The Sea Wolf & Basis
All of the readers of this article, the readers of The Sea Wolf, come from different backgrounds in life. Impoverished, wealthy, urban, suburban, rural, American, European, Asian, so on and so forth. Everyone, regardless of their history or circumstance, is called to follow Christ and submit to Him [Psalm 117, Isaiah 61:10-11, Matthew 28:16-20, Revelation 7:9-10] Our earthly circumstances do affect who we are, though. The people we're born to, the place they live, the way the people in the place we live treat us and view us affect how we grow and how we exist, not just as children but also in our adult lives. Someone in America will have a much better time accepting the Gospel than someone in Dubai or Vietnam because the American's circumstance, the history of that circumstance, is disposed to Christianity, unlike the nations of Dubai or Vietnam. Someone who has been physically abused by church clergy will be less willing to accept the gospel than someone who has not. Nonetheless, we are all called to accept the Gospels. No one is exempt.
The protagonist and narrator of this novel is Humphrey van Weyden. Humphrey is, for the time of the novel, what would in modern terms be coined the "trust fund baby." Humphrey, before the start of the novel, does basically nothing to earn money. Some of his writings have been published in newspapers, but that is his only source of income he personally contributes to; he lazes about his house all day while his family provides. His boat voyage that starts the novel out is quite unusual for him, and unfortunately unusual in general, as it is collided by another boat and is completely destroyed. Humphrey describes himself as thus: "I, Humphrey van Weyden, a scholar and a dilettante, if you please, in things artistic and literary, should be lying here. . . I had never done any hard manual labor, or scullion labor, in my life."[1] He never directly admits this to anyone on the sealing boat that picks him up, the Ghost, after the boat he was on sinks, but he cannot hide this fact, neither. It will not be as such for long, for the captain of the Ghost has no intention of bringing him home; rather, he is going to make Humphrey work for the remainder of the Ghost's own journey. This is unthinkable to Humphrey. The right thing to do, the thing that is good for Humphrey, is to take him back to San Francisco. The captain of the Ghost won't take him back, and neither does another passing sealing boat. This is not the life that Humphrey is accustomed to.
Such is the life of Wolf Larsen, captain of the Ghost. Wolf describes his own upbringing as such:
"I am a Dane. My mother and father were Danes, and how they ever came to that bleak bight of land on the west coast [of Norway] I do not know. I never heard. Outside of that there is nothing mysterious. They were poor people and unlettered. They came of generations of poor unlettered people – peasants of the sea who sowed their sons on the waves as has been their custom since time began. There is no more to tell."[2]
He had a very poor, very coastal, uneducated upbringing. When he came into his own, he decided to change what he could. He taught himself English so he could read all of the finest works of the time, became a seal hunter so he could make money, and built himself up to be the captain of his current vessel. Even in the current moment of the novel, he schemes inventions up so he may sell them for more money, to improve his situation. Yet his past still haunts him. Even in his rebuilt life, he cannot help but bring his past with him, the past of his vagabond family and cruel sea treatment. One of his first plans when he brought himself out of his hole was to go back to his home town and kill everyone, "but unfortunately the skippers were dead, all but one, a mate in the old days, a skipper when I met him, and when I left him a cripple who would never walk again."[3] He has ensured his life has not changed, not fundamentally, and has utilized his education to this end. He is quite evil to his shipmates. One of them, named Johnson, complained about the quality of the raincoat Wolf provides. Humphrey watches the subsequent beating and narrates it this way: "Johnson fought bravely enough, but he was no match for Wolf Larsen, much less Wolf Larsen and his mate. It was frightful. I had not imagined a human being could endure so much and still live and struggle on."[4]
Humphrey's shock at the life on the Ghost is thorough. "All my days have been passed in comparative ignorance to the animality of man. In fact, I had known life only in its intellectual phases,"[5] is the way he phrases it. Even more shocking than this to Humphrey, though, is the person of Wolf – that such a cruel, bestial man could not only be so educated, but use that education to the purpose of his cruelty and his bestialty. For when Humphrey reads Wolf a book of the latter's that Wolf has yet to read,
"He [Wolf] interrupted me [Humphrey] again and again with comment and criticism. When I finished, he had me read it over a second time, and a third. We fell into discussion – philosophy, science, evolution, religion. He betrayed the inaccuracies of the self-read man, and, it must be granted, the sureness and directness of the primitive mind. The very simplicity of his reasoning was its strength, and his materialism was far more compelling than the subtly complex materialism of Charley Furuseth."[6]
Humphrey's worldview is never properly identified on its own terms, but always in contrast with Wolf's, and for this reason Humphrey begins to come over to the Wolf's side of things, not just because of the debates they have – perhaps even not primarily because of the debates – but because of the situation he finds himself in. Wolf describes his own philosophy this way: "I have no fictions that make for nobility and manhood. A living dog is better than a dead lion, I say with the preacher. My only doctrine is the doctrine of expediency, and it makes for surviving."[7] Humphrey's response to the Wolf, ultimately: "One thing I was beginning to feel, and that was that I never again could be quite the same man I had been. While my hope and faith in human life still survived Wolf Larsen's destructive criticism, he had nevertheless been a cause of change in minor matters."[8] "Minor matters" is one way to put it, as this comes after Humphrey has subdued the man he was serving directly under, the cook, Thomas Mugridge, in a game of brutality they put on for some time: "Whet, whet, whet – Humphrey van Weyden sharpening his knife in a ship’s galley and trying its edge with his thumb! Of all situations this was most inconceivable. I know that my own kind could not have believed it possible."[9] Not only does he participate, he wins, and uses his victory to gain an edge on Thomas, to reverse their roles and make Thomas do his bidding, as opposed to how it has been up to this point.
That surviving of his hope and faith shines through when someone from his past is brought on board, Maud Brewster. Brewster is a castaway who the Ghost finds when waiting to grab some of its own crew who fled on boat from the ship. Brewster is an author that Humphrey admires, and the two connect strongly once they realize who the other person is. Brewster has the same general realization that Humphrey does at the beginning of the novel, as she has to witness the same things he did the moment he came on board – death and brutality. Maud however, unlike Humphrey, ultimately stays on her own philosophy uncompromisingly, and after talking at length with Wolf on Wolf's readings of literature, "that unnameable and unmistakable terror was in her eyes, and she said, almost in a whisper, 'You are Lucifer.'"[10]
Wolf does seem to choose Maud, but only in a very surface level way. He cannot choose her philosophy completely, and is driven to a baseless desire for sex with her that he attempts to act on once before he is thwarted by his own failing health – which, while has been mentioned throughout the novel, has not been so capable as to stop Wolf before now. This is the beginning of the Wolf's descent – he has tried to choose the right side of things, but he cannot choose to let go of the wrong side of things at the same time and seals his fate therefore. Is this because of Wolf's basis? It would be wrong to suggest otherwise; the way Wolf was raised influenced his line of thinking, and the trials he was put to shaped him into the man he became. All of this is true, but it does not lead one to conclude that Wolf could have never changed his ways. The problem was that Wolf valued his old life too much. Even when salvation from his wrongdoing came directly to him, and even when Wolf saw the greatness of this new and strange life, he could not let go of his old life. Wolf could only interpret salvation through his sin, and was unable to obtain salvation therefore. He is like the rich man who came to Jesus, who loved that which was good but could not hate that which was evil, and so lost the point entirely [Matthew 19:16-24,] though the rich man at the least is only dejected and does not reject the Christ immediately, whereas Wolf plunges himself into his evil once he sees that he has not the want to let go of it. Humphrey is emboldened by Maud's persistence in the right thing, however, and the two make it off of the Ghost. Though his basis makes it easier for him to choose Maud over Wolf and the Ghost, it is still a difficult decision he has to make, and it is helped by little decisions he makes throughout the novel, such as holding on to his hope for humanity as aforementioned. Though the vessel and its captain will meet Humphrey again after his escape, it will be crippled by its own choices, and Maud and Humphrey will succeed in being rescued at sea. It is incredibly difficult and taxing for the pair, but they are able to overcome their situation in the pursuit of something better.
When Christ enters the life of the believer, similarly he rescues us from our need to sin and compels us to leave it behind. We all have things that hold us down to this world that we refuse to let go of. We want to stay on the cruel, violent, maniacal life sin gives us because deep down we want that life – but even when we don’t want that life, our circumstances and upbringing can make the Gospel of the Eastern Mediterranean seem too foreign to take up. Nonetheless, we are called to leave all we know so we can follow the Christ, and the Holy Spirit empowers us to do this when we cannot. When sin finds us or happens back to us, as Wolf had happened back to Humphrey and Maud, then we are given the means to fight against it and to overcome it. Sin will always be a thorn in our side until we are called out of the seas of earthly life and into the security of the Kingdom of Heaven. Nonetheless, Maud's entry into Humphrey's life is but a pale mockery of the salvation of Christ, for Maud brings Humphrey from a life of violence back to his life of meandering around the books of men, never compelling Humphrey to leave his sin behind him. Humphrey seeks comfort, but Christ would have us seek redemption, and on the path to redemption and to give glory to Christ, one might find themselves walking willingly onto the Ghost, where one would be tested in their faith, as Humphrey was, and where one could show others where such testing and salvation comes from, as Humphrey could not.