The law of club and fang

Life. It is a beautiful and terrible thing. Oftentimes you find that the terrible comes when you aren't guarded, when you trust too much in the wrong things, the wrong people. We are given a principle in Psalm 118:8, "It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man." More up close, we are told to beware of the people that are close that we feel we should trust. Jeremiah 9:4 "Let everyone be on guard against his neighbor, And do not trust any brother; Because every brother deals craftily, And every neighbor goes about as a slanderer." (But don't forget Proverbs 27:6, "faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy"). In Jack London's The Call of the Wild, the burly St. Bernard-mix Buck is stolen from his pampered life as a beloved family dog in California and sold into a hellish existence of violence and servitude in the northern continent during the Klondike Gold Rush.  He went from a land of civilization - even his interactions with other dogs had its moral codes - to a life where kindness, courtesy, and fair-play were non-existent. He was kidnapped because his dealings with men prior to that event were always good; he was finessed by the gardener's apprentice. He had built a naive belief that humans were to be trusted; he found out otherwise as he was sold and exposed to never-before-known-to-him violence.

"Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment's safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang."

Buck found himself beaten into compliance (but never submission!) by the man in the red sweater. He watched in horror as friendly Curly approaches a husky in a amiable way and has her face ripped open. As she responds to the attack, a pack of dogs surrounds her and takes her down. Buck never forgets her savage end, nor Spitz seeming to laugh at her demise. He cements his will against ever letting himself go down in a fight. Cruelty and violence have replaced fair play; he must adapt or meet a similar end.

"He had learned well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed."

My tendency is to trust. To believe that deep down, people mean well. For years I had been in a rather insular life - homeschooling, homeschool groups, church, working with children in rec league. Here and there, I ran into an occasional bad apple, but for the most part I dealt with honest, moral, empathetic people. When I finished my degree and hit the work force when Erin was in high school, I discovered a different, wilder sort of world - but still manageable.  After all, I had a safe haven in Pat to come home to.  However, when Pat passed away 3 1/2 years ago, I began to discover the law of the club and fang in earnest.

My students have taught me the  pop culture understanding of being "finessed." They don't want anyone "finessing" them - saying one thing, doing another or manipulating them. When you  trust people to be honorable, to have good moral standards, to be ethical - it is easy to be finessed. Buck was finessed into taking a walk with Manual and wound up sold, beaten and dragged a thousand miles away. Buck was also finessed by a dog who appeared friendly but would snatch his dinner in a heartbeat. Most of us have met people who will lie, slander, whatever it takes to get ahead, to achieve preeminence.

The more I become acquainted with the law of the club and fang, I find that I get a deeper understanding of Kipling's "If--" The more I deal with its workings in the world, the clearer it becomes that it is at work in our own realms. I remember my father saying repeatedly that it is a "Dog eat dog" world. Since it is my father who introduced me to Jack London, this might be why the law of the club and fang strikes me so deeply. It would be easy, I think, to decide to play as dirty as you are played - but I believe there is a loving Father who would be saddened and shamed by that behavior. I know I've mentioned before how I clung to the "Filling the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run" line for years... Now other verses have been becoming more clear.

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise

My hope is to be able to be on guard like Buck without the need to resort to the cunning he use in snatching an extra morsel when the opportunity arose. It should always be in the goal to never be part of the pack that rips apart the fallen. It could be that finding your "pack," is the best way to operate in this dog-eat-dog world. Sadly, although Buck found trust and love with John Thornton, Skeet and Nig, the primitive never left him. This goes unfinished as a ponder the hows and whys of rising above after having been nipped by the fang and beat by the club.


*A side note: Kipling and London were contemporaries. While there seems to be such disparity in their inspirations, both witnessed the law of club and fang.  Kipling and his sister endured the torment and terror of childhood abuse in the hands of Mrs. Holloway  who boarded them while their parents were in India. "Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told any one how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established. Also, badly-treated children have a clear notion of what they are likely to get if they betray the secrets of a prison-house before they are clear of it."