50 Fun Facts About White Fang

Which breed of dog nearly kills White Fang in his last pit fight by clamping onto his throat?

A bulldog, the first of its breed ever seen in the Klondike, stood too low to be knocked off its feet. It worked its grip slowly towards the windpipe until two strangers forced its jaws apart.

Which Native hunter recognises the cub's mother as his dead brother's dog and gives White Fang his name?

Grey Beaver chose the name on the spot when the snarling cub bared his teeth and the men remarked how white they were. He becomes the wolf-dog's first master.

Which American author, who joined the Klondike gold rush himself at 21, wrote White Fang?

Jack London sailed north in July 1897 and later set his best-known stories there. The novel first ran as a magazine serial in 1906 before appearing as a book that October.

Which earlier novel about a stolen pet dog that ends up running with wolves does White Fang mirror in reverse?

The Call of the Wild follows Buck from a sunny ranch to the wolves, and the later book runs the same road backwards. Both grew out of one winter their author spent in the Klondike.

Which animals does White Fang kill by the dozen at Weedon Scott's family home before learning to leave them alone?

Chickens seemed lawful prey to him, and one night he killed fifty of them. After a scolding from his master he spent a whole afternoon locked in their yard and simply went to sleep.

Who breaks into the judge's house at the climax of White Fang and dies in a fight with the wolf-dog?

An escaped convict named Jim Hall had sworn revenge on the judge who sentenced him, unaware that the judge had been fed false evidence. The dog was shot three times stopping him and barely lived.

What are the two men hauling by dog sled through wolf country in the opening chapters of White Fang?

A coffin holding the body of a young lord is lashed to the sled, bound for a distant outpost. When only one man is left, he hoists it into a tree so the wolves cannot reach it.

What does a scheming dog-fighter keep bringing White Fang's first master until the dog is traded away for more of it?

Whisky drained the money the hunter had earned trading furs, mittens and moccasins, and then his temper. In the end he handed over his best sled dog for a few more bottles.

Which US president mocked a fight scene in White Fang and branded its author a nature faker?

Theodore Roosevelt called the scene the height of absurdity in 1907. The author replied in an essay the next year that his dog stories were a protest against humanising animals.

Which sound does White Fang manage only twice in his life, the second time to bring help for his injured master?

A bark finally burst out of him at the house after Weedon Scott broke a leg in a riding fall and sent him home. The family, baffled by his growling and tugging, at last understood and followed him.

Which cowardly cook at a northern trading post buys White Fang and torments him into a savage pit fighter?

Beauty Smith owed his nickname to a joke about his ugliness. He kept the dog chained or caged, beat him often, and charged men fifty cents in gold dust for a look.

What is the name of White Fang's mother, a half-wolf sled dog who ran off to live with a wolf pack?

Kiche had fled her owner's camp a year earlier, when there was no meat for the dogs. Among the wolves she acted as a decoy, tempting sled dogs away from their teams to be eaten.

What is the profession of Weedon Scott, the man who breaks up the pit fight and buys White Fang?

A mining expert with friends among the Klondike's officials, he could threaten to have the dog's owner run out of town. He forced $150 on the man and carried the half-dead animal away.

Which battle-scarred old wolf kills a younger rival to win the she-wolf and becomes White Fang's father?

One Eye had only his left eye, which may be why he always ran at the she-wolf's right side. He hunted for her and their cubs until he met an enemy he could not beat.

Which predator kills White Fang's father, leaving the she-wolf to feed her cub alone?

A lynx with kittens of her own proved too much for the ageing wolf. His mate later raided the lair, then killed the mother in a fight in the cave while the cub bit at a hind leg.

Which older puppy in the Native camp bullies White Fang for months and turns the other young dogs against him?

Lip-lip won every early scrap, so the cub never learned to play and grew up a sullen loner. Years later, in a time of hunger, the two met in the woods and the bully did not walk away.

What human reaction, turned on White Fang himself, throws the proud wolf-dog into a blind rage?

Laughter shamed him as a cub, when the whole camp roared at his burnt nose, and he never forgot it. Only Weedon Scott could chuckle at him safely, and the dog learned to romp in reply.

In which city does White Fang come ashore from the North into a bewildering world of cable cars and tall buildings?

San Francisco terrified him with its crowds and clanging cable cars, and he was then chained in a baggage car for the rail journey inland. The novel's author knew those streets well: he was born there.

What name do the women of the judge's household give White Fang after he saves the family from an intruder?

The Blessed Wolf was first spoken by Weedon Scott's wife on the day the last bandage came off, and the other women took it up. The judge, long a doubter of the animal, adopted the name too.

What first tells the two sled drivers at the start of White Fang that a wolf has slipped in among their dogs?

A missing fish gives her away: six are handed out to six dogs, yet one dog goes hungry because a seventh mouth took a share. The visitor turns out to know the ways of camps very well.

How does the last surviving sled driver hold back the wolf pack at the start of White Fang until rescuers arrive?

A circle of fire kept him alive through one more night, and he crouched inside it on his bedding while the wolves sat close enough to enjoy the warmth. He was dozing, the flames dying, when help came.

Which northern bird's nest does the cub White Fang tumble into on his first day outside the cave?

A ptarmigan brood of seven chicks became his first kill, eaten on the spot. Their mother then pecked his nose until he let go and fled, his first lesson that bigger prey hits back.

What does the newborn White Fang believe the bright mouth of his cave to be, before he ever crawls outside?

A wall of light was all he could make of it, since the only world he knew was closed in on every side. It puzzled him that his father could walk straight into it and vanish.

Which word for human beings appears in three chapter titles of White Fang, reflecting how the wolf-dog sees his masters?

Gods is the narration's word for people throughout, since they make warmth, hand out meat and strike from a distance. Native hunters are the first he meets; white men strike him as a superior kind.

Which actor played the young gold hunter who befriends the wolf-dog in Disney's 1991 film of White Fang?

Ethan Hawke worked opposite a wolf-dog and a trained bear on a shoot that lasted five months. His character, a young prospector, was invented for the screen and appears nowhere in the novel.

Why does White Fang's first master hand the cub's mother over to another hunter who is leaving by canoe?

To settle a debt, she went along with a strip of scarlet cloth, a bearskin and twenty cartridges. The cub was a yearling before he saw her again, and by then she had a new litter and drove him off.

Which dog on Weedon Scott's family estate nags White Fang for months before becoming mother to his puppies?

Collie could not forgive his wolfish looks, since her kind had guarded flocks against his kind for generations. The book ends with him dozing in the sun while her puppies clamber over him.

In which Klondike boomtown is White Fang put on show in a cage and matched against all comers?

Dawson was the heart of the gold rush, and there he was prodded with a stick so paying crowds saw him rage. His fights were held in the woods outside town to dodge the Mounted Police.

Which illness cost the author of White Fang his front teeth and ended his own Klondike adventure after one winter?

Scurvy was common among gold seekers who wintered without fresh food. He left the next summer with no fortune, but with the raw material for his northern tales.

What kills White Fang's brothers and sisters, leaving him the only cub of the litter to survive?

A famine struck while the cubs were tiny, and four of the five faded away in the den. He was the fiercest of the litter and the only one with his father's colouring.

Which small predator nearly kills the cub White Fang by fastening on his throat until his mother arrives?

A weasel mother attacked after the cub had rolled her kit over with a paw. Small as she was, she hung on at his throat until the she-wolf flung her into the air and caught her in her jaws.

Which animal does White Fang's father wait beside for hours, knowing that a careless bite would cripple him?

A porcupine had once left a quill in his muzzle that rankled for weeks, so he kept clear and let a second hunter make the mistake. Once it was dead, he dragged it home to his mate.

What does Weedon Scott wedge between the jaws of the dog throttling White Fang to pry them apart?

A revolver muzzle did the work, levered between the teeth while the other dog's owner warned him not to break them. Moments earlier Scott had knocked the wolf-dog's own master flat for kicking the helpless animal.

What does White Fang crash through to follow Weedon Scott, who has locked him in a cabin before leaving the Klondike?

A window was the one exit the two men forgot, and he reached the dock cut and gouged underneath. Scott gave in on the spot and took him aboard for the journey south.

How does White Fang react when Weedon Scott leaves on a trip without him for the first time?

He stops eating and lets every dog in the team thrash him, lying by the stove without interest in life. When the cabin door finally opens on Scott, the dog-musher is amazed to see a tail wag.

Which streaming service released the 2018 animated film of White Fang, voiced by Nick Offerman and Rashida Jones?

Netflix released the film, made in France and Luxembourg, in July 2018, months after its January premiere at the Sundance festival. Paul Giamatti voiced its villain.

Jed, the wolf-dog who played the title role in the 1991 film of White Fang, first appeared in which horror classic?

The Thing cast him as a sled dog that is really a shape-shifting alien in disguise, and some scenes called for unsettling, unnatural behaviour. He then played a wolf for Disney before landing the title role.

Which animal does the starving wolf pack finally pull down early in White Fang, ending weeks of hunger?

A bull moose split skulls with his hoofs before he went down with the she-wolf at his throat. Once fed, the pack broke up into pairs, and her suitors began a deadly contest of their own.

What is the name of the judge's country estate in the Santa Clara Valley where White Fang spends his later life?

Sierra Vista lies in the same sunny valley where its author's other famous dog hero began life as a judge's pet. There the wolf-dog must learn a tangle of new rules about livestock, servants and children.

In White Fang, what do the old-timers at the trading post call the newcomers who step off the summer steamers?

Chechaquos baked their bread with baking powder, and they wilted when the name was used on them. The veterans, who had none, used fermented starter and wore the name Sour-doughs with pride.

Which American magazine ran White Fang as a serial from May to October 1906, before the book came out?

Outing was a monthly of sport, travel and outdoor life, a natural home for a wolf story. The same author's previous dog novel had been serialised in a far bigger general weekly three years earlier.

In which country was the 1993 television series of White Fang filmed, far from the Klondike of the novel?

New Zealand's South Island hosted the shoot, around Arrowtown and Queenstown. The series ran for 25 episodes and kept little of the book, following a boy whose dog keeps rescuing him.

Which English philosopher's phrase about the survival of the fittest shaped the harsh natural world of White Fang?

Herbert Spencer was one of three thinkers the novel's author drew on, alongside Nietzsche and Marx. One critic reads the book as an allegory of humanity's passage from nature to civilisation.

Which Italian director made the 1973 film of White Fang starring Franco Nero, a hit that led to a sequel?

Lucio Fulci made it during an Italian craze for northern adventure films, and its takings brought him straight back for Challenge to White Fang. Several unofficial follow-ups traded on the title.

Which of the two sled drivers stalked by wolves at the opening of White Fang lives to be rescued?

Henry watched his partner run off with a rifle and three cartridges to save a dog, then heard the shooting end. He was asleep where he sat, his fuel gone, when a party of men found him.

At which old Hudson's Bay Company trading post does White Fang see his first white men, in the gold-rush summer of 1898?

Fort Yukon lay hundreds of miles short of the goldfields, yet gold hunters streamed through it all summer. His master had hauled furs, mittens and moccasins across a mountain divide to sell to them.

Which plain-spoken dog-musher works for Weedon Scott and first spots that White Fang has worn a sled harness?

Matt points to the old strap marks across the chest as proof that the so-called wolf was once somebody's sled dog. He is also the first of the pair to be bitten, through the trouser leg.

What does the young White Fang do when a canoe carries his mother away from the Native camp?

He swims after it, deaf to his master's shouts, until the man paddles out and lifts him from the water by the scruff. The beating that follows teaches him that this man must be obeyed.

Which place in the sled team does White Fang's young driver give the camp bully as a punishment disguised as an honour?

Lead dog meant running at the end of the longest rope, so the others always saw him fleeing and chased him all day. The driver made it worse by handing him extra meat in front of them.

Which bird swoops down and carries off the mother bird that the cub White Fang has just been fighting?

A hawk had narrowly missed the cub himself moments earlier, sending him into a bush. From there he watched it strike, a lesson in how quickly a hunter can become the hunted.