22 pages • 44 minutes read
Jack LondonThe Law of Life
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1901A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Rhetorical Question
A rhetorical question is one that isn’t asked with the expectation of a response. This may be because the speaker intends to provide an answer, or—as in “The Law of Life”—because the answer is implied or otherwise obvious. Here, for instance, are two rhetorical questions Koskoosh poses while musing about his granddaughter’s failure to provide him with more firewood: “[S]he was ever a careless child, and honored not her ancestors from the time the Beaver, son of the son of Zing-ha, first cast eyes upon her. Well, what mattered it? Had he not done likewise in his own quick youth?” (Paragraph 20). The effect is not simply to suggest that Koskoosh was similarly “careless” as a young man, but rather to suggest that such carelessness is all but inevitable; according to Koskoosh, the young are simply not disposed to pay attention to the elderly, or mortality more generally. Other rhetorical questions in the story serve a similar purpose, underscoring the immutability of the life cycle and Koskoosh’s resignation to his own impending death by framing these things as questions with preordained answers.
Archaism
“The Law of Life” frequently uses syntax and grammar in ways that are deliberately archaic—that is, outdated at the time of writing. This is particularly evident in the dialogue, which avoids modern contractions (e.g. “it’s” rather than “it is”) and employs the subjunctive in ways a contemporary speaker would not, as when Koskoosh’s son tells him, “There be wood beside you” (Paragraph 6). These archaisms serve in part to evoke a culture that would be unfamiliar to most of London’s readers; in effect, London uses language that implies distance in time to imply distance in location and practices. In this sense, the use of archaic language arguably plays into an ethnocentric notion of non-Western cultures as less advanced than Western ones.
On the other hand, the formality of the characters’ speech also conveys a sense of ceremony that underscores the story’s depiction of cyclical patterns of life and death. London implies that the decision to leave Koskoosh behind is part of a time-honored tradition, and that that tradition is a reflection of natural laws. In this sense, the highly stylized dialogue between Koskoosh and his son can be read as a ritual response to and reflection of the similarly repetitive rhythms of nature.
Onomatopoeia
An onomatopoeic word is one that evokes its meaning with its sound; the sibilant “S” sound in the word “hiss,” for instance, creates an effect similar to actual hissing. “The Law of Life” contains many examples of onomatopoeia, particularly in the passage in which Koskoosh listens to the sounds of the tribe breaking camp: “The whip-lashes snarled and bit among the dogs. Hear them whine! [...] The snow crunched beneath a moccasin” (Paragraph 3). “Snarled,” “whine,” and “crunched” are all words that resemble the noises they describe.
London uses onomatopoeia partly as a way of capturing Koskoosh’s inner life. Because Koskoosh is blind, he experiences the world around him largely through sound; by relying on auditory techniques like onomatopoeia, London provides a somewhat similar experience for the story’s readers. The use of onomatopoeia is perhaps also significant considering the story’s focus on the material realities of life. Unlike most terms, onomatopoeic words have a concrete rather than purely symbolic relationship to the things they describe. As a result, they are especially appropriate in the context of a story about a man who has lived his entire life “close to the earth” and who has little time for “abstraction” (Paragraph 11).
Personification
Personification is the attribution of human qualities to something that isn’t human. Writers can employ personification in ways that are subtle or passing, as in a phrase like “the water’s embrace.” In “The Law of Life,” however, London makes use of a more sweeping form of personification that verges on anthropomorphism. Early in the story, for instance, he describes death as a human-like agent, capitalizing it as though it were a proper noun: “And in the end, Death waited, ever-hungry and hungriest of them all” (Paragraph 2). London’s depiction of nature is similar; he refers to it as “she,” ascribing a gender to it, and discusses its “interests” at length (Paragraph 11).
What makes this personification especially noteworthy is that it takes place in the context of a story about the inhumanity of nature and its laws. As London depicts it, the world at large is apathetic (if not outright hostile) to human dreams and desires; London was an atheist and, in this story in particular, depicts impersonal forces like natural selection as the sole arbiter of human fate. The fact that he nevertheless ascribes human traits (like the ability to care or not care) to those forces perhaps speaks to how difficult it is even for a figure like Koskoosh to fully embrace the notion that humanity is marginal and unimportant.
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