wolf, the hereditary marauder who had preyed upon her flocks from the time sheep were first herded and guarded by some dim ancestor of hers. And so, as he abandoned his rush at her and braced himself to avoid the contact, she sprang upon him. He snarled involuntarily as he felt her teeth in his shoulder, but beyond this made no offer to hurt her. He backed away, stiff-legged with self-consciousness, and tried to go around her. He dodged this way and that, and curved and turned, but to no purpose. She remained always between him and the way he wanted to go. "Here, Collie!" called the strange man in the carriage. Weedon Scott laughed. "Never mind, father. It is good discipline. White Fang will have to learn many things, and it's just as well that he begins now. He'll adjust himself all right." The carriage drove on, and still Collie blocked White Fang's way. He tried to outrun her by leaving the drive and circling across the lawn but she ran on the inner and smaller circle, and was always there, facing him with her two rows of gleaming teeth. Back he circled, across the drive to the other lawn, and again she headed him off. The carriage was bearing the master away. White Fang caught glimpses of it disappearing amongst the trees. The situation was desperate. He essayed another circle. She followed, running swiftly. And then, suddenly, he turned upon her. It was his old fighting trick. Shoulder to shoulder, he struck her squarely. Not only was she overthrown. So fast had she been running that she rolled along, now on her back, now on her side, as she struggled to stop, clawing gravel with her feet and crying shrilly her hurt pride and indignation. White Fang did not wait. The way was clear, and that was all he had wanted. She took after him, never ceasing her outcry. It was the straightaway now, and when it came to real running, White Fang could teach her things. She ran frantically, hysterically, straining to the utmost, advertising the effort she was making with every leap: and all the time White Fang slid smoothly away from her silently, without effort, gliding like a ghost over the ground. As he rounded the house to the _porte-cochere_, he came upon the carriage. It had stopped, and the master was alighting. At this moment, still running at top speed, White Fang became suddenly aware of an attack from the side. It was a deer-hound rushing upon him. White Fang tried to face it. But he was going too fast, and the hound was too close. It struck him on the side; and such was his forward momentum and the unexpectedness of it, White Fang was hurled to the ground and rolled clear over. He came out of the tangle a spectacle of malignancy, ears flattened back, lips writhing, nose wrinkling, his teeth clipping together as the fangs barely missed the hound's soft throat. The master was running up, but was too far away; and it was Collie that saved the hound's life. Before White Fang could spring in and deliver the fatal stroke, and just as he was in the act of springing in, Collie arrived. She had been out-manoeuvred and out-run, to say nothing of her having been unceremoniously tumbled in the gravel, and her arrival was like that of a tornado--made up of offended dignity, justifiable wrath, and instinctive hatred for this marauder from the Wild. She struck White Fang at right angles in the midst of his spring, and again he was knocked off his feet and rolled over. The next moment the master arrived, and with one hand held White Fang, while the father called off the dogs. "I say, this is a pretty warm reception for a poor lone wolf from the Arctic," the master said, while White Fang calmed down under his caressing hand. "In all his life he's only been known once to go off his feet, and here he's been rolled twice in thirty seconds." The carriage had driven away, and other strange gods had appeared from out the house. Some of these stood respectfully at a distance; but two of them, women, perpetrated the hostile act of clutching the master around the neck. White Fang, however, was beginning to tolerate this act. No harm seemed to come of it, while the noises the gods made were certainly not threatening. These gods also made overtures to White Fang, but he warned them off with a snarl, and the master did likewise with word of mouth. At such times White Fang leaned in close against the master's legs and received reassuring pats on the head. The hound, under the command, "Dick! Lie down, sir!" had gone up the steps and lain down to one side of the porch, still growling and keeping a sullen watch on the intruder. Collie had been taken in charge by one of the woman-gods, who held arms around her neck and petted and caressed her; but Collie was very much perplexed and worried, whining and restless, outraged by the permitted presence of this wolf and confident that the gods were making a mistake. All the gods started up the steps to enter the house. White Fang followed closely at the master's heels. Dick, on the porch, growled, and White Fang, on the steps, bristled and growled back. "Take Collie inside and leave the two of them to fight it out," suggested Scott's father. "After that they'll be friends." "Then White Fang, to show his friendship, will have to be chief mourner at the funeral," laughed the master. The elder Scott looked incredulously, first at White Fang, then at Dick, and finally at his son. "You mean . . .?" Weedon nodded his head. "I mean just that. You'd have a dead Dick inside one minute--two minutes at the farthest." He turned to White Fang. "Come on, you wolf. It's you that'll have to come inside." White Fang walked stiff-legged up the steps and across the porch, with tail rigidly erect, keeping his eyes on Dick to guard against a flank attack, and at the same time prepared for whatever fierce manifestation of the unknown that might pounce out upon him from the interior of the house. But no thing of fear pounced out, and when he had gained the inside he scouted carefully around, looking at it and finding it not. Then he lay down with a contented grunt at the master's feet, observing all that went on, ever ready to spring to his feet and fight for life with the terrors he felt must lurk under the trap-roof of the dwelling.

chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang23.html

When White Fang reaches San Francisco, he is chained in a cage and put on a baggage cart; he is amazed at the sight of the tall buildings, crowded streets, and horse carts. When they arrive at Scott's country home, they are greeted by Scott's mother, who warmly embraces her son. White Fang sees this as a hostile act and starts to snarl at Scott's mother. Scott has to control the wolf-dog. When White Fang finally goes off to explore his new home, he encounters Collie, the indignant sheepdog, and is attacked by the deerhound, Dick. These animals have no reason to fear White Fang.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/23.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_22_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 5.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang24.html", "summary": "White Fangs experiences at Sierra Vista, Scotts residence, are described in this chapter. Scotts family is also introduced. Dick, the deeerhound, has accepted White Fang, and they do fine together; but White Fang tries to avoid Collie, who still tries to stand in his way. White Fang also learns to like Weedon and Maud, Scotts children, and to accept the servants. It is difficult for White Fang to adjust to Sierra Vista and learn the rules he must follow. Once, he kills fifty chickens before he learns that their coop is off-limits. Scott works with White Fang, trying to train him for life in the California countryside. He uses his voice, not violence, to control White Fang, who responds positively and learns quickly. Even Judge Scott is forced to admit that White Fang is smart. Before long, White Fang has learned to spare domesticated animals, such as the chickens, and to pursue only wild animals, like jack rabbits. There are three dogs in town who perpetually trouble White Fang. Since he is not allowed to fight them, he tries to stay away. One day he is permitted to pursue these dogs, and he kills them all. The reader is suddenly reminded of White Fangs wild origins and recent history. It is miraculous that Scott has been able to bring this wolf under control.", "analysis": ""}

Not only was White Fang adaptable by nature, but he had travelled much, and knew the meaning and necessity of adjustment. Here, in Sierra Vista, which was the name of Judge Scott's place, White Fang quickly began to make himself at home. He had no further serious trouble with the dogs. They knew more about the ways of the Southland gods than did he, and in their eyes he had qualified when he accompanied the gods inside the house. Wolf that he was, and unprecedented as it was, the gods had sanctioned his presence, and they, the dogs of the gods, could only recognise this sanction. Dick, perforce, had to go through a few stiff formalities at first, after which he calmly accepted White Fang as an addition to the premises. Had Dick had his way, they would have been good friends; but White Fang was averse to friendship. All he asked of other dogs was to be let alone. His whole life he had kept aloof from his kind, and he still desired to keep aloof. Dick's overtures bothered him, so he snarled Dick away. In the north he had learned the lesson that he must let the master's dogs alone, and he did not forget that lesson now. But he insisted on his own privacy and self-seclusion, and so thoroughly ignored Dick that that good-natured creature finally gave him up and scarcely took as much interest in him as in the hitching-post near the stable. Not so with Collie. While she accepted him because it was the mandate of the gods, that was no reason that she should leave him in peace. Woven into her being was the memory of countless crimes he and his had perpetrated against her ancestry. Not in a day nor a generation were the ravaged sheepfolds to be forgotten. All this was a spur to her, pricking her to retaliation. She could not fly in the face of the gods who permitted him, but that did not prevent her from making life miserable for him in petty ways. A feud, ages old, was between them, and she, for one, would see to it that he was reminded. So Collie took advantage of her sex to pick upon White Fang and maltreat him. His instinct would not permit him to attack her, while her persistence would not permit him to ignore her. When she rushed at him he turned his fur-protected shoulder to her sharp teeth and walked away stiff-legged and stately. When she forced him too hard, he was compelled to go about in a circle, his shoulder presented to her, his head turned from her, and on his face and in his eyes a patient and bored expression. Sometimes, however, a nip on his hind-quarters hastened his retreat and made it anything but stately. But as a rule he managed to maintain a dignity that was almost solemnity. He ignored her existence whenever it was possible, and made it a point to keep out of her way. When he saw or heard her coming, he got up and walked off. There was much in other matters for White Fang to learn. Life in the Northland was simplicity itself when compared with the complicated affairs of Sierra Vista. First of all, he had to learn the family of the master. In a way he was prepared to do this. As Mit-sah and Kloo-kooch had belonged to Grey Beaver, sharing his food, his fire, and his blankets, so now, at Sierra Vista, belonged to the love-master all the denizens of the house. But in this matter there was a difference, and many differences. Sierra Vista was a far vaster affair than the tepee of Grey Beaver. There were many persons to be considered. There was Judge Scott, and there was his wife. There were the master's two sisters, Beth and Mary. There was his wife, Alice, and then there were his children, Weedon and Maud, toddlers of four and six. There was no way for anybody to tell him about all these people, and of blood-ties and relationship he knew nothing whatever and never would be capable of knowing. Yet he quickly worked it out that all of them belonged to the master. Then, by observation, whenever opportunity offered, by study of action, speech, and the very intonations of the voice, he slowly learned the intimacy and the degree of favour they enjoyed with the master. And by this ascertained standard, White Fang treated them accordingly. What was of value to the master he valued; what was dear to the master was to be cherished by White Fang and guarded carefully. Thus it was with the two children. All his life he had disliked children. He hated and feared their hands. The lessons were not tender that he had learned of their tyranny and cruelty in the days of the Indian villages. When Weedon and Maud had first approached him, he growled warningly and looked malignant. A cuff from the master and a sharp word had then compelled him to permit their caresses, though he growled and growled under their tiny hands, and in the growl there was no crooning note. Later, he observed that the boy and girl were of great value in the master's eyes. Then it was that no cuff nor sharp word was necessary before they could pat him. Yet White Fang was never effusively affectionate. He yielded to the master's children with an ill but honest grace, and endured their fooling as one would endure a painful operation. When he could no longer endure, he would get up and stalk determinedly away from them. But after a time, he grew even to like the children. Still he was not demonstrative. He would not go up to them. On the other hand, instead of walking away at sight of them, he waited for them to come to him. And still later, it was noticed that a pleased light came into his eyes when he saw them approaching, and that he looked after them with an appearance of curious regret when they left him for other amusements. All this was a matter of development, and took time. Next in his regard, after the children, was Judge Scott. There were two reasons, possibly, for this. First, he was evidently a valuable possession of the master's, and next, he was undemonstrative. White Fang liked to lie at his feet on the wide porch when he read the newspaper, from time to time favouring White Fang with a look or a word--untroublesome tokens that he recognised White Fang's presence and existence. But this was only when the master was not around. When the master appeared, all other beings ceased to exist so far as White Fang was concerned. White Fang allowed all the members of the family to pet him and make much of him; but he never gave to them what he gave to the master. No caress of theirs could put the love-croon into his throat, and, try as they would, they could never persuade him into snuggling against them. This expression of abandon and surrender, of absolute trust, he reserved for the master alone. In fact, he never regarded the members of the family in any other light than possessions of the love-master. Also White Fang had early come to differentiate between the family and the servants of the household. The latter were afraid of him, while he merely refrained from attacking them. This because he considered that they were likewise possessions of the master. Between White Fang and them existed a neutrality and no more. They cooked for the master and washed the dishes and did other things just as Matt had done up in the Klondike. They were, in short, appurtenances of the household. Outside the household there was even more for White Fang to learn. The master's domain was wide and complex, yet it had its metes and bounds. The land itself ceased at the county road. Outside was the common domain of all gods--the roads and streets. Then inside other fences were the particular domains of other gods. A myriad laws governed all these things and determined conduct; yet he did not know the speech of the gods, nor was there any way for him to learn save by experience. He obeyed his natural impulses until they ran him counter to some law. When this had been done a few times, he learned the law and after that observed it. But most potent in his education was the cuff of the master's hand, the censure of the master's voice. Because of White Fang's very great love, a cuff from the master hurt him far more than any beating Grey Beaver or Beauty Smith had ever given him. They had hurt only the flesh of him; beneath the flesh the spirit had still raged, splendid and invincible. But with the master the cuff was always too light to hurt the flesh. Yet it went deeper. It was an expression of the master's disapproval, and White Fang's spirit wilted under it. In point of fact, the cuff was rarely administered. The master's voice was sufficient. By it White Fang knew whether he did right or not. By it he trimmed his conduct and adjusted his actions. It was the compass by which he steered and learned to chart the manners of a new land and life. In the Northland, the only domesticated animal was the dog. All other animals lived in the Wild, and were, when not too formidable, lawful spoil for any dog. All his days White Fang had foraged among the live things for food. It did not enter his head that in the Southland it was otherwise. But this he was to learn early in his residence in Santa Clara Valley. Sauntering around the corner of the house in the early morning, he came upon a chicken that had escaped from the chicken-yard. White Fang's natural impulse was to eat it. A couple of bounds, a flash of teeth and a frightened squawk, and he had scooped in the adventurous fowl. It was farm-bred and fat and tender; and White Fang licked his chops and decided that such fare was good. Later in the day, he chanced upon another stray chicken near the stables. One of the grooms ran to the rescue. He did not know White Fang's breed, so for weapon he took a light buggy-whip. At the first cut of the whip, White Fang left the chicken for the man. A club might have stopped White Fang, but not a whip. Silently, without flinching, he took a second cut in his forward rush, and as he leaped for the throat the groom cried out, "My God!" and staggered backward. He dropped the whip and shielded his throat with his arms. In consequence, his forearm was ripped open to the bone. The man was badly frightened. It was not so much White Fang's ferocity as it was his silence that unnerved the groom. Still protecting his throat and face with his torn and bleeding arm, he tried to retreat to the barn. And it would have gone hard with him had not Collie appeared on the scene. As she had saved Dick's life, she now saved the groom's. She rushed upon White Fang in frenzied wrath. She had been right. She had known better than the blundering gods. All her suspicions were justified. Here was the ancient marauder up to his old tricks again. The groom escaped into the stables, and White Fang backed away before Collie's wicked teeth, or presented his shoulder to them and circled round and round. But Collie did not give over, as was her wont, after a decent interval of chastisement. On the contrary, she grew more excited and angry every moment, until, in the end, White Fang flung dignity to the winds and frankly fled away from her across the fields. "He'll learn to leave chickens alone," the master said. "But I can't give him the lesson until I catch him in the act." Two nights later came the act, but on a more generous scale than the master had anticipated. White Fang had observed closely the chicken-yards and the habits of the chickens. In the night-time, after they had gone to roost, he climbed to the top of a pile of newly hauled lumber. From there he gained the roof of a chicken-house, passed over the ridgepole and dropped to the ground inside. A moment later he was inside the house, and the slaughter began. In the morning, when the master came out on to the porch, fifty white Leghorn hens, laid out in a row by the groom, greeted his eyes. He whistled to himself, softly, first with surprise, and then, at the end, with admiration. His eyes were likewise greeted by White Fang, but about the latter there were no signs of shame nor guilt. He carried himself with pride, as though, forsooth, he had achieved a deed praiseworthy and meritorious. There was about him no consciousness of sin. The master's lips tightened as he faced the disagreeable task. Then he talked harshly to the unwitting culprit, and in his voice there was nothing but godlike wrath. Also, he held White Fang's nose down to the slain hens, and at the same time cuffed him soundly. White Fang never raided a chicken-roost again. It was against the law, and he had learned it. Then the master took him into the chicken-yards. White Fang's natural impulse, when he saw the live food fluttering about him and under his very nose, was to spring upon it. He obeyed the impulse, but was checked by the master's voice. They continued in the yards for half an hour. Time and again the impulse surged over White Fang, and each time, as he yielded to it, he was checked by the master's voice. Thus it was he learned the law, and ere he left the domain of the chickens, he had learned to ignore their existence. "You can never cure a chicken-killer." Judge Scott shook his head sadly at luncheon table, when his son narrated the lesson he had given White Fang. "Once they've got the habit and the taste of blood . . ." Again he shook his head sadly. But Weedon Scott did not agree with his father. "I'll tell you what I'll do," he challenged finally. "I'll lock White Fang in with the chickens all afternoon." "But think of the chickens," objected the judge. "And furthermore," the son went on, "for every chicken he kills, I'll pay you one dollar gold coin of the realm." "But you should penalise father, too," interpose Beth. Her sister seconded her, and a chorus of approval arose from around the table. Judge Scott nodded his head in agreement. "All right." Weedon Scott pondered for a moment. "And if, at the end of the afternoon White Fang hasn't harmed a chicken, for every ten minutes of the time he has spent in the yard, you will have to say to him, gravely and with deliberation, just as if you were sitting on the bench and solemnly passing judgment, 'White Fang, you are smarter than I thought.'" From hidden points of vantage the family watched the performance. But it was a fizzle. Locked in the yard and there deserted by the master, White Fang lay down and went to sleep. Once he got up and walked over to the trough for a drink of water. The chickens he calmly ignored. So far as he was concerned they did not exist. At four o'clock he executed a running jump, gained the roof of the chicken-house and leaped to the ground outside, whence he sauntered gravely to the house. He had learned the law. And on the porch, before the delighted family, Judge Scott, face to face with White Fang, said slowly and solemnly, sixteen times, "White Fang, you are smarter than I thought." But it was the multiplicity of laws that befuddled White Fang and often brought him into disgrace. He had to learn that he must not touch the chickens that belonged to other gods. Then there were cats, and rabbits, and turkeys; all these he must let alone. In fact, when he had but partly learned the law, his impression was that he must leave all live things alone. Out in the back-pasture, a quail could flutter up under his nose unharmed. All tense and trembling with eagerness and desire, he mastered his instinct and stood still. He was obeying the will of the gods. And then, one day, again out in the back-pasture, he saw Dick start a jackrabbit and run it. The master himself was looking on and did not interfere. Nay, he encouraged White Fang to join in the chase. And thus he learned that there was no taboo on jackrabbits. In the end he worked out the complete law. Between him and all domestic animals there must be no hostilities. If not amity, at least neutrality must obtain. But the other animals--the squirrels, and quail, and cottontails, were creatures of the Wild who had never yielded allegiance to man. They were the lawful prey of any dog. It was only the tame that the gods protected, and between the tame deadly strife was not permitted. The gods held the power of life and death over their subjects, and the gods were jealous of their power. Life was complex in the Santa Clara Valley after the simplicities of the Northland. And the chief thing demanded by these intricacies of civilisation was control, restraint--a poise of self that was as delicate as the fluttering of gossamer wings and at the same time as rigid as steel. Life had a thousand faces, and White Fang found he must meet them all--thus, when he went to town, in to San Jose, running behind the carriage or loafing about the streets when the carriage stopped. Life flowed past him, deep and wide and varied, continually impinging upon his senses, demanding of him instant and endless adjustments and correspondences, and compelling him, almost always, to suppress his natural impulses. There were butcher-shops where meat hung within reach. This meat he must not touch. There were cats at the houses the master visited that must be let alone. And there were dogs everywhere that snarled at him and that he must not attack. And then, on the crowded sidewalks there were persons innumerable whose attention he attracted. They would stop and look at him, point him out to one another, examine him, talk of him, and, worst of all, pat him. And these perilous contacts from all these strange hands he must endure. Yet this endurance he achieved. Furthermore, he got over being awkward and self-conscious. In a lofty way he received the attentions of the multitudes of strange gods. With condescension he accepted their condescension. On the other hand, there was something about him that prevented great familiarity. They patted him on the head and passed on, contented and pleased with their own daring. But it was not all easy for White Fang. Running behind the carriage in the outskirts of San Jose, he encountered certain small boys who made a practice of flinging stones at him. Yet he knew that it was not permitted him to pursue and drag them down. Here he was compelled to violate his instinct of self-preservation, and violate it he did, for he was becoming tame and qualifying himself for civilisation. Nevertheless, White Fang was not quite satisfied with the arrangement. He had no abstract ideas about justice and fair play. But there is a certain sense of equity that resides in life, and it was this sense in him that resented the unfairness of his being permitted no defence against the stone-throwers. He forgot that in the covenant entered into between him and the gods they were pledged to care for him and defend him. But one day the master sprang from the carriage, whip in hand, and gave the stone-throwers a thrashing. After that they threw stones no more, and White Fang understood and was satisfied. One other experience of similar nature was his. On the way to town, hanging around the saloon at the cross-roads, were three dogs that made a practice of rushing out upon him when he went by. Knowing his deadly method of fighting, the master had never ceased impressing upon White Fang the law that he must not fight. As a result, having learned the lesson well, White Fang was hard put whenever he passed the cross-roads saloon. After the first rush, each time, his snarl kept the three dogs at a distance but they trailed along behind, yelping and bickering and insulting him. This endured for some time. The men at the saloon even urged the dogs on to attack White Fang. One day they openly sicked the dogs on him. The master stopped the carriage. "Go to it," he said to White Fang. But White Fang could not believe. He looked at the master, and he looked at the dogs. Then he looked back eagerly and questioningly at the master. The master nodded his head. "Go to them, old fellow. Eat them up." White Fang no longer hesitated. He turned and leaped silently among his enemies. All three faced him. There was a great snarling and growling, a clashing of teeth and a flurry of bodies. The dust of the road arose in a cloud and screened the battle. But at the end of several minutes two dogs were struggling in the dirt and the third was in full flight. He leaped a ditch, went through a rail fence, and fled across a field. White Fang followed, sliding over the ground in wolf fashion and with wolf speed, swiftly and without noise, and in the centre of the field he dragged down and slew the dog. With this triple killing his main troubles with dogs ceased. The word went up and down the valley, and men saw to it that their dogs did not molest the Fighting Wolf.

chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang24.html

White Fangs experiences at Sierra Vista, Scotts residence, are described in this chapter. Scotts family is also introduced. Dick, the deeerhound, has accepted White Fang, and they do fine together; but White Fang tries to avoid Collie, who still tries to stand in his way. White Fang also learns to like Weedon and Maud, Scotts children, and to accept the servants. It is difficult for White Fang to adjust to Sierra Vista and learn the rules he must follow. Once, he kills fifty chickens before he learns that their coop is off-limits. Scott works with White Fang, trying to train him for life in the California countryside. He uses his voice, not violence, to control White Fang, who responds positively and learns quickly. Even Judge Scott is forced to admit that White Fang is smart. Before long, White Fang has learned to spare domesticated animals, such as the chickens, and to pursue only wild animals, like jack rabbits. There are three dogs in town who perpetually trouble White Fang. Since he is not allowed to fight them, he tries to stay away. One day he is permitted to pursue these dogs, and he kills them all. The reader is suddenly reminded of White Fangs wild origins and recent history. It is miraculous that Scott has been able to bring this wolf under control.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/24.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_23_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 5.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang25.html", "summary": "White Fang does not really have much to do in California. At first, he is not friendly with the other dogs and vaguely misses the excitement of fighting. When Scott goes out on horseback, White Fang eagerly follows, traveling for miles. Once, Scott falls off his horse and breaks his leg. Unable to move, he orders White Fang to go home, where the dog growls and attracts the attention of his master's wife. He finally convinces the family to follow him back to Scott, but only after barking, which he is reluctant to do. He has not yet adopted all canine habits. White Fang grows more mellow in Sierra Vista. He actually begins to play with Collie and actually misses an outing with Scott in order to be with the sheepdog. He also learns to tolerate laughter when it is issued by Scott.", "analysis": ""}

The months came and went. There was plenty of food and no work in the Southland, and White Fang lived fat and prosperous and happy. Not alone was he in the geographical Southland, for he was in the Southland of life. Human kindness was like a sun shining upon him, and he flourished like a flower planted in good soil. And yet he remained somehow different from other dogs. He knew the law even better than did the dogs that had known no other life, and he observed the law more punctiliously; but still there was about him a suggestion of lurking ferocity, as though the Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept. He never chummed with other dogs. Lonely he had lived, so far as his kind was concerned, and lonely he would continue to live. In his puppyhood, under the persecution of Lip-lip and the puppy-pack, and in his fighting days with Beauty Smith, he had acquired a fixed aversion for dogs. The natural course of his life had been diverted, and, recoiling from his kind, he had clung to the human. Besides, all Southland dogs looked upon him with suspicion. He aroused in them their instinctive fear of the Wild, and they greeted him always with snarl and growl and belligerent hatred. He, on the other hand, learned that it was not necessary to use his teeth upon them. His naked fangs and writhing lips were uniformly efficacious, rarely failing to send a bellowing on-rushing dog back on its haunches. But there was one trial in White Fang's life--Collie. She never gave him a moment's peace. She was not so amenable to the law as he. She defied all efforts of the master to make her become friends with White Fang. Ever in his ears was sounding her sharp and nervous snarl. She had never forgiven him the chicken-killing episode, and persistently held to the belief that his intentions were bad. She found him guilty before the act, and treated him accordingly. She became a pest to him, like a policeman following him around the stable and the hounds, and, if he even so much as glanced curiously at a pigeon or chicken, bursting into an outcry of indignation and wrath. His favourite way of ignoring her was to lie down, with his head on his fore-paws, and pretend sleep. This always dumfounded and silenced her. With the exception of Collie, all things went well with White Fang. He had learned control and poise, and he knew the law. He achieved a staidness, and calmness, and philosophic tolerance. He no longer lived in a hostile environment. Danger and hurt and death did not lurk everywhere about him. In time, the unknown, as a thing of terror and menace ever impending, faded away. Life was soft and easy. It flowed along smoothly, and neither fear nor foe lurked by the way. He missed the snow without being aware of it. "An unduly long summer," would have been his thought had he thought about it; as it was, he merely missed the snow in a vague, subconscious way. In the same fashion, especially in the heat of summer when he suffered from the sun, he experienced faint longings for the Northland. Their only effect upon him, however, was to make him uneasy and restless without his knowing what was the matter. White Fang had never been very demonstrative. Beyond his snuggling and the throwing of a crooning note into his love-growl, he had no way of expressing his love. Yet it was given him to discover a third way. He had always been susceptible to the laughter of the gods. Laughter had affected him with madness, made him frantic with rage. But he did not have it in him to be angry with the love-master, and when that god elected to laugh at him in a good-natured, bantering way, he was nonplussed. He could feel the pricking and stinging of the old anger as it strove to rise up in him, but it strove against love. He could not be angry; yet he had to do something. At first he was dignified, and the master laughed the harder. Then he tried to be more dignified, and the master laughed harder than before. In the end, the master laughed him out of his dignity. His jaws slightly parted, his lips lifted a little, and a quizzical expression that was more love than humour came into his eyes. He had learned to laugh. Likewise he learned to romp with the master, to be tumbled down and rolled over, and be the victim of innumerable rough tricks. In return he feigned anger, bristling and growling ferociously, and clipping his teeth together in snaps that had all the seeming of deadly intention. But he never forgot himself. Those snaps were always delivered on the empty air. At the end of such a romp, when blow and cuff and snap and snarl were fast and furious, they would break off suddenly and stand several feet apart, glaring at each other. And then, just as suddenly, like the sun rising on a stormy sea, they would begin to laugh. This would always culminate with the master's arms going around White Fang's neck and shoulders while the latter crooned and growled his love-song. But nobody else ever romped with White Fang. He did not permit it. He stood on his dignity, and when they attempted it, his warning snarl and bristling mane were anything but playful. That he allowed the master these liberties was no reason that he should be a common dog, loving here and loving there, everybody's property for a romp and good time. He loved with single heart and refused to cheapen himself or his love. The master went out on horseback a great deal, and to accompany him was one of White Fang's chief duties in life. In the Northland he had evidenced his fealty by toiling in the harness; but there were no sleds in the Southland, nor did dogs pack burdens on their backs. So he rendered fealty in the new way, by running with the master's horse. The longest day never played White Fang out. His was the gait of the wolf, smooth, tireless and effortless, and at the end of fifty miles he would come in jauntily ahead of the horse. It was in connection with the riding, that White Fang achieved one other mode of expression--remarkable in that he did it but twice in all his life. The first time occurred when the master was trying to teach a spirited thoroughbred the method of opening and closing gates without the rider's dismounting. Time and again and many times he ranged the horse up to the gate in the effort to close it and each time the horse became frightened and backed and plunged away. It grew more nervous and excited every moment. When it reared, the master put the spurs to it and made it drop its fore-legs back to earth, whereupon it would begin kicking with its hind-legs. White Fang watched the performance with increasing anxiety until he could contain himself no longer, when he sprang in front of the horse and barked savagely and warningly. Though he often tried to bark thereafter, and the master encouraged him, he succeeded only once, and then it was not in the master's presence. A scamper across the pasture, a jackrabbit rising suddenly under the horse's feet, a violent sheer, a stumble, a fall to earth, and a broken leg for the master, was the cause of it. White Fang sprang in a rage at the throat of the offending horse, but was checked by the master's voice. "Home! Go home!" the master commanded when he had ascertained his injury. White Fang was disinclined to desert him. The master thought of writing a note, but searched his pockets vainly for pencil and paper. Again he commanded White Fang to go home. The latter regarded him wistfully, started away, then returned and whined softly. The master talked to him gently but seriously, and he cocked his ears, and listened with painful intentness. "That's all right, old fellow, you just run along home," ran the talk. "Go on home and tell them what's happened to me. Home with you, you wolf. Get along home!" White Fang knew the meaning of "home," and though he did not understand the remainder of the master's language, he knew it was his will that he should go home. He turned and trotted reluctantly away. Then he stopped, undecided, and looked back over his shoulder. "Go home!" came the sharp command, and this time he obeyed. The family was on the porch, taking the cool of the afternoon, when White Fang arrived. He came in among them, panting, covered with dust. "Weedon's back," Weedon's mother announced. The children welcomed White Fang with glad cries and ran to meet him. He avoided them and passed down the porch, but they cornered him against a rocking-chair and the railing. He growled and tried to push by them. Their mother looked apprehensively in their direction. "I confess, he makes me nervous around the children," she said. "I have a dread that he will turn upon them unexpectedly some day." Growling savagely, White Fang sprang out of the corner, overturning the boy and the girl. The mother called them to her and comforted them, telling them not to bother White Fang. "A wolf is a wolf!" commented Judge Scott. "There is no trusting one." "But he is not all wolf," interposed Beth, standing for her brother in his absence. "You have only Weedon's opinion for that," rejoined the judge. "He merely surmises that there is some strain of dog in White Fang; but as he will tell you himself, he knows nothing about it. As for his appearance--" He did not finish his sentence. White Fang stood before him, growling fiercely. "Go away! Lie down, sir!" Judge Scott commanded. White Fang turned to the love-master's wife. She screamed with fright as he seized her dress in his teeth and dragged on it till the frail fabric tore away. By this time he had become the centre of interest. He had ceased from his growling and stood, head up, looking into their faces. His throat worked spasmodically, but made no sound, while he struggled with all his body, convulsed with the effort to rid himself of the incommunicable something that strained for utterance. "I hope he is not going mad," said Weedon's mother. "I told Weedon that I was afraid the warm climate would not agree with an Arctic animal." "He's trying to speak, I do believe," Beth announced. At this moment speech came to White Fang, rushing up in a great burst of barking. "Something has happened to Weedon," his wife said decisively. They were all on their feet now, and White Fang ran down the steps, looking back for them to follow. For the second and last time in his life he had barked and made himself understood. After this event he found a warmer place in the hearts of the Sierra Vista people, and even the groom whose arm he had slashed admitted that he was a wise dog even if he was a wolf. Judge Scott still held to the same opinion, and proved it to everybody's dissatisfaction by measurements and descriptions taken from the encyclopaedia and various works on natural history. The days came and went, streaming their unbroken sunshine over the Santa Clara Valley. But as they grew shorter and White Fang's second winter in the Southland came on, he made a strange discovery. Collie's teeth were no longer sharp. There was a playfulness about her nips and a gentleness that prevented them from really hurting him. He forgot that she had made life a burden to him, and when she disported herself around him he responded solemnly, striving to be playful and becoming no more than ridiculous. One day she led him off on a long chase through the back-pasture land into the woods. It was the afternoon that the master was to ride, and White Fang knew it. The horse stood saddled and waiting at the door. White Fang hesitated. But there was that in him deeper than all the law he had learned, than the customs that had moulded him, than his love for the master, than the very will to live of himself; and when, in the moment of his indecision, Collie nipped him and scampered off, he turned and followed after. The master rode alone that day; and in the woods, side by side, White Fang ran with Collie, as his mother, Kiche, and old One Eye had run long years before in the silent Northland forest.

chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang25.html

White Fang does not really have much to do in California. At first, he is not friendly with the other dogs and vaguely misses the excitement of fighting. When Scott goes out on horseback, White Fang eagerly follows, traveling for miles. Once, Scott falls off his horse and breaks his leg. Unable to move, he orders White Fang to go home, where the dog growls and attracts the attention of his master's wife. He finally convinces the family to follow him back to Scott, but only after barking, which he is reluctant to do. He has not yet adopted all canine habits. White Fang grows more mellow in Sierra Vista. He actually begins to play with Collie and actually misses an outing with Scott in order to be with the sheepdog. He also learns to tolerate laughter when it is issued by Scott.

thebestnotes

all_chapterized_books/910-chapters/25.txt

finished_summaries/thebestnotes/White Fang/section_24_part_0.txt

White Fang.part 5.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang25.html", "summary": "This last chapter tells of an escaped convict, Jim Hall. He was long ago sentenced to fifty years in prison by Judge Scott. Innocent of the crime, Hall resents the judge who put him away and seeks revenge. Three years of life in a prison cell have made him morose, indignant, violent, and bitter. He escapes from jail by killing the guards with his own bare hands. When the news of Hall's escape reaches Sierra Vista, the family becomes very anxious. For protection, Alice, Judge Scott's wife, lets White Fang into the house every night when the family goes to sleep, even though the judge does not allow the dog inside. Early one morning, White Fang hears strange footsteps inside the house. Suspicious of the stranger that he finds, he attacks silently and furiously. When the family wakes up, they find Jim Hall lying dead in their home. White Fang, too, is severely wounded, with one broken hind-leg, three broken ribs, a great loss of blood, and three bullet holes. The family spares no expense to save his life, and their attempts are rewarded. White Fang is then dubbed \"the Blessed Wolf\" by Alice Scott. He also becomes the proud father of puppies, which Collie jealously guards.", "analysis": ""}

It was about this time that the newspapers were full of the daring escape of a convict from San Quentin prison. He was a ferocious man. He had been ill-made in the making. He had not been born right, and he had not been helped any by the moulding he had received at the hands of society. The hands of society are harsh, and this man was a striking sample of its handiwork. He was a beast--a human beast, it is true, but nevertheless so terrible a beast that he can best be characterised as carnivorous. In San Quentin prison he had proved incorrigible. Punishment failed to break his spirit. He could die dumb-mad and fighting to the last, but he could not live and be beaten. The more fiercely he fought, the more harshly society handled him, and the only effect of harshness was to make him fiercer. Strait-jackets, starvation, and beatings and clubbings were the wrong treatment for Jim Hall; but it was the treatment he received. It was the treatment he had received from the time he was a little pulpy boy in a San Francisco slum--soft clay in the hands of society and ready to be formed into something. It was during Jim Hall's third term in prison that he encountered a guard that was almost as great a beast as he. The guard treated him unfairly, lied about him to the warden, lost his credits, persecuted him. The difference between them was that the guard carried a bunch of keys and a revolver. Jim Hall had only his naked hands and his teeth. But he sprang upon the guard one day and used his teeth on the other's throat just like any jungle animal. After this, Jim Hall went to live in the incorrigible cell. He lived there three years. The cell was of iron, the floor, the walls, the roof. He never left this cell. He never saw the sky nor the sunshine. Day was a twilight and night was a black silence. He was in an iron tomb, buried alive. He saw no human face, spoke to no human thing. When his food was shoved in to him, he growled like a wild animal. He hated all things. For days and nights he bellowed his rage at the universe. For weeks and months he never made a sound, in the black silence eating his very soul. He was a man and a monstrosity, as fearful a thing of fear as ever gibbered in the visions of a maddened brain. And then, one night, he escaped. The warders said it was impossible, but nevertheless the cell was empty, and half in half out of it lay the body of a dead guard. Two other dead guards marked his trail through the prison to the outer walls, and he had killed with his hands to avoid noise. He was armed with the weapons of the slain guards--a live arsenal that fled through the hills pursued by the organised might of society. A heavy price of gold was upon his head. Avaricious farmers hunted him with shot-guns. His blood might pay off a mortgage or send a son to college. Public-spirited citizens took down their rifles and went out after him. A pack of bloodhounds followed the way of his bleeding feet. And the sleuth-hounds of the law, the paid fighting animals of society, with telephone, and telegraph, and special train, clung to his trail night and day. Sometimes they came upon him, and men faced him like heroes, or stampeded through barbed-wire fences to the delight of the commonwealth reading the account at the breakfast table. It was after such encounters that the dead and wounded were carted back to the towns, and their places filled by men eager for the man-hunt. And then Jim Hall disappeared. The bloodhounds vainly quested on the lost trail. Inoffensive ranchers in remote valleys were held up by armed men and compelled to identify themselves. While the remains of Jim Hall were discovered on a dozen mountain-sides by greedy claimants for blood- money. In the meantime the newspapers were read at Sierra Vista, not so much with interest as with anxiety. The women were afraid. Judge Scott pooh- poohed and laughed, but not with reason, for it was in his last days on the bench that Jim Hall had stood before him and received sentence. And in open court-room, before all men, Jim Hall had proclaimed that the day would come when he would wreak vengeance on the Judge that sentenced him. For once, Jim Hall was right. He was innocent of the crime for which he was sentenced. It was a case, in the parlance of thieves and police, of "rail-roading." Jim Hall was being "rail-roaded" to prison for a crime he had not committed. Because of the two prior convictions against him, Judge Scott imposed upon him a sentence of fifty years. Judge Scott did not know all things, and he did not know that he was party to a police conspiracy, that the evidence was hatched and perjured, that Jim Hall was guiltless of the crime charged. And Jim Hall, on the other hand, did not know that Judge Scott was merely ignorant. Jim Hall believed that the judge knew all about it and was hand in glove with the police in the perpetration of the monstrous injustice. So it was, when the doom of fifty years of living death was uttered by Judge Scott, that Jim Hall, hating all things in the society that misused him, rose up and raged in the court-room until dragged down by half a dozen of his blue- coated enemies. To him, Judge Scott was the keystone in the arch of injustice, and upon Judge Scott he emptied the vials of his wrath and hurled the threats of his revenge yet to come. Then Jim Hall went to his living death . . . and escaped. Of all this White Fang knew nothing. But between him and Alice, the master's wife, there existed a secret. Each night, after Sierra Vista had gone to bed, she rose and let in White Fang to sleep in the big hall. Now White Fang was not a house-dog, nor was he permitted to sleep in the house; so each morning, early, she slipped down and let him out before the family was awake. On one such night, while all the house slept, White Fang awoke and lay very quietly. And very quietly he smelled the air and read the message it bore of a strange god's presence. And to his ears came sounds of the strange god's movements. White Fang burst into no furious outcry. It was not his way. The strange god walked softly, but more softly walked White Fang, for he had no clothes to rub against the flesh of his body. He followed silently. In the Wild he had hunted live meat that was infinitely timid, and he knew the advantage of surprise. The strange god paused at the foot of the great staircase and listened, and White Fang was as dead, so without movement was he as he watched and waited. Up that staircase the way led to the love-master and to the love- master's dearest possessions. White Fang bristled, but waited. The strange god's foot lifted. He was beginning the ascent. Then it was that White Fang struck. He gave no warning, with no snarl anticipated his own action. Into the air he lifted his body in the spring that landed him on the strange god's back. White Fang clung with his fore-paws to the man's shoulders, at the same time burying his fangs into the back of the man's neck. He clung on for a moment, long enough to drag the god over backward. Together they crashed to the floor. White Fang leaped clear, and, as the man struggled to rise, was in again with the slashing fangs. Sierra Vista awoke in alarm. The noise from downstairs was as that of a score of battling fiends. There were revolver shots. A man's voice screamed once in horror and anguish. There was a great snarling and growling, and over all arose a smashing and crashing of furniture and glass. But almost as quickly as it had arisen, the commotion died away. The struggle had not lasted more than three minutes. The frightened household clustered at the top of the stairway. From below, as from out an abyss of blackness, came up a gurgling sound, as of air bubbling through water. Sometimes this gurgle became sibilant, almost a whistle. But this, too, quickly died down and ceased. Then naught came up out of the blackness save a heavy panting of some creature struggling sorely for air. Weedon Scott pressed a button, and the staircase and downstairs hall were flooded with light. Then he and Judge Scott, revolvers in hand, cautiously descended. There was no need for this caution. White Fang had done his work. In the midst of the wreckage of overthrown and smashed furniture, partly on his side, his face hidden by an arm, lay a man. Weedon Scott bent over, removed the arm and turned the man's face upward. A gaping throat explained the manner of his death. "Jim Hall," said Judge Scott, and father and son looked significantly at each other. Then they turned to White Fang. He, too, was lying on his side. His eyes were closed, but the lids slightly lifted in an effort to look at them as they bent over him, and the tail was perceptibly agitated in a vain effort to wag. Weedon Scott patted him, and his throat rumbled an acknowledging growl. But it was a weak growl at best, and it quickly ceased. His eyelids drooped and went shut, and his whole body seemed to relax and flatten out upon the floor. "He's all in, poor devil," muttered the master. "We'll see about that," asserted the Judge, as he started for the telephone. "Frankly, he has one chance in a thousand," announced the surgeon, after he had worked an hour and a half on White Fang. Dawn was breaking through the windows and dimming the electric lights. With the exception of the children, the whole family was gathered about the surgeon to hear his verdict. "One broken hind-leg," he went on. "Three broken ribs, one at least of which has pierced the lungs. He has lost nearly all the blood in his body. There is a large likelihood of internal injuries. He must have been jumped upon. To say nothing of three bullet holes clear through him. One chance in a thousand is really optimistic. He hasn't a chance in ten thousand." "But he mustn't lose any chance that might be of help to him," Judge Scott exclaimed. "Never mind expense. Put him under the X-ray--anything. Weedon, telegraph at once to San Francisco for Doctor Nichols. No reflection on you, doctor, you understand; but he must have the advantage of every chance." The surgeon smiled indulgently. "Of course I understand. He deserves all that can be done for him. He must be nursed as you would nurse a human being, a sick child. And don't forget what I told you about temperature. I'll be back at ten o'clock again." White Fang received the nursing. Judge Scott's suggestion of a trained nurse was indignantly clamoured down by the girls, who themselves undertook the task. And White Fang won out on the one chance in ten thousand denied him by the surgeon. The latter was not to be censured for his misjudgment. All his life he had tended and operated on the soft humans of civilisation, who lived sheltered lives and had descended out of many sheltered generations. Compared with White Fang, they were frail and flabby, and clutched life without any strength in their grip. White Fang had come straight from the Wild, where the weak perish early and shelter is vouchsafed to none. In neither his father nor his mother was there any weakness, nor in the generations before them. A constitution of iron and the vitality of the Wild were White Fang's inheritance, and he clung to life, the whole of him and every part of him, in spirit and in flesh, with the tenacity that of old belonged to all creatures. Bound down a prisoner, denied even movement by the plaster casts and bandages, White Fang lingered out the weeks. He slept long hours and dreamed much, and through his mind passed an unending pageant of Northland visions. All the ghosts of the past arose and were with him. Once again he lived in the lair with Kiche, crept trembling to the knees of Grey Beaver to tender his allegiance, ran for his life before Lip-lip and all the howling bedlam of the puppy-pack. He ran again through the silence, hunting his living food through the months of famine; and again he ran at the head of the team, the gut-whips of Mit-sah and Grey Beaver snapping behind, their voices crying "Ra! Raa!" when they came to a narrow passage and the team closed together like a fan to go through. He lived again all his days with Beauty Smith and the fights he had fought. At such times he whimpered and snarled in his sleep, and they that looked on said that his dreams were bad. But there was one particular nightmare from which he suffered--the clanking, clanging monsters of electric cars that were to him colossal screaming lynxes. He would lie in a screen of bushes, watching for a squirrel to venture far enough out on the ground from its tree-refuge. Then, when he sprang out upon it, it would transform itself into an electric car, menacing and terrible, towering over him like a mountain, screaming and clanging and spitting fire at him. It was the same when he challenged the hawk down out of the sky. Down out of the blue it would rush, as it dropped upon him changing itself into the ubiquitous electric car. Or again, he would be in the pen of Beauty Smith. Outside the pen, men would be gathering, and he knew that a fight was on. He watched the door for his antagonist to enter. The door would open, and thrust in upon him would come the awful electric car. A thousand times this occurred, and each time the terror it inspired was as vivid and great as ever. Then came the day when the last bandage and the last plaster cast were taken off. It was a gala day. All Sierra Vista was gathered around. The master rubbed his ears, and he crooned his love-growl. The master's wife called him the "Blessed Wolf," which name was taken up with acclaim and all the women called him the Blessed Wolf. He tried to rise to his feet, and after several attempts fell down from weakness. He had lain so long that his muscles had lost their cunning, and all the strength had gone out of them. He felt a little shame because of his weakness, as though, forsooth, he were failing the gods in the service he owed them. Because of this he made heroic efforts to arise and at last he stood on his four legs, tottering and swaying back and forth. "The Blessed Wolf!" chorused the women. Judge Scott surveyed them triumphantly. "Out of your own mouths be it," he said. "Just as I contended right along. No mere dog could have done what he did. He's a wolf." "A Blessed Wolf," amended the Judge's wife. "Yes, Blessed Wolf," agreed the Judge. "And henceforth that shall be my name for him." "He'll have to learn to walk again," said the surgeon; "so he might as well start in right now. It won't hurt him. Take him outside." And outside he went, like a king, with all Sierra Vista about him and tending on him. He was very weak, and when he reached the lawn he lay down and rested for a while. Then the procession started on, little spurts of strength coming into White Fang's muscles as he used them and the blood began to surge through them. The stables were reached, and there in the doorway, lay Collie, a half-dozen pudgy puppies playing about her in the sun. White Fang looked on with a wondering eye. Collie snarled warningly at him, and he was careful to keep his distance. The master with his toe helped one sprawling puppy toward him. He bristled suspiciously, but the master warned him that all was well. Collie, clasped in the arms of one of the women, watched him jealously and with a snarl warned him that all was not well. The puppy sprawled in front of him. He cocked his ears and watched it curiously. Then their noses touched, and he felt the warm little tongue of the puppy on his jowl. White Fang's tongue went out, he knew not why, and he licked the puppy's face. Hand-clapping and pleased cries from the gods greeted the performance. He was surprised, and looked at them in a puzzled way. Then his weakness asserted itself, and he lay down, his ears cocked, his head on one side, as he watched the puppy. The other puppies came sprawling toward him, to Collie's great disgust; and he gravely permitted them to clamber and tumble over him. At first, amid the applause of the gods, he betrayed a trifle of his old self-consciousness and awkwardness. This passed away as the puppies' antics and mauling continued, and he lay with half-shut patient eyes, drowsing in the sun.

chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20190903025238/http:/thebestnotes.com/booknotes/White_Fang/White_Fang25.html

This last chapter tells of an escaped convict, Jim Hall. He was long ago sentenced to fifty years in prison by Judge Scott. Innocent of the crime, Hall resents the judge who put him away and seeks revenge. Three years of life in a prison cell have made him morose, indignant, violent, and bitter. He escapes from jail by killing the guards with his own bare hands. When the news of Hall's escape reaches Sierra Vista, the family becomes very anxious. For protection, Alice, Judge Scott's wife, lets White Fang into the house every night when the family goes to sleep, even though the judge does not allow the dog inside. Early one morning, White Fang hears strange footsteps inside the house. Suspicious of the stranger that he finds, he attacks silently and furiously. When the family wakes up, they find Jim Hall lying dead in their home. White Fang, too, is severely wounded, with one broken hind-leg, three broken ribs, a great loss of blood, and three bullet holes. The family spares no expense to save his life, and their attempts are rewarded. White Fang is then dubbed "the Blessed Wolf" by Alice Scott. He also becomes the proud father of puppies, which Collie jealously guards.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/act_4.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/Romeo and Juliet/section_3_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 4.scene 1-scene 5

act 4

{"name": "Act 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210415192050/https://www.gradesaver.com/romeo-and-juliet/study-guide/summary-act-4", "summary": "Scene One At the chapel, Paris speaks to Friar Laurence about his impending wedding to Juliet. Aware of the complications that will arise from this new match, the Friar is full of misgivings. Juliet, in search of Romeo, arrives at the chapel and finds Paris there. She is forced to speak with him, and he behaves arrogantly now that their wedding is set. However, Juliet rebuffs him with her vague answers, and then finally asks Friar Laurence if she might speak to him alone. When the Friar assents, Paris is forced to leave. Friar Laurence proposes a complicated plan to help Juliet reunite with Romeo. The Friar will give Juliet a special potion that will effectively kill her for 48 hours; she will exhibit no signs of life. Following their family tradition, her parents will place her body in the Capulet vault. Meanwhile, Friar Laurence will send a letter to Romeo, instructing him of the plan so that the boy can meet Juliet in the tomb and then lead her away from Verona. Juliet approves of the plan. Act Four, Scene Two Happy to know that she will be reunited with Romeo, Juliet returns home and apologizes to her father for her disobedience. He pardons her, and instructs her to prepare her clothes for the wedding, which is now going to happen the next day. Lord Capulet then sets out to find Paris to deliver the good news about Juliet's change of heart. Act Four, Scene Three Juliet convinces Lady Capulet and the Nurse to let her sleep alone that night. Juliet keeps a knife nearby in case the potion should fail. She then drinks the Friar's potion and falls to her bed, motionless. Act Four, Scene Four When the Nurse arrives to fetch Juliet the next morning, she finds the young girl's lifeless body. Lady Capulet soon follows, and is understandably devastated over her daughter's apparent suicide. When Lord Capulet finds out his daughter is dead, he orders the the wedding music to shift into funeral dirges. The grieving family prepares to move Juliet's body to the Capulet tomb as soon as possible.", "analysis": "As noted in the previous Analysis sections, Shakespeare foreshadows Romeo and Juliet's tragic ending by peppering the whole play with images of death. In Act 4, death finally comes to the forefront. Even though the audience understands that Juliet's death is a ploy, watching her plan and execute her suicide is an emotional moment - the extreme measures Juliet and Romeo are willing to take to be together are proof of their tragic desperation. In Act 4, Juliet summons all of her internal strength, which is manifest in her willingness to engage in the Friar's rash and precarious plan. Romeo does not appear in this Act; which makes it feel like Shakespeare wanted to draw attention to Juliet's unwavering devotion towards solving their problem. Where Romeo's reacted to his banishment by actually attempting suicide in Act 3, Juliet looks at the problem logically, choosing to feign suicide in order to reunited with her lover. These parallel decisions suggest Juliet's superior courage and cleverness, and indicate the power of love in Romeo and Juliet. Juliet's actions emphasize the recurring division between the young and the old in the play. Her decision to comply with the Friar's plan might be rash, but it is unquestionably brave. On the other hand, the adults in Act 4 act almost exclusively out of resignation and self-interest. Paris is no longer trying to charm or woo Juliet but, upon hearing the news that she has accepted his hand, becomes arrogant and obnoxious. Juliet's parents no longer concern themselves with her well-being once she claims to accept her betrothal to Paris, and even the Nurse allows her to sleep alone. Only the young lovers know the triumph and the heartbreak of true love, whereas their older counterparts stoically accept the status quo, favoring ease and expediency. Juliet's parents are so happy that she has agreed to the profitable match with Paris that they never question why she has changed her mind about him so quickly. From the beginning of Romeo and Juliet, Friar Laurence seems more like a politician than a holy man. He knows that Romeo and Juliet's marriage is hasty and irrational but sees it as a way to negotiate peace between the Montagues and the Capulets. In the first scene of Act 4, Friar Laurence makes no attempt to interfere with Paris's marriage plans, even though the Friar knows that Juliet is already married. He lacks the courage to state the truth, even though he knows that Juliet and Paris' marriage would be complete sacrilege. Furthermore, the Friar allows Juliet to use the sacrament of penance to get rid of Paris, which is another example of his disrespect for religious conventions. Finally, the Friar's outrageous plan makes him seem more like a mad scientist than a priest. He could have helped Romeo and Juliet to simply run away, but had he done so, he would have lost an opportunity to reconcile the feud between the Montagues and Capulets. By engineering a false tragedy and playing with death, Friar Laurence reveals his priorities - his own desire for political influence is more important than the lovers' happiness or his own religious vows. Finally, the Friar's convoluted plan calls the play's tragic categorization into further question. While the ending of Romeo and Juliet is undeniably sad, it keeps moving further away from the tropes of classical tragedy. The fact that Juliet agrees the Friar's wild plan instead of simply running away suggests that the characters' choices play a major role in the lovers' ultimate demise. In a classical tragedy, fate and other immovable forces lead to catastrophic events. However, in the Friar and Juliet's plan, it seems that Juliet cannot fully relinquish her life in Verona - she wants to claim victory over her parents. She is too headstrong to wonder whether her youthful bravado might have its own negative consequences."}

ACT IV. Scene I. Friar Laurence's cell. Enter Friar, [Laurence] and County Paris. Friar. On Thursday, sir? The time is very short. Par. My father Capulet will have it so, And I am nothing slow to slack his haste. Friar. You say you do not know the lady's mind. Uneven is the course; I like it not. Par. Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt's death, And therefore have I little talk'd of love; For Venus smiles not in a house of tears. Now, sir, her father counts it dangerous That she do give her sorrow so much sway, And in his wisdom hastes our marriage To stop the inundation of her tears, Which, too much minded by herself alone, May be put from her by society. Now do you know the reason of this haste. Friar. [aside] I would I knew not why it should be slow'd.- Look, sir, here comes the lady toward my cell. Enter Juliet. Par. Happily met, my lady and my wife! Jul. That may be, sir, when I may be a wife. Par. That may be must be, love, on Thursday next. Jul. What must be shall be. Friar. That's a certain text. Par. Come you to make confession to this father? Jul. To answer that, I should confess to you. Par. Do not deny to him that you love me. Jul. I will confess to you that I love him. Par. So will ye, I am sure, that you love me. Jul. If I do so, it will be of more price, Being spoke behind your back, than to your face. Par. Poor soul, thy face is much abus'd with tears. Jul. The tears have got small victory by that, For it was bad enough before their spite. Par. Thou wrong'st it more than tears with that report. Jul. That is no slander, sir, which is a truth; And what I spake, I spake it to my face. Par. Thy face is mine, and thou hast sland'red it. Jul. It may be so, for it is not mine own. Are you at leisure, holy father, now, Or shall I come to you at evening mass Friar. My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now. My lord, we must entreat the time alone. Par. God shield I should disturb devotion! Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse ye. Till then, adieu, and keep this holy kiss. Exit. Jul. O, shut the door! and when thou hast done so, Come weep with me- past hope, past cure, past help! Friar. Ah, Juliet, I already know thy grief; It strains me past the compass of my wits. I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it, On Thursday next be married to this County. Jul. Tell me not, friar, that thou hear'st of this, Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it. If in thy wisdom thou canst give no help, Do thou but call my resolution wise And with this knife I'll help it presently. God join'd my heart and Romeo's, thou our hands; And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo's seal'd, Shall be the label to another deed, Or my true heart with treacherous revolt Turn to another, this shall slay them both. Therefore, out of thy long-experienc'd time, Give me some present counsel; or, behold, 'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife Shall play the empire, arbitrating that Which the commission of thy years and art Could to no issue of true honour bring. Be not so long to speak. I long to die If what thou speak'st speak not of remedy. Friar. Hold, daughter. I do spy a kind of hope, Which craves as desperate an execution As that is desperate which we would prevent. If, rather than to marry County Paris Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself, Then is it likely thou wilt undertake A thing like death to chide away this shame, That cop'st with death himself to scape from it; And, if thou dar'st, I'll give thee remedy. Jul. O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower, Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears, Or shut me nightly in a charnel house, O'ercover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones, With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls; Or bid me go into a new-made grave And hide me with a dead man in his shroud- Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble- And I will do it without fear or doubt, To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love. Friar. Hold, then. Go home, be merry, give consent To marry Paris. Wednesday is to-morrow. To-morrow night look that thou lie alone; Let not the nurse lie with thee in thy chamber. Take thou this vial, being then in bed, And this distilled liquor drink thou off; When presently through all thy veins shall run A cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse Shall keep his native progress, but surcease; No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest; The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade To paly ashes, thy eyes' windows fall Like death when he shuts up the day of life; Each part, depriv'd of supple government, Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death; And in this borrowed likeness of shrunk death Thou shalt continue two-and-forty hours, And then awake as from a pleasant sleep. Now, when the bridegroom in the morning comes To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead. Then, as the manner of our country is, In thy best robes uncovered on the bier Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie. In the mean time, against thou shalt awake, Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift; And hither shall he come; and he and I Will watch thy waking, and that very night Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua. And this shall free thee from this present shame, If no inconstant toy nor womanish fear Abate thy valour in the acting it. Jul. Give me, give me! O, tell not me of fear! Friar. Hold! Get you gone, be strong and prosperous In this resolve. I'll send a friar with speed To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord. Jul. Love give me strength! and strength shall help afford. Farewell, dear father. Exeunt. Scene II. Capulet's house. Enter Father Capulet, Mother, Nurse, and Servingmen, two or three. Cap. So many guests invite as here are writ. [Exit a Servingman.] Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks. Serv. You shall have none ill, sir; for I'll try if they can lick their fingers. Cap. How canst thou try them so? Serv. Marry, sir, 'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers. Therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with me. Cap. Go, begone. Exit Servingman. We shall be much unfurnish'd for this time. What, is my daughter gone to Friar Laurence? Nurse. Ay, forsooth. Cap. Well, be may chance to do some good on her. A peevish self-will'd harlotry it is. Enter Juliet. Nurse. See where she comes from shrift with merry look. Cap. How now, my headstrong? Where have you been gadding? Jul. Where I have learnt me to repent the sin Of disobedient opposition To you and your behests, and am enjoin'd By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here To beg your pardon. Pardon, I beseech you! Henceforward I am ever rul'd by you. Cap. Send for the County. Go tell him of this. I'll have this knot knit up to-morrow morning. Jul. I met the youthful lord at Laurence' cell And gave him what becomed love I might, Not stepping o'er the bounds of modesty. Cap. Why, I am glad on't. This is well. Stand up. This is as't should be. Let me see the County. Ay, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither. Now, afore God, this reverend holy friar, All our whole city is much bound to him. Jul. Nurse, will you go with me into my closet To help me sort such needful ornaments As you think fit to furnish me to-morrow? Mother. No, not till Thursday. There is time enough. Cap. Go, nurse, go with her. We'll to church to-morrow. Exeunt Juliet and Nurse. Mother. We shall be short in our provision. 'Tis now near night. Cap. Tush, I will stir about, And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife. Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her. I'll not to bed to-night; let me alone. I'll play the housewife for this once. What, ho! They are all forth; well, I will walk myself To County Paris, to prepare him up Against to-morrow. My heart is wondrous light, Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim'd. Exeunt. Scene III. Juliet's chamber. Enter Juliet and Nurse. Jul. Ay, those attires are best; but, gentle nurse, I pray thee leave me to myself to-night; For I have need of many orisons To move the heavens to smile upon my state, Which, well thou knowest, is cross and full of sin. Enter Mother. Mother. What, are you busy, ho? Need you my help? Jul. No, madam; we have cull'd such necessaries As are behooffull for our state to-morrow. So please you, let me now be left alone, And let the nurse this night sit up with you; For I am sure you have your hands full all In this so sudden business. Mother. Good night. Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need. Exeunt [Mother and Nurse.] Jul. Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins That almost freezes up the heat of life. I'll call them back again to comfort me. Nurse!- What should she do here? My dismal scene I needs must act alone. Come, vial. What if this mixture do not work at all? Shall I be married then to-morrow morning? No, No! This shall forbid it. Lie thou there. Lays down a dagger. What if it be a poison which the friar Subtilly hath minist'red to have me dead, Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd Because he married me before to Romeo? I fear it is; and yet methinks it should not, For he hath still been tried a holy man. I will not entertain so bad a thought. How if, when I am laid into the tomb, I wake before the time that Romeo Come to redeem me? There's a fearful point! Shall I not then be stifled in the vault, To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes? Or, if I live, is it not very like The horrible conceit of death and night, Together with the terror of the place- As in a vault, an ancient receptacle Where for this many hundred years the bones Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd; Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth, Lies fest'ring in his shroud; where, as they say, At some hours in the night spirits resort- Alack, alack, is it not like that I, So early waking- what with loathsome smells, And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth, That living mortals, hearing them, run mad- O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught, Environed with all these hideous fears, And madly play with my forefathers' joints, And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud., And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone As with a club dash out my desp'rate brains? O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body Upon a rapier's point. Stay, Tybalt, stay! Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee. She [drinks and] falls upon her bed within the curtains. Scene IV. Capulet's house. Enter Lady of the House and Nurse. Lady. Hold, take these keys and fetch more spices, nurse. Nurse. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry. Enter Old Capulet. Cap. Come, stir, stir, stir! The second cock hath crow'd, The curfew bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock. Look to the bak'd meats, good Angelica; Spare not for cost. Nurse. Go, you cot-quean, go, Get you to bed! Faith, you'll be sick to-morrow For this night's watching. Cap. No, not a whit. What, I have watch'd ere now All night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick. Lady. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time; But I will watch you from such watching now. Exeunt Lady and Nurse. Cap. A jealous hood, a jealous hood! Enter three or four [Fellows, with spits and logs and baskets. What is there? Now, fellow, Fellow. Things for the cook, sir; but I know not what. Cap. Make haste, make haste. [Exit Fellow.] Sirrah, fetch drier logs. Call Peter; he will show thee where they are. Fellow. I have a head, sir, that will find out logs And never trouble Peter for the matter. Cap. Mass, and well said; a merry whoreson, ha! Thou shalt be loggerhead. [Exit Fellow.] Good faith, 'tis day. The County will be here with music straight, For so he said he would. Play music. I hear him near. Nurse! Wife! What, ho! What, nurse, I say! Enter Nurse. Go waken Juliet; go and trim her up. I'll go and chat with Paris. Hie, make haste, Make haste! The bridegroom he is come already: Make haste, I say. [Exeunt.] Scene V. Juliet's chamber. [Enter Nurse.] Nurse. Mistress! what, mistress! Juliet! Fast, I warrant her, she. Why, lamb! why, lady! Fie, you slug-abed! Why, love, I say! madam! sweetheart! Why, bride! What, not a word? You take your pennyworths now! Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant, The County Paris hath set up his rest That you shall rest but little. God forgive me! Marry, and amen. How sound is she asleep! I needs must wake her. Madam, madam, madam! Ay, let the County take you in your bed! He'll fright you up, i' faith. Will it not be? [Draws aside the curtains.] What, dress'd, and in your clothes, and down again? I must needs wake you. Lady! lady! lady! Alas, alas! Help, help! My lady's dead! O weraday that ever I was born! Some aqua-vitae, ho! My lord! my lady! Enter Mother. Mother. What noise is here? Nurse. O lamentable day! Mother. What is the matter? Nurse. Look, look! O heavy day! Mother. O me, O me! My child, my only life! Revive, look up, or I will die with thee! Help, help! Call help. Enter Father. Father. For shame, bring Juliet forth; her lord is come. Nurse. She's dead, deceas'd; she's dead! Alack the day! Mother. Alack the day, she's dead, she's dead, she's dead! Cap. Ha! let me see her. Out alas! she's cold, Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff; Life and these lips have long been separated. Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field. Nurse. O lamentable day! Mother. O woful time! Cap. Death, that hath ta'en her hence to make me wail, Ties up my tongue and will not let me speak. Enter Friar [Laurence] and the County [Paris], with Musicians. Friar. Come, is the bride ready to go to church? Cap. Ready to go, but never to return. O son, the night before thy wedding day Hath Death lain with thy wife. See, there she lies, Flower as she was, deflowered by him. Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir; My daughter he hath wedded. I will die And leave him all. Life, living, all is Death's. Par. Have I thought long to see this morning's face, And doth it give me such a sight as this? Mother. Accurs'd, unhappy, wretched, hateful day! Most miserable hour that e'er time saw In lasting labour of his pilgrimage! But one, poor one, one poor and loving child, But one thing to rejoice and solace in, And cruel Death hath catch'd it from my sight! Nurse. O woe? O woful, woful, woful day! Most lamentable day, most woful day That ever ever I did yet behold! O day! O day! O day! O hateful day! Never was seen so black a day as this. O woful day! O woful day! Par. Beguil'd, divorced, wronged, spited, slain! Most detestable Death, by thee beguil'd, By cruel cruel thee quite overthrown! O love! O life! not life, but love in death Cap. Despis'd, distressed, hated, martyr'd, kill'd! Uncomfortable time, why cam'st thou now To murther, murther our solemnity? O child! O child! my soul, and not my child! Dead art thou, dead! alack, my child is dead, And with my child my joys are buried! Friar. Peace, ho, for shame! Confusion's cure lives not In these confusions. Heaven and yourself Had part in this fair maid! now heaven hath all, And all the better is it for the maid. Your part in her you could not keep from death, But heaven keeps his part in eternal life. The most you sought was her promotion, For 'twas your heaven she should be advanc'd; And weep ye now, seeing she is advanc'd Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself? O, in this love, you love your child so ill That you run mad, seeing that she is well. She's not well married that lives married long, But she's best married that dies married young. Dry up your tears and stick your rosemary On this fair corse, and, as the custom is, In all her best array bear her to church; For though fond nature bids us all lament, Yet nature's tears are reason's merriment. Cap. All things that we ordained festival Turn from their office to black funeral- Our instruments to melancholy bells, Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast; Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change; Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse; And all things change them to the contrary. Friar. Sir, go you in; and, madam, go with him; And go, Sir Paris. Every one prepare To follow this fair corse unto her grave. The heavens do low'r upon you for some ill; Move them no more by crossing their high will. Exeunt. Manent Musicians [and Nurse]. 1. Mus. Faith, we may put up our pipes and be gone. Nurse. Honest good fellows, ah, put up, put up! For well you know this is a pitiful case. [Exit.] 1. Mus. Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended. Enter Peter. Pet. Musicians, O, musicians, 'Heart's ease,' 'Heart's ease'! O, an you will have me live, play 'Heart's ease.' 1. Mus. Why 'Heart's ease'', Pet. O, musicians, because my heart itself plays 'My heart is full of woe.' O, play me some merry dump to comfort me. 1. Mus. Not a dump we! 'Tis no time to play now. Pet. You will not then? 1. Mus. No. Pet. I will then give it you soundly. 1. Mus. What will you give us? Pet. No money, on my faith, but the gleek. I will give you the minstrel. 1. Mus. Then will I give you the serving-creature. Pet. Then will I lay the serving-creature's dagger on your pate. I will carry no crotchets. I'll re you, I'll fa you. Do you note me? 1. Mus. An you re us and fa us, you note us. 2. Mus. Pray you put up your dagger, and put out your wit. Pet. Then have at you with my wit! I will dry-beat you with an iron wit, and put up my iron dagger. Answer me like men. 'When griping grief the heart doth wound, And doleful dumps the mind oppress, Then music with her silver sound'- Why 'silver sound'? Why 'music with her silver sound'? What say you, Simon Catling? 1. Mus. Marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound. Pet. Pretty! What say You, Hugh Rebeck? 2. Mus. I say 'silver sound' because musicians sound for silver. Pet. Pretty too! What say you, James Soundpost? 3. Mus. Faith, I know not what to say. Pet. O, I cry you mercy! you are the singer. I will say for you. It is 'music with her silver sound' because musicians have no gold for sounding. 'Then music with her silver sound With speedy help doth lend redress.' [Exit. 1. Mus. What a pestilent knave is this same? 2. Mus. Hang him, Jack! Come, we'll in here, tarry for the mourners, and stay dinner. Exeunt.

Act 4

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Scene One At the chapel, Paris speaks to Friar Laurence about his impending wedding to Juliet. Aware of the complications that will arise from this new match, the Friar is full of misgivings. Juliet, in search of Romeo, arrives at the chapel and finds Paris there. She is forced to speak with him, and he behaves arrogantly now that their wedding is set. However, Juliet rebuffs him with her vague answers, and then finally asks Friar Laurence if she might speak to him alone. When the Friar assents, Paris is forced to leave. Friar Laurence proposes a complicated plan to help Juliet reunite with Romeo. The Friar will give Juliet a special potion that will effectively kill her for 48 hours; she will exhibit no signs of life. Following their family tradition, her parents will place her body in the Capulet vault. Meanwhile, Friar Laurence will send a letter to Romeo, instructing him of the plan so that the boy can meet Juliet in the tomb and then lead her away from Verona. Juliet approves of the plan. Act Four, Scene Two Happy to know that she will be reunited with Romeo, Juliet returns home and apologizes to her father for her disobedience. He pardons her, and instructs her to prepare her clothes for the wedding, which is now going to happen the next day. Lord Capulet then sets out to find Paris to deliver the good news about Juliet's change of heart. Act Four, Scene Three Juliet convinces Lady Capulet and the Nurse to let her sleep alone that night. Juliet keeps a knife nearby in case the potion should fail. She then drinks the Friar's potion and falls to her bed, motionless. Act Four, Scene Four When the Nurse arrives to fetch Juliet the next morning, she finds the young girl's lifeless body. Lady Capulet soon follows, and is understandably devastated over her daughter's apparent suicide. When Lord Capulet finds out his daughter is dead, he orders the the wedding music to shift into funeral dirges. The grieving family prepares to move Juliet's body to the Capulet tomb as soon as possible.

As noted in the previous Analysis sections, Shakespeare foreshadows Romeo and Juliet's tragic ending by peppering the whole play with images of death. In Act 4, death finally comes to the forefront. Even though the audience understands that Juliet's death is a ploy, watching her plan and execute her suicide is an emotional moment - the extreme measures Juliet and Romeo are willing to take to be together are proof of their tragic desperation. In Act 4, Juliet summons all of her internal strength, which is manifest in her willingness to engage in the Friar's rash and precarious plan. Romeo does not appear in this Act; which makes it feel like Shakespeare wanted to draw attention to Juliet's unwavering devotion towards solving their problem. Where Romeo's reacted to his banishment by actually attempting suicide in Act 3, Juliet looks at the problem logically, choosing to feign suicide in order to reunited with her lover. These parallel decisions suggest Juliet's superior courage and cleverness, and indicate the power of love in Romeo and Juliet. Juliet's actions emphasize the recurring division between the young and the old in the play. Her decision to comply with the Friar's plan might be rash, but it is unquestionably brave. On the other hand, the adults in Act 4 act almost exclusively out of resignation and self-interest. Paris is no longer trying to charm or woo Juliet but, upon hearing the news that she has accepted his hand, becomes arrogant and obnoxious. Juliet's parents no longer concern themselves with her well-being once she claims to accept her betrothal to Paris, and even the Nurse allows her to sleep alone. Only the young lovers know the triumph and the heartbreak of true love, whereas their older counterparts stoically accept the status quo, favoring ease and expediency. Juliet's parents are so happy that she has agreed to the profitable match with Paris that they never question why she has changed her mind about him so quickly. From the beginning of Romeo and Juliet, Friar Laurence seems more like a politician than a holy man. He knows that Romeo and Juliet's marriage is hasty and irrational but sees it as a way to negotiate peace between the Montagues and the Capulets. In the first scene of Act 4, Friar Laurence makes no attempt to interfere with Paris's marriage plans, even though the Friar knows that Juliet is already married. He lacks the courage to state the truth, even though he knows that Juliet and Paris' marriage would be complete sacrilege. Furthermore, the Friar allows Juliet to use the sacrament of penance to get rid of Paris, which is another example of his disrespect for religious conventions. Finally, the Friar's outrageous plan makes him seem more like a mad scientist than a priest. He could have helped Romeo and Juliet to simply run away, but had he done so, he would have lost an opportunity to reconcile the feud between the Montagues and Capulets. By engineering a false tragedy and playing with death, Friar Laurence reveals his priorities - his own desire for political influence is more important than the lovers' happiness or his own religious vows. Finally, the Friar's convoluted plan calls the play's tragic categorization into further question. While the ending of Romeo and Juliet is undeniably sad, it keeps moving further away from the tropes of classical tragedy. The fact that Juliet agrees the Friar's wild plan instead of simply running away suggests that the characters' choices play a major role in the lovers' ultimate demise. In a classical tragedy, fate and other immovable forces lead to catastrophic events. However, in the Friar and Juliet's plan, it seems that Juliet cannot fully relinquish her life in Verona - she wants to claim victory over her parents. She is too headstrong to wonder whether her youthful bravado might have its own negative consequences.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/3.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_3_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 1.scene 3

act 1, scene 3

{"name": "Act 1, Scene 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-1-scene-3", "summary": "At the Capulet house, Juliet's mother, Lady Capulet, comes in to tell her daughter about Paris's proposal. But Juliet's nurse first delivers a long, semi-bawdy speech about Juliet's infancy and toddler years. Her rambling, tangent of a speech reveals the following information: the Nurse had a baby named Susan who was about Juliet's age but, sadly, she died. The Nurse is not only Juliet's nanny but she also her wet-nurse. When it was time to \"wean\" Juliet, the Nurse put \"wormwood\" on her breast. Also, Juliet once fell down and cut her forehead when she was little, which the Nurse's late husband thought was hilarious--so hilarious that he turned the accident into a dirty joke about how Juliet would eventually grow up and then fall down and have sex with a guy. This is ... a lot of information. Lady Capulet eventually cuts her off and tells her to \"hold her peace.\" Lady Capulet unloads the news that Paris has been sniffing around for Juliet's hand in marriage. Eyeroll. Just check Paris out at the party that night, Lady Capulet says. He'll be the oh-so-dreamy guy all the other girls are swooning over. Speaking of, Peter, the servant, enters to announce that guests are beginning to arrive for the big bash.", "analysis": ""}

Scene III. Capulet's house. Enter Capulet's Wife, and Nurse. Wife. Nurse, where's my daughter? Call her forth to me. Nurse. Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year old, I bade her come. What, lamb! what ladybird! God forbid! Where's this girl? What, Juliet! Enter Juliet. Jul. How now? Who calls? Nurse. Your mother. Jul. Madam, I am here. What is your will? Wife. This is the matter- Nurse, give leave awhile, We must talk in secret. Nurse, come back again; I have rememb'red me, thou's hear our counsel. Thou knowest my daughter's of a pretty age. Nurse. Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour. Wife. She's not fourteen. Nurse. I'll lay fourteen of my teeth- And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four- She is not fourteen. How long is it now To Lammastide? Wife. A fortnight and odd days. Nurse. Even or odd, of all days in the year, Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen. Susan and she (God rest all Christian souls!) Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God; She was too good for me. But, as I said, On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen; That shall she, marry; I remember it well. 'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years; And she was wean'd (I never shall forget it), Of all the days of the year, upon that day; For I had then laid wormwood to my dug, Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall. My lord and you were then at Mantua. Nay, I do bear a brain. But, as I said, When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool, To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug! Shake, quoth the dovehouse! 'Twas no need, I trow, To bid me trudge. And since that time it is eleven years, For then she could stand high-lone; nay, by th' rood, She could have run and waddled all about; For even the day before, she broke her brow; And then my husband (God be with his soul! 'A was a merry man) took up the child. 'Yea,' quoth he, 'dost thou fall upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit; Wilt thou not, Jule?' and, by my holidam, The pretty wretch left crying, and said 'Ay.' To see now how a jest shall come about! I warrant, an I should live a thousand yeas, I never should forget it. 'Wilt thou not, Jule?' quoth he, And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said 'Ay.' Wife. Enough of this. I pray thee hold thy peace. Nurse. Yes, madam. Yet I cannot choose but laugh To think it should leave crying and say 'Ay.' And yet, I warrant, it bad upon it brow A bump as big as a young cock'rel's stone; A perilous knock; and it cried bitterly. 'Yea,' quoth my husband, 'fall'st upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age; Wilt thou not, Jule?' It stinted, and said 'Ay.' Jul. And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse, say I. Nurse. Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace! Thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er I nurs'd. An I might live to see thee married once, I have my wish. Wife. Marry, that 'marry' is the very theme I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet, How stands your disposition to be married? Jul. It is an honour that I dream not of. Nurse. An honour? Were not I thine only nurse, I would say thou hadst suck'd wisdom from thy teat. Wife. Well, think of marriage now. Younger than you, Here in Verona, ladies of esteem, Are made already mothers. By my count, I was your mother much upon these years That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief: The valiant Paris seeks you for his love. Nurse. A man, young lady! lady, such a man As all the world- why he's a man of wax. Wife. Verona's summer hath not such a flower. Nurse. Nay, he's a flower, in faith- a very flower. Wife. What say you? Can you love the gentleman? This night you shall behold him at our feast. Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face, And find delight writ there with beauty's pen; Examine every married lineament, And see how one another lends content; And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies Find written in the margent of his eyes, This precious book of love, this unbound lover, To beautify him only lacks a cover. The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride For fair without the fair within to hide. That book in many's eyes doth share the glory, That in gold clasps locks in the golden story; So shall you share all that he doth possess, By having him making yourself no less. Nurse. No less? Nay, bigger! Women grow by men Wife. Speak briefly, can you like of Paris' love? Jul. I'll look to like, if looking liking move; But no more deep will I endart mine eye Than your consent gives strength to make it fly. Enter Servingman. Serv. Madam, the guests are come, supper serv'd up, you call'd, my young lady ask'd for, the nurse curs'd in the pantry, and everything in extremity. I must hence to wait. I beseech you follow straight. Wife. We follow thee. Exit [Servingman]. Juliet, the County stays. Nurse. Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days. Exeunt.

Act 1, Scene 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-1-scene-3

At the Capulet house, Juliet's mother, Lady Capulet, comes in to tell her daughter about Paris's proposal. But Juliet's nurse first delivers a long, semi-bawdy speech about Juliet's infancy and toddler years. Her rambling, tangent of a speech reveals the following information: the Nurse had a baby named Susan who was about Juliet's age but, sadly, she died. The Nurse is not only Juliet's nanny but she also her wet-nurse. When it was time to "wean" Juliet, the Nurse put "wormwood" on her breast. Also, Juliet once fell down and cut her forehead when she was little, which the Nurse's late husband thought was hilarious--so hilarious that he turned the accident into a dirty joke about how Juliet would eventually grow up and then fall down and have sex with a guy. This is ... a lot of information. Lady Capulet eventually cuts her off and tells her to "hold her peace." Lady Capulet unloads the news that Paris has been sniffing around for Juliet's hand in marriage. Eyeroll. Just check Paris out at the party that night, Lady Capulet says. He'll be the oh-so-dreamy guy all the other girls are swooning over. Speaking of, Peter, the servant, enters to announce that guests are beginning to arrive for the big bash.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/4.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_4_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 1.scene 4

act 1, scene 4

{"name": "Act 1, Scene 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-1-scene-4", "summary": "Romeo and his posse are getting ready to sneak into the Capulets' party. Luckily, it's a costume party, so they can wear masks. Romeo and Mercutio trade insults and there's some naughty talk about love, in particular, what to do to when \"love pricks like a thorn.\" Mercutio's solution? \"If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.\" Translation: The solution to heartache is to go out and have sex. Romeo continues to boo-hoo about the unavailable Rosaline and then he announces that he had a dream the night before. Before he can go into the details, Mercutio interrupts and delivers a long, crazy speech about \"Queen Mab,\" a tiny fairy who visits people in their dreams. Romeo says Mercutio is talking nonsense and Mercutio, our resident skeptic, retorts that dreams are for idiots. Before entering the party, Romeo says he has a feeling that \"fate\" may have something bad in store for him.", "analysis": ""}

Scene IV. A street. Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six other Maskers; Torchbearers. Rom. What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse? Or shall we on without apology? Ben. The date is out of such prolixity. We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf, Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath, Scaring the ladies like a crowkeeper; Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke After the prompter, for our entrance; But, let them measure us by what they will, We'll measure them a measure, and be gone. Rom. Give me a torch. I am not for this ambling. Being but heavy, I will bear the light. Mer. Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance. Rom. Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes With nimble soles; I have a soul of lead So stakes me to the ground I cannot move. Mer. You are a lover. Borrow Cupid's wings And soar with them above a common bound. Rom. I am too sore enpierced with his shaft To soar with his light feathers; and so bound I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe. Under love's heavy burthen do I sink. Mer. And, to sink in it, should you burthen love- Too great oppression for a tender thing. Rom. Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, Too rude, too boist'rous, and it pricks like thorn. Mer. If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down. Give me a case to put my visage in. A visor for a visor! What care I What curious eye doth quote deformities? Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me. Ben. Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in But every man betake him to his legs. Rom. A torch for me! Let wantons light of heart Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels; For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase, I'll be a candle-holder and look on; The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done. Mer. Tut! dun's the mouse, the constable's own word! If thou art Dun, we'll draw thee from the mire Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick'st Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho! Rom. Nay, that's not so. Mer. I mean, sir, in delay We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day. Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits Five times in that ere once in our five wits. Rom. And we mean well, in going to this masque; But 'tis no wit to go. Mer. Why, may one ask? Rom. I dreamt a dream to-night. Mer. And so did I. Rom. Well, what was yours? Mer. That dreamers often lie. Rom. In bed asleep, while they do dream things true. Mer. O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep; Her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs, The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; Her traces, of the smallest spider's web; Her collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams; Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film; Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid; Her chariot is an empty hazelnut, Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers. And in this state she 'gallops night by night Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love; O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on cursies straight; O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees; O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream, Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep, Then dreams he of another benefice. Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, Of healths five fadom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two And sleeps again. This is that very Mab That plats the manes of horses in the night And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish, hairs, Which once untangled much misfortune bodes This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them and learns them first to bear, Making them women of good carriage. This is she- Rom. Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace! Thou talk'st of nothing. Mer. True, I talk of dreams; Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy; Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes Even now the frozen bosom of the North And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, Turning his face to the dew-dropping South. Ben. This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves. Supper is done, and we shall come too late. Rom. I fear, too early; for my mind misgives Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars, Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night's revels and expire the term Of a despised life, clos'd in my breast, By some vile forfeit of untimely death. But he that hath the steerage of my course Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen! Ben. Strike, drum. They march about the stage. [Exeunt.]

Act 1, Scene 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-1-scene-4

Romeo and his posse are getting ready to sneak into the Capulets' party. Luckily, it's a costume party, so they can wear masks. Romeo and Mercutio trade insults and there's some naughty talk about love, in particular, what to do to when "love pricks like a thorn." Mercutio's solution? "If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down." Translation: The solution to heartache is to go out and have sex. Romeo continues to boo-hoo about the unavailable Rosaline and then he announces that he had a dream the night before. Before he can go into the details, Mercutio interrupts and delivers a long, crazy speech about "Queen Mab," a tiny fairy who visits people in their dreams. Romeo says Mercutio is talking nonsense and Mercutio, our resident skeptic, retorts that dreams are for idiots. Before entering the party, Romeo says he has a feeling that "fate" may have something bad in store for him.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/6.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_7_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 2.scene 1

act 2, scene 1

{"name": "Act 2, Scene 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-2-scene-1", "summary": "Romeo doesn't want to leave the Capulet's property, so he ditches his friends and hides out in the orchard behind the Capulet house. Benvolio and Mercutio try to find him. Unaware that Romeo now has the hots for Juliet, they shout lots of filthy things about Rosaline hoping that Romeo will come out to defend Rosaline's honor. No such luck. Eventually they give up and head home. We interrupt this program for a helpful reading tip: Worried that your copy of the play divides scenes differently than we do here? Don't trip. The division of acts and scenes varies depending on which edition of the play you're reading. Some editions of the play cut off Act 2, Scene 1 at the end of Benvolio's line and give the famous balcony scene its own section . Some other editions include Romeo and Juliet's famous balcony scene in Act 2, Scene 1. Now back to our program.", "analysis": ""}

ACT II. Scene I. A lane by the wall of Capulet's orchard. Enter Romeo alone. Rom. Can I go forward when my heart is here? Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out. [Climbs the wall and leaps down within it.] Enter Benvolio with Mercutio. Ben. Romeo! my cousin Romeo! Romeo! Mer. He is wise, And, on my life, hath stol'n him home to bed. Ben. He ran this way, and leapt this orchard wall. Call, good Mercutio. Mer. Nay, I'll conjure too. Romeo! humours! madman! passion! lover! Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh; Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied! Cry but 'Ay me!' pronounce but 'love' and 'dove'; Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word, One nickname for her purblind son and heir, Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim When King Cophetua lov'd the beggar maid! He heareth not, he stirreth not, be moveth not; The ape is dead, and I must conjure him. I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes. By her high forehead and her scarlet lip, By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh, And the demesnes that there adjacent lie, That in thy likeness thou appear to us! Ben. An if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him. Mer. This cannot anger him. 'Twould anger him To raise a spirit in his mistress' circle Of some strange nature, letting it there stand Till she had laid it and conjur'd it down. That were some spite; my invocation Is fair and honest: in his mistress' name, I conjure only but to raise up him. Ben. Come, he hath hid himself among these trees To be consorted with the humorous night. Blind is his love and best befits the dark. Mer. If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. Now will he sit under a medlar tree And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit As maids call medlars when they laugh alone. O, Romeo, that she were, O that she were An open et cetera, thou a pop'rin pear! Romeo, good night. I'll to my truckle-bed; This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep. Come, shall we go? Ben. Go then, for 'tis in vain 'To seek him here that means not to be found. Exeunt.

Act 2, Scene 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-2-scene-1

Romeo doesn't want to leave the Capulet's property, so he ditches his friends and hides out in the orchard behind the Capulet house. Benvolio and Mercutio try to find him. Unaware that Romeo now has the hots for Juliet, they shout lots of filthy things about Rosaline hoping that Romeo will come out to defend Rosaline's honor. No such luck. Eventually they give up and head home. We interrupt this program for a helpful reading tip: Worried that your copy of the play divides scenes differently than we do here? Don't trip. The division of acts and scenes varies depending on which edition of the play you're reading. Some editions of the play cut off Act 2, Scene 1 at the end of Benvolio's line and give the famous balcony scene its own section . Some other editions include Romeo and Juliet's famous balcony scene in Act 2, Scene 1. Now back to our program.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/8.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_9_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 2.scene 3

act 2, scene 3

{"name": "Act 2, Scene 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-2-scene-3", "summary": "That Romeo sure is fast because the next thing we know, Romeo tracks down Friar Laurence, who has been out foraging for medicinal plants and herbs for one of his concoctions. also tell us that it wasn't uncommon for clergymen to practice or dabble in medicine--after all, a visit to the physician was an expense that many people couldn't afford and priests often needed to supplement their income.) Friar Laurence delivers a speech about how herbs and plants have the potential to be healing and medicinal, but if they're misused, they can be deadly poison. Friar Laurence looks at Romeo and notices that loverboy hasn't \"been in bed tonight\" and assumes that he must have finally hooked up with Rosaline. He also notices that Romeo is suddenly cheerful after weeks of moping around. Nope, he's totally over Rosaline and into this chick Juliet. Will Friar Laurence perform the ceremony? The Friar's response: \"Holy Saint Francis!\" Friar Laurence provides a much-needed reality check: Romeo has been switching girls like highway lanes. The Friar decides to help Romeo out but not because he's a romantic: he's got political motives--a marriage between Romeo and Juliet just might reconcile the two warring families. So, in the name of reducing the yearly street-brawl-murder rate in Verona, Friar Laurence skips the lecture on fidelity and commitment and goes right to agreeing with the marriage.", "analysis": ""}

Scene III. Friar Laurence's cell. Enter Friar, [Laurence] alone, with a basket. Friar. The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night, Check'ring the Eastern clouds with streaks of light; And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels. Non, ere the sun advance his burning eye The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry, I must up-fill this osier cage of ours With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb. What is her burying gave, that is her womb; And from her womb children of divers kind We sucking on her natural bosom find; Many for many virtues excellent, None but for some, and yet all different. O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities; For naught so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give; Nor aught so good but, strain'd from that fair use, Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime's by action dignified. Within the infant rind of this small flower Poison hath residence, and medicine power; For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. Two such opposed kings encamp them still In man as well as herbs- grace and rude will; And where the worser is predominant, Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. Enter Romeo. Rom. Good morrow, father. Friar. Benedicite! What early tongue so sweet saluteth me? Young son, it argues a distempered head So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed. Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye, And where care lodges sleep will never lie; But where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brain Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign. Therefore thy earliness doth me assure Thou art uprous'd with some distemp'rature; Or if not so, then here I hit it right- Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night. Rom. That last is true-the sweeter rest was mine. Friar. God pardon sin! Wast thou with Rosaline? Rom. With Rosaline, my ghostly father? No. I have forgot that name, and that name's woe. Friar. That's my good son! But where hast thou been then? Rom. I'll tell thee ere thou ask it me again. I have been feasting with mine enemy, Where on a sudden one hath wounded me That's by me wounded. Both our remedies Within thy help and holy physic lies. I bear no hatred, blessed man, for, lo, My intercession likewise steads my foe. Friar. Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift. Rom. Then plainly know my heart's dear love is set On the fair daughter of rich Capulet; As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine, And all combin'd, save what thou must combine By holy marriage. When, and where, and how We met, we woo'd, and made exchange of vow, I'll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray, That thou consent to marry us to-day. Friar. Holy Saint Francis! What a change is here! Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear, So soon forsaken? Young men's love then lies Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes. Jesu Maria! What a deal of brine Hath wash'd thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline! How much salt water thrown away in waste, To season love, that of it doth not taste! The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears, Thy old groans ring yet in mine ancient ears. Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit Of an old tear that is not wash'd off yet. If e'er thou wast thyself, and these woes thine, Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline. And art thou chang'd? Pronounce this sentence then: Women may fall when there's no strength in men. Rom. Thou chid'st me oft for loving Rosaline. Friar. For doting, not for loving, pupil mine. Rom. And bad'st me bury love. Friar. Not in a grave To lay one in, another out to have. Rom. I pray thee chide not. She whom I love now Doth grace for grace and love for love allow. The other did not so. Friar. O, she knew well Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell. But come, young waverer, come go with me. In one respect I'll thy assistant be; For this alliance may so happy prove To turn your households' rancour to pure love. Rom. O, let us hence! I stand on sudden haste. Friar. Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast. Exeunt.

Act 2, Scene 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-2-scene-3

That Romeo sure is fast because the next thing we know, Romeo tracks down Friar Laurence, who has been out foraging for medicinal plants and herbs for one of his concoctions. also tell us that it wasn't uncommon for clergymen to practice or dabble in medicine--after all, a visit to the physician was an expense that many people couldn't afford and priests often needed to supplement their income.) Friar Laurence delivers a speech about how herbs and plants have the potential to be healing and medicinal, but if they're misused, they can be deadly poison. Friar Laurence looks at Romeo and notices that loverboy hasn't "been in bed tonight" and assumes that he must have finally hooked up with Rosaline. He also notices that Romeo is suddenly cheerful after weeks of moping around. Nope, he's totally over Rosaline and into this chick Juliet. Will Friar Laurence perform the ceremony? The Friar's response: "Holy Saint Francis!" Friar Laurence provides a much-needed reality check: Romeo has been switching girls like highway lanes. The Friar decides to help Romeo out but not because he's a romantic: he's got political motives--a marriage between Romeo and Juliet just might reconcile the two warring families. So, in the name of reducing the yearly street-brawl-murder rate in Verona, Friar Laurence skips the lecture on fidelity and commitment and goes right to agreeing with the marriage.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/9.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_10_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 2.scene 4

act 2, scene 4

{"name": "Act 2, Scene 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-2-scene-4", "summary": "Mercutio and Benvolio still haven't figured out where Romeo is. It turns out that Tybalt has sent Romeo a message that goes something like this: \"I'm going to beat you up with my sword.\" But lovelorn Romeo is in no condition to face Tybalt in a duel, right? History Snack: Many Elizabethans believed that love basically turned men into sissies. Being \"effeminate\" didn't mean you were like a woman--it meant you were too into women. Of course Mercutio also uses the opportunity to take a dig at Tybalt, who takes himself and his sword fighting skills way too seriously. Romeo finally shows up, and he's dropped the depressed \"Rosaline doesn't love me\" act. The fellas engage in one of their favorite pastimes, talking trash and telling some of the dirtiest jokes in Western literature. You know, just a few bros chillin' together. As planned, the Nurse shows up to meet with Romeo. She looks ridiculous, apparently, and Mercutio can't resist flirting with her, mocking her, and talking dirty to her. He first says that the fan she's using should be used to cover her face since it's more attractive than she is. Then, when the Nurse questions him about the time of day, he manages to turn a description of a clock into a graphic portrayal of masturbation. In between all these antics, Romeo manages to take the Nurse aside and tell her that Juliet should find an excuse to come to Friar Laurence's church--where she will be married. , including his best friends.]", "analysis": ""}

Scene IV. A street. Enter Benvolio and Mercutio. Mer. Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home to-night? Ben. Not to his father's. I spoke with his man. Mer. Why, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline, Torments him so that he will sure run mad. Ben. Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet, Hath sent a letter to his father's house. Mer. A challenge, on my life. Ben. Romeo will answer it. Mer. Any man that can write may answer a letter. Ben. Nay, he will answer the letter's master, how he dares, being dared. Mer. Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! stabb'd with a white wench's black eye; shot through the ear with a love song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft; and is he a man to encounter Tybalt? Ben. Why, what is Tybalt? Mer. More than Prince of Cats, I can tell you. O, he's the courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing pricksong-keeps time, distance, and proportion; rests me his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom! the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist! a gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause. Ah, the immortal passado! the punto reverse! the hay. Ben. The what? Mer. The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting fantasticoes- these new tuners of accent! 'By Jesu, a very good blade! a very tall man! a very good whore!' Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsir, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardona-mi's, who stand so much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench? O, their bones, their bones! Enter Romeo. Ben. Here comes Romeo! here comes Romeo! Mer. Without his roe, like a dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in. Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen wench (marry, she had a better love to berhyme her), Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a gypsy, Helen and Hero hildings and harlots, This be a gray eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, bon jour! There's a French salutation to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night. Rom. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you? Mer. The slip, sir, the slip. Can you not conceive? Rom. Pardon, good Mercutio. My business was great, and in such a case as mine a man may strain courtesy. Mer. That's as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams. Rom. Meaning, to cursy. Mer. Thou hast most kindly hit it. Rom. A most courteous exposition. Mer. Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy. Rom. Pink for flower. Mer. Right. Rom. Why, then is my pump well-flower'd. Mer. Well said! Follow me this jest now till thou hast worn out thy pump, that, when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain, after the wearing, solely singular. Rom. O single-sold jest, solely singular for the singleness! Mer. Come between us, good Benvolio! My wits faint. Rom. Swits and spurs, swits and spurs! or I'll cry a match. Mer. Nay, if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done; for thou hast more of the wild goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five. Was I with you there for the goose? Rom. Thou wast never with me for anything when thou wast not there for the goose. Mer. I will bite thee by the ear for that jest. Rom. Nay, good goose, bite not! Mer. Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce. Rom. And is it not, then, well serv'd in to a sweet goose? Mer. O, here's a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an inch narrow to an ell broad! Rom. I stretch it out for that word 'broad,' which, added to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose. Mer. Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature. For this drivelling love is like a great natural that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole. Ben. Stop there, stop there! Mer. Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair. Ben. Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large. Mer. O, thou art deceiv'd! I would have made it short; for I was come to the whole depth of my tale, and meant indeed to occupy the argument no longer. Rom. Here's goodly gear! Enter Nurse and her Man [Peter]. Mer. A sail, a sail! Ben. Two, two! a shirt and a smock. Nurse. Peter! Peter. Anon. Nurse. My fan, Peter. Mer. Good Peter, to hide her face; for her fan's the fairer face of the two. Nurse. God ye good morrow, gentlemen. Mer. God ye good-den, fair gentlewoman. Nurse. Is it good-den? Mer. 'Tis no less, I tell ye; for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon. Nurse. Out upon you! What a man are you! Rom. One, gentlewoman, that God hath made for himself to mar. Nurse. By my troth, it is well said. 'For himself to mar,' quoth 'a? Gentlemen, can any of you tell me where I may find the young Romeo? Rom. I can tell you; but young Romeo will be older when you have found him than he was when you sought him. I am the youngest of that name, for fault of a worse. Nurse. You say well. Mer. Yea, is the worst well? Very well took, i' faith! wisely, wisely. Nurse. If you be he, sir, I desire some confidence with you. Ben. She will endite him to some supper. Mer. A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! So ho! Rom. What hast thou found? Mer. No hare, sir; unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent He walks by them and sings. An old hare hoar, And an old hare hoar, Is very good meat in Lent; But a hare that is hoar Is too much for a score When it hoars ere it be spent. Romeo, will you come to your father's? We'll to dinner thither. Rom. I will follow you. Mer. Farewell, ancient lady. Farewell, [sings] lady, lady, lady. Exeunt Mercutio, Benvolio. Nurse. Marry, farewell! I Pray you, Sir, what saucy merchant was this that was so full of his ropery? Rom. A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himself talk and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month. Nurse. An 'a speak anything against me, I'll take him down, an 'a were lustier than he is, and twenty such jacks; and if I cannot, I'll find those that shall. Scurvy knave! I am none of his flirt-gills; I am none of his skains-mates. And thou must stand by too, and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure! Peter. I saw no man use you at his pleasure. If I had, my weapon should quickly have been out, I warrant you. I dare draw as soon as another man, if I see occasion in a good quarrel, and the law on my side. Nurse. Now, afore God, I am so vexed that every part about me quivers. Scurvy knave! Pray you, sir, a word; and, as I told you, my young lady bid me enquire you out. What she bid me say, I will keep to myself; but first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her into a fool's paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behaviour, as they say; for the gentlewoman is young; and therefore, if you should deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be off'red to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing. Rom. Nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress. I protest unto thee- Nurse. Good heart, and I faith I will tell her as much. Lord, Lord! she will be a joyful woman. Rom. What wilt thou tell her, nurse? Thou dost not mark me. Nurse. I will tell her, sir, that you do protest, which, as I take it, is a gentlemanlike offer. Rom. Bid her devise Some means to come to shrift this afternoon; And there she shall at Friar Laurence' cell Be shriv'd and married. Here is for thy pains. Nurse. No, truly, sir; not a penny. Rom. Go to! I say you shall. Nurse. This afternoon, sir? Well, she shall be there. Rom. And stay, good nurse, behind the abbey wall. Within this hour my man shall be with thee And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair, Which to the high topgallant of my joy Must be my convoy in the secret night. Farewell. Be trusty, and I'll quit thy pains. Farewell. Commend me to thy mistress. Nurse. Now God in heaven bless thee! Hark you, sir. Rom. What say'st thou, my dear nurse? Nurse. Is your man secret? Did you ne'er hear say, Two may keep counsel, putting one away? Rom. I warrant thee my man's as true as steel. Nurse. Well, sir, my mistress is the sweetest lady. Lord, Lord! when 'twas a little prating thing- O, there is a nobleman in town, one Paris, that would fain lay knife aboard; but she, good soul, had as lieve see a toad, a very toad, as see him. I anger her sometimes, and tell her that Paris is the properer man; but I'll warrant you, when I say so, she looks as pale as any clout in the versal world. Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin both with a letter? Rom. Ay, nurse; what of that? Both with an R. Nurse. Ah, mocker! that's the dog's name. R is for the- No; I know it begins with some other letter; and she hath the prettiest sententious of it, of you and rosemary, that it would do you good to hear it. Rom. Commend me to thy lady. Nurse. Ay, a thousand times. [Exit Romeo.] Peter! Peter. Anon. Nurse. Peter, take my fan, and go before, and apace. Exeunt.

Act 2, Scene 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-2-scene-4

Mercutio and Benvolio still haven't figured out where Romeo is. It turns out that Tybalt has sent Romeo a message that goes something like this: "I'm going to beat you up with my sword." But lovelorn Romeo is in no condition to face Tybalt in a duel, right? History Snack: Many Elizabethans believed that love basically turned men into sissies. Being "effeminate" didn't mean you were like a woman--it meant you were too into women. Of course Mercutio also uses the opportunity to take a dig at Tybalt, who takes himself and his sword fighting skills way too seriously. Romeo finally shows up, and he's dropped the depressed "Rosaline doesn't love me" act. The fellas engage in one of their favorite pastimes, talking trash and telling some of the dirtiest jokes in Western literature. You know, just a few bros chillin' together. As planned, the Nurse shows up to meet with Romeo. She looks ridiculous, apparently, and Mercutio can't resist flirting with her, mocking her, and talking dirty to her. He first says that the fan she's using should be used to cover her face since it's more attractive than she is. Then, when the Nurse questions him about the time of day, he manages to turn a description of a clock into a graphic portrayal of masturbation. In between all these antics, Romeo manages to take the Nurse aside and tell her that Juliet should find an excuse to come to Friar Laurence's church--where she will be married. , including his best friends.]

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_11_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 2.scene 5

act 2, scene 5

{"name": "Act 2, Scene 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-2-scene-5", "summary": "In an orchard at the Capulet place, Juliet waits for the Nurse to come back with a message from Romeo. When the Nurse comes back, she plays a little game by refusing to tell Juliet anything and complaining about her aching back. Finally, the Nurse gives in and tells Juliet to run to Friar Laurence's cell where Romeo is waiting so they can get hitched. Before the scene ends, the Nurse says she'll \"fetch a ladder\" for Romeo to climb up so the lovers can spend their wedding night together. She also manages to turn her description of Romeo \"climbing\" the ladder into Juliet's \"bird's nest\" into an image of the kind of sex the couple is going to have later that night.", "analysis": ""}

Scene V. Capulet's orchard. Enter Juliet. Jul. The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse; In half an hour she 'promis'd to return. Perchance she cannot meet him. That's not so. O, she is lame! Love's heralds should be thoughts, Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams Driving back shadows over low'ring hills. Therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw Love, And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings. Now is the sun upon the highmost hill Of this day's journey, and from nine till twelve Is three long hours; yet she is not come. Had she affections and warm youthful blood, She would be as swift in motion as a ball; My words would bandy her to my sweet love, And his to me, But old folks, many feign as they were dead- Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead. Enter Nurse [and Peter]. O God, she comes! O honey nurse, what news? Hast thou met with him? Send thy man away. Nurse. Peter, stay at the gate. [Exit Peter.] Jul. Now, good sweet nurse- O Lord, why look'st thou sad? Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily; If good, thou shamest the music of sweet news By playing it to me with so sour a face. Nurse. I am aweary, give me leave awhile. Fie, how my bones ache! What a jaunce have I had! Jul. I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy news. Nay, come, I pray thee speak. Good, good nurse, speak. Nurse. Jesu, what haste! Can you not stay awhile? Do you not see that I am out of breath? Jul. How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath To say to me that thou art out of breath? The excuse that thou dost make in this delay Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse. Is thy news good or bad? Answer to that. Say either, and I'll stay the circumstance. Let me be satisfied, is't good or bad? Nurse. Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not how to choose a man. Romeo? No, not he. Though his face be better than any man's, yet his leg excels all men's; and for a hand and a foot, and a body, though they be not to be talk'd on, yet they are past compare. He is not the flower of courtesy, but, I'll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb. Go thy ways, wench; serve God. What, have you din'd at home? Jul. No, no. But all this did I know before. What says he of our marriage? What of that? Nurse. Lord, how my head aches! What a head have I! It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces. My back o' t' other side,- ah, my back, my back! Beshrew your heart for sending me about To catch my death with jauncing up and down! Jul. I' faith, I am sorry that thou art not well. Sweet, sweet, Sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love? Nurse. Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome; and, I warrant, a virtuous- Where is your mother? Jul. Where is my mother? Why, she is within. Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest! 'Your love says, like an honest gentleman, "Where is your mother?"' Nurse. O God's Lady dear! Are you so hot? Marry come up, I trow. Is this the poultice for my aching bones? Henceforward do your messages yourself. Jul. Here's such a coil! Come, what says Romeo? Nurse. Have you got leave to go to shrift to-day? Jul. I have. Nurse. Then hie you hence to Friar Laurence' cell; There stays a husband to make you a wife. Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks: They'll be in scarlet straight at any news. Hie you to church; I must another way, To fetch a ladder, by the which your love Must climb a bird's nest soon when it is dark. I am the drudge, and toil in your delight; But you shall bear the burthen soon at night. Go; I'll to dinner; hie you to the cell. Jul. Hie to high fortune! Honest nurse, farewell. Exeunt.

Act 2, Scene 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-2-scene-5

In an orchard at the Capulet place, Juliet waits for the Nurse to come back with a message from Romeo. When the Nurse comes back, she plays a little game by refusing to tell Juliet anything and complaining about her aching back. Finally, the Nurse gives in and tells Juliet to run to Friar Laurence's cell where Romeo is waiting so they can get hitched. Before the scene ends, the Nurse says she'll "fetch a ladder" for Romeo to climb up so the lovers can spend their wedding night together. She also manages to turn her description of Romeo "climbing" the ladder into Juliet's "bird's nest" into an image of the kind of sex the couple is going to have later that night.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_12_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 2.scene 6

act 2, scene 6

{"name": "Act 2, Scene 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-2-scene-6", "summary": "Back at Friar Laurence's place, the priest tries to convince Romeo to calm down a little. Marriage is for the long term, you see. \"These violent delights have violent ends,\" he warns. Unfortunately, it goes in one ear and out the other. Brain Snack: If you're a Twilight fan, you're probably thinking that Friar Laurence's \"These violent delights\" line sounds familiar. That's because Stephenie Meyer uses the quote as an epigraph for the novel New Moon. Juliet runs in. The room's hormonal level skyrockets. Romeo and Juliet can barely keep their hands off each other, even in the presence of a priest. Friar Laurence takes them off to marry them so they can move on to the highly anticipated honeymoon phase.", "analysis": ""}

Scene VI. Friar Laurence's cell. Enter Friar [Laurence] and Romeo. Friar. So smile the heavens upon this holy act That after-hours with sorrow chide us not! Rom. Amen, amen! But come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy That one short minute gives me in her sight. Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then love-devouring death do what he dare- It is enough I may but call her mine. Friar. These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately: long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. Enter Juliet. Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint. A lover may bestride the gossamer That idles in the wanton summer air, And yet not fall; so light is vanity. Jul. Good even to my ghostly confessor. Friar. Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both. Jul. As much to him, else is his thanks too much. Rom. Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy Be heap'd like mine, and that thy skill be more To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath This neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue Unfold the imagin'd happiness that both Receive in either by this dear encounter. Jul. Conceit, more rich in matter than in words, Brags of his substance, not of ornament. They are but beggars that can count their worth; But my true love is grown to such excess cannot sum up sum of half my wealth. Friar. Come, come with me, and we will make short work; For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone Till Holy Church incorporate two in one. [Exeunt.]

Act 2, Scene 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-2-scene-6

Back at Friar Laurence's place, the priest tries to convince Romeo to calm down a little. Marriage is for the long term, you see. "These violent delights have violent ends," he warns. Unfortunately, it goes in one ear and out the other. Brain Snack: If you're a Twilight fan, you're probably thinking that Friar Laurence's "These violent delights" line sounds familiar. That's because Stephenie Meyer uses the quote as an epigraph for the novel New Moon. Juliet runs in. The room's hormonal level skyrockets. Romeo and Juliet can barely keep their hands off each other, even in the presence of a priest. Friar Laurence takes them off to marry them so they can move on to the highly anticipated honeymoon phase.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_14_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 3.scene 2

act 3, scene 2

{"name": "Act 3, Scene 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-3-scene-2", "summary": "Juliet, who hasn't heard about the whole murder/ revenge killing thing, is watching the clock for nightfall, when Romeo is supposed to sneak into her room. When the Nurse enters, Juliet realizes right away that something has gone wrong. First, Juliet thinks Romeo has been killed. Nope: her husband has just murdered her cousin. Juliet's first reaction is to curse Romeo, and the Nurse joins in--but you know that isn't going to go over well, and it doesn't. Juliet turns on the Nurse and tells her she can't criticize her husband. If he hadn't killed Tybalt, then Tybalt would have killed Romeo. Forced to choose between the cousin she has loved all her life and her new husband, she chooses Romeo. Teenagers, right? Just as she's decided to forgive Romeo, she remembers that he's been banished and starts flipping out. Juliet is wailing about the fact that she'll die a virgin when the Nurse tells her Romeo isn't gone yet. He's hiding out at Friar Laurence's. The Nurse promises to find him so he and Juliet can have their night of passion before he has to hit the road.", "analysis": ""}

Scene II. Capulet's orchard. Enter Juliet alone. Jul. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Towards Phoebus' lodging! Such a wagoner As Phaeton would whip you to the West And bring in cloudy night immediately. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, That runaway eyes may wink, and Romeo Leap to these arms untalk'd of and unseen. Lovers can see to do their amorous rites By their own beauties; or, if love be blind, It best agrees with night. Come, civil night, Thou sober-suited matron, all in black, And learn me how to lose a winning match, Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods. Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks, With thy black mantle till strange love, grown bold, Think true love acted simple modesty. Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night; For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night Whiter than new snow upon a raven's back. Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-brow'd night; Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun. O, I have bought the mansion of a love, But not possess'd it; and though I am sold, Not yet enjoy'd. So tedious is this day As is the night before some festival To an impatient child that hath new robes And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse, Enter Nurse, with cords. And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks But Romeo's name speaks heavenly eloquence. Now, nurse, what news? What hast thou there? the cords That Romeo bid thee fetch? Nurse. Ay, ay, the cords. [Throws them down.] Jul. Ay me! what news? Why dost thou wring thy hands Nurse. Ah, weraday! he's dead, he's dead, he's dead! We are undone, lady, we are undone! Alack the day! he's gone, he's kill'd, he's dead! Jul. Can heaven be so envious? Nurse. Romeo can, Though heaven cannot. O Romeo, Romeo! Who ever would have thought it? Romeo! Jul. What devil art thou that dost torment me thus? This torture should be roar'd in dismal hell. Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but 'I,' And that bare vowel 'I' shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. I am not I, if there be such an 'I'; Or those eyes shut that make thee answer 'I.' If be be slain, say 'I'; or if not, 'no.' Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe. Nurse. I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes, (God save the mark!) here on his manly breast. A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse; Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub'd in blood, All in gore-blood. I swounded at the sight. Jul. O, break, my heart! poor bankrout, break at once! To prison, eyes; ne'er look on liberty! Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here, And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier! Nurse. O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had! O courteous Tybalt! honest gentleman That ever I should live to see thee dead! Jul. What storm is this that blows so contrary? Is Romeo slaught'red, and is Tybalt dead? My dear-lov'd cousin, and my dearer lord? Then, dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom! For who is living, if those two are gone? Nurse. Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished; Romeo that kill'd him, he is banished. Jul. O God! Did Romeo's hand shed Tybalt's blood? Nurse. It did, it did! alas the day, it did! Jul. O serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st- A damned saint, an honourable villain! O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh? Was ever book containing such vile matter So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell In such a gorgeous palace! Nurse. There's no trust, No faith, no honesty in men; all perjur'd, All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers. Ah, where's my man? Give me some aqua vitae. These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old. Shame come to Romeo! Jul. Blister'd be thy tongue For such a wish! He was not born to shame. Upon his brow shame is asham'd to sit; For 'tis a throne where honour may be crown'd Sole monarch of the universal earth. O, what a beast was I to chide at him! Nurse. Will you speak well of him that kill'd your cousin? Jul. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband? Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it? But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin? That villain cousin would have kill'd my husband. Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring! Your tributary drops belong to woe, Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy. My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain; And Tybalt's dead, that would have slain my husband. All this is comfort; wherefore weep I then? Some word there was, worser than Tybalt's death, That murd'red me. I would forget it fain; But O, it presses to my memory Like damned guilty deeds to sinners' minds! 'Tybalt is dead, and Romeo- banished.' That 'banished,' that one word 'banished,' Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt's death Was woe enough, if it had ended there; Or, if sour woe delights in fellowship And needly will be rank'd with other griefs, Why followed not, when she said 'Tybalt's dead,' Thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both, Which modern lamentation might have mov'd? But with a rearward following Tybalt's death, 'Romeo is banished'- to speak that word Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet, All slain, all dead. 'Romeo is banished'- There is no end, no limit, measure, bound, In that word's death; no words can that woe sound. Where is my father and my mother, nurse? Nurse. Weeping and wailing over Tybalt's corse. Will you go to them? I will bring you thither. Jul. Wash they his wounds with tears? Mine shall be spent, When theirs are dry, for Romeo's banishment. Take up those cords. Poor ropes, you are beguil'd, Both you and I, for Romeo is exil'd. He made you for a highway to my bed; But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed. Come, cords; come, nurse. I'll to my wedding bed; And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead! Nurse. Hie to your chamber. I'll find Romeo To comfort you. I wot well where he is. Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night. I'll to him; he is hid at Laurence' cell. Jul. O, find him! give this ring to my true knight And bid him come to take his last farewell. Exeunt.

Act 3, Scene 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-3-scene-2

Juliet, who hasn't heard about the whole murder/ revenge killing thing, is watching the clock for nightfall, when Romeo is supposed to sneak into her room. When the Nurse enters, Juliet realizes right away that something has gone wrong. First, Juliet thinks Romeo has been killed. Nope: her husband has just murdered her cousin. Juliet's first reaction is to curse Romeo, and the Nurse joins in--but you know that isn't going to go over well, and it doesn't. Juliet turns on the Nurse and tells her she can't criticize her husband. If he hadn't killed Tybalt, then Tybalt would have killed Romeo. Forced to choose between the cousin she has loved all her life and her new husband, she chooses Romeo. Teenagers, right? Just as she's decided to forgive Romeo, she remembers that he's been banished and starts flipping out. Juliet is wailing about the fact that she'll die a virgin when the Nurse tells her Romeo isn't gone yet. He's hiding out at Friar Laurence's. The Nurse promises to find him so he and Juliet can have their night of passion before he has to hit the road.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_15_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 3.scene 3

act 3, scene 3

{"name": "Act 3, Scene 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-3-scene-3", "summary": "Romeo is hiding out at Friar Laurence's, and Friar updates him on the Tybalt situation. The Friar wants him to see the banishment as good news--yay for no executions?--but Romeo is too focused on the never seeing Juliet again part. There's a knock at the door. It may be the Prince's men. Eek. The Friar tells Romeo to hide, but Romeo refuses. Luckily for everyone, it's only the Nurse at the door. She and the Friar try to deal with Romeo, who keeps threatening really mature things like stabbing himself out of guilt for hurting Juliet. The Friar comes up with a slightly plan that's better because it doesn't involve suicide: Romeo and Juliet can have one night together before Romeo leaves Verona. Later, he promises, they'll be able to figure out a way to get Romeo pardoned by the Prince so he can come back to Verona and make his marriage to Juliet public knowledge. Hearing this plan, Romeo recovers and runs off to see Juliet. Quick Brain Snack: marriages in the Catholic Church weren't consider valid unless they'd been consummated--i.e., the two people had to have sex. If Juliet and Romeo don't sleep together, Juliet's dad will be able to get the marriage declared invalid and marry her off to Paris.", "analysis": ""}

Scene III. Friar Laurence's cell. Enter Friar [Laurence]. Friar. Romeo, come forth; come forth, thou fearful man. Affliction is enanmour'd of thy parts, And thou art wedded to calamity. Enter Romeo. Rom. Father, what news? What is the Prince's doom What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand That I yet know not? Friar. Too familiar Is my dear son with such sour company. I bring thee tidings of the Prince's doom. Rom. What less than doomsday is the Prince's doom? Friar. A gentler judgment vanish'd from his lips- Not body's death, but body's banishment. Rom. Ha, banishment? Be merciful, say 'death'; For exile hath more terror in his look, Much more than death. Do not say 'banishment.' Friar. Hence from Verona art thou banished. Be patient, for the world is broad and wide. Rom. There is no world without Verona walls, But purgatory, torture, hell itself. Hence banished is banish'd from the world, And world's exile is death. Then 'banishment' Is death misterm'd. Calling death 'banishment,' Thou cut'st my head off with a golden axe And smilest upon the stroke that murders me. Friar. O deadly sin! O rude unthankfulness! Thy fault our law calls death; but the kind Prince, Taking thy part, hath rush'd aside the law, And turn'd that black word death to banishment. This is dear mercy, and thou seest it not. Rom. 'Tis torture, and not mercy. Heaven is here, Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog And little mouse, every unworthy thing, Live here in heaven and may look on her; But Romeo may not. More validity, More honourable state, more courtship lives In carrion flies than Romeo. They may seize On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand And steal immortal blessing from her lips, Who, even in pure and vestal modesty, Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin; But Romeo may not- he is banished. This may flies do, when I from this must fly; They are free men, but I am banished. And sayest thou yet that exile is not death? Hadst thou no poison mix'd, no sharp-ground knife, No sudden mean of death, though ne'er so mean, But 'banished' to kill me- 'banished'? O friar, the damned use that word in hell; Howling attends it! How hast thou the heart, Being a divine, a ghostly confessor, A sin-absolver, and my friend profess'd, To mangle me with that word 'banished'? Friar. Thou fond mad man, hear me a little speak. Rom. O, thou wilt speak again of banishment. Friar. I'll give thee armour to keep off that word; Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy, To comfort thee, though thou art banished. Rom. Yet 'banished'? Hang up philosophy! Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom, It helps not, it prevails not. Talk no more. Friar. O, then I see that madmen have no ears. Rom. How should they, when that wise men have no eyes? Friar. Let me dispute with thee of thy estate. Rom. Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel. Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love, An hour but married, Tybalt murdered, Doting like me, and like me banished, Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair, And fall upon the ground, as I do now, Taking the measure of an unmade grave. Knock [within]. Friar. Arise; one knocks. Good Romeo, hide thyself. Rom. Not I; unless the breath of heartsick groans, Mist-like infold me from the search of eyes. Knock. Friar. Hark, how they knock! Who's there? Romeo, arise; Thou wilt be taken.- Stay awhile!- Stand up; Knock. Run to my study.- By-and-by!- God's will, What simpleness is this.- I come, I come! Knock. Who knocks so hard? Whence come you? What's your will Nurse. [within] Let me come in, and you shall know my errand. I come from Lady Juliet. Friar. Welcome then. Enter Nurse. Nurse. O holy friar, O, tell me, holy friar Where is my lady's lord, where's Romeo? Friar. There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk. Nurse. O, he is even in my mistress' case, Just in her case! Friar. O woeful sympathy! Piteous predicament! Nurse. Even so lies she, Blubb'ring and weeping, weeping and blubbering. Stand up, stand up! Stand, an you be a man. For Juliet's sake, for her sake, rise and stand! Why should you fall into so deep an O? Rom. (rises) Nurse- Nurse. Ah sir! ah sir! Well, death's the end of all. Rom. Spakest thou of Juliet? How is it with her? Doth not she think me an old murtherer, Now I have stain'd the childhood of our joy With blood remov'd but little from her own? Where is she? and how doth she! and what says My conceal'd lady to our cancell'd love? Nurse. O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps; And now falls on her bed, and then starts up, And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries, And then down falls again. Rom. As if that name, Shot from the deadly level of a gun, Did murther her; as that name's cursed hand Murder'd her kinsman. O, tell me, friar, tell me, In what vile part of this anatomy Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack The hateful mansion. [Draws his dagger.] Friar. Hold thy desperate hand. Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art; Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote The unreasonable fury of a beast. Unseemly woman in a seeming man! Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both! Thou hast amaz'd me. By my holy order, I thought thy disposition better temper'd. Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself? And slay thy lady that in thy life lives, By doing damned hate upon thyself? Why railest thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth? Since birth and heaven and earth, all three do meet In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose. Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit, Which, like a usurer, abound'st in all, And usest none in that true use indeed Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit. Thy noble shape is but a form of wax Digressing from the valour of a man; Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury, Killing that love which thou hast vow'd to cherish; Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love, Misshapen in the conduct of them both, Like powder in a skilless soldier's flask, is get afire by thine own ignorance, And thou dismemb'red with thine own defence. What, rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive, For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead. There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee, But thou slewest Tybalt. There art thou happy too. The law, that threat'ned death, becomes thy friend And turns it to exile. There art thou happy. A pack of blessings light upon thy back; Happiness courts thee in her best array; But, like a misbhav'd and sullen wench, Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love. Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable. Go get thee to thy love, as was decreed, Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her. But look thou stay not till the watch be set, For then thou canst not pass to Mantua, Where thou shalt live till we can find a time To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends, Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back With twenty hundred thousand times more joy Than thou went'st forth in lamentation. Go before, nurse. Commend me to thy lady, And bid her hasten all the house to bed, Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto. Romeo is coming. Nurse. O Lord, I could have stay'd here all the night To hear good counsel. O, what learning is! My lord, I'll tell my lady you will come. Rom. Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide. Nurse. Here is a ring she bid me give you, sir. Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late. Exit. Rom. How well my comfort is reviv'd by this! Friar. Go hence; good night; and here stands all your state: Either be gone before the watch be set, Or by the break of day disguis'd from hence. Sojourn in Mantua. I'll find out your man, And he shall signify from time to time Every good hap to you that chances here. Give me thy hand. 'Tis late. Farewell; good night. Rom. But that a joy past joy calls out on me, It were a grief so brief to part with thee. Farewell. Exeunt.

Act 3, Scene 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-3-scene-3

Romeo is hiding out at Friar Laurence's, and Friar updates him on the Tybalt situation. The Friar wants him to see the banishment as good news--yay for no executions?--but Romeo is too focused on the never seeing Juliet again part. There's a knock at the door. It may be the Prince's men. Eek. The Friar tells Romeo to hide, but Romeo refuses. Luckily for everyone, it's only the Nurse at the door. She and the Friar try to deal with Romeo, who keeps threatening really mature things like stabbing himself out of guilt for hurting Juliet. The Friar comes up with a slightly plan that's better because it doesn't involve suicide: Romeo and Juliet can have one night together before Romeo leaves Verona. Later, he promises, they'll be able to figure out a way to get Romeo pardoned by the Prince so he can come back to Verona and make his marriage to Juliet public knowledge. Hearing this plan, Romeo recovers and runs off to see Juliet. Quick Brain Snack: marriages in the Catholic Church weren't consider valid unless they'd been consummated--i.e., the two people had to have sex. If Juliet and Romeo don't sleep together, Juliet's dad will be able to get the marriage declared invalid and marry her off to Paris.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_16_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 3.scene 4

act 3, scene 4

{"name": "Act 3, Scene 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-3-scene-4", "summary": "Paris is still hanging around hoping he can marry Juliet. Unfortunately, Juliet's still way depressed about Tybalt/Romeo. Of course, her parents don't know about the Romeo part, and Juliet's grief for Tybalt seems so extreme to her father that he changes his mind about waiting a few years before she is married. What better way to cheer her up than to force her into a marriage with a man she's just not that into? Figuring that there's no way Juliet could refuse a great guy like Paris, Lord Capulet decides to go full speed ahead. How about marrying her next week? he asks Paris. Sure!", "analysis": ""}

Scene IV. Capulet's house Enter Old Capulet, his Wife, and Paris. Cap. Things have fall'n out, sir, so unluckily That we have had no time to move our daughter. Look you, she lov'd her kinsman Tybalt dearly, And so did I. Well, we were born to die. 'Tis very late; she'll not come down to-night. I promise you, but for your company, I would have been abed an hour ago. Par. These times of woe afford no tune to woo. Madam, good night. Commend me to your daughter. Lady. I will, and know her mind early to-morrow; To-night she's mew'd up to her heaviness. Cap. Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender Of my child's love. I think she will be rul'd In all respects by me; nay more, I doubt it not. Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed; Acquaint her here of my son Paris' love And bid her (mark you me?) on Wednesday next- But, soft! what day is this? Par. Monday, my lord. Cap. Monday! ha, ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon. Thursday let it be- a Thursday, tell her She shall be married to this noble earl. Will you be ready? Do you like this haste? We'll keep no great ado- a friend or two; For hark you, Tybalt being slain so late, It may be thought we held him carelessly, Being our kinsman, if we revel much. Therefore we'll have some half a dozen friends, And there an end. But what say you to Thursday? Par. My lord, I would that Thursday were to-morrow. Cap. Well, get you gone. A Thursday be it then. Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed; Prepare her, wife, against this wedding day. Farewell, My lord.- Light to my chamber, ho! Afore me, It is so very very late That we may call it early by-and-by. Good night. Exeunt

Act 3, Scene 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-3-scene-4

Paris is still hanging around hoping he can marry Juliet. Unfortunately, Juliet's still way depressed about Tybalt/Romeo. Of course, her parents don't know about the Romeo part, and Juliet's grief for Tybalt seems so extreme to her father that he changes his mind about waiting a few years before she is married. What better way to cheer her up than to force her into a marriage with a man she's just not that into? Figuring that there's no way Juliet could refuse a great guy like Paris, Lord Capulet decides to go full speed ahead. How about marrying her next week? he asks Paris. Sure!

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_18_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 4.scene 1

act 4, scene 1

{"name": "Act 4, Scene 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-4-scene-1", "summary": "Paris has stopped by Friar Laurence's church to make plans for his upcoming marriage to Juliet. The Friar is quietly freaking out, since he's not a big fan of enabling bigamy. Juliet rushes in to see the friar talking with the last person on earth she wants to see: Paris. \"Happily met, my lady and my wife,\" Paris says to Juliet as she enters. It's pretty much downhill from there. Eventually, Paris takes the hint that Juliet needs to make confession to the Friar, and he leaves--but not before giving Juliet an unwanted and uninspiring kiss. Left alone, Juliet ... whips out a dagger and tells the Friar she will kill herself if he can't think of a way for her to avoid marrying Paris. Confronted with his second suicidal teen in under 24 hours, Friar Laurence remains calm. Once again, he has a better plan that doesn't involve suicide. He tells Juliet his idea. He knows of a weird potion that will make Juliet appear as if she is dead for \"two and forty hours.\" That's Shakespeare for 42 hours. Conveniently, the Capulets don't actually bury their dead in the ground, which otherwise would kind of screw up the plan. Instead, they stick them in a big tomb. If everyone thinks Juliet is dead, the Friar explains, she won't have to marry Paris. Then he and Romeo can come to the tomb and wait for her to wake up, and then she and Romeo can go to Mantua together. The Friar promises to send a letter to Romeo so he knows what's going on. Juliet thinks this is a great idea, which we can only understand by assuming she's never seen a tragedy in her life. She takes the potion, thanks the Friar, and heads home.", "analysis": ""}

ACT IV. Scene I. Friar Laurence's cell. Enter Friar, [Laurence] and County Paris. Friar. On Thursday, sir? The time is very short. Par. My father Capulet will have it so, And I am nothing slow to slack his haste. Friar. You say you do not know the lady's mind. Uneven is the course; I like it not. Par. Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt's death, And therefore have I little talk'd of love; For Venus smiles not in a house of tears. Now, sir, her father counts it dangerous That she do give her sorrow so much sway, And in his wisdom hastes our marriage To stop the inundation of her tears, Which, too much minded by herself alone, May be put from her by society. Now do you know the reason of this haste. Friar. [aside] I would I knew not why it should be slow'd.- Look, sir, here comes the lady toward my cell. Enter Juliet. Par. Happily met, my lady and my wife! Jul. That may be, sir, when I may be a wife. Par. That may be must be, love, on Thursday next. Jul. What must be shall be. Friar. That's a certain text. Par. Come you to make confession to this father? Jul. To answer that, I should confess to you. Par. Do not deny to him that you love me. Jul. I will confess to you that I love him. Par. So will ye, I am sure, that you love me. Jul. If I do so, it will be of more price, Being spoke behind your back, than to your face. Par. Poor soul, thy face is much abus'd with tears. Jul. The tears have got small victory by that, For it was bad enough before their spite. Par. Thou wrong'st it more than tears with that report. Jul. That is no slander, sir, which is a truth; And what I spake, I spake it to my face. Par. Thy face is mine, and thou hast sland'red it. Jul. It may be so, for it is not mine own. Are you at leisure, holy father, now, Or shall I come to you at evening mass Friar. My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now. My lord, we must entreat the time alone. Par. God shield I should disturb devotion! Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse ye. Till then, adieu, and keep this holy kiss. Exit. Jul. O, shut the door! and when thou hast done so, Come weep with me- past hope, past cure, past help! Friar. Ah, Juliet, I already know thy grief; It strains me past the compass of my wits. I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it, On Thursday next be married to this County. Jul. Tell me not, friar, that thou hear'st of this, Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it. If in thy wisdom thou canst give no help, Do thou but call my resolution wise And with this knife I'll help it presently. God join'd my heart and Romeo's, thou our hands; And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo's seal'd, Shall be the label to another deed, Or my true heart with treacherous revolt Turn to another, this shall slay them both. Therefore, out of thy long-experienc'd time, Give me some present counsel; or, behold, 'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife Shall play the empire, arbitrating that Which the commission of thy years and art Could to no issue of true honour bring. Be not so long to speak. I long to die If what thou speak'st speak not of remedy. Friar. Hold, daughter. I do spy a kind of hope, Which craves as desperate an execution As that is desperate which we would prevent. If, rather than to marry County Paris Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself, Then is it likely thou wilt undertake A thing like death to chide away this shame, That cop'st with death himself to scape from it; And, if thou dar'st, I'll give thee remedy. Jul. O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower, Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears, Or shut me nightly in a charnel house, O'ercover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones, With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls; Or bid me go into a new-made grave And hide me with a dead man in his shroud- Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble- And I will do it without fear or doubt, To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love. Friar. Hold, then. Go home, be merry, give consent To marry Paris. Wednesday is to-morrow. To-morrow night look that thou lie alone; Let not the nurse lie with thee in thy chamber. Take thou this vial, being then in bed, And this distilled liquor drink thou off; When presently through all thy veins shall run A cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse Shall keep his native progress, but surcease; No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest; The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade To paly ashes, thy eyes' windows fall Like death when he shuts up the day of life; Each part, depriv'd of supple government, Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death; And in this borrowed likeness of shrunk death Thou shalt continue two-and-forty hours, And then awake as from a pleasant sleep. Now, when the bridegroom in the morning comes To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead. Then, as the manner of our country is, In thy best robes uncovered on the bier Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie. In the mean time, against thou shalt awake, Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift; And hither shall he come; and he and I Will watch thy waking, and that very night Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua. And this shall free thee from this present shame, If no inconstant toy nor womanish fear Abate thy valour in the acting it. Jul. Give me, give me! O, tell not me of fear! Friar. Hold! Get you gone, be strong and prosperous In this resolve. I'll send a friar with speed To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord. Jul. Love give me strength! and strength shall help afford. Farewell, dear father. Exeunt.

Act 4, Scene 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-4-scene-1

Paris has stopped by Friar Laurence's church to make plans for his upcoming marriage to Juliet. The Friar is quietly freaking out, since he's not a big fan of enabling bigamy. Juliet rushes in to see the friar talking with the last person on earth she wants to see: Paris. "Happily met, my lady and my wife," Paris says to Juliet as she enters. It's pretty much downhill from there. Eventually, Paris takes the hint that Juliet needs to make confession to the Friar, and he leaves--but not before giving Juliet an unwanted and uninspiring kiss. Left alone, Juliet ... whips out a dagger and tells the Friar she will kill herself if he can't think of a way for her to avoid marrying Paris. Confronted with his second suicidal teen in under 24 hours, Friar Laurence remains calm. Once again, he has a better plan that doesn't involve suicide. He tells Juliet his idea. He knows of a weird potion that will make Juliet appear as if she is dead for "two and forty hours." That's Shakespeare for 42 hours. Conveniently, the Capulets don't actually bury their dead in the ground, which otherwise would kind of screw up the plan. Instead, they stick them in a big tomb. If everyone thinks Juliet is dead, the Friar explains, she won't have to marry Paris. Then he and Romeo can come to the tomb and wait for her to wake up, and then she and Romeo can go to Mantua together. The Friar promises to send a letter to Romeo so he knows what's going on. Juliet thinks this is a great idea, which we can only understand by assuming she's never seen a tragedy in her life. She takes the potion, thanks the Friar, and heads home.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_19_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 4.scene 2

act 4, scene 2

{"name": "Act 4, Scene 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-4-scene-2", "summary": "Juliet comes home, all fake-humble and repentant. She apologizes for being a bratty teenager and says she'll marry Paris. Lord Capulet is overjoyed and decides the marriage will take place the next day, even if he has to stay up all night making preparations.", "analysis": ""}

Scene II. Capulet's house. Enter Father Capulet, Mother, Nurse, and Servingmen, two or three. Cap. So many guests invite as here are writ. [Exit a Servingman.] Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks. Serv. You shall have none ill, sir; for I'll try if they can lick their fingers. Cap. How canst thou try them so? Serv. Marry, sir, 'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers. Therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with me. Cap. Go, begone. Exit Servingman. We shall be much unfurnish'd for this time. What, is my daughter gone to Friar Laurence? Nurse. Ay, forsooth. Cap. Well, be may chance to do some good on her. A peevish self-will'd harlotry it is. Enter Juliet. Nurse. See where she comes from shrift with merry look. Cap. How now, my headstrong? Where have you been gadding? Jul. Where I have learnt me to repent the sin Of disobedient opposition To you and your behests, and am enjoin'd By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here To beg your pardon. Pardon, I beseech you! Henceforward I am ever rul'd by you. Cap. Send for the County. Go tell him of this. I'll have this knot knit up to-morrow morning. Jul. I met the youthful lord at Laurence' cell And gave him what becomed love I might, Not stepping o'er the bounds of modesty. Cap. Why, I am glad on't. This is well. Stand up. This is as't should be. Let me see the County. Ay, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither. Now, afore God, this reverend holy friar, All our whole city is much bound to him. Jul. Nurse, will you go with me into my closet To help me sort such needful ornaments As you think fit to furnish me to-morrow? Mother. No, not till Thursday. There is time enough. Cap. Go, nurse, go with her. We'll to church to-morrow. Exeunt Juliet and Nurse. Mother. We shall be short in our provision. 'Tis now near night. Cap. Tush, I will stir about, And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife. Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her. I'll not to bed to-night; let me alone. I'll play the housewife for this once. What, ho! They are all forth; well, I will walk myself To County Paris, to prepare him up Against to-morrow. My heart is wondrous light, Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim'd. Exeunt.

Act 4, Scene 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-4-scene-2

Juliet comes home, all fake-humble and repentant. She apologizes for being a bratty teenager and says she'll marry Paris. Lord Capulet is overjoyed and decides the marriage will take place the next day, even if he has to stay up all night making preparations.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/19.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_20_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 4.scene 3

act 4, scene 3

{"name": "Act 4, Scene 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-4-scene-3", "summary": "Juliet convinces the Nurse and Lady Capulet to leave her alone, then takes out the potion the Friar gave her. She worries for a brief moment that it might be real poison, and then freaks herself out by imagining what it'll be like to awake surrounded by a bunch of dead bodies, including the fresh corpse of her cousin Tybalt. She drinks the potion, making sure to fall on to the bed instead of dropping awkwardly onto the floor.", "analysis": ""}

Scene III. Juliet's chamber. Enter Juliet and Nurse. Jul. Ay, those attires are best; but, gentle nurse, I pray thee leave me to myself to-night; For I have need of many orisons To move the heavens to smile upon my state, Which, well thou knowest, is cross and full of sin. Enter Mother. Mother. What, are you busy, ho? Need you my help? Jul. No, madam; we have cull'd such necessaries As are behooffull for our state to-morrow. So please you, let me now be left alone, And let the nurse this night sit up with you; For I am sure you have your hands full all In this so sudden business. Mother. Good night. Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need. Exeunt [Mother and Nurse.] Jul. Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins That almost freezes up the heat of life. I'll call them back again to comfort me. Nurse!- What should she do here? My dismal scene I needs must act alone. Come, vial. What if this mixture do not work at all? Shall I be married then to-morrow morning? No, No! This shall forbid it. Lie thou there. Lays down a dagger. What if it be a poison which the friar Subtilly hath minist'red to have me dead, Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd Because he married me before to Romeo? I fear it is; and yet methinks it should not, For he hath still been tried a holy man. I will not entertain so bad a thought. How if, when I am laid into the tomb, I wake before the time that Romeo Come to redeem me? There's a fearful point! Shall I not then be stifled in the vault, To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes? Or, if I live, is it not very like The horrible conceit of death and night, Together with the terror of the place- As in a vault, an ancient receptacle Where for this many hundred years the bones Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd; Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth, Lies fest'ring in his shroud; where, as they say, At some hours in the night spirits resort- Alack, alack, is it not like that I, So early waking- what with loathsome smells, And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth, That living mortals, hearing them, run mad- O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught, Environed with all these hideous fears, And madly play with my forefathers' joints, And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud., And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone As with a club dash out my desp'rate brains? O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body Upon a rapier's point. Stay, Tybalt, stay! Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee. She [drinks and] falls upon her bed within the curtains.

Act 4, Scene 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-4-scene-3

Juliet convinces the Nurse and Lady Capulet to leave her alone, then takes out the potion the Friar gave her. She worries for a brief moment that it might be real poison, and then freaks herself out by imagining what it'll be like to awake surrounded by a bunch of dead bodies, including the fresh corpse of her cousin Tybalt. She drinks the potion, making sure to fall on to the bed instead of dropping awkwardly onto the floor.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/20.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_21_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 4.scene 4

act 4, scene 4

{"name": "Act 4, Scene 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-4-scene-4", "summary": "Everyone is bustling around cheerfully trying to get things ready for the wedding that morning. No one has realized yet that the bride has a serious case of cold feet.", "analysis": ""}

Scene IV. Capulet's house. Enter Lady of the House and Nurse. Lady. Hold, take these keys and fetch more spices, nurse. Nurse. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry. Enter Old Capulet. Cap. Come, stir, stir, stir! The second cock hath crow'd, The curfew bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock. Look to the bak'd meats, good Angelica; Spare not for cost. Nurse. Go, you cot-quean, go, Get you to bed! Faith, you'll be sick to-morrow For this night's watching. Cap. No, not a whit. What, I have watch'd ere now All night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick. Lady. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time; But I will watch you from such watching now. Exeunt Lady and Nurse. Cap. A jealous hood, a jealous hood! Enter three or four [Fellows, with spits and logs and baskets. What is there? Now, fellow, Fellow. Things for the cook, sir; but I know not what. Cap. Make haste, make haste. [Exit Fellow.] Sirrah, fetch drier logs. Call Peter; he will show thee where they are. Fellow. I have a head, sir, that will find out logs And never trouble Peter for the matter. Cap. Mass, and well said; a merry whoreson, ha! Thou shalt be loggerhead. [Exit Fellow.] Good faith, 'tis day. The County will be here with music straight, For so he said he would. Play music. I hear him near. Nurse! Wife! What, ho! What, nurse, I say! Enter Nurse. Go waken Juliet; go and trim her up. I'll go and chat with Paris. Hie, make haste, Make haste! The bridegroom he is come already: Make haste, I say. [Exeunt.]

Act 4, Scene 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-4-scene-4

Everyone is bustling around cheerfully trying to get things ready for the wedding that morning. No one has realized yet that the bride has a serious case of cold feet.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/21.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_22_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 4.scene 5

act 4, scene 5

{"name": "Act 4, Scene 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-4-scene-5", "summary": "When the Nurse comes to wake Juliet up in the morning, she discovers the girl dead. Oh, bummer. Wonder if they'll get the photographer's deposit back? Then the Friar shows up and takes action, telling them to take Juliet to the tomb, stat.", "analysis": ""}

Scene V. Juliet's chamber. [Enter Nurse.] Nurse. Mistress! what, mistress! Juliet! Fast, I warrant her, she. Why, lamb! why, lady! Fie, you slug-abed! Why, love, I say! madam! sweetheart! Why, bride! What, not a word? You take your pennyworths now! Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant, The County Paris hath set up his rest That you shall rest but little. God forgive me! Marry, and amen. How sound is she asleep! I needs must wake her. Madam, madam, madam! Ay, let the County take you in your bed! He'll fright you up, i' faith. Will it not be? [Draws aside the curtains.] What, dress'd, and in your clothes, and down again? I must needs wake you. Lady! lady! lady! Alas, alas! Help, help! My lady's dead! O weraday that ever I was born! Some aqua-vitae, ho! My lord! my lady! Enter Mother. Mother. What noise is here? Nurse. O lamentable day! Mother. What is the matter? Nurse. Look, look! O heavy day! Mother. O me, O me! My child, my only life! Revive, look up, or I will die with thee! Help, help! Call help. Enter Father. Father. For shame, bring Juliet forth; her lord is come. Nurse. She's dead, deceas'd; she's dead! Alack the day! Mother. Alack the day, she's dead, she's dead, she's dead! Cap. Ha! let me see her. Out alas! she's cold, Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff; Life and these lips have long been separated. Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field. Nurse. O lamentable day! Mother. O woful time! Cap. Death, that hath ta'en her hence to make me wail, Ties up my tongue and will not let me speak. Enter Friar [Laurence] and the County [Paris], with Musicians. Friar. Come, is the bride ready to go to church? Cap. Ready to go, but never to return. O son, the night before thy wedding day Hath Death lain with thy wife. See, there she lies, Flower as she was, deflowered by him. Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir; My daughter he hath wedded. I will die And leave him all. Life, living, all is Death's. Par. Have I thought long to see this morning's face, And doth it give me such a sight as this? Mother. Accurs'd, unhappy, wretched, hateful day! Most miserable hour that e'er time saw In lasting labour of his pilgrimage! But one, poor one, one poor and loving child, But one thing to rejoice and solace in, And cruel Death hath catch'd it from my sight! Nurse. O woe? O woful, woful, woful day! Most lamentable day, most woful day That ever ever I did yet behold! O day! O day! O day! O hateful day! Never was seen so black a day as this. O woful day! O woful day! Par. Beguil'd, divorced, wronged, spited, slain! Most detestable Death, by thee beguil'd, By cruel cruel thee quite overthrown! O love! O life! not life, but love in death Cap. Despis'd, distressed, hated, martyr'd, kill'd! Uncomfortable time, why cam'st thou now To murther, murther our solemnity? O child! O child! my soul, and not my child! Dead art thou, dead! alack, my child is dead, And with my child my joys are buried! Friar. Peace, ho, for shame! Confusion's cure lives not In these confusions. Heaven and yourself Had part in this fair maid! now heaven hath all, And all the better is it for the maid. Your part in her you could not keep from death, But heaven keeps his part in eternal life. The most you sought was her promotion, For 'twas your heaven she should be advanc'd; And weep ye now, seeing she is advanc'd Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself? O, in this love, you love your child so ill That you run mad, seeing that she is well. She's not well married that lives married long, But she's best married that dies married young. Dry up your tears and stick your rosemary On this fair corse, and, as the custom is, In all her best array bear her to church; For though fond nature bids us all lament, Yet nature's tears are reason's merriment. Cap. All things that we ordained festival Turn from their office to black funeral- Our instruments to melancholy bells, Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast; Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change; Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse; And all things change them to the contrary. Friar. Sir, go you in; and, madam, go with him; And go, Sir Paris. Every one prepare To follow this fair corse unto her grave. The heavens do low'r upon you for some ill; Move them no more by crossing their high will. Exeunt. Manent Musicians [and Nurse]. 1. Mus. Faith, we may put up our pipes and be gone. Nurse. Honest good fellows, ah, put up, put up! For well you know this is a pitiful case. [Exit.] 1. Mus. Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended. Enter Peter. Pet. Musicians, O, musicians, 'Heart's ease,' 'Heart's ease'! O, an you will have me live, play 'Heart's ease.' 1. Mus. Why 'Heart's ease'', Pet. O, musicians, because my heart itself plays 'My heart is full of woe.' O, play me some merry dump to comfort me. 1. Mus. Not a dump we! 'Tis no time to play now. Pet. You will not then? 1. Mus. No. Pet. I will then give it you soundly. 1. Mus. What will you give us? Pet. No money, on my faith, but the gleek. I will give you the minstrel. 1. Mus. Then will I give you the serving-creature. Pet. Then will I lay the serving-creature's dagger on your pate. I will carry no crotchets. I'll re you, I'll fa you. Do you note me? 1. Mus. An you re us and fa us, you note us. 2. Mus. Pray you put up your dagger, and put out your wit. Pet. Then have at you with my wit! I will dry-beat you with an iron wit, and put up my iron dagger. Answer me like men. 'When griping grief the heart doth wound, And doleful dumps the mind oppress, Then music with her silver sound'- Why 'silver sound'? Why 'music with her silver sound'? What say you, Simon Catling? 1. Mus. Marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound. Pet. Pretty! What say You, Hugh Rebeck? 2. Mus. I say 'silver sound' because musicians sound for silver. Pet. Pretty too! What say you, James Soundpost? 3. Mus. Faith, I know not what to say. Pet. O, I cry you mercy! you are the singer. I will say for you. It is 'music with her silver sound' because musicians have no gold for sounding. 'Then music with her silver sound With speedy help doth lend redress.' [Exit. 1. Mus. What a pestilent knave is this same? 2. Mus. Hang him, Jack! Come, we'll in here, tarry for the mourners, and stay dinner. Exeunt.

Act 4, Scene 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-4-scene-5

When the Nurse comes to wake Juliet up in the morning, she discovers the girl dead. Oh, bummer. Wonder if they'll get the photographer's deposit back? Then the Friar shows up and takes action, telling them to take Juliet to the tomb, stat.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/22.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_23_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 5.scene 1

act 5, scene 1

{"name": "Act 5, Scene 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-5-scene-1", "summary": "In exile in Mantua, Romeo wakes up feeling good. He has just had a dream in which Juliet found him dead, but then kissed him back to life. That sound you just heard was the anvil of foreshadowing. Romeo's servant Balthasar arrives with the news from Verona. There's no good way to say this: Juliet's dead. Um, is there any message from Friar Laurence? Nope. Romeo immediately decides that the only thing he can do is go to Juliet's grave and commit suicide there. He knows a poor apothecary who sells illegal drugs, including poisons. He goes to said \"poor apothecary,\" whose sunken cheeks and hollow looking eyes suggest that he is starving to death, and Romeo convinces him to sell him a dram of poison , since, you know, the guy is starving and really needs the money. Then Romeo heads for Verona.", "analysis": ""}

ACT V. Scene I. Mantua. A street. Enter Romeo. Rom. If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep My dreams presage some joyful news at hand. My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne, And all this day an unaccustom'd spirit Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts. I dreamt my lady came and found me dead (Strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think!) And breath'd such life with kisses in my lips That I reviv'd and was an emperor. Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess'd, When but love's shadows are so rich in joy! Enter Romeo's Man Balthasar, booted. News from Verona! How now, Balthasar? Dost thou not bring me letters from the friar? How doth my lady? Is my father well? How fares my Juliet? That I ask again, For nothing can be ill if she be well. Man. Then she is well, and nothing can be ill. Her body sleeps in Capel's monument, And her immortal part with angels lives. I saw her laid low in her kindred's vault And presently took post to tell it you. O, pardon me for bringing these ill news, Since you did leave it for my office, sir. Rom. Is it e'en so? Then I defy you, stars! Thou knowest my lodging. Get me ink and paper And hire posthorses. I will hence to-night. Man. I do beseech you, sir, have patience. Your looks are pale and wild and do import Some misadventure. Rom. Tush, thou art deceiv'd. Leave me and do the thing I bid thee do. Hast thou no letters to me from the friar? Man. No, my good lord. Rom. No matter. Get thee gone And hire those horses. I'll be with thee straight. Exit [Balthasar]. Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. Let's see for means. O mischief, thou art swift To enter in the thoughts of desperate men! I do remember an apothecary, And hereabouts 'a dwells, which late I noted In tatt'red weeds, with overwhelming brows, Culling of simples. Meagre were his looks, Sharp misery had worn him to the bones; And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff'd, and other skins Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds, Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses Were thinly scattered, to make up a show. Noting this penury, to myself I said, 'An if a man did need a poison now Whose sale is present death in Mantua, Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.' O, this same thought did but forerun my need, And this same needy man must sell it me. As I remember, this should be the house. Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut. What, ho! apothecary! Enter Apothecary. Apoth. Who calls so loud? Rom. Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor. Hold, there is forty ducats. Let me have A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear As will disperse itself through all the veins That the life-weary taker mall fall dead, And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath As violently as hasty powder fir'd Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb. Apoth. Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law Is death to any he that utters them. Rom. Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness And fearest to die? Famine is in thy cheeks, Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes, Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back: The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law; The world affords no law to make thee rich; Then be not poor, but break it and take this. Apoth. My poverty but not my will consents. Rom. I pay thy poverty and not thy will. Apoth. Put this in any liquid thing you will And drink it off, and if you had the strength Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight. Rom. There is thy gold- worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murther in this loathsome world, Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell. I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none. Farewell. Buy food and get thyself in flesh. Come, cordial and not poison, go with me To Juliet's grave; for there must I use thee. Exeunt.

Act 5, Scene 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-5-scene-1

In exile in Mantua, Romeo wakes up feeling good. He has just had a dream in which Juliet found him dead, but then kissed him back to life. That sound you just heard was the anvil of foreshadowing. Romeo's servant Balthasar arrives with the news from Verona. There's no good way to say this: Juliet's dead. Um, is there any message from Friar Laurence? Nope. Romeo immediately decides that the only thing he can do is go to Juliet's grave and commit suicide there. He knows a poor apothecary who sells illegal drugs, including poisons. He goes to said "poor apothecary," whose sunken cheeks and hollow looking eyes suggest that he is starving to death, and Romeo convinces him to sell him a dram of poison , since, you know, the guy is starving and really needs the money. Then Romeo heads for Verona.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/23.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Romeo and Juliet/section_24_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 5.scene 2

act 5, scene 2

{"name": "Act 5, Scene 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-5-scene-2", "summary": "Why didn't Romeo get the message Friar Laurence sent him? Because Friar Laurence sent the letter with his friend, Friar John, who was delayed due to an unfortunate mix-up. . Next time, don't use up all your minutes, Friar. Friar John comes back without having delivered the letter, and Friar Laurence is getting a baaaaaad feeling about this. Friar Laurence goes off to the tomb thinking he'll have to wake Juliet alone.", "analysis": ""}

Scene II. Verona. Friar Laurence's cell. Enter Friar John to Friar Laurence. John. Holy Franciscan friar, brother, ho! Enter Friar Laurence. Laur. This same should be the voice of Friar John. Welcome from Mantua. What says Romeo? Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter. John. Going to find a barefoot brother out, One of our order, to associate me Here in this city visiting the sick, And finding him, the searchers of the town, Suspecting that we both were in a house Where the infectious pestilence did reign, Seal'd up the doors, and would not let us forth, So that my speed to Mantua there was stay'd. Laur. Who bare my letter, then, to Romeo? John. I could not send it- here it is again- Nor get a messenger to bring it thee, So fearful were they of infection. Laur. Unhappy fortune! By my brotherhood, The letter was not nice, but full of charge, Of dear import; and the neglecting it May do much danger. Friar John, go hence, Get me an iron crow and bring it straight Unto my cell. John. Brother, I'll go and bring it thee. Exit. Laur. Now, must I to the monument alone. Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake. She will beshrew me much that Romeo Hath had no notice of these accidents; But I will write again to Mantua, And keep her at my cell till Romeo come- Poor living corse, clos'd in a dead man's tomb! Exit.

Act 5, Scene 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514145017/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/romeo-and-juliet/summary/act-5-scene-2

Why didn't Romeo get the message Friar Laurence sent him? Because Friar Laurence sent the letter with his friend, Friar John, who was delayed due to an unfortunate mix-up. . Next time, don't use up all your minutes, Friar. Friar John comes back without having delivered the letter, and Friar Laurence is getting a baaaaaad feeling about this. Friar Laurence goes off to the tomb thinking he'll have to wake Juliet alone.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/1.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Romeo and Juliet/section_1_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 1.scene 1

romeo and juliet: summary & analysis act 1 scene 1 | romeo and jul1et play summary & study gu1de | cl1ffsnotes shakespeare central

{"name": "Romeo and Juliet: Summary & Analysis Act I Scene 1 | Romeo and Juliet Play Summary & Study Guide | CliffsNotes Shakespeare Central", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-i-scene-1", "summary": "The scene opens with a brawl on the streets of Verona between servants from the affluent Montague and Capulet households. While attempting to stop the fight, Benvolio is drawn into the fray by Tybalt, kinsman of the Capulets. The fight rapidly escalates as more citizens become involved and soon the heads of both households appear on the scene. At last, Prince Escalus arrives and stops the riot, forbidding any further outbreaks of violence on pain of death. After Escalus dismisses both sides, Montague and his wife discuss Romeo's recent melancholy behavior with Benvolio and ask him to discover its cause. They exit as Romeo enters in his sad state -- a victim of an unrequited love for the cold and unresponsive Rosaline. Benvolio advises him to forget Rosaline by looking for another, but Romeo insists that this would be impossible.", "analysis": "A spirited exchange of vulgar jokes between servants opens the play and immediately links sex with conflict. In their bawdy quarrel, the servants' references to \"tool\" and \"naked weapon,\" together with repeated images of striking and thrusting, illustrate how images of love and sex are intertwined with violence and death -- and will continue to be throughout the play. The sudden switch from the comedic interplay between the servants to a potentially life-threatening situation demonstrates the rapidly changing pace that drives the action of the rest of the play. For instance, Benvolio, whose name means \"goodwill,\" tries to act as a peacemaker by dividing the servants, but the quick-tempered \"fiery Tybalt\" forces him to draw his sword, and the atmosphere changes from harmony to hatred within a few lines. This undercurrent of uncertain fortune wrenches the characters into and out of pleasure and pain as fate seemingly preempts each of their hopes with another tragic turn of events. When the elderly, hot-tempered Capulet calls for his long sword to jump into a duel with the young swordsmen wielding light, modern weapons, both the absurdity of the feud and the gulf between the old and the young are evident. Both patriarchs are chastised by their wives for such impetuous behavior: \"A crutch. Why call you for a sword?\" chides Capulet's wife. Though Romeo and Juliet try to separate themselves from such archaic grudges and foolish fighting, the couple can't escape the repercussions of the feud, which ultimately deals their love a fatal wound. The second half of the scene switches its focus from the theme of feuding and violence to the play's other key theme, love. Romeo woefully bemoans his plight as an unrequited, Petrarchan lover. The term Petrarchan comes from the poet, Petrarch, who wrote sonnets obsessively consumed with his unrequited love for Laura. Romeo's feelings of love have not been reciprocated by Rosaline, and this predicament causes him to dwell on his emotional torment. Shakespeare chooses language that reflects youthful, idealized notions of romance. Romeo describes his state of mind through a series of oxymorons -- setting contradictory words together -- blending the joys of love with the emotional desolation of unrequited love: \"O brawling love, O loving hate.\" That he can express such extreme emotions for a woman he barely knows demonstrates both his immaturity and his potential for deeper love. Romeo's use of traditional, hackneyed poetry in the early stages of the play show him as a young, inexperienced lover who is more interested in the concept of being in love, than actually loving another human being. As the play progresses, Romeo's use of language shifts as he begins to speak in blank verse as well as rhyme. Through this development, his expressions sound more genuine rather than like a poem learned by rote. Shakespeare elevates Romeo's language as he elevates Romeo's love for Juliet. Romeo's emotional turmoil also reflects the chaos of Verona, a city divided by the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets. Just as the city is embattled by the feud between the families, Romeo is embattled by his unrequited love for Rosaline. Romeo illustrates his idea of love as a battlefield by using military terms to describe the ways in which he has used his eyes and words of love in a combined attack to win the lady over, but without success: \"She will not stay the siege of loving terms / Nor bide th' encounter of assailing eyes.\" Shakespeare repeatedly demonstrates how closely intertwined battles of love and hate can be. These conflicting images of love and violence ominously anticipate the play's conclusion when the deaths of Romeo and Juliet \"win\" the end of the feud. Glossary we'll not carry coals an old-fashioned saying, which meant to submit to insults. colliers coal miners. draw your neck out of collar Gregory puns on the word \"draw\" here, implying that Sampson will draw or slip his head out of a hangman's noose . maidenhead virginity. I will bite my thumb at them, which is a disgrace to them if they bear it an Italian insult, a provocative, probably obscene gesture. bills medieval weapons having a hook-shaped blade with a spike at the back, mounted on a long staff. partisans broad-bladed weapons with a long shaft, used especially in the 16th century. purple fountains jets of blood. mistemper'd bad-tempered, angry; here, also referring to weapons which have been tempered, or made hard, in blood rather than water. moved angry. artificial night Romeo's behavior is unnatural . true shrift confession. love so gentle in his view love, often represented as Cupid, appears gentle. in proof when actually experienced. stay undergo. posterity Rosaline's celibacy will prevent her passing on her beauty to her children or descendants. forsworn promised not to love. do I live dead Romeo regards Rosaline's decision to remain chaste as a form of living death."}

ACT I. Scene I. Verona. A public place. Enter Sampson and Gregory (with swords and bucklers) of the house of Capulet. Samp. Gregory, on my word, we'll not carry coals. Greg. No, for then we should be colliers. Samp. I mean, an we be in choler, we'll draw. Greg. Ay, while you live, draw your neck out of collar. Samp. I strike quickly, being moved. Greg. But thou art not quickly moved to strike. Samp. A dog of the house of Montague moves me. Greg. To move is to stir, and to be valiant is to stand. Therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn'st away. Samp. A dog of that house shall move me to stand. I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague's. Greg. That shows thee a weak slave; for the weakest goes to the wall. Samp. 'Tis true; and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall. Therefore I will push Montague's men from the wall and thrust his maids to the wall. Greg. The quarrel is between our masters and us their men. Samp. 'Tis all one. I will show myself a tyrant. When I have fought with the men, I will be cruel with the maids- I will cut off their heads. Greg. The heads of the maids? Samp. Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads. Take it in what sense thou wilt. Greg. They must take it in sense that feel it. Samp. Me they shall feel while I am able to stand; and 'tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh. Greg. 'Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been poor-John. Draw thy tool! Here comes two of the house of Montagues. Enter two other Servingmen [Abram and Balthasar]. Samp. My naked weapon is out. Quarrel! I will back thee. Greg. How? turn thy back and run? Samp. Fear me not. Greg. No, marry. I fear thee! Samp. Let us take the law of our sides; let them begin. Greg. I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list. Samp. Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them; which is disgrace to them, if they bear it. Abr. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? Samp. I do bite my thumb, sir. Abr. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? Samp. [aside to Gregory] Is the law of our side if I say ay? Greg. [aside to Sampson] No. Samp. No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir; but I bite my thumb, sir. Greg. Do you quarrel, sir? Abr. Quarrel, sir? No, sir. Samp. But if you do, sir, am for you. I serve as good a man as you. Abr. No better. Samp. Well, sir. Enter Benvolio. Greg. [aside to Sampson] Say 'better.' Here comes one of my master's kinsmen. Samp. Yes, better, sir. Abr. You lie. Samp. Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy swashing blow. They fight. Ben. Part, fools! [Beats down their swords.] Put up your swords. You know not what you do. Enter Tybalt. Tyb. What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn thee Benvolio! look upon thy death. Ben. I do but keep the peace. Put up thy sword, Or manage it to part these men with me. Tyb. What, drawn, and talk of peace? I hate the word As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee. Have at thee, coward! They fight. Enter an officer, and three or four Citizens with clubs or partisans. Officer. Clubs, bills, and partisans! Strike! beat them down! Citizens. Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues! Enter Old Capulet in his gown, and his Wife. Cap. What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho! Wife. A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword? Cap. My sword, I say! Old Montague is come And flourishes his blade in spite of me. Enter Old Montague and his Wife. Mon. Thou villain Capulet!- Hold me not, let me go. M. Wife. Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe. Enter Prince Escalus, with his Train. Prince. Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel- Will they not hear? What, ho! you men, you beasts, That quench the fire of your pernicious rage With purple fountains issuing from your veins! On pain of torture, from those bloody hands Throw your mistempered weapons to the ground And hear the sentence of your moved prince. Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word By thee, old Capulet, and Montague, Have thrice disturb'd the quiet of our streets And made Verona's ancient citizens Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments To wield old partisans, in hands as old, Cank'red with peace, to part your cank'red hate. If ever you disturb our streets again, Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace. For this time all the rest depart away. You, Capulet, shall go along with me; And, Montague, come you this afternoon, To know our farther pleasure in this case, To old Freetown, our common judgment place. Once more, on pain of death, all men depart. Exeunt [all but Montague, his Wife, and Benvolio]. Mon. Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach? Speak, nephew, were you by when it began? Ben. Here were the servants of your adversary And yours, close fighting ere I did approach. I drew to part them. In the instant came The fiery Tybalt, with his sword prepar'd; Which, as he breath'd defiance to my ears, He swung about his head and cut the winds, Who, nothing hurt withal, hiss'd him in scorn. While we were interchanging thrusts and blows, Came more and more, and fought on part and part, Till the Prince came, who parted either part. M. Wife. O, where is Romeo? Saw you him to-day? Right glad I am he was not at this fray. Ben. Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun Peer'd forth the golden window of the East, A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad; Where, underneath the grove of sycamore That westward rooteth from the city's side, So early walking did I see your son. Towards him I made; but he was ware of me And stole into the covert of the wood. I- measuring his affections by my own, Which then most sought where most might not be found, Being one too many by my weary self- Pursu'd my humour, not Pursuing his, And gladly shunn'd who gladly fled from me. Mon. Many a morning hath he there been seen, With tears augmenting the fresh morning's dew, Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs; But all so soon as the all-cheering sun Should in the furthest East bean to draw The shady curtains from Aurora's bed, Away from light steals home my heavy son And private in his chamber pens himself, Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight And makes himself an artificial night. Black and portentous must this humour prove Unless good counsel may the cause remove. Ben. My noble uncle, do you know the cause? Mon. I neither know it nor can learn of him Ben. Have you importun'd him by any means? Mon. Both by myself and many other friend; But he, his own affections' counsellor, Is to himself- I will not say how true- But to himself so secret and so close, So far from sounding and discovery, As is the bud bit with an envious worm Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air Or dedicate his beauty to the sun. Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow, We would as willingly give cure as know. Enter Romeo. Ben. See, where he comes. So please you step aside, I'll know his grievance, or be much denied. Mon. I would thou wert so happy by thy stay To hear true shrift. Come, madam, let's away, Exeunt [Montague and Wife]. Ben. Good morrow, cousin. Rom. Is the day so young? Ben. But new struck nine. Rom. Ay me! sad hours seem long. Was that my father that went hence so fast? Ben. It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours? Rom. Not having that which having makes them short. Ben. In love? Rom. Out- Ben. Of love? Rom. Out of her favour where I am in love. Ben. Alas that love, so gentle in his view, Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof! Rom. Alas that love, whose view is muffled still, Should without eyes see pathways to his will! Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here? Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Here's much to do with hate, but more with love. Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O anything, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! serious vanity! Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is This love feel I, that feel no love in this. Dost thou not laugh? Ben. No, coz, I rather weep. Rom. Good heart, at what? Ben. At thy good heart's oppression. Rom. Why, such is love's transgression. Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast, Which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest With more of thine. This love that thou hast shown Doth add more grief to too much of mine own. Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs; Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet. Farewell, my coz. Ben. Soft! I will go along. An if you leave me so, you do me wrong. Rom. Tut! I have lost myself; I am not here: This is not Romeo, he's some other where. Ben. Tell me in sadness, who is that you love? Rom. What, shall I groan and tell thee? Ben. Groan? Why, no; But sadly tell me who. Rom. Bid a sick man in sadness make his will. Ah, word ill urg'd to one that is so ill! In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman. Ben. I aim'd so near when I suppos'd you lov'd. Rom. A right good markman! And she's fair I love. Ben. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit. Rom. Well, in that hit you miss. She'll not be hit With Cupid's arrow. She hath Dian's wit, And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd, From Love's weak childish bow she lives unharm'd. She will not stay the siege of loving terms, Nor bide th' encounter of assailing eyes, Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold. O, she's rich in beauty; only poor That, when she dies, with beauty dies her store. Ben. Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste? Rom. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste; For beauty, starv'd with her severity, Cuts beauty off from all posterity. She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair, To merit bliss by making me despair. She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow Do I live dead that live to tell it now. Ben. Be rul'd by me: forget to think of her. Rom. O, teach me how I should forget to think! Ben. By giving liberty unto thine eyes. Examine other beauties. Rom. 'Tis the way To call hers (exquisite) in question more. These happy masks that kiss fair ladies' brows, Being black puts us in mind they hide the fair. He that is strucken blind cannot forget The precious treasure of his eyesight lost. Show me a mistress that is passing fair, What doth her beauty serve but as a note Where I may read who pass'd that passing fair? Farewell. Thou canst not teach me to forget. Ben. I'll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt. Exeunt.

Romeo and Juliet: Summary & Analysis Act I Scene 1 | Romeo and Juliet Play Summary & Study Guide | CliffsNotes Shakespeare Central

https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-i-scene-1

The scene opens with a brawl on the streets of Verona between servants from the affluent Montague and Capulet households. While attempting to stop the fight, Benvolio is drawn into the fray by Tybalt, kinsman of the Capulets. The fight rapidly escalates as more citizens become involved and soon the heads of both households appear on the scene. At last, Prince Escalus arrives and stops the riot, forbidding any further outbreaks of violence on pain of death. After Escalus dismisses both sides, Montague and his wife discuss Romeo's recent melancholy behavior with Benvolio and ask him to discover its cause. They exit as Romeo enters in his sad state -- a victim of an unrequited love for the cold and unresponsive Rosaline. Benvolio advises him to forget Rosaline by looking for another, but Romeo insists that this would be impossible.

A spirited exchange of vulgar jokes between servants opens the play and immediately links sex with conflict. In their bawdy quarrel, the servants' references to "tool" and "naked weapon," together with repeated images of striking and thrusting, illustrate how images of love and sex are intertwined with violence and death -- and will continue to be throughout the play. The sudden switch from the comedic interplay between the servants to a potentially life-threatening situation demonstrates the rapidly changing pace that drives the action of the rest of the play. For instance, Benvolio, whose name means "goodwill," tries to act as a peacemaker by dividing the servants, but the quick-tempered "fiery Tybalt" forces him to draw his sword, and the atmosphere changes from harmony to hatred within a few lines. This undercurrent of uncertain fortune wrenches the characters into and out of pleasure and pain as fate seemingly preempts each of their hopes with another tragic turn of events. When the elderly, hot-tempered Capulet calls for his long sword to jump into a duel with the young swordsmen wielding light, modern weapons, both the absurdity of the feud and the gulf between the old and the young are evident. Both patriarchs are chastised by their wives for such impetuous behavior: "A crutch. Why call you for a sword?" chides Capulet's wife. Though Romeo and Juliet try to separate themselves from such archaic grudges and foolish fighting, the couple can't escape the repercussions of the feud, which ultimately deals their love a fatal wound. The second half of the scene switches its focus from the theme of feuding and violence to the play's other key theme, love. Romeo woefully bemoans his plight as an unrequited, Petrarchan lover. The term Petrarchan comes from the poet, Petrarch, who wrote sonnets obsessively consumed with his unrequited love for Laura. Romeo's feelings of love have not been reciprocated by Rosaline, and this predicament causes him to dwell on his emotional torment. Shakespeare chooses language that reflects youthful, idealized notions of romance. Romeo describes his state of mind through a series of oxymorons -- setting contradictory words together -- blending the joys of love with the emotional desolation of unrequited love: "O brawling love, O loving hate." That he can express such extreme emotions for a woman he barely knows demonstrates both his immaturity and his potential for deeper love. Romeo's use of traditional, hackneyed poetry in the early stages of the play show him as a young, inexperienced lover who is more interested in the concept of being in love, than actually loving another human being. As the play progresses, Romeo's use of language shifts as he begins to speak in blank verse as well as rhyme. Through this development, his expressions sound more genuine rather than like a poem learned by rote. Shakespeare elevates Romeo's language as he elevates Romeo's love for Juliet. Romeo's emotional turmoil also reflects the chaos of Verona, a city divided by the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets. Just as the city is embattled by the feud between the families, Romeo is embattled by his unrequited love for Rosaline. Romeo illustrates his idea of love as a battlefield by using military terms to describe the ways in which he has used his eyes and words of love in a combined attack to win the lady over, but without success: "She will not stay the siege of loving terms / Nor bide th' encounter of assailing eyes." Shakespeare repeatedly demonstrates how closely intertwined battles of love and hate can be. These conflicting images of love and violence ominously anticipate the play's conclusion when the deaths of Romeo and Juliet "win" the end of the feud. Glossary we'll not carry coals an old-fashioned saying, which meant to submit to insults. colliers coal miners. draw your neck out of collar Gregory puns on the word "draw" here, implying that Sampson will draw or slip his head out of a hangman's noose . maidenhead virginity. I will bite my thumb at them, which is a disgrace to them if they bear it an Italian insult, a provocative, probably obscene gesture. bills medieval weapons having a hook-shaped blade with a spike at the back, mounted on a long staff. partisans broad-bladed weapons with a long shaft, used especially in the 16th century. purple fountains jets of blood. mistemper'd bad-tempered, angry; here, also referring to weapons which have been tempered, or made hard, in blood rather than water. moved angry. artificial night Romeo's behavior is unnatural . true shrift confession. love so gentle in his view love, often represented as Cupid, appears gentle. in proof when actually experienced. stay undergo. posterity Rosaline's celibacy will prevent her passing on her beauty to her children or descendants. forsworn promised not to love. do I live dead Romeo regards Rosaline's decision to remain chaste as a form of living death.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/2.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Romeo and Juliet/section_2_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 1.scene 2

scene 2

{"name": "Scene 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-i-scene-2", "summary": "Paris, a relative of the prince, asks Capulet for his daughter Juliet's hand in marriage. Capulet is initially reluctant to give his consent because Juliet is so young. Finally, however, he agrees to the match if Paris can gain Juliet's consent. Capulet invites Paris to a feast to be held that night. Capulet sends off the guest list with a servant, who is, unfortunately, illiterate and cannot read the names. He meets Romeo and Benvolio whom he asks for help. The guest list includes Rosaline, the object of Romeo's affections, so Romeo resolves to go to the feast despite the danger involved. Benvolio hopes that Romeo will see another lady there to help him forget about Rosaline. Romeo again denies that this could happen.", "analysis": "Paris and Capulet's discussion of Juliet's age in the beginning of this scene continues another of the play's resounding themes: youth versus old age. In the world of the feud, the older generation's conflicts and bids for power control the destinies of their children without much apparent thought for their children's ultimate welfare. Thus the flaws in this patriarchal system make Romeo and Juliet's waywardness in love seem all the more innocent. Capulet worries that Juliet, at 13, is too young to be married. He cautiously advises Paris: \"Let two more summers wither in their pride / Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.\" Shakespeare's emphasis on Juliet as a teenage girl poised between childhood and adulthood highlights that Juliet is a very young tragic heroine who is forced to mature extremely quickly during the course of the play. Although Juliet's parents, like Romeo's, seem to look out for their child's best interests, Juliet's position is clearly subordinate to her father's political concerns. In the discussion of her marriage, Juliet is primarily a commodity. Paris wants her mainly because of her social status and beauty. Capulet may even be using her youth and innocence as \"selling points\" to Paris rather than expressing genuine fatherly concern for protecting her from the corruption of the big wide world. No sooner does he insist that Paris win Juliet's consent than he arranges the feast where Paris may woo her more easily. Her father's half-hearted nod to gaining her consent is the last evidence of Juliet being empowered by her family. Hereafter, fate and her family control the marionette strings. Her actions are contrary to the powers that try to control her. Although her defiance doesn't become manifest until she refuses to marry Paris, this passage is both the twilight of her permissive independence and a harbinger of her defiant independence. This scene presents Paris and Romeo as unwitting rivals for Juliet's hand. Paris is the model suitor -- a well-to-do relative of the prince and notably courteous toward Capulet. He complies with social convention in his public proposal of marriage. Romeo, on the other hand, appears as a fanciful and fashionable young lover, with idealistic concepts of love. Romeo is reckless in his attitude towards love, quickly transferring his affections from Rosaline to Juliet, whereas Paris remains constant in his affection for Juliet. When Romeo falls in love with Juliet, he defies social conventions and woos her in secret. A chance encounter with Capulet's illiterate servant later in the scene enables Romeo and Benvolio to find out about the feast. This chance meeting contributes to a sense of inevitability that Romeo and Juliet are destined to meet. In his concluding speech, Romeo is only able to describe his feelings for Rosaline through figurative language that he has learned from poetry books. His borrowed images of love as a religious quest suggest that his idealism has separated him from reality; he is in love with an ideal, not a real person. Also borrowed second-hand from the sonnets are his images of \"looking\" -- his declaration that his eyes cannot delude him only proves that he is the stereotypical lover blinded by love. This paradox builds dramatic suspense for Act I, Scene 5 when he falls in love at first sight with Juliet. Glossary suit the act of wooing; courtship. well-apparell'd April clothed or adorned with images of new growth associated with the spring, such as leaves and blossom. Contrast with \"limping winter.\" sirrah a contemptuous term of address, here used to indicate the difference in social status between Capulet and his servant. new infection to thy eye Benvolio continues to encourage Romeo to look for another love. Ironically, Romeo and Juliet fall in love at first sight. plantain leaf the leaf was used to heal cuts and bruises. Romeo replies sarcastically that Benvolio's suggestion of a cure for Romeo's love melancholy would be as effective as applying a plantain leaf. unattainted unprejudiced. transparent heretics Romeo says that if he saw another woman more beautiful than Rosaline his tears would turn to fire and burn his eyes as \"transparent heretics\" for lying. poised balanced, weighed. crystal scales Romeo's eyes are like the pans on a set of crystal scales."}

Scene II. A Street. Enter Capulet, County Paris, and [Servant] -the Clown. Cap. But Montague is bound as well as I, In penalty alike; and 'tis not hard, I think, For men so old as we to keep the peace. Par. Of honourable reckoning are you both, And pity 'tis you liv'd at odds so long. But now, my lord, what say you to my suit? Cap. But saying o'er what I have said before: My child is yet a stranger in the world, She hath not seen the change of fourteen years; Let two more summers wither in their pride Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride. Par. Younger than she are happy mothers made. Cap. And too soon marr'd are those so early made. The earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she; She is the hopeful lady of my earth. But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart; My will to her consent is but a part. An she agree, within her scope of choice Lies my consent and fair according voice. This night I hold an old accustom'd feast, Whereto I have invited many a guest, Such as I love; and you among the store, One more, most welcome, makes my number more. At my poor house look to behold this night Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light. Such comfort as do lusty young men feel When well apparell'd April on the heel Of limping Winter treads, even such delight Among fresh female buds shall you this night Inherit at my house. Hear all, all see, And like her most whose merit most shall be; Which, on more view of many, mine, being one, May stand in number, though in reck'ning none. Come, go with me. [To Servant, giving him a paper] Go, sirrah, trudge about Through fair Verona; find those persons out Whose names are written there, and to them say, My house and welcome on their pleasure stay- Exeunt [Capulet and Paris]. Serv. Find them out whose names are written here? It is written that the shoemaker should meddle with his yard and the tailor with his last, the fisher with his pencil and the painter with his nets; but I am sent to find those persons whose names are here writ, and can never find what names the writing person hath here writ. I must to the learned. In good time! Enter Benvolio and Romeo. Ben. Tut, man, one fire burns out another's burning; One pain is lessoned by another's anguish; Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning; One desperate grief cures with another's languish. Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die. Rom. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that. Ben. For what, I pray thee? Rom. For your broken shin. Ben. Why, Romeo, art thou mad? Rom. Not mad, but bound more than a madman is; Shut up in Prison, kept without my food, Whipp'd and tormented and- God-den, good fellow. Serv. God gi' go-den. I pray, sir, can you read? Rom. Ay, mine own fortune in my misery. Serv. Perhaps you have learned it without book. But I pray, can you read anything you see? Rom. Ay, If I know the letters and the language. Serv. Ye say honestly. Rest you merry! Rom. Stay, fellow; I can read. He reads. 'Signior Martino and his wife and daughters; County Anselmo and his beauteous sisters; The lady widow of Vitruvio; Signior Placentio and His lovely nieces; Mercutio and his brother Valentine; Mine uncle Capulet, his wife, and daughters; My fair niece Rosaline and Livia; Signior Valentio and His cousin Tybalt; Lucio and the lively Helena.' [Gives back the paper.] A fair assembly. Whither should they come? Serv. Up. Rom. Whither? Serv. To supper, to our house. Rom. Whose house? Serv. My master's. Rom. Indeed I should have ask'd you that before. Serv. Now I'll tell you without asking. My master is the great rich Capulet; and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray come and crush a cup of wine. Rest you merry! Exit. Ben. At this same ancient feast of Capulet's Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lov'st; With all the admired beauties of Verona. Go thither, and with unattainted eye Compare her face with some that I shall show, And I will make thee think thy swan a crow. Rom. When the devout religion of mine eye Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires; And these, who, often drown'd, could never die, Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars! One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun. Ben. Tut! you saw her fair, none else being by, Herself pois'd with herself in either eye; But in that crystal scales let there be weigh'd Your lady's love against some other maid That I will show you shining at this feast, And she shall scant show well that now seems best. Rom. I'll go along, no such sight to be shown, But to rejoice in splendour of my own. [Exeunt.]

Scene 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-i-scene-2

Paris, a relative of the prince, asks Capulet for his daughter Juliet's hand in marriage. Capulet is initially reluctant to give his consent because Juliet is so young. Finally, however, he agrees to the match if Paris can gain Juliet's consent. Capulet invites Paris to a feast to be held that night. Capulet sends off the guest list with a servant, who is, unfortunately, illiterate and cannot read the names. He meets Romeo and Benvolio whom he asks for help. The guest list includes Rosaline, the object of Romeo's affections, so Romeo resolves to go to the feast despite the danger involved. Benvolio hopes that Romeo will see another lady there to help him forget about Rosaline. Romeo again denies that this could happen.

Paris and Capulet's discussion of Juliet's age in the beginning of this scene continues another of the play's resounding themes: youth versus old age. In the world of the feud, the older generation's conflicts and bids for power control the destinies of their children without much apparent thought for their children's ultimate welfare. Thus the flaws in this patriarchal system make Romeo and Juliet's waywardness in love seem all the more innocent. Capulet worries that Juliet, at 13, is too young to be married. He cautiously advises Paris: "Let two more summers wither in their pride / Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride." Shakespeare's emphasis on Juliet as a teenage girl poised between childhood and adulthood highlights that Juliet is a very young tragic heroine who is forced to mature extremely quickly during the course of the play. Although Juliet's parents, like Romeo's, seem to look out for their child's best interests, Juliet's position is clearly subordinate to her father's political concerns. In the discussion of her marriage, Juliet is primarily a commodity. Paris wants her mainly because of her social status and beauty. Capulet may even be using her youth and innocence as "selling points" to Paris rather than expressing genuine fatherly concern for protecting her from the corruption of the big wide world. No sooner does he insist that Paris win Juliet's consent than he arranges the feast where Paris may woo her more easily. Her father's half-hearted nod to gaining her consent is the last evidence of Juliet being empowered by her family. Hereafter, fate and her family control the marionette strings. Her actions are contrary to the powers that try to control her. Although her defiance doesn't become manifest until she refuses to marry Paris, this passage is both the twilight of her permissive independence and a harbinger of her defiant independence. This scene presents Paris and Romeo as unwitting rivals for Juliet's hand. Paris is the model suitor -- a well-to-do relative of the prince and notably courteous toward Capulet. He complies with social convention in his public proposal of marriage. Romeo, on the other hand, appears as a fanciful and fashionable young lover, with idealistic concepts of love. Romeo is reckless in his attitude towards love, quickly transferring his affections from Rosaline to Juliet, whereas Paris remains constant in his affection for Juliet. When Romeo falls in love with Juliet, he defies social conventions and woos her in secret. A chance encounter with Capulet's illiterate servant later in the scene enables Romeo and Benvolio to find out about the feast. This chance meeting contributes to a sense of inevitability that Romeo and Juliet are destined to meet. In his concluding speech, Romeo is only able to describe his feelings for Rosaline through figurative language that he has learned from poetry books. His borrowed images of love as a religious quest suggest that his idealism has separated him from reality; he is in love with an ideal, not a real person. Also borrowed second-hand from the sonnets are his images of "looking" -- his declaration that his eyes cannot delude him only proves that he is the stereotypical lover blinded by love. This paradox builds dramatic suspense for Act I, Scene 5 when he falls in love at first sight with Juliet. Glossary suit the act of wooing; courtship. well-apparell'd April clothed or adorned with images of new growth associated with the spring, such as leaves and blossom. Contrast with "limping winter." sirrah a contemptuous term of address, here used to indicate the difference in social status between Capulet and his servant. new infection to thy eye Benvolio continues to encourage Romeo to look for another love. Ironically, Romeo and Juliet fall in love at first sight. plantain leaf the leaf was used to heal cuts and bruises. Romeo replies sarcastically that Benvolio's suggestion of a cure for Romeo's love melancholy would be as effective as applying a plantain leaf. unattainted unprejudiced. transparent heretics Romeo says that if he saw another woman more beautiful than Rosaline his tears would turn to fire and burn his eyes as "transparent heretics" for lying. poised balanced, weighed. crystal scales Romeo's eyes are like the pans on a set of crystal scales.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/3.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Romeo and Juliet/section_3_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 1.scene 3

romeo and juliet: act 1 scene 3 summary & analys1s | shakespeare | cl1ffsnotes

{"name": "Romeo and Juliet: Act I Scene 3 Summary & Analysis | Shakespeare | CliffsNotes", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-i-scene-3", "summary": "Lady Capulet questions Juliet regarding her feelings about marriage and then informs Juliet of Paris' proposal. When her mother mentions that Paris will attend the feast that evening, Juliet reacts with dutiful reserve, whereas her nurse, recalling incidents from Juliet's childhood, volunteers a bawdier response.", "analysis": "This scene introduces Juliet on stage and explores the theme of youth versus old age and the difference in attitudes between The Nurse, Lady Capulet, and Juliet towards love and marriage. The Nurse's uninhibited attitude towards sex is contrasted with Lady Capulet's reserved discussion of Juliet's proposed marriage to Paris. The Nurse is a comic character who is a foil for Juliet, contrasting Juliet's youthful innocence with the Nurse's older, coarser outlook on life. The Nurse's reminiscence about Juliet's being weaned and learning to walk also anticipates Juliet's move towards sexual maturity. For example, in her account of when Juliet fell over learning to walk, the Nurse recalls that her own husband noted bawdily: \"Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit.\" Such comments help depict Juliet as an adolescent on the threshold of womanhood, while reinforcing the idea that Juliet has been objectified as a marriage commodity since birth. Juxtaposed with the Nurse's reflections on Juliet's childhood is Lady Capulet's discussion of the proposed match between Juliet and Paris. In her relationship with Juliet, Lady Capulet seems distant and cold, expecting Juliet's complete obedience in agreeing to the marriage. Juliet is clearly reluctant to agree to the arranged marriage as she says demurely: \"It is an honor that I dreamt not of.\" Lady Capulet considers Juliet to be old enough for marriage: Besides, a marriage to Paris would bring increased social status and wealth for the Capulets, as Lady Capulet observes: \"So shall you share all that he doth possess.\" While Lady Capulet sees Paris as the chance to make a socially advantageous match for the family, rather than considering Juliet's feelings, the Nurse regards marriage as a purely physical relationship, almost a burden women simply must bear. She reinterprets Lady Capulet's line that marriage increases a woman's wealth and status as referring instead to the way in which marriage increases a woman through pregnancy. Thus, neither her mother nor her Nurse addresses the romantic concept of love that Juliet harbors. In fact, each identifies a distinct aspect of female oppression -- social and physical. Juliet's response to her mother's wish for her to agree to the marriage is clever and evasive: \"I'll look to like, if looking liking move / But no more deep will I endart my eye.\" This answer indicates Juliet's emotional maturity because she has made up her own mind that she cannot marry someone whom she does not love, rejecting both her mother's and the Nurse's materialistic and sexual views of love. While she seems to acquiesce to tradition, her words suggest an awareness that there must be something better, beyond the concept of marriage that reinforces female social subordination. Juliet's attitude anticipates her rebellion against her parents later in the play; as the gap between Juliet and her family widens. Juliet's view of love also points to the spiritual quality of her love for Romeo, which is not tainted by economic and sexual concerns. Because her concept of love transcends the temporal issues of family feuds, oppression of women, and generational differences, it is doomed to become the victim of those jealous forces. Glossary Lammas-tide a harvest festival formerly held in England on Aug. 1, when bread baked from the first crop of wheat was consecrated at Mass. The festival is used to symbolize fertility and plentitude, qualities which can be linked to Juliet as a young adolescent. laid wormwood to my dug rubbed wormwood on my nipple: a method of weaning children. The Nurse's role when Juliet was a young child was to act as her wet-nurse and breast-feed Juliet. tetchy touchy; irritable; peevish. trow think. by th'rood an oath: by Christ's cross. broke her brow fell and cut her forehead. by my holidame from the Anglo-Saxon for holiness, here used by the Nurse to mean \"holy dame,\" that is, the Virgin Mary. young cockerel's stone young rooster's testicle. stinted stopped crying. disposition inclination. he's a man of wax he's perfect, without fault, like a wax figure. endart shoot as a dart."}

Scene III. Capulet's house. Enter Capulet's Wife, and Nurse. Wife. Nurse, where's my daughter? Call her forth to me. Nurse. Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year old, I bade her come. What, lamb! what ladybird! God forbid! Where's this girl? What, Juliet! Enter Juliet. Jul. How now? Who calls? Nurse. Your mother. Jul. Madam, I am here. What is your will? Wife. This is the matter- Nurse, give leave awhile, We must talk in secret. Nurse, come back again; I have rememb'red me, thou's hear our counsel. Thou knowest my daughter's of a pretty age. Nurse. Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour. Wife. She's not fourteen. Nurse. I'll lay fourteen of my teeth- And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four- She is not fourteen. How long is it now To Lammastide? Wife. A fortnight and odd days. Nurse. Even or odd, of all days in the year, Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen. Susan and she (God rest all Christian souls!) Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God; She was too good for me. But, as I said, On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen; That shall she, marry; I remember it well. 'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years; And she was wean'd (I never shall forget it), Of all the days of the year, upon that day; For I had then laid wormwood to my dug, Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall. My lord and you were then at Mantua. Nay, I do bear a brain. But, as I said, When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool, To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug! Shake, quoth the dovehouse! 'Twas no need, I trow, To bid me trudge. And since that time it is eleven years, For then she could stand high-lone; nay, by th' rood, She could have run and waddled all about; For even the day before, she broke her brow; And then my husband (God be with his soul! 'A was a merry man) took up the child. 'Yea,' quoth he, 'dost thou fall upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit; Wilt thou not, Jule?' and, by my holidam, The pretty wretch left crying, and said 'Ay.' To see now how a jest shall come about! I warrant, an I should live a thousand yeas, I never should forget it. 'Wilt thou not, Jule?' quoth he, And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said 'Ay.' Wife. Enough of this. I pray thee hold thy peace. Nurse. Yes, madam. Yet I cannot choose but laugh To think it should leave crying and say 'Ay.' And yet, I warrant, it bad upon it brow A bump as big as a young cock'rel's stone; A perilous knock; and it cried bitterly. 'Yea,' quoth my husband, 'fall'st upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age; Wilt thou not, Jule?' It stinted, and said 'Ay.' Jul. And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse, say I. Nurse. Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace! Thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er I nurs'd. An I might live to see thee married once, I have my wish. Wife. Marry, that 'marry' is the very theme I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet, How stands your disposition to be married? Jul. It is an honour that I dream not of. Nurse. An honour? Were not I thine only nurse, I would say thou hadst suck'd wisdom from thy teat. Wife. Well, think of marriage now. Younger than you, Here in Verona, ladies of esteem, Are made already mothers. By my count, I was your mother much upon these years That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief: The valiant Paris seeks you for his love. Nurse. A man, young lady! lady, such a man As all the world- why he's a man of wax. Wife. Verona's summer hath not such a flower. Nurse. Nay, he's a flower, in faith- a very flower. Wife. What say you? Can you love the gentleman? This night you shall behold him at our feast. Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face, And find delight writ there with beauty's pen; Examine every married lineament, And see how one another lends content; And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies Find written in the margent of his eyes, This precious book of love, this unbound lover, To beautify him only lacks a cover. The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride For fair without the fair within to hide. That book in many's eyes doth share the glory, That in gold clasps locks in the golden story; So shall you share all that he doth possess, By having him making yourself no less. Nurse. No less? Nay, bigger! Women grow by men Wife. Speak briefly, can you like of Paris' love? Jul. I'll look to like, if looking liking move; But no more deep will I endart mine eye Than your consent gives strength to make it fly. Enter Servingman. Serv. Madam, the guests are come, supper serv'd up, you call'd, my young lady ask'd for, the nurse curs'd in the pantry, and everything in extremity. I must hence to wait. I beseech you follow straight. Wife. We follow thee. Exit [Servingman]. Juliet, the County stays. Nurse. Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days. Exeunt.

Romeo and Juliet: Act I Scene 3 Summary & Analysis | Shakespeare | CliffsNotes

https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-i-scene-3

Lady Capulet questions Juliet regarding her feelings about marriage and then informs Juliet of Paris' proposal. When her mother mentions that Paris will attend the feast that evening, Juliet reacts with dutiful reserve, whereas her nurse, recalling incidents from Juliet's childhood, volunteers a bawdier response.

This scene introduces Juliet on stage and explores the theme of youth versus old age and the difference in attitudes between The Nurse, Lady Capulet, and Juliet towards love and marriage. The Nurse's uninhibited attitude towards sex is contrasted with Lady Capulet's reserved discussion of Juliet's proposed marriage to Paris. The Nurse is a comic character who is a foil for Juliet, contrasting Juliet's youthful innocence with the Nurse's older, coarser outlook on life. The Nurse's reminiscence about Juliet's being weaned and learning to walk also anticipates Juliet's move towards sexual maturity. For example, in her account of when Juliet fell over learning to walk, the Nurse recalls that her own husband noted bawdily: "Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit." Such comments help depict Juliet as an adolescent on the threshold of womanhood, while reinforcing the idea that Juliet has been objectified as a marriage commodity since birth. Juxtaposed with the Nurse's reflections on Juliet's childhood is Lady Capulet's discussion of the proposed match between Juliet and Paris. In her relationship with Juliet, Lady Capulet seems distant and cold, expecting Juliet's complete obedience in agreeing to the marriage. Juliet is clearly reluctant to agree to the arranged marriage as she says demurely: "It is an honor that I dreamt not of." Lady Capulet considers Juliet to be old enough for marriage: Besides, a marriage to Paris would bring increased social status and wealth for the Capulets, as Lady Capulet observes: "So shall you share all that he doth possess." While Lady Capulet sees Paris as the chance to make a socially advantageous match for the family, rather than considering Juliet's feelings, the Nurse regards marriage as a purely physical relationship, almost a burden women simply must bear. She reinterprets Lady Capulet's line that marriage increases a woman's wealth and status as referring instead to the way in which marriage increases a woman through pregnancy. Thus, neither her mother nor her Nurse addresses the romantic concept of love that Juliet harbors. In fact, each identifies a distinct aspect of female oppression -- social and physical. Juliet's response to her mother's wish for her to agree to the marriage is clever and evasive: "I'll look to like, if looking liking move / But no more deep will I endart my eye." This answer indicates Juliet's emotional maturity because she has made up her own mind that she cannot marry someone whom she does not love, rejecting both her mother's and the Nurse's materialistic and sexual views of love. While she seems to acquiesce to tradition, her words suggest an awareness that there must be something better, beyond the concept of marriage that reinforces female social subordination. Juliet's attitude anticipates her rebellion against her parents later in the play; as the gap between Juliet and her family widens. Juliet's view of love also points to the spiritual quality of her love for Romeo, which is not tainted by economic and sexual concerns. Because her concept of love transcends the temporal issues of family feuds, oppression of women, and generational differences, it is doomed to become the victim of those jealous forces. Glossary Lammas-tide a harvest festival formerly held in England on Aug. 1, when bread baked from the first crop of wheat was consecrated at Mass. The festival is used to symbolize fertility and plentitude, qualities which can be linked to Juliet as a young adolescent. laid wormwood to my dug rubbed wormwood on my nipple: a method of weaning children. The Nurse's role when Juliet was a young child was to act as her wet-nurse and breast-feed Juliet. tetchy touchy; irritable; peevish. trow think. by th'rood an oath: by Christ's cross. broke her brow fell and cut her forehead. by my holidame from the Anglo-Saxon for holiness, here used by the Nurse to mean "holy dame," that is, the Virgin Mary. young cockerel's stone young rooster's testicle. stinted stopped crying. disposition inclination. he's a man of wax he's perfect, without fault, like a wax figure. endart shoot as a dart.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/4.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Romeo and Juliet/section_4_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 1.scene 4

scene 4

{"name": "Scene 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-i-scene-4", "summary": "Romeo, Benvolio, Mercutio, and others from the Montague household make their way to the Capulet feast. With their masks concealing their identity, they resolve to stay for just one dance. Because Romeo continues to be lovesick for Rosaline, Mercutio teases him for being such a stereotypical hopeless lover. Mercutio then delivers his highly imaginative Queen Mab speech in which he describes how the fairy delivers dreams to humans as they sleep. The scene concludes with Romeo's sense of foreboding at the forthcoming evening: for my mind misgives Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars, Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night's revels.", "analysis": "Mercutio acts in contrast to the lovestruck Romeo and the peaceful Benvolio -- he is a witty and quick-tempered skeptic. Mercutio teases Romeo for his love melancholy by sarcastically using conventional images of Petrarchan infatuation to underscore Romeo's naive view of love. For example, when Romeo refuses to dance at the feast because his soul is overburdened with unrequited love, Mercutio mocks: \"You are a lover, borrow Cupid's wings / And soar with them above a common bound.\" Mercutio is an anti-romantic; for him, love is a physical pursuit, which he emphasizes through his bawdy wordplay: \"If love be rough with you, be rough with love / Prick love for pricking and you beat love down.\" Mercutio's repeated references to the sexual aspect of love casts Romeo's transcendent love for Juliet in a more spiritual light. Mercutio treats the subject of dreams, like the subject of love, with witty skepticism, as he describes them both as \"fantasy.\" Unlike Romeo, Mercutio does not believe that dreams can foretell future events. Instead, painting vivid pictures of the dreamscape people inhabit as they sleep, Mercutio suggests that the fairy Queen Mab brings dreams to humans as a result of men's worldly desires and anxieties. To him, lawyers dream of collecting fees and lovers dream of lusty encounters; the fairies merely grant carnal wishes as they gallop by. In juxtaposing lawyers and lovers, soldiers and the fairy entourage, his eloquent speech touches on a number of the play's opposing themes such as love and hate, fantasy and reality, idealism and cynicism. It also gives insight into Mercutio's antagonistic and cynical nature: His description of the lovers is brief compared with the bloodthirsty image of the soldier who dreams of \"cutting foreign throats.\" The beauty of the ladies' lips is quickly followed by the image of Mab blistering their lips with plague sores because the women had eaten too many sweets. Mercutio is down-to-earth, whereas Romeo continues to indulge in idealistic, lovelorn daydreaming. Indeed, his dream speech contains all the elements that will conspire to bring down Romeo and Juliet's starry-eyed dream of love to the depths of the tomb. Romeo's final speech anticipates his meeting with Juliet and creates an atmosphere of impending doom, which undercuts the festivities. Instead of a date with a pretty girl on a starlit night, he intuits that he goes to a date with destiny. The heavy tone of this premonition is far more serious than the shallow melancholy Romeo has so far expressed. The cosmic imagery of \"some consequence hanging in the stars\" echoes the prologue in which Romeo and Juliet are presented as \"star-cross'd\" lovers, whose destinies are tragically interlinked. Glossary hoodwink'd blindfolded. common bound ordinary limit, with a pun on \"bound,\" as bound to leap about and to be confined. a pitch falconry term used to describe the height from which a bird of prey swoops to seize its prey. case mask. quote note or observe. Queen Mab a fairy queen who controlspeople's dreams. agate stone a hard, semiprecious stone. atomi creatures as small as atoms. long spinners' legs the legs of the crane fly. sweetmeats any sweet food or delicacy prepared with sugar or honey. suit a petition at court which requires the influence of the courtier for it to be heard, for which he will receive financial reward. benefice an endowed church office providing a living for a vicar, rector, etc. ambuscados ambushes. Spanish blades the best swords were made with Spanish steel. vain fantasy misleading flights of imagination. This is how Mercutio perceives love. misgives feels fear, doubt, or suspicion."}

Scene IV. A street. Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six other Maskers; Torchbearers. Rom. What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse? Or shall we on without apology? Ben. The date is out of such prolixity. We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf, Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath, Scaring the ladies like a crowkeeper; Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke After the prompter, for our entrance; But, let them measure us by what they will, We'll measure them a measure, and be gone. Rom. Give me a torch. I am not for this ambling. Being but heavy, I will bear the light. Mer. Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance. Rom. Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes With nimble soles; I have a soul of lead So stakes me to the ground I cannot move. Mer. You are a lover. Borrow Cupid's wings And soar with them above a common bound. Rom. I am too sore enpierced with his shaft To soar with his light feathers; and so bound I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe. Under love's heavy burthen do I sink. Mer. And, to sink in it, should you burthen love- Too great oppression for a tender thing. Rom. Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, Too rude, too boist'rous, and it pricks like thorn. Mer. If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down. Give me a case to put my visage in. A visor for a visor! What care I What curious eye doth quote deformities? Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me. Ben. Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in But every man betake him to his legs. Rom. A torch for me! Let wantons light of heart Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels; For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase, I'll be a candle-holder and look on; The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done. Mer. Tut! dun's the mouse, the constable's own word! If thou art Dun, we'll draw thee from the mire Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick'st Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho! Rom. Nay, that's not so. Mer. I mean, sir, in delay We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day. Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits Five times in that ere once in our five wits. Rom. And we mean well, in going to this masque; But 'tis no wit to go. Mer. Why, may one ask? Rom. I dreamt a dream to-night. Mer. And so did I. Rom. Well, what was yours? Mer. That dreamers often lie. Rom. In bed asleep, while they do dream things true. Mer. O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep; Her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs, The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; Her traces, of the smallest spider's web; Her collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams; Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film; Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat, Not half so big as a round little worm Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid; Her chariot is an empty hazelnut, Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers. And in this state she 'gallops night by night Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love; O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on cursies straight; O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees; O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream, Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep, Then dreams he of another benefice. Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, Of healths five fadom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two And sleeps again. This is that very Mab That plats the manes of horses in the night And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish, hairs, Which once untangled much misfortune bodes This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them and learns them first to bear, Making them women of good carriage. This is she- Rom. Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace! Thou talk'st of nothing. Mer. True, I talk of dreams; Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy; Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes Even now the frozen bosom of the North And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, Turning his face to the dew-dropping South. Ben. This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves. Supper is done, and we shall come too late. Rom. I fear, too early; for my mind misgives Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars, Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night's revels and expire the term Of a despised life, clos'd in my breast, By some vile forfeit of untimely death. But he that hath the steerage of my course Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen! Ben. Strike, drum. They march about the stage. [Exeunt.]

Scene 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-i-scene-4

Romeo, Benvolio, Mercutio, and others from the Montague household make their way to the Capulet feast. With their masks concealing their identity, they resolve to stay for just one dance. Because Romeo continues to be lovesick for Rosaline, Mercutio teases him for being such a stereotypical hopeless lover. Mercutio then delivers his highly imaginative Queen Mab speech in which he describes how the fairy delivers dreams to humans as they sleep. The scene concludes with Romeo's sense of foreboding at the forthcoming evening: for my mind misgives Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars, Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night's revels.

Mercutio acts in contrast to the lovestruck Romeo and the peaceful Benvolio -- he is a witty and quick-tempered skeptic. Mercutio teases Romeo for his love melancholy by sarcastically using conventional images of Petrarchan infatuation to underscore Romeo's naive view of love. For example, when Romeo refuses to dance at the feast because his soul is overburdened with unrequited love, Mercutio mocks: "You are a lover, borrow Cupid's wings / And soar with them above a common bound." Mercutio is an anti-romantic; for him, love is a physical pursuit, which he emphasizes through his bawdy wordplay: "If love be rough with you, be rough with love / Prick love for pricking and you beat love down." Mercutio's repeated references to the sexual aspect of love casts Romeo's transcendent love for Juliet in a more spiritual light. Mercutio treats the subject of dreams, like the subject of love, with witty skepticism, as he describes them both as "fantasy." Unlike Romeo, Mercutio does not believe that dreams can foretell future events. Instead, painting vivid pictures of the dreamscape people inhabit as they sleep, Mercutio suggests that the fairy Queen Mab brings dreams to humans as a result of men's worldly desires and anxieties. To him, lawyers dream of collecting fees and lovers dream of lusty encounters; the fairies merely grant carnal wishes as they gallop by. In juxtaposing lawyers and lovers, soldiers and the fairy entourage, his eloquent speech touches on a number of the play's opposing themes such as love and hate, fantasy and reality, idealism and cynicism. It also gives insight into Mercutio's antagonistic and cynical nature: His description of the lovers is brief compared with the bloodthirsty image of the soldier who dreams of "cutting foreign throats." The beauty of the ladies' lips is quickly followed by the image of Mab blistering their lips with plague sores because the women had eaten too many sweets. Mercutio is down-to-earth, whereas Romeo continues to indulge in idealistic, lovelorn daydreaming. Indeed, his dream speech contains all the elements that will conspire to bring down Romeo and Juliet's starry-eyed dream of love to the depths of the tomb. Romeo's final speech anticipates his meeting with Juliet and creates an atmosphere of impending doom, which undercuts the festivities. Instead of a date with a pretty girl on a starlit night, he intuits that he goes to a date with destiny. The heavy tone of this premonition is far more serious than the shallow melancholy Romeo has so far expressed. The cosmic imagery of "some consequence hanging in the stars" echoes the prologue in which Romeo and Juliet are presented as "star-cross'd" lovers, whose destinies are tragically interlinked. Glossary hoodwink'd blindfolded. common bound ordinary limit, with a pun on "bound," as bound to leap about and to be confined. a pitch falconry term used to describe the height from which a bird of prey swoops to seize its prey. case mask. quote note or observe. Queen Mab a fairy queen who controlspeople's dreams. agate stone a hard, semiprecious stone. atomi creatures as small as atoms. long spinners' legs the legs of the crane fly. sweetmeats any sweet food or delicacy prepared with sugar or honey. suit a petition at court which requires the influence of the courtier for it to be heard, for which he will receive financial reward. benefice an endowed church office providing a living for a vicar, rector, etc. ambuscados ambushes. Spanish blades the best swords were made with Spanish steel. vain fantasy misleading flights of imagination. This is how Mercutio perceives love. misgives feels fear, doubt, or suspicion.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/5.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Romeo and Juliet/section_5_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 1.scene 5

scene 5

{"name": "Scene 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-i-scene-5", "summary": "Romeo and his fellow attendees arrive at the Capulet feast. The guests are greeted by Capulet, who reminisces with his cousin about how long it has been since they both took part in a masque. Romeo sees Juliet and falls in love with her instantly. Tybalt recognizes Romeo's voice and sends for his rapier to kill him. A violent outburst is prevented as Capulet insists on Tybalt's obedience, reminding him of Romeo's good character and the need to keep the peace. Romeo and Juliet continue their exchanges and they kiss, but are interrupted by The Nurse, who sends Juliet to find her mother. In her absence, Romeo asks the Nurse who Juliet is and on discovering that she is a Capulet, realizes the grave consequences of their love. The feast draws to a close and Romeo leaves with Benvolio and the others. Juliet then discovers from the Nurse that Romeo is a Montague.", "analysis": "The theme of youth versus old age is again evident in this scene through Capulet's interaction with his guests and relatives, particularly Tybalt. The reminiscence with his cousin about the masques they danced in as young men emphasizes his position within the play as an old man past his \"dancing days.\" When Romeo sees Juliet for the first time, he is struck by her beauty and breaks into a sonnet. The imagery Romeo uses to describe Juliet gives important insights into their relationship. Romeo initially describes Juliet as a source of light, like a star, against the darkness: \"she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night.\" As the play progresses, a cloak of interwoven light and dark images is cast around the pair. The lovers are repeatedly associated with the dark, an association that points to the secret nature of their love because this is the time they are able to meet in safety. At the same time, the light that surrounds the lovers in each other's eyes grows brighter to the very end, when Juliet's beauty even illuminates the dark of the tomb. The association of both Romeo and Juliet with the stars also continually reminds the audience that their fate is \"star-cross'd.\" Romeo believes that he can now distinguish between the artificiality of his love for Rosaline and the genuine feelings Juliet inspires. Romeo acknowledges his love was blind, \"Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight / For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.\" Romeo's use of religious imagery from this point on -- as when he describes Juliet as a holy shrine -- indicates a move towards a more spiritual consideration of love as he moves away from the inflated, overacted descriptions of his love for Rosaline. Such ethereal moments of the expression of true love never last long within this feuding society. The threat of violence immediately interrupts the romantic atmosphere created by Romeo's sonnet when Tybalt recognizes Romeo's voice and wants to kill him then and there. Although forced to accept Capulet's decision as head of the family to allow Romeo to stay, Tybalt utters a threat that indicates that he will disregard Capulet's command, as he does in Act II, Scene 4, when he sends a challenge to Romeo. In presenting these complex social interactions in a public space, the play explores not only the conflict between the two feuding families but also the conflict within the families and across the generations. All the intertwined motivations become a snare for Romeo and Juliet's newfound love. Romeo proceeds to woo Juliet with another sonnet which continues to use the religious imagery begun in the first sonnet to emphasize the wonder and spiritual purity of his love. Flirting with his pure approach, Juliet teases Romeo as a lover who kisses according to convention rather than from the heart, but the audience recognizes that he has already shed most of his pretenses. Romeo and Juliet are so enrapt completing the sonnet and gazing into each other's sparkling eyes that they forget to ask one another for names; instead, both discover from the Nurse the other's identity. In an instant, Juliet concisely expresses the connection between love and hate and marriage and death: \"My only love sprung from my only hate.\" She also declares immediately that if she cannot marry Romeo, she would rather die: \"If he be married. / My grave is like to be my wedding bed.\" The image of death as a bridegroom for Juliet is repeated throughout the play to maintain an atmosphere of impending tragedy. Glossary trencher a wooden board or platter on which to carve or serve meat. marchpane marzipan, a confection of ground almonds, sugar, and egg white made into a paste and variously shaped and colored. visor mask. Pentecost a religious festival, the seventh Sunday after Easter. antic face Romeo's face is still covered by his mask. to fleer to laugh derisively ; sneer or jeer . portly dignified or well-mannered. disparagement disrespect. an ill-beseeming semblance an unfitting or inappropriate outward appearance or aspect. set cock-a-hoop be boastful or conceited. Capulet is concerned that Tybalt's anger and lack of restraint will spoil the feast. princox a coxcomb; fop. Capulet is keen to belittle Tybalt and force him to submit to his will as head of the household. bitt'rest gall bitter feeling; rancor. Gall is another name for bile, one of the bodily humors . holy palmers' kiss a palmer is a pilgrim who carried a palm leaf to signify the making of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. For Romeo, love is likened to a religious quest. you kiss by th'book that is, according to convention. marry an exclamation of surprise. \"Marry\" is a respelling of \"Mary.\" the chinks plenty of cash. fay faith: used in oaths as here. prodigious both wonderful and portentous."}

Scene V. Capulet's house. Servingmen come forth with napkins. 1. Serv. Where's Potpan, that he helps not to take away? He shift a trencher! he scrape a trencher! 2. Serv. When good manners shall lie all in one or two men's hands, and they unwash'd too, 'tis a foul thing. 1. Serv. Away with the join-stools, remove the court-cubbert, look to the plate. Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane and, as thou loves me, let the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell. Anthony, and Potpan! 2. Serv. Ay, boy, ready. 1. Serv. You are look'd for and call'd for, ask'd for and sought for, in the great chamber. 3. Serv. We cannot be here and there too. Cheerly, boys! Be brisk awhile, and the longer liver take all. Exeunt. Enter the Maskers, Enter, [with Servants,] Capulet, his Wife, Juliet, Tybalt, and all the Guests and Gentlewomen to the Maskers. Cap. Welcome, gentlemen! Ladies that have their toes Unplagu'd with corns will have a bout with you. Ah ha, my mistresses! which of you all Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty, She I'll swear hath corns. Am I come near ye now? Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day That I have worn a visor and could tell A whispering tale in a fair lady's ear, Such as would please. 'Tis gone, 'tis gone, 'tis gone! You are welcome, gentlemen! Come, musicians, play. A hall, a hall! give room! and foot it, girls. Music plays, and they dance. More light, you knaves! and turn the tables up, And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot. Ah, sirrah, this unlook'd-for sport comes well. Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin Capulet, For you and I are past our dancing days. How long is't now since last yourself and I Were in a mask? 2. Cap. By'r Lady, thirty years. Cap. What, man? 'Tis not so much, 'tis not so much! 'Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio, Come Pentecost as quickly as it will, Some five-and-twenty years, and then we mask'd. 2. Cap. 'Tis more, 'tis more! His son is elder, sir; His son is thirty. Cap. Will you tell me that? His son was but a ward two years ago. Rom. [to a Servingman] What lady's that, which doth enrich the hand Of yonder knight? Serv. I know not, sir. Rom. O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear- Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear! So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows. The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand. Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night. Tyb. This, by his voice, should be a Montague. Fetch me my rapier, boy. What, dares the slave Come hither, cover'd with an antic face, To fleer and scorn at our solemnity? Now, by the stock and honour of my kin, To strike him dead I hold it not a sin. Cap. Why, how now, kinsman? Wherefore storm you so? Tyb. Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe; A villain, that is hither come in spite To scorn at our solemnity this night. Cap. Young Romeo is it? Tyb. 'Tis he, that villain Romeo. Cap. Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone. 'A bears him like a portly gentleman, And, to say truth, Verona brags of him To be a virtuous and well-govern'd youth. I would not for the wealth of all this town Here in my house do him disparagement. Therefore be patient, take no note of him. It is my will; the which if thou respect, Show a fair presence and put off these frowns, An ill-beseeming semblance for a feast. Tyb. It fits when such a villain is a guest. I'll not endure him. Cap. He shall be endur'd. What, goodman boy? I say he shall. Go to! Am I the master here, or you? Go to! You'll not endure him? God shall mend my soul! You'll make a mutiny among my guests! You will set cock-a-hoop! you'll be the man! Tyb. Why, uncle, 'tis a shame. Cap. Go to, go to! You are a saucy boy. Is't so, indeed? This trick may chance to scathe you. I know what. You must contrary me! Marry, 'tis time.- Well said, my hearts!- You are a princox- go! Be quiet, or- More light, more light!- For shame! I'll make you quiet; what!- Cheerly, my hearts! Tyb. Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting. I will withdraw; but this intrusion shall, Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt'rest gall. Exit. Rom. If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. Jul. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. Rom. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? Jul. Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in pray'r. Rom. O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do! They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. Jul. Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. Rom. Then move not while my prayer's effect I take. Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purg'd. [Kisses her.] Jul. Then have my lips the sin that they have took. Rom. Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg'd! Give me my sin again. [Kisses her.] Jul. You kiss by th' book. Nurse. Madam, your mother craves a word with you. Rom. What is her mother? Nurse. Marry, bachelor, Her mother is the lady of the house. And a good lady, and a wise and virtuous. I nurs'd her daughter that you talk'd withal. I tell you, he that can lay hold of her Shall have the chinks. Rom. Is she a Capulet? O dear account! my life is my foe's debt. Ben. Away, be gone; the sport is at the best. Rom. Ay, so I fear; the more is my unrest. Cap. Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone; We have a trifling foolish banquet towards. Is it e'en so? Why then, I thank you all. I thank you, honest gentlemen. Good night. More torches here! [Exeunt Maskers.] Come on then, let's to bed. Ah, sirrah, by my fay, it waxes late; I'll to my rest. Exeunt [all but Juliet and Nurse]. Jul. Come hither, nurse. What is yond gentleman? Nurse. The son and heir of old Tiberio. Jul. What's he that now is going out of door? Nurse. Marry, that, I think, be young Petruchio. Jul. What's he that follows there, that would not dance? Nurse. I know not. Jul. Go ask his name.- If he be married, My grave is like to be my wedding bed. Nurse. His name is Romeo, and a Montague, The only son of your great enemy. Jul. My only love, sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me That I must love a loathed enemy. Nurse. What's this? what's this? Jul. A rhyme I learnt even now Of one I danc'd withal. One calls within, 'Juliet.' Nurse. Anon, anon! Come, let's away; the strangers all are gone. Exeunt. PROLOGUE Enter Chorus. Chor. Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie, And young affection gapes to be his heir; That fair for which love groan'd for and would die, With tender Juliet match'd, is now not fair. Now Romeo is belov'd, and loves again, Alike bewitched by the charm of looks; But to his foe suppos'd he must complain, And she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks. Being held a foe, he may not have access To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear, And she as much in love, her means much less To meet her new beloved anywhere; But passion lends them power, time means, to meet, Temp'ring extremities with extreme sweet. Exit.

Scene 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-i-scene-5

Romeo and his fellow attendees arrive at the Capulet feast. The guests are greeted by Capulet, who reminisces with his cousin about how long it has been since they both took part in a masque. Romeo sees Juliet and falls in love with her instantly. Tybalt recognizes Romeo's voice and sends for his rapier to kill him. A violent outburst is prevented as Capulet insists on Tybalt's obedience, reminding him of Romeo's good character and the need to keep the peace. Romeo and Juliet continue their exchanges and they kiss, but are interrupted by The Nurse, who sends Juliet to find her mother. In her absence, Romeo asks the Nurse who Juliet is and on discovering that she is a Capulet, realizes the grave consequences of their love. The feast draws to a close and Romeo leaves with Benvolio and the others. Juliet then discovers from the Nurse that Romeo is a Montague.

The theme of youth versus old age is again evident in this scene through Capulet's interaction with his guests and relatives, particularly Tybalt. The reminiscence with his cousin about the masques they danced in as young men emphasizes his position within the play as an old man past his "dancing days." When Romeo sees Juliet for the first time, he is struck by her beauty and breaks into a sonnet. The imagery Romeo uses to describe Juliet gives important insights into their relationship. Romeo initially describes Juliet as a source of light, like a star, against the darkness: "she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night." As the play progresses, a cloak of interwoven light and dark images is cast around the pair. The lovers are repeatedly associated with the dark, an association that points to the secret nature of their love because this is the time they are able to meet in safety. At the same time, the light that surrounds the lovers in each other's eyes grows brighter to the very end, when Juliet's beauty even illuminates the dark of the tomb. The association of both Romeo and Juliet with the stars also continually reminds the audience that their fate is "star-cross'd." Romeo believes that he can now distinguish between the artificiality of his love for Rosaline and the genuine feelings Juliet inspires. Romeo acknowledges his love was blind, "Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight / For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night." Romeo's use of religious imagery from this point on -- as when he describes Juliet as a holy shrine -- indicates a move towards a more spiritual consideration of love as he moves away from the inflated, overacted descriptions of his love for Rosaline. Such ethereal moments of the expression of true love never last long within this feuding society. The threat of violence immediately interrupts the romantic atmosphere created by Romeo's sonnet when Tybalt recognizes Romeo's voice and wants to kill him then and there. Although forced to accept Capulet's decision as head of the family to allow Romeo to stay, Tybalt utters a threat that indicates that he will disregard Capulet's command, as he does in Act II, Scene 4, when he sends a challenge to Romeo. In presenting these complex social interactions in a public space, the play explores not only the conflict between the two feuding families but also the conflict within the families and across the generations. All the intertwined motivations become a snare for Romeo and Juliet's newfound love. Romeo proceeds to woo Juliet with another sonnet which continues to use the religious imagery begun in the first sonnet to emphasize the wonder and spiritual purity of his love. Flirting with his pure approach, Juliet teases Romeo as a lover who kisses according to convention rather than from the heart, but the audience recognizes that he has already shed most of his pretenses. Romeo and Juliet are so enrapt completing the sonnet and gazing into each other's sparkling eyes that they forget to ask one another for names; instead, both discover from the Nurse the other's identity. In an instant, Juliet concisely expresses the connection between love and hate and marriage and death: "My only love sprung from my only hate." She also declares immediately that if she cannot marry Romeo, she would rather die: "If he be married. / My grave is like to be my wedding bed." The image of death as a bridegroom for Juliet is repeated throughout the play to maintain an atmosphere of impending tragedy. Glossary trencher a wooden board or platter on which to carve or serve meat. marchpane marzipan, a confection of ground almonds, sugar, and egg white made into a paste and variously shaped and colored. visor mask. Pentecost a religious festival, the seventh Sunday after Easter. antic face Romeo's face is still covered by his mask. to fleer to laugh derisively ; sneer or jeer . portly dignified or well-mannered. disparagement disrespect. an ill-beseeming semblance an unfitting or inappropriate outward appearance or aspect. set cock-a-hoop be boastful or conceited. Capulet is concerned that Tybalt's anger and lack of restraint will spoil the feast. princox a coxcomb; fop. Capulet is keen to belittle Tybalt and force him to submit to his will as head of the household. bitt'rest gall bitter feeling; rancor. Gall is another name for bile, one of the bodily humors . holy palmers' kiss a palmer is a pilgrim who carried a palm leaf to signify the making of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. For Romeo, love is likened to a religious quest. you kiss by th'book that is, according to convention. marry an exclamation of surprise. "Marry" is a respelling of "Mary." the chinks plenty of cash. fay faith: used in oaths as here. prodigious both wonderful and portentous.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/6.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Romeo and Juliet/section_7_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 2.scene 1

scene 1

{"name": "Scene 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-1", "summary": "This scene takes place outside the Capulet orchard. Romeo hopes to see Juliet again after falling in love with her at first sight during the Capulet masquerade ball. He leaps the orchard wall when he hears Mercutioand Benvolio approaching. His friends are unaware that Romeo has met and fallen in love with Juliet. Mercutio beckons to Romeo by teasing him about Rosaline's seductive beauty. Romeo continues to hide, and Benvolio persuades Mercutio to leave the scene, knowing Romeo's love of solitude.", "analysis": "In this scene, Romeo begins a separation from his friends that continues throughout the play. His inability to reveal his love of a Capulet heightens his isolation. By leaping the wall surrounding the Capulet orchard, Romeo physically separates himself from Mercutio and Benvolio -- a separation that reflects the distance he feels from society, his friends, and his family. Romeo previously wallowed in a \"prison, kept without food\" as his unrequited love for Rosaline withered from lack of reciprocation. Having joked at Romeo's Petrarchan miseries earlier in the play, Mercutio now adds a more cutting edge to his barbs. He calls to Romeo using physical and sexual innuendo to describe the female allure. To Mercutio, love is a conquest, a physical endeavor. Mercutio jests that Romeo will think of Rosaline as a medlar fruit, which was supposed to look like the female genitalia, and himself as a poperin pear shaped like the male genitalia. Romeo's leap over the Capulet wall is symbolic of his flight to a spiritual conceptualization of love. He has moved beyond Mercutio's crude understanding of love -- \"quivering thigh, / And the demesnes that there adjacent lie\" -- to a less physical, more mystical perception of love. Romeo describes Juliet in light images -- conspicuously nonphysical descriptions. When he first sees Juliet, he says, \"she doth teach the torches to burn bright.\" Romeo has often sought sanctuary in the dark, but the deepest shade has never satisfied him. Recall that he locked himself away in his room and shut the windows to create an \"artificial night\" while pining for Rosaline in Act I, Scene 1. Juliet transports him from the dark into the light, moving Romeo to a higher spiritual plane. Ironically, however, Romeo and Juliet's clandestine love can only flourish under the shelter of night. Glossary dull earth Romeo's description of himself. conjure to summon a demon or spirit as by a magic spell. Mercutio attempts to raise or draw Romeo from his hiding place. when King . . . lov'd the beggar maid a 16th-century ballad. the ape is dead Romeo is described as a performing monkey who is playing dead and will not respond to Mercutio's conjuration. demesnes a region or domain. Here Mercutio uses it to refer bawdily to the female genitalia. to raise a spirit in his mistresses circle Mercutio puns on circle as both the magician's magic circle and the female genitalia. consorted associated with. medlars small, brown, apple-like fruit. open-arse slang term for a medlar; \"arse\" is the buttocks. poperin pear Mercutio compares the pear with the shape of the male genitals and puns on the name: pop-her-in. truckle-bed a low bed on small wheels or casters, that can be rolled under another bed when not in use. field-bed bed upon the ground."}

ACT II. Scene I. A lane by the wall of Capulet's orchard. Enter Romeo alone. Rom. Can I go forward when my heart is here? Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out. [Climbs the wall and leaps down within it.] Enter Benvolio with Mercutio. Ben. Romeo! my cousin Romeo! Romeo! Mer. He is wise, And, on my life, hath stol'n him home to bed. Ben. He ran this way, and leapt this orchard wall. Call, good Mercutio. Mer. Nay, I'll conjure too. Romeo! humours! madman! passion! lover! Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh; Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied! Cry but 'Ay me!' pronounce but 'love' and 'dove'; Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word, One nickname for her purblind son and heir, Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim When King Cophetua lov'd the beggar maid! He heareth not, he stirreth not, be moveth not; The ape is dead, and I must conjure him. I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes. By her high forehead and her scarlet lip, By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh, And the demesnes that there adjacent lie, That in thy likeness thou appear to us! Ben. An if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him. Mer. This cannot anger him. 'Twould anger him To raise a spirit in his mistress' circle Of some strange nature, letting it there stand Till she had laid it and conjur'd it down. That were some spite; my invocation Is fair and honest: in his mistress' name, I conjure only but to raise up him. Ben. Come, he hath hid himself among these trees To be consorted with the humorous night. Blind is his love and best befits the dark. Mer. If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. Now will he sit under a medlar tree And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit As maids call medlars when they laugh alone. O, Romeo, that she were, O that she were An open et cetera, thou a pop'rin pear! Romeo, good night. I'll to my truckle-bed; This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep. Come, shall we go? Ben. Go then, for 'tis in vain 'To seek him here that means not to be found. Exeunt.

Scene 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-1

This scene takes place outside the Capulet orchard. Romeo hopes to see Juliet again after falling in love with her at first sight during the Capulet masquerade ball. He leaps the orchard wall when he hears Mercutioand Benvolio approaching. His friends are unaware that Romeo has met and fallen in love with Juliet. Mercutio beckons to Romeo by teasing him about Rosaline's seductive beauty. Romeo continues to hide, and Benvolio persuades Mercutio to leave the scene, knowing Romeo's love of solitude.

In this scene, Romeo begins a separation from his friends that continues throughout the play. His inability to reveal his love of a Capulet heightens his isolation. By leaping the wall surrounding the Capulet orchard, Romeo physically separates himself from Mercutio and Benvolio -- a separation that reflects the distance he feels from society, his friends, and his family. Romeo previously wallowed in a "prison, kept without food" as his unrequited love for Rosaline withered from lack of reciprocation. Having joked at Romeo's Petrarchan miseries earlier in the play, Mercutio now adds a more cutting edge to his barbs. He calls to Romeo using physical and sexual innuendo to describe the female allure. To Mercutio, love is a conquest, a physical endeavor. Mercutio jests that Romeo will think of Rosaline as a medlar fruit, which was supposed to look like the female genitalia, and himself as a poperin pear shaped like the male genitalia. Romeo's leap over the Capulet wall is symbolic of his flight to a spiritual conceptualization of love. He has moved beyond Mercutio's crude understanding of love -- "quivering thigh, / And the demesnes that there adjacent lie" -- to a less physical, more mystical perception of love. Romeo describes Juliet in light images -- conspicuously nonphysical descriptions. When he first sees Juliet, he says, "she doth teach the torches to burn bright." Romeo has often sought sanctuary in the dark, but the deepest shade has never satisfied him. Recall that he locked himself away in his room and shut the windows to create an "artificial night" while pining for Rosaline in Act I, Scene 1. Juliet transports him from the dark into the light, moving Romeo to a higher spiritual plane. Ironically, however, Romeo and Juliet's clandestine love can only flourish under the shelter of night. Glossary dull earth Romeo's description of himself. conjure to summon a demon or spirit as by a magic spell. Mercutio attempts to raise or draw Romeo from his hiding place. when King . . . lov'd the beggar maid a 16th-century ballad. the ape is dead Romeo is described as a performing monkey who is playing dead and will not respond to Mercutio's conjuration. demesnes a region or domain. Here Mercutio uses it to refer bawdily to the female genitalia. to raise a spirit in his mistresses circle Mercutio puns on circle as both the magician's magic circle and the female genitalia. consorted associated with. medlars small, brown, apple-like fruit. open-arse slang term for a medlar; "arse" is the buttocks. poperin pear Mercutio compares the pear with the shape of the male genitals and puns on the name: pop-her-in. truckle-bed a low bed on small wheels or casters, that can be rolled under another bed when not in use. field-bed bed upon the ground.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/7.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Romeo and Juliet/section_8_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 2.scene 2

scene 2

{"name": "Scene 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-2", "summary": "Romeo stands in the shadows beneath Juliet's bedroom window. Juliet appears on the balcony and thinking she's alone, reveals in a soliloquy her love for Romeo. She despairs over the feud between the two families and the problems the feud presents. Romeo listens and when Juliet calls on him to \"doff\" his name, he steps from the darkness saying, \"call me but love.\" After the two exchange expressions of devotion, the Nurse calls Juliet from the balcony. Juliet leaves, but returns momentarily. They agree to marry. Juliet promises to send a messenger the next day so that Romeo can tell her what wedding arrangements he has made. The scene concludes as day breaks and Romeo leaves to seek the advice of Friar Laurence.", "analysis": "The scene contains some of the more recognizable and memorable passages in all of Shakespeare. Here, in the famous balcony scene, Romeo and Juliet reveal their love to each other, and at Juliet's suggestion, they plan to marry. Shakespeare uses light and dark imagery in this scene to describe the blossoming of Romeo and Juliet's romance. As Romeo stands in the shadows, he looks to the balcony and compares Juliet to the sun. He then asks the sun to rise and kill the envious moon. Romeo had always compared Rosaline to the moon, and now, his love for Juliet has outshone the moon. Thus, as Romeo steps from the moonlit darkness into the light from Juliet's balcony, he has left behind his melodramatic woes and moved toward a more genuine, mature understanding of love. The scene takes place at nighttime, illustrating the way Romeo and Juliet's love exists in a world quite distinct from the violence of the feud. Throughout the play, their love flourishes at night -- an allusion to the forbidden nature of their relationship. As night ends and dawn breaks, the two are forced to part to avoid being discovered by the Capulet kinsmen. Romeo and Juliet fear that they might be exposed -- that the artificial light of discovery might be shone upon them, thereby forcing their permanent separation. Shakespeare describes the natural quality of their love by juxtaposing the balcony scene with Mercutio's lewd sexual jokes in the previous scene. Romeo returns to the religious imagery used between the lovers in their sonnets at the feast when he describes Juliet as, \"a bright angel\" and \"dear saint.\" The recurring use of religious imagery emphasizes the purity of Romeo and Juliet's love -- as distinguished from the Nurse and Mercutio's understanding of love that is constituted in the physical, sexual aspects. Romeo begins to display signs of increasing maturity in this scene. His speeches are now in blank verse rather than the rhymed iambic pentameter evident in his earlier sonnets and couplets. Romeo is no longer the melancholy lover of Act I. Up to this point, Romeo has expressed his emotions in a traditional, colloquial style. His behavior has been notably antisocial -- he preferred to submit to the misery of his own amorous failures. Although Romeo has matured in the brief time since the beginning of the play, he remains somewhat immature when compared with Juliet -- a pattern that recurs throughout their relationship. Although Juliet is only 13, she considers the world with striking maturity. As later acts reveal, her parents do not provide an emotionally rich and stable environment, possibly forcing Juliet to mature beyond her years. Juliet shows the beginnings of increasing self-possession and confidence that ultimately lead her to seek her own fate rather than a destiny imposed upon her by her parents. Juliet introduces the idea of marriage to Romeo. She makes the practical arrangements for sending a messenger to Romeo the next day. Juliet stops Romeo from swearing his love on the moon as it is too \"inconstant\" and \"variable.\" She stops him from using traditional, colloquial poetic forms in expressing his affection. She encourages him to be genuine and to invest himself in a less traditional, more spiritual concept of love. Juliet's soliloquy examines another of the play's themes -- the importance of words and names. Juliet compares Romeo to a rose and reasons that if a rose were given another name, it would still be a rose in its essence. If Romeo abandoned his family name, he would still be Romeo. Juliet calls into the night for Romeo to \"refuse thy name\" and in return, she will \"no longer be a Capulet.\" Therein lies one of the great conflicts of the play -- the protagonists' family names operate against their love. While their love blossoms in oblivion to any barriers, the people who affect their lives use their familial battles to impose separation upon the two young lovers. Juliet's promise to Romeo to \"follow thee my lord throughout the world\" is full of dramatic irony and foreshadows the final scene of the play, when Juliet follows Romeo into death. Interruptions from the Nurse add to the atmosphere of intense urgency as the lovers frantically say good-bye. The heightened anticipation of their forthcoming marriage continues to build further tension and increase the pace of the play. Glossary her vestal livery chaste appearance or virginal dress. sick and green pale and sickly. Green was the color associated with maids. wherefore why? doff discard. enmity hatred; hostility. prorogued delayed; postponed. I am no pilot . . . should adventure for such merchandise Romeo describes himself as a merchant venturer, one who would make risky voyages to be with Juliet. perjuries the breaking of promises. Jove king of the Roman gods. fond tender and affectionate; loving; sometimes, affectionate in a foolish or overly indulgent way. strange reserved, aloof. the god of my idolatry the object of my excessive devotion. tassel-gentle from \"tiercel,\" a falconry term for a male hawk, especially the male peregrine. bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud at home, Juliet is under her father's strict discipline and must whisper as though she is hoarse to avoid detection. a wanton's bird that is, the pet of an undisciplined, spoiled child. hap good luck or news."}

Scene II. Capulet's orchard. Enter Romeo. Rom. He jests at scars that never felt a wound. Enter Juliet above at a window. But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun! Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief That thou her maid art far more fair than she. Be not her maid, since she is envious. Her vestal livery is but sick and green, And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off. It is my lady; O, it is my love! O that she knew she were! She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that? Her eye discourses; I will answer it. I am too bold; 'tis not to me she speaks. Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night. See how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek! Jul. Ay me! Rom. She speaks. O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art As glorious to this night, being o'er my head, As is a winged messenger of heaven Unto the white-upturned wond'ring eyes Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds And sails upon the bosom of the air. Jul. O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name! Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I'll no longer be a Capulet. Rom. [aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this? Jul. 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy. Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name; And for that name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself. Rom. I take thee at thy word. Call me but love, and I'll be new baptiz'd; Henceforth I never will be Romeo. Jul. What man art thou that, thus bescreen'd in night, So stumblest on my counsel? Rom. By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am. My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, Because it is an enemy to thee. Had I it written, I would tear the word. Jul. My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words Of that tongue's utterance, yet I know the sound. Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague? Rom. Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike. Jul. How cam'st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore? The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, And the place death, considering who thou art, If any of my kinsmen find thee here. Rom. With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls; For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do, that dares love attempt. Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me. Jul. If they do see thee, they will murther thee. Rom. Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords! Look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity. Jul. I would not for the world they saw thee here. Rom. I have night's cloak to hide me from their sight; And but thou love me, let them find me here. My life were better ended by their hate Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love. Jul. By whose direction found'st thou out this place? Rom. By love, that first did prompt me to enquire. He lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes. I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far As that vast shore wash'd with the farthest sea, I would adventure for such merchandise. Jul. Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face; Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night. Fain would I dwell on form- fain, fain deny What I have spoke; but farewell compliment! Dost thou love me, I know thou wilt say 'Ay'; And I will take thy word. Yet, if thou swear'st, Thou mayst prove false. At lovers' perjuries, They say Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo, If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully. Or if thou thinkest I am too quickly won, I'll frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay, So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world. In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond, And therefore thou mayst think my haviour light; But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true Than those that have more cunning to be strange. I should have been more strange, I must confess, But that thou overheard'st, ere I was ware, My true-love passion. Therefore pardon me, And not impute this yielding to light love, Which the dark night hath so discovered. Rom. Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear, That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops- Jul. O, swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable. Rom. What shall I swear by? Jul. Do not swear at all; Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, Which is the god of my idolatry, And I'll believe thee. Rom. If my heart's dear love- Jul. Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract to-night. It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden; Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be Ere one can say 'It lightens.' Sweet, good night! This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flow'r when next we meet. Good night, good night! As sweet repose and rest Come to thy heart as that within my breast! Rom. O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? Jul. What satisfaction canst thou have to-night? Rom. Th' exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine. Jul. I gave thee mine before thou didst request it; And yet I would it were to give again. Rom. Would'st thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love? Jul. But to be frank and give it thee again. And yet I wish but for the thing I have. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite. I hear some noise within. Dear love, adieu! [Nurse] calls within. Anon, good nurse! Sweet Montague, be true. Stay but a little, I will come again. [Exit.] Rom. O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard, Being in night, all this is but a dream, Too flattering-sweet to be substantial. Enter Juliet above. Jul. Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed. If that thy bent of love be honourable, Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow, By one that I'll procure to come to thee, Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite; And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay And follow thee my lord throughout the world. Nurse. (within) Madam! Jul. I come, anon.- But if thou meanest not well, I do beseech thee- Nurse. (within) Madam! Jul. By-and-by I come.- To cease thy suit and leave me to my grief. To-morrow will I send. Rom. So thrive my soul- Jul. A thousand times good night! Exit. Rom. A thousand times the worse, to want thy light! Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books; But love from love, towards school with heavy looks. Enter Juliet again, [above]. Jul. Hist! Romeo, hist! O for a falconer's voice To lure this tassel-gentle back again! Bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud; Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies, And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine With repetition of my Romeo's name. Romeo! Rom. It is my soul that calls upon my name. How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears! Jul. Romeo! Rom. My dear? Jul. At what o'clock to-morrow Shall I send to thee? Rom. By the hour of nine. Jul. I will not fail. 'Tis twenty years till then. I have forgot why I did call thee back. Rom. Let me stand here till thou remember it. Jul. I shall forget, to have thee still stand there, Rememb'ring how I love thy company. Rom. And I'll still stay, to have thee still forget, Forgetting any other home but this. Jul. 'Tis almost morning. I would have thee gone- And yet no farther than a wanton's bird, That lets it hop a little from her hand, Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, And with a silk thread plucks it back again, So loving-jealous of his liberty. Rom. I would I were thy bird. Jul. Sweet, so would I. Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing. Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow. [Exit.] Rom. Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast! Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest! Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell, His help to crave and my dear hap to tell. Exit

Scene 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-2

Romeo stands in the shadows beneath Juliet's bedroom window. Juliet appears on the balcony and thinking she's alone, reveals in a soliloquy her love for Romeo. She despairs over the feud between the two families and the problems the feud presents. Romeo listens and when Juliet calls on him to "doff" his name, he steps from the darkness saying, "call me but love." After the two exchange expressions of devotion, the Nurse calls Juliet from the balcony. Juliet leaves, but returns momentarily. They agree to marry. Juliet promises to send a messenger the next day so that Romeo can tell her what wedding arrangements he has made. The scene concludes as day breaks and Romeo leaves to seek the advice of Friar Laurence.

The scene contains some of the more recognizable and memorable passages in all of Shakespeare. Here, in the famous balcony scene, Romeo and Juliet reveal their love to each other, and at Juliet's suggestion, they plan to marry. Shakespeare uses light and dark imagery in this scene to describe the blossoming of Romeo and Juliet's romance. As Romeo stands in the shadows, he looks to the balcony and compares Juliet to the sun. He then asks the sun to rise and kill the envious moon. Romeo had always compared Rosaline to the moon, and now, his love for Juliet has outshone the moon. Thus, as Romeo steps from the moonlit darkness into the light from Juliet's balcony, he has left behind his melodramatic woes and moved toward a more genuine, mature understanding of love. The scene takes place at nighttime, illustrating the way Romeo and Juliet's love exists in a world quite distinct from the violence of the feud. Throughout the play, their love flourishes at night -- an allusion to the forbidden nature of their relationship. As night ends and dawn breaks, the two are forced to part to avoid being discovered by the Capulet kinsmen. Romeo and Juliet fear that they might be exposed -- that the artificial light of discovery might be shone upon them, thereby forcing their permanent separation. Shakespeare describes the natural quality of their love by juxtaposing the balcony scene with Mercutio's lewd sexual jokes in the previous scene. Romeo returns to the religious imagery used between the lovers in their sonnets at the feast when he describes Juliet as, "a bright angel" and "dear saint." The recurring use of religious imagery emphasizes the purity of Romeo and Juliet's love -- as distinguished from the Nurse and Mercutio's understanding of love that is constituted in the physical, sexual aspects. Romeo begins to display signs of increasing maturity in this scene. His speeches are now in blank verse rather than the rhymed iambic pentameter evident in his earlier sonnets and couplets. Romeo is no longer the melancholy lover of Act I. Up to this point, Romeo has expressed his emotions in a traditional, colloquial style. His behavior has been notably antisocial -- he preferred to submit to the misery of his own amorous failures. Although Romeo has matured in the brief time since the beginning of the play, he remains somewhat immature when compared with Juliet -- a pattern that recurs throughout their relationship. Although Juliet is only 13, she considers the world with striking maturity. As later acts reveal, her parents do not provide an emotionally rich and stable environment, possibly forcing Juliet to mature beyond her years. Juliet shows the beginnings of increasing self-possession and confidence that ultimately lead her to seek her own fate rather than a destiny imposed upon her by her parents. Juliet introduces the idea of marriage to Romeo. She makes the practical arrangements for sending a messenger to Romeo the next day. Juliet stops Romeo from swearing his love on the moon as it is too "inconstant" and "variable." She stops him from using traditional, colloquial poetic forms in expressing his affection. She encourages him to be genuine and to invest himself in a less traditional, more spiritual concept of love. Juliet's soliloquy examines another of the play's themes -- the importance of words and names. Juliet compares Romeo to a rose and reasons that if a rose were given another name, it would still be a rose in its essence. If Romeo abandoned his family name, he would still be Romeo. Juliet calls into the night for Romeo to "refuse thy name" and in return, she will "no longer be a Capulet." Therein lies one of the great conflicts of the play -- the protagonists' family names operate against their love. While their love blossoms in oblivion to any barriers, the people who affect their lives use their familial battles to impose separation upon the two young lovers. Juliet's promise to Romeo to "follow thee my lord throughout the world" is full of dramatic irony and foreshadows the final scene of the play, when Juliet follows Romeo into death. Interruptions from the Nurse add to the atmosphere of intense urgency as the lovers frantically say good-bye. The heightened anticipation of their forthcoming marriage continues to build further tension and increase the pace of the play. Glossary her vestal livery chaste appearance or virginal dress. sick and green pale and sickly. Green was the color associated with maids. wherefore why? doff discard. enmity hatred; hostility. prorogued delayed; postponed. I am no pilot . . . should adventure for such merchandise Romeo describes himself as a merchant venturer, one who would make risky voyages to be with Juliet. perjuries the breaking of promises. Jove king of the Roman gods. fond tender and affectionate; loving; sometimes, affectionate in a foolish or overly indulgent way. strange reserved, aloof. the god of my idolatry the object of my excessive devotion. tassel-gentle from "tiercel," a falconry term for a male hawk, especially the male peregrine. bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud at home, Juliet is under her father's strict discipline and must whisper as though she is hoarse to avoid detection. a wanton's bird that is, the pet of an undisciplined, spoiled child. hap good luck or news.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/8.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Romeo and Juliet/section_9_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 2.scene 3

scene 3

{"name": "Scene 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-3", "summary": "Romeo arrives at Friar Laurence's cell as day breaks. The Friar is collecting herbs and flowers while he postulates on their powers to medicate and to poison. Romeo tells him of his love for Juliet and asks the Friar to marry them later that day. The Friar is amazed and concerned at the speed with which Romeo has transferred his love from Rosaline to Juliet, but agrees to help the couple in the hope that the marriage might ease the discord between the two families.", "analysis": "This scene introduces the Friar, a philosophical man who wishes to heal the rift between the families. His discourse on the healing and harming powers of plants will echo loudly later in the play. He will provide Juliet the sleeping potion that she drinks to avoid marrying Paris. The dual nature within the Friar's plants suggests a coexistence of good and evil. The tension between good and evil is a constant force in this play -- a strong undercurrent that conveys fate into the characters' lives. The Friar is a good example. His intentions are good; he wishes to end the feud in Verona. His plan, however, precipitates the tragic end to the play. As the play progresses, the contentious coexistence of love and hate unfolds. Capulet loves his daughter, but treats her like his personal property. Romeo and Juliet's love exists in an atmosphere electrified by the darkness of the hatred between the families. The Friar's comment that \"he earth that's nature's mother is her tomb; / What is her burying grave that is her womb\" harkens back to Capulet's statement about his daughter in Act I, Scene 2 -- \"the earth has swallowed all my hopes but she.\" The theme of nature destroying life in order to create life recurs frequently. While an undeniable certainty exists within this natural cycle, the Friar suggests that the deeply flawed human being imposes some degree of mutability on the entire process. Good and evil coexist in imperfect harmony. \"Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied; / And vice sometimes by action dignified.\" The Friar is a religious idealist, a philosopher who understands the big picture while other characters in the play are too involved in their interrelationships to share his perspective. The Friar, like the herbs he collects, displays conflicting characteristics. He is a holy man, anxious to help the lovers in order to reconcile the Montagues and Capulets and bring peace to Verona. Yet his decision to marry Romeo and Juliet in a secret ceremony and deceive the Capulet family when Juliet takes the sleeping potion emphasizes the Friar's naive underestimation of the feud and the workings of fate -- a failing that will prove deadly for Romeo and Juliet. Romeo's relationship with the Friar again highlights the theme of youth versus old age, while underscoring Romeo's isolation from his friends and family. The Friar acts as a father figure to Romeo. The Friar is the only person to whom Romeo can confide the secret of his love for Juliet and his plans to marry. Romeo is typically impulsive and wants to be married that day whereas the Friar, using the formal language of rhyme, advises caution, reminding Romeo of the love he recently had for Rosaline and the speed with which he has abandoned that love. Glossary advance raise. osier cage basket made from willow. baleful harmful or poisonous. virtues qualities. mickle much or great. residence the place in which a person or thing resides. benedicite Latin for \"bless you!\" distemperature a disordered condition, especially of the body or the mind. holy physic spiritual remedy. intercession prayers and petitions. steads is of benefit to. riddling puzzling or enigmatic. shrift confession. brine salt water; that is, tears. by rote by memory alone, without understanding or thought. rancour a continuing and bitter hate or ill will."}

Scene III. Friar Laurence's cell. Enter Friar, [Laurence] alone, with a basket. Friar. The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night, Check'ring the Eastern clouds with streaks of light; And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels. Non, ere the sun advance his burning eye The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry, I must up-fill this osier cage of ours With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers. The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb. What is her burying gave, that is her womb; And from her womb children of divers kind We sucking on her natural bosom find; Many for many virtues excellent, None but for some, and yet all different. O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities; For naught so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give; Nor aught so good but, strain'd from that fair use, Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime's by action dignified. Within the infant rind of this small flower Poison hath residence, and medicine power; For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. Two such opposed kings encamp them still In man as well as herbs- grace and rude will; And where the worser is predominant, Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. Enter Romeo. Rom. Good morrow, father. Friar. Benedicite! What early tongue so sweet saluteth me? Young son, it argues a distempered head So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed. Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye, And where care lodges sleep will never lie; But where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brain Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign. Therefore thy earliness doth me assure Thou art uprous'd with some distemp'rature; Or if not so, then here I hit it right- Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night. Rom. That last is true-the sweeter rest was mine. Friar. God pardon sin! Wast thou with Rosaline? Rom. With Rosaline, my ghostly father? No. I have forgot that name, and that name's woe. Friar. That's my good son! But where hast thou been then? Rom. I'll tell thee ere thou ask it me again. I have been feasting with mine enemy, Where on a sudden one hath wounded me That's by me wounded. Both our remedies Within thy help and holy physic lies. I bear no hatred, blessed man, for, lo, My intercession likewise steads my foe. Friar. Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift. Rom. Then plainly know my heart's dear love is set On the fair daughter of rich Capulet; As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine, And all combin'd, save what thou must combine By holy marriage. When, and where, and how We met, we woo'd, and made exchange of vow, I'll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray, That thou consent to marry us to-day. Friar. Holy Saint Francis! What a change is here! Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear, So soon forsaken? Young men's love then lies Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes. Jesu Maria! What a deal of brine Hath wash'd thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline! How much salt water thrown away in waste, To season love, that of it doth not taste! The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears, Thy old groans ring yet in mine ancient ears. Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit Of an old tear that is not wash'd off yet. If e'er thou wast thyself, and these woes thine, Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline. And art thou chang'd? Pronounce this sentence then: Women may fall when there's no strength in men. Rom. Thou chid'st me oft for loving Rosaline. Friar. For doting, not for loving, pupil mine. Rom. And bad'st me bury love. Friar. Not in a grave To lay one in, another out to have. Rom. I pray thee chide not. She whom I love now Doth grace for grace and love for love allow. The other did not so. Friar. O, she knew well Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell. But come, young waverer, come go with me. In one respect I'll thy assistant be; For this alliance may so happy prove To turn your households' rancour to pure love. Rom. O, let us hence! I stand on sudden haste. Friar. Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast. Exeunt.

Scene 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-3

Romeo arrives at Friar Laurence's cell as day breaks. The Friar is collecting herbs and flowers while he postulates on their powers to medicate and to poison. Romeo tells him of his love for Juliet and asks the Friar to marry them later that day. The Friar is amazed and concerned at the speed with which Romeo has transferred his love from Rosaline to Juliet, but agrees to help the couple in the hope that the marriage might ease the discord between the two families.

This scene introduces the Friar, a philosophical man who wishes to heal the rift between the families. His discourse on the healing and harming powers of plants will echo loudly later in the play. He will provide Juliet the sleeping potion that she drinks to avoid marrying Paris. The dual nature within the Friar's plants suggests a coexistence of good and evil. The tension between good and evil is a constant force in this play -- a strong undercurrent that conveys fate into the characters' lives. The Friar is a good example. His intentions are good; he wishes to end the feud in Verona. His plan, however, precipitates the tragic end to the play. As the play progresses, the contentious coexistence of love and hate unfolds. Capulet loves his daughter, but treats her like his personal property. Romeo and Juliet's love exists in an atmosphere electrified by the darkness of the hatred between the families. The Friar's comment that "he earth that's nature's mother is her tomb; / What is her burying grave that is her womb" harkens back to Capulet's statement about his daughter in Act I, Scene 2 -- "the earth has swallowed all my hopes but she." The theme of nature destroying life in order to create life recurs frequently. While an undeniable certainty exists within this natural cycle, the Friar suggests that the deeply flawed human being imposes some degree of mutability on the entire process. Good and evil coexist in imperfect harmony. "Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied; / And vice sometimes by action dignified." The Friar is a religious idealist, a philosopher who understands the big picture while other characters in the play are too involved in their interrelationships to share his perspective. The Friar, like the herbs he collects, displays conflicting characteristics. He is a holy man, anxious to help the lovers in order to reconcile the Montagues and Capulets and bring peace to Verona. Yet his decision to marry Romeo and Juliet in a secret ceremony and deceive the Capulet family when Juliet takes the sleeping potion emphasizes the Friar's naive underestimation of the feud and the workings of fate -- a failing that will prove deadly for Romeo and Juliet. Romeo's relationship with the Friar again highlights the theme of youth versus old age, while underscoring Romeo's isolation from his friends and family. The Friar acts as a father figure to Romeo. The Friar is the only person to whom Romeo can confide the secret of his love for Juliet and his plans to marry. Romeo is typically impulsive and wants to be married that day whereas the Friar, using the formal language of rhyme, advises caution, reminding Romeo of the love he recently had for Rosaline and the speed with which he has abandoned that love. Glossary advance raise. osier cage basket made from willow. baleful harmful or poisonous. virtues qualities. mickle much or great. residence the place in which a person or thing resides. benedicite Latin for "bless you!" distemperature a disordered condition, especially of the body or the mind. holy physic spiritual remedy. intercession prayers and petitions. steads is of benefit to. riddling puzzling or enigmatic. shrift confession. brine salt water; that is, tears. by rote by memory alone, without understanding or thought. rancour a continuing and bitter hate or ill will.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/9.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Romeo and Juliet/section_10_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 2.scene 4

scene 4

{"name": "Scene 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-4", "summary": "Now, the morning after the Capulet feast, Mercutio and Benvolio search for Romeo. Mercutio blames Romeo's absence on his love for the \"pale, hard-hearted wench,\" Rosaline. Benvolio has discovered that Tybalt has sent Romeo a challenge to duel, and Mercutio is amused at the thought of an encounter between Romeo, the romantic, and Tybalt, the fashionable \"Prince of Cats.\" Romeo then arrives and engages in a long series of linked puns and quibbles with Mercutio. The Nurse arrives with her servant, Peter, looking for Romeo. Mercutio exasperates her with his quick, sharp mockery. Mercutio leaves with Benvolio, and Romeo tells the Nurse that Juliet should meet him at Friar Laurence's cell at 2 p.m. that afternoon to be married. The Nurse is to collect a rope ladder from Romeo so that he can climb to Juliet's window to celebrate their wedding night.", "analysis": "Once melancholy and depressed by his passions, Romeo is now rejuvenated, buoyed by a renewed romantic energy after seeing Juliet at her balcony. Thoughts of his impending marriage have enlivened him to meet all of Mercutio's barbed, verbal challenges with equally gilded retorts. An air of excited anticipation energizes the atmosphere. Mercutio continues to ridicule Romeo as a Petrarchan lover for employing the popular love poetry of the sonnets. However, his speech is ironic because he still believes that Romeo is in love with Rosaline, and he never discovers Romeo's love for Juliet. These rapid, highly energized exchanges between the two friends reflect Romeo's own feelings of anticipation at his forthcoming wedding. Mercutio, who has little patience for the emotional aspects of romantic pursuit, is delighted that Romeo has gotten over his lovesickness. Mercutio impishly engages in lewd wordplay and is preoccupied with the physical aspects of love. When Benvolio declares a truce in the talk between the two friends, Mercutio turns his verbal rapier on the Nurse, flustering her to distraction. This mischievous repartee contrasts with the darkly ominous threats of Tybalt's challenge to duel Romeo. As in other parts of the play, vastly contrasting ideas coexist -- love and hate; euphoria and despair; good and evil; levity and danger. The news of Tybalt's challenge threatens to embroil Romeo in the violence of the family feud. While Romeo is well-liked in the community and has a peaceable reputation, Tybalt is a proud and vengeful foe. He is determined to confront Romeo despite Lord Capulet's opposition to continuing the feud. Although Capulet has forbidden any further violence, he remains the figurehead of the old conflict. \"Fiery\" Tybalt is Capulet's heir-apparent in carrying on the hostility since both men are quick-tempered and ready for a battle at a moment's notice. In contrast, Romeo is elated by his love for Juliet. His romantic idealism lightens his steps and carries him above these dark concerns. The motive for Tybalt's quarrel with Romeo arguably stems from Tybalt's own masculine aggression rather than a sense of honor, thus emphasizing the trivial nature of the feud and Tybalt's isolation in maintaining the grudge. The antagonism between Mercutio and Tybalt is intensely portrayed in this scene because both men are adversarial and quick-tempered. Mercutio scorns Tybalt's challenge and mocks him as someone more concerned with fashion than substance -- a man who employs foreign styles of fencing and their terminology, which Mercutio regards as effeminate: \"Ah, the immortal passado, the punto reverso, the hay!\" The sense of anticipation increases in this scene through repeated references to time. The Nurse's delay in finding Romeo amplifies an already intense sense of urgency. News that the wedding ceremony will take place at 2 p.m. illustrates the speed with which Romeo and Juliet meet and are to be married -- in less than 24 hours. Glossary answer it accept it. captain of compliments in dueling, one who has mastered all the rules and moves. immortal punning on the moves as both famous and fatal. passado a forward thrust. the punto reverso a backhanded thrust. the hay! term used to indicate that your opponent has been hit. roe fish eggs. conceive understand. bow in the hams make a bow. I'll cry a match I'll claim the victory. natural fool; idiot. bauble a jester's baton with an ornament at the end. here's goodly gear a large clothes horse, refers to the appearance of the Nurse, who is also described in this scene as a sail. Romeo also continues Mercutio's series of bawdy puns in this scene, as gear refers to the reproductive organs. ropery roguery. flirt-gills loose women. skains-mates cutthroat companions. tackled stair rope ladder. quit reward you for. lay knife aboard lay claim to. clout any piece of cloth, esp. one for cleaning."}

Scene IV. A street. Enter Benvolio and Mercutio. Mer. Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home to-night? Ben. Not to his father's. I spoke with his man. Mer. Why, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline, Torments him so that he will sure run mad. Ben. Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet, Hath sent a letter to his father's house. Mer. A challenge, on my life. Ben. Romeo will answer it. Mer. Any man that can write may answer a letter. Ben. Nay, he will answer the letter's master, how he dares, being dared. Mer. Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! stabb'd with a white wench's black eye; shot through the ear with a love song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft; and is he a man to encounter Tybalt? Ben. Why, what is Tybalt? Mer. More than Prince of Cats, I can tell you. O, he's the courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing pricksong-keeps time, distance, and proportion; rests me his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom! the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist! a gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause. Ah, the immortal passado! the punto reverse! the hay. Ben. The what? Mer. The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting fantasticoes- these new tuners of accent! 'By Jesu, a very good blade! a very tall man! a very good whore!' Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsir, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardona-mi's, who stand so much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench? O, their bones, their bones! Enter Romeo. Ben. Here comes Romeo! here comes Romeo! Mer. Without his roe, like a dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in. Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen wench (marry, she had a better love to berhyme her), Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a gypsy, Helen and Hero hildings and harlots, This be a gray eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, bon jour! There's a French salutation to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night. Rom. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you? Mer. The slip, sir, the slip. Can you not conceive? Rom. Pardon, good Mercutio. My business was great, and in such a case as mine a man may strain courtesy. Mer. That's as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams. Rom. Meaning, to cursy. Mer. Thou hast most kindly hit it. Rom. A most courteous exposition. Mer. Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy. Rom. Pink for flower. Mer. Right. Rom. Why, then is my pump well-flower'd. Mer. Well said! Follow me this jest now till thou hast worn out thy pump, that, when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain, after the wearing, solely singular. Rom. O single-sold jest, solely singular for the singleness! Mer. Come between us, good Benvolio! My wits faint. Rom. Swits and spurs, swits and spurs! or I'll cry a match. Mer. Nay, if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done; for thou hast more of the wild goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five. Was I with you there for the goose? Rom. Thou wast never with me for anything when thou wast not there for the goose. Mer. I will bite thee by the ear for that jest. Rom. Nay, good goose, bite not! Mer. Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce. Rom. And is it not, then, well serv'd in to a sweet goose? Mer. O, here's a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an inch narrow to an ell broad! Rom. I stretch it out for that word 'broad,' which, added to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose. Mer. Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature. For this drivelling love is like a great natural that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole. Ben. Stop there, stop there! Mer. Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair. Ben. Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large. Mer. O, thou art deceiv'd! I would have made it short; for I was come to the whole depth of my tale, and meant indeed to occupy the argument no longer. Rom. Here's goodly gear! Enter Nurse and her Man [Peter]. Mer. A sail, a sail! Ben. Two, two! a shirt and a smock. Nurse. Peter! Peter. Anon. Nurse. My fan, Peter. Mer. Good Peter, to hide her face; for her fan's the fairer face of the two. Nurse. God ye good morrow, gentlemen. Mer. God ye good-den, fair gentlewoman. Nurse. Is it good-den? Mer. 'Tis no less, I tell ye; for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon. Nurse. Out upon you! What a man are you! Rom. One, gentlewoman, that God hath made for himself to mar. Nurse. By my troth, it is well said. 'For himself to mar,' quoth 'a? Gentlemen, can any of you tell me where I may find the young Romeo? Rom. I can tell you; but young Romeo will be older when you have found him than he was when you sought him. I am the youngest of that name, for fault of a worse. Nurse. You say well. Mer. Yea, is the worst well? Very well took, i' faith! wisely, wisely. Nurse. If you be he, sir, I desire some confidence with you. Ben. She will endite him to some supper. Mer. A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! So ho! Rom. What hast thou found? Mer. No hare, sir; unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent He walks by them and sings. An old hare hoar, And an old hare hoar, Is very good meat in Lent; But a hare that is hoar Is too much for a score When it hoars ere it be spent. Romeo, will you come to your father's? We'll to dinner thither. Rom. I will follow you. Mer. Farewell, ancient lady. Farewell, [sings] lady, lady, lady. Exeunt Mercutio, Benvolio. Nurse. Marry, farewell! I Pray you, Sir, what saucy merchant was this that was so full of his ropery? Rom. A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himself talk and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month. Nurse. An 'a speak anything against me, I'll take him down, an 'a were lustier than he is, and twenty such jacks; and if I cannot, I'll find those that shall. Scurvy knave! I am none of his flirt-gills; I am none of his skains-mates. And thou must stand by too, and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure! Peter. I saw no man use you at his pleasure. If I had, my weapon should quickly have been out, I warrant you. I dare draw as soon as another man, if I see occasion in a good quarrel, and the law on my side. Nurse. Now, afore God, I am so vexed that every part about me quivers. Scurvy knave! Pray you, sir, a word; and, as I told you, my young lady bid me enquire you out. What she bid me say, I will keep to myself; but first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her into a fool's paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behaviour, as they say; for the gentlewoman is young; and therefore, if you should deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be off'red to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing. Rom. Nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress. I protest unto thee- Nurse. Good heart, and I faith I will tell her as much. Lord, Lord! she will be a joyful woman. Rom. What wilt thou tell her, nurse? Thou dost not mark me. Nurse. I will tell her, sir, that you do protest, which, as I take it, is a gentlemanlike offer. Rom. Bid her devise Some means to come to shrift this afternoon; And there she shall at Friar Laurence' cell Be shriv'd and married. Here is for thy pains. Nurse. No, truly, sir; not a penny. Rom. Go to! I say you shall. Nurse. This afternoon, sir? Well, she shall be there. Rom. And stay, good nurse, behind the abbey wall. Within this hour my man shall be with thee And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair, Which to the high topgallant of my joy Must be my convoy in the secret night. Farewell. Be trusty, and I'll quit thy pains. Farewell. Commend me to thy mistress. Nurse. Now God in heaven bless thee! Hark you, sir. Rom. What say'st thou, my dear nurse? Nurse. Is your man secret? Did you ne'er hear say, Two may keep counsel, putting one away? Rom. I warrant thee my man's as true as steel. Nurse. Well, sir, my mistress is the sweetest lady. Lord, Lord! when 'twas a little prating thing- O, there is a nobleman in town, one Paris, that would fain lay knife aboard; but she, good soul, had as lieve see a toad, a very toad, as see him. I anger her sometimes, and tell her that Paris is the properer man; but I'll warrant you, when I say so, she looks as pale as any clout in the versal world. Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin both with a letter? Rom. Ay, nurse; what of that? Both with an R. Nurse. Ah, mocker! that's the dog's name. R is for the- No; I know it begins with some other letter; and she hath the prettiest sententious of it, of you and rosemary, that it would do you good to hear it. Rom. Commend me to thy lady. Nurse. Ay, a thousand times. [Exit Romeo.] Peter! Peter. Anon. Nurse. Peter, take my fan, and go before, and apace. Exeunt.

Scene 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-4

Now, the morning after the Capulet feast, Mercutio and Benvolio search for Romeo. Mercutio blames Romeo's absence on his love for the "pale, hard-hearted wench," Rosaline. Benvolio has discovered that Tybalt has sent Romeo a challenge to duel, and Mercutio is amused at the thought of an encounter between Romeo, the romantic, and Tybalt, the fashionable "Prince of Cats." Romeo then arrives and engages in a long series of linked puns and quibbles with Mercutio. The Nurse arrives with her servant, Peter, looking for Romeo. Mercutio exasperates her with his quick, sharp mockery. Mercutio leaves with Benvolio, and Romeo tells the Nurse that Juliet should meet him at Friar Laurence's cell at 2 p.m. that afternoon to be married. The Nurse is to collect a rope ladder from Romeo so that he can climb to Juliet's window to celebrate their wedding night.

Once melancholy and depressed by his passions, Romeo is now rejuvenated, buoyed by a renewed romantic energy after seeing Juliet at her balcony. Thoughts of his impending marriage have enlivened him to meet all of Mercutio's barbed, verbal challenges with equally gilded retorts. An air of excited anticipation energizes the atmosphere. Mercutio continues to ridicule Romeo as a Petrarchan lover for employing the popular love poetry of the sonnets. However, his speech is ironic because he still believes that Romeo is in love with Rosaline, and he never discovers Romeo's love for Juliet. These rapid, highly energized exchanges between the two friends reflect Romeo's own feelings of anticipation at his forthcoming wedding. Mercutio, who has little patience for the emotional aspects of romantic pursuit, is delighted that Romeo has gotten over his lovesickness. Mercutio impishly engages in lewd wordplay and is preoccupied with the physical aspects of love. When Benvolio declares a truce in the talk between the two friends, Mercutio turns his verbal rapier on the Nurse, flustering her to distraction. This mischievous repartee contrasts with the darkly ominous threats of Tybalt's challenge to duel Romeo. As in other parts of the play, vastly contrasting ideas coexist -- love and hate; euphoria and despair; good and evil; levity and danger. The news of Tybalt's challenge threatens to embroil Romeo in the violence of the family feud. While Romeo is well-liked in the community and has a peaceable reputation, Tybalt is a proud and vengeful foe. He is determined to confront Romeo despite Lord Capulet's opposition to continuing the feud. Although Capulet has forbidden any further violence, he remains the figurehead of the old conflict. "Fiery" Tybalt is Capulet's heir-apparent in carrying on the hostility since both men are quick-tempered and ready for a battle at a moment's notice. In contrast, Romeo is elated by his love for Juliet. His romantic idealism lightens his steps and carries him above these dark concerns. The motive for Tybalt's quarrel with Romeo arguably stems from Tybalt's own masculine aggression rather than a sense of honor, thus emphasizing the trivial nature of the feud and Tybalt's isolation in maintaining the grudge. The antagonism between Mercutio and Tybalt is intensely portrayed in this scene because both men are adversarial and quick-tempered. Mercutio scorns Tybalt's challenge and mocks him as someone more concerned with fashion than substance -- a man who employs foreign styles of fencing and their terminology, which Mercutio regards as effeminate: "Ah, the immortal passado, the punto reverso, the hay!" The sense of anticipation increases in this scene through repeated references to time. The Nurse's delay in finding Romeo amplifies an already intense sense of urgency. News that the wedding ceremony will take place at 2 p.m. illustrates the speed with which Romeo and Juliet meet and are to be married -- in less than 24 hours. Glossary answer it accept it. captain of compliments in dueling, one who has mastered all the rules and moves. immortal punning on the moves as both famous and fatal. passado a forward thrust. the punto reverso a backhanded thrust. the hay! term used to indicate that your opponent has been hit. roe fish eggs. conceive understand. bow in the hams make a bow. I'll cry a match I'll claim the victory. natural fool; idiot. bauble a jester's baton with an ornament at the end. here's goodly gear a large clothes horse, refers to the appearance of the Nurse, who is also described in this scene as a sail. Romeo also continues Mercutio's series of bawdy puns in this scene, as gear refers to the reproductive organs. ropery roguery. flirt-gills loose women. skains-mates cutthroat companions. tackled stair rope ladder. quit reward you for. lay knife aboard lay claim to. clout any piece of cloth, esp. one for cleaning.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Romeo and Juliet/section_11_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 2.scene 5

scene 5

{"name": "Scene 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-5", "summary": "Three hours after sending the Nurse for news from Romeo, Juliet waits impatiently for her return. The Nurse, knowing of Juliet's eagerness, deliberately teases the young bride-to-be by withholding the word of the upcoming wedding. Instead, the Nurse complains about her aches and pains. The Nurse finally relents when Juliet is almost hysterical with frustration and tells her that she is to marry Romeo that afternoon at Friar Laurence's cell. The Nurse then leaves to collect the rope ladder that Romeo will use to climb into Juliet's bedroom that night.", "analysis": "The dizzying speed with which the lovers met, fell in love, and agree to marry is now contrasted with the way in which the hours appear to lengthen for Juliet as she waits for news. The emphasis on the passing of time evokes Juliet's parting lines to Romeo from the balcony in Act II, Scene 2, when he promised to send word to her the next day: \"'Tis twenty years till then.\" The scene echoes Romeo's discussions with the Friar because both Romeo and Juliet are desperately impatient to wed. Juliet's soliloquy and her subsequent exchanges with the Nurse show her youthful energy and enthusiasm in contrast with the Nurse, who is old, decrepit, and slow. Unlike her demeanor in other scenes, Juliet acts like a young teenage girl who has little patience for deferred gratification. Since the Nurse has been much more of a mother figure to Juliet than Juliet's biological mother, it follows that Juliet would feel free to act her age in the Nurse's presence. The Nurse delivers Juliet news of her wedding -- a message for a woman or young lady, not a 13-year-old girl. Maturity beckons Juliet with ominous, fateful overtones. The Nurse's comic role increases the tension in this scene as she deliberately refuses to be hurried by Juliet in imparting her news. Juliet is forced to wait and coax the news from the Nurse, stifling her impatience when the Nurse continually changes the subject. The Nurse focuses on Romeo's physical attributes, describing his legs, feet, and hands in a speech that echoes Mercutio's description of Rosaline in Act II, Scene 1. Both the Nurse and Mercutio share a bawdy sense of humor and view love as a purely physical relationship. The Nurse then comments knowingly on the pleasures that await Juliet on her wedding night with the pregnancy that will likely follow. This comment reflects the inverted life/death theme that runs throughout the play. Although Juliet will not live to give life, her death unifies her and Romeo in spirit and mends the feud -- both forms of life-giving. Glossary nimble-pinion'd swift-winged. bandy to toss or hit back and forth, as a ball. feign to make a false show of; pretend. jaunce trudge up and down. coil commotion; turmoil. drudge a person who does hard, menial, or tedious work."}

Scene V. Capulet's orchard. Enter Juliet. Jul. The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse; In half an hour she 'promis'd to return. Perchance she cannot meet him. That's not so. O, she is lame! Love's heralds should be thoughts, Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams Driving back shadows over low'ring hills. Therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw Love, And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings. Now is the sun upon the highmost hill Of this day's journey, and from nine till twelve Is three long hours; yet she is not come. Had she affections and warm youthful blood, She would be as swift in motion as a ball; My words would bandy her to my sweet love, And his to me, But old folks, many feign as they were dead- Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead. Enter Nurse [and Peter]. O God, she comes! O honey nurse, what news? Hast thou met with him? Send thy man away. Nurse. Peter, stay at the gate. [Exit Peter.] Jul. Now, good sweet nurse- O Lord, why look'st thou sad? Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily; If good, thou shamest the music of sweet news By playing it to me with so sour a face. Nurse. I am aweary, give me leave awhile. Fie, how my bones ache! What a jaunce have I had! Jul. I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy news. Nay, come, I pray thee speak. Good, good nurse, speak. Nurse. Jesu, what haste! Can you not stay awhile? Do you not see that I am out of breath? Jul. How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath To say to me that thou art out of breath? The excuse that thou dost make in this delay Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse. Is thy news good or bad? Answer to that. Say either, and I'll stay the circumstance. Let me be satisfied, is't good or bad? Nurse. Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not how to choose a man. Romeo? No, not he. Though his face be better than any man's, yet his leg excels all men's; and for a hand and a foot, and a body, though they be not to be talk'd on, yet they are past compare. He is not the flower of courtesy, but, I'll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb. Go thy ways, wench; serve God. What, have you din'd at home? Jul. No, no. But all this did I know before. What says he of our marriage? What of that? Nurse. Lord, how my head aches! What a head have I! It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces. My back o' t' other side,- ah, my back, my back! Beshrew your heart for sending me about To catch my death with jauncing up and down! Jul. I' faith, I am sorry that thou art not well. Sweet, sweet, Sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love? Nurse. Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome; and, I warrant, a virtuous- Where is your mother? Jul. Where is my mother? Why, she is within. Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest! 'Your love says, like an honest gentleman, "Where is your mother?"' Nurse. O God's Lady dear! Are you so hot? Marry come up, I trow. Is this the poultice for my aching bones? Henceforward do your messages yourself. Jul. Here's such a coil! Come, what says Romeo? Nurse. Have you got leave to go to shrift to-day? Jul. I have. Nurse. Then hie you hence to Friar Laurence' cell; There stays a husband to make you a wife. Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks: They'll be in scarlet straight at any news. Hie you to church; I must another way, To fetch a ladder, by the which your love Must climb a bird's nest soon when it is dark. I am the drudge, and toil in your delight; But you shall bear the burthen soon at night. Go; I'll to dinner; hie you to the cell. Jul. Hie to high fortune! Honest nurse, farewell. Exeunt.

Scene 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-5

Three hours after sending the Nurse for news from Romeo, Juliet waits impatiently for her return. The Nurse, knowing of Juliet's eagerness, deliberately teases the young bride-to-be by withholding the word of the upcoming wedding. Instead, the Nurse complains about her aches and pains. The Nurse finally relents when Juliet is almost hysterical with frustration and tells her that she is to marry Romeo that afternoon at Friar Laurence's cell. The Nurse then leaves to collect the rope ladder that Romeo will use to climb into Juliet's bedroom that night.

The dizzying speed with which the lovers met, fell in love, and agree to marry is now contrasted with the way in which the hours appear to lengthen for Juliet as she waits for news. The emphasis on the passing of time evokes Juliet's parting lines to Romeo from the balcony in Act II, Scene 2, when he promised to send word to her the next day: "'Tis twenty years till then." The scene echoes Romeo's discussions with the Friar because both Romeo and Juliet are desperately impatient to wed. Juliet's soliloquy and her subsequent exchanges with the Nurse show her youthful energy and enthusiasm in contrast with the Nurse, who is old, decrepit, and slow. Unlike her demeanor in other scenes, Juliet acts like a young teenage girl who has little patience for deferred gratification. Since the Nurse has been much more of a mother figure to Juliet than Juliet's biological mother, it follows that Juliet would feel free to act her age in the Nurse's presence. The Nurse delivers Juliet news of her wedding -- a message for a woman or young lady, not a 13-year-old girl. Maturity beckons Juliet with ominous, fateful overtones. The Nurse's comic role increases the tension in this scene as she deliberately refuses to be hurried by Juliet in imparting her news. Juliet is forced to wait and coax the news from the Nurse, stifling her impatience when the Nurse continually changes the subject. The Nurse focuses on Romeo's physical attributes, describing his legs, feet, and hands in a speech that echoes Mercutio's description of Rosaline in Act II, Scene 1. Both the Nurse and Mercutio share a bawdy sense of humor and view love as a purely physical relationship. The Nurse then comments knowingly on the pleasures that await Juliet on her wedding night with the pregnancy that will likely follow. This comment reflects the inverted life/death theme that runs throughout the play. Although Juliet will not live to give life, her death unifies her and Romeo in spirit and mends the feud -- both forms of life-giving. Glossary nimble-pinion'd swift-winged. bandy to toss or hit back and forth, as a ball. feign to make a false show of; pretend. jaunce trudge up and down. coil commotion; turmoil. drudge a person who does hard, menial, or tedious work.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/1112-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Romeo and Juliet/section_12_part_0.txt

Romeo and Juliet.act 2.scene 6

scene 6

{"name": "Scene 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-6", "summary": "Romeo and Friar Laurence wait for Juliet, and again the Friar warns Romeo about the hastiness of his decision to marry. Romeo agrees, but boldly challenges \"love-devouring death\" to destroy his euphoria. The friar then warns, These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume Juliet arrives and the Friar takes them into the church to be married.", "analysis": "The wedding scene is notable for its brevity and pervasive atmosphere of impending doom. Images of happiness and marriage are repeatedly paired with images of violence and death. Romeo believes that not even death can counteract the pleasure he feels in marrying Juliet. This speech reflects both the impetuous and tragic nature of Romeo's love. Although he is unhesitating in his desire to be married to Juliet, Romeo's challenge to fate is prophetic and full of dramatic irony because it foreshadows his final speech in Act V, Scene 3, when death triumphs over both protagonists. The explosive image in the Friar's \"violent ends\" speech recalls Montague's question in Act I, Scene 1, after the brawl: \"Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?\" The term \"abroach\" was used to describe the way in which a barrel of gunpowder would be pierced to allow the contents to pour out and form a trail. The Friar's words are prophetic because he draws parallels between the destructive passion of Romeo and Juliet and the feud that will cause the violent deaths of Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, Tybalt, and Paris. Glossary countervail to match or equal. gossamers filmy cobwebs floating in the air or spread on bushes or grass. vanity earthly pleasures or happiness. blazen declare or celebrate."}

Scene VI. Friar Laurence's cell. Enter Friar [Laurence] and Romeo. Friar. So smile the heavens upon this holy act That after-hours with sorrow chide us not! Rom. Amen, amen! But come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy That one short minute gives me in her sight. Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then love-devouring death do what he dare- It is enough I may but call her mine. Friar. These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately: long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. Enter Juliet. Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint. A lover may bestride the gossamer That idles in the wanton summer air, And yet not fall; so light is vanity. Jul. Good even to my ghostly confessor. Friar. Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both. Jul. As much to him, else is his thanks too much. Rom. Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy Be heap'd like mine, and that thy skill be more To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath This neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue Unfold the imagin'd happiness that both Receive in either by this dear encounter. Jul. Conceit, more rich in matter than in words, Brags of his substance, not of ornament. They are but beggars that can count their worth; But my true love is grown to such excess cannot sum up sum of half my wealth. Friar. Come, come with me, and we will make short work; For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone Till Holy Church incorporate two in one. [Exeunt.]

Scene 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20201109215341/http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/romeo-and-juliet/summary-and-analysis/act-ii-scene-6

Romeo and Friar Laurence wait for Juliet, and again the Friar warns Romeo about the hastiness of his decision to marry. Romeo agrees, but boldly challenges "love-devouring death" to destroy his euphoria. The friar then warns, These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume Juliet arrives and the Friar takes them into the church to be married.

The wedding scene is notable for its brevity and pervasive atmosphere of impending doom. Images of happiness and marriage are repeatedly paired with images of violence and death. Romeo believes that not even death can counteract the pleasure he feels in marrying Juliet. This speech reflects both the impetuous and tragic nature of Romeo's love. Although he is unhesitating in his desire to be married to Juliet, Romeo's challenge to fate is prophetic and full of dramatic irony because it foreshadows his final speech in Act V, Scene 3, when death triumphs over both protagonists. The explosive image in the Friar's "violent ends" speech recalls Montague's question in Act I, Scene 1, after the brawl: "Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?" The term "abroach" was used to describe the way in which a barrel of gunpowder would be pierced to allow the contents to pour out and form a trail. The Friar's words are prophetic because he draws parallels between the destructive passion of Romeo and Juliet and the feud that will cause the violent deaths of Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, Tybalt, and Paris. Glossary countervail to match or equal. gossamers filmy cobwebs floating in the air or spread on bushes or grass. vanity earthly pleasures or happiness. blazen declare or celebrate.