The Law of Life

“The long trail waited while the short day refused to linger. Life called [Sit-cum-to-ha], and the duties of life, not death.” 

Koskoosh is accepting not only of his own death, but also of the relative indifference of others towards it. Although he at times finds himself wishing his granddaughter had taken more care to stockpile wood for him, he sees her actions as an inevitable side effect of her youth. For a young woman like Sit-cum-to-ha, the “duties of life”—particularly the desire to find a partner and have children—are instinctive and overriding concerns (as he notes later in the story, Sit-cum-to-ha has been particularly “careless” since the “Beaver, son of the son of Zing-ha” began courting her) (Paragraph 20). The first sentence in this passage underscores this point, drawing an implicit parallel between the long journey facing the tribe and the many years Sit-cum-to-ha still has to look forward to; by contrast, Koskoosh’s life, like “the short day,” is nearly over.

“[A] fretful child, and not overstrong. It would die soon, perhaps, and they would burn a hole through the frozen tundra and pile rocks above to keep the wolverines away. Well, what did it matter? A few years at best, and as many an empty belly as a full one. And in the end, Death waited, ever-hungry and hungriest of them all.” 

The discussion of Koo-tee reinforces the centrality and inevitability of death in “The Law of Life”; even young children aren’t immune. Koskoosh’s relative apathy towards Koo-tee’s survival further underscores the point, while also hinting at the role harsh environmental conditions—and in particular the constant threat of famine—have played in shaping his attitudes. The description of death as a kind of predator is also significant, both considering death’s later association with wolves, and in terms of the broader motif of hunger. In a place where resources are scarce, survival often entails killing and consuming other animals; life and death are therefore intertwined with and interdependent on one another in a way that London’s depiction of death as “hungry” underscores. 

“It is well. I am as a last year’s leaf, clinging lightly to the stem. The first breath that blows, and I fall. My voice is become like an old woman’s. My eyes no longer show me the way of my feet, and my feet are heavy, and I am tired. It is well.” 

Koskoosh’s parting words to his son are significant for a couple of reasons. The dialogue features deliberately archaic sentence constructions (e.g. “is become”) and rhythmic repetitions (e.g. “It is well”), both of which evoke a sense of ritual; the exchange reads as part of a time-honored tradition, which is precisely what London suggests the practice of voluntary suicide was. The comparison Koskoosh draws between himself and “last year’s leaf” further underscores this point, painting his actions as natural and inevitable—no different than the changing seasons. In this way, the passage also hints at a relationship between Koskoosh’s close connection to the natural world and his acceptance of his own mortality; Koskoosh understands his own existence in terms of life cycles he sees repeated throughout nature.

“[H]is hand crept out in haste to the wood. It alone stood betwixt him and the eternity that yawned in upon him. At last the measure of his life was a handful of faggots. One by one they would go to feed the fire, and just so, step by step, death would creep upon him.” 

Symbolism linking fire and life is fairly common in literature, but in “The Law of Life” the relationship is both figurative and literal; the warmth and intensity of fire not only evoke life and the will to live, but also represent Koskoosh’s only defense against the cold that he expects will kill him. In that respect, it’s significant that he reaches for more firewood as soon as his son is gone, and that he seems to do so almost against his own will (it’s Koskoosh’s “hand” that London describes reaching out, not Koskoosh himself). The urgency Koskoosh feels to keep the fire going reflects an unconscious will to live that his conscious mind rejects. 

“He did not complain. It was the way of life, and it was just. He had been born close to the earth, close to the earth had he lived, and the law thereof was not new to him.” 

Throughout “The Law of Life,” London suggests that much of Koskoosh’s stoicism in the face of death stems from his relationship to nature. As hunter-gatherers, Koskoosh and his people live not only in close proximity to the natural world, but in tandem with it; their existence revolves around seasonal shifts in the availability of salmon, caribou, etc. As a result, they are constantly reminded of nature’s rhythms in a way that modern Western society generally is not, and thus view the life cycle of an individual human in that broader context of renewal, growth, and decay.  

“But one task did Nature set the individual. Did he not perform it, he died. Did he perform it, it was all the same, he died. Nature did not care; there were plenty who were obedient, and it was only the obedience in this matter, not the obedient, which lived and always lived.” 

Koskoosh’s reflections in this passage demonstrate the influence of Darwin’s theory of evolution on London’s work. As far as the survival of a species is concerned, the only thing that matters about an individual organism is whether it’s well-adapted enough to live to reproduce; if it is, the traits that facilitated its success, including the “obedient” drive to mate, will be passed on, and the individual can die at no cost to the group. Notably, Koskoosh characterizes this as a kind of indifference on the part of “Nature,” which he describes as a human-like agent with particular goals or preferences; in other words, he personifies nature even while discussing the irrelevance of human life in the broad scheme of things, perhaps underscoring just how difficult an idea the latter can be to fully grasp and accept.

“The tribe of Koskoosh was very old. The old men he had known when a boy, had known old men before them. Therefore it was true that the tribe lived, that it stood for the obedience of all its members, way down into the forgotten past, whose very resting-places were unremembered. They did not count; they were episodes.”

The above passage is significant for the way in which it links the story’s Darwinian philosophy to the survival not just of species, but of human cultures or societies. In much the same way that individual organisms are only important to the extent that they perpetuate the species by reproducing, individual tribe members are important to the extent that their actions help the tribe survive. This can entail having children, but it also implicitly means prioritizing the tribe’s needs over one’s own if the two come into conflict; in “The Law of Life,” for instance, those who are too old or sick to keep up with the tribe’s movements are expected to remain behind, effectively sacrificing their lives for the greater good.

“A maiden was a good creature to look upon, full-breasted and strong, with spring to her step and light in her eyes. But her task was yet before her. The light in her eyes brightened, her step quickened, she was now bold with the young men, now timid, and she gave them of her own unrest. And ever she grew fairer and yet fairer to look upon, till some hunter, able no longer to withhold himself, took her to his lodge to cook and toil for him and to become the mother of his children.” 

This description of a woman’s life cycle is very much in keeping with the idea that humans are subject to the same evolutionary pressures and drives that impact other animals. Not only does it suggest that reproduction—the “task” mentioned above—is the sole purpose of human life, but it also depicts the urge to reproduce as a force over which people have little to no control. As London depicts them, both the woman and her suitors seem to be acting on unconscious impulse; without necessarily intending to, the woman communicates her own “unrest” to those around her, and her eventual husband makes her his wife because he can’t “withhold himself.” This attitude is characteristic of naturalist literature, which tends to be skeptical of the possibility of free will, instead interpreting human behavior as the product of powerful historical, psychological, and evolutionary currents.  

“There was the time of the Great Famine, when the old men crouched empty-bellied to the fire, and from their lips fell dim traditions of the ancient days when the Yukon ran wide open for three winters, and then lay frozen for three summers.” 

Koskoosh’s memories of the Great Famine—and others’ memories of famines before that—serve as a reminder of how precarious life is for Koskoosh’s tribe. Because the tribe relies on salmon fishing in the summer, a change in weather patterns that causes the river to freeze during those months is life-threatening. The passage also underscores the significance of hunger and predation as motifs associated with death, which in this environment often comes in the form of starvation.

“It was the end they saw.” 

London devotes a considerable portion of the story to Koskoosh’s memories of tracking a wounded bull moose as it is hunted down by a pack of wolves. The significance of this episode lies not only in its relationship to the story’s broader themes—the wolves, in their inexorable pursuit of their prey, are symbols of death’s inevitability—but also in its relevance to Koskoosh’s situation in particular. In much the same way that Koskoosh, a former tribal chief, now finds himself too weak to keep up with his tribe, the old moose has fallen behind the rest of the herd. These parallels make the above passage a significant instance of foreshadowing; the bull moose’s last stand against the wolves represents not only its own “end,” but also Koskoosh’s.

“The picture, like all of youth’s impressions, was still strong with him, and his dim eyes watched the end played out as vividly as in that far-off time. Koskoosh marvelled at this, for in the days which followed, when he was a leader of men and a head of councillors, he had done great deeds and made his name a curse in the mouth of the Pellys.” 

There are at least two reasons why the episode involving the bull moose looms so large in Koskoosh’s memory. First, the moose’s situation parallels Koskoosh’s in many ways; both are aging patriarchs who find themselves cut off from the group and facing death. More broadly, the episode is a distillation of what Koskoosh (as well as the story itself) takes to be the fundamental truth of life: that because it inevitably ends in death for the individual, the only real purpose of life is to secure the survival of the group. As a result, memories that center on Koskoosh’s accomplishments as an individual—his wisdom as a chief, his prowess as a warrior, etc.—seem futile and illusory.

“Perhaps the heart of his son might soften, and he would come back with the dogs to take his old father on with the tribe to where the caribou ran thick and the fat hung heavy upon them.” 

Although generally resigned to his fate, Koskoosh here fantasizes that his son might save his life at the last minute after all. In many ways, the moment represents the resurgence of the same instinctive will to live that drives the actions of the bull moose; although Koskoosh, like the bull, has already fulfilled his “purpose” in life by reproducing, this doesn’t make the prospect of death any more appealing. Relatedly, the fact that Koskoosh imagines his rescue in terms of his son’s heart “softening” implies a level of discomfort with the cultural mores that prioritize the needs of the group over those of the individual; despite its practical arguments in favor of sacrificing those who threaten the survival of the group as a whole, the story also seeks to elicit sympathy for Koskoosh’s loneliness and vulnerability. 

“He saw the flashing forms of gray, the gleaming eyes, the lolling tongues, the slavered fangs. And he saw the inexorable circle close in till it became a dark point in the midst of the stamped snow.” 

London’s descriptions of the wolves pursuing both Koskoosh and the moose tend to deemphasize the wolves’ status as flesh and blood animals. Instead, they appear mostly as abstract shapes and colors (“gray,” “dark point,” etc.), or as particular, noteworthy features (e.g. “slavered fangs”). This points to the wolves’ symbolic function in “The Law of Life”; in their relentless pursuit of their prey and their apparently insatiable hunger, the wolves are a metaphor for death, which is similarly “inexorable” in overtaking and consuming all living things.