White Fang

How does author develop the gray cub’s point of view?

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Part II is noteworthy for the change in tone and narrative that occurs in this section. There are many tender and even light-hearted scenes, especially in the two fine chapters, "The Gray Cub" and "The Wall of the World." The cub's inability to distinguish the sold walls of the cave from it's penetrable entrance is brilliantly captured in the image of the "wall of light," toward which the cub strives and through which the omnipotent father can magically appear and disappear. In astringent prose, London sketches the time of famine, muting the too-easy pathos of the death of White Fang's siblings. Especially moving is the account in the "Wall of the World," of White Fang's first adventure beyond the cave. Approaching the wall of light, the cub discovers that it is "unlike any other wall with which he had had experience." Indeed, it is the antithesis of the "wall of darkness" that pressed upon Bill and Henry in Part One, for "this wall seemed to recede from him as he approached." Whereas the first wall is death, the wall of light is the orifice of the womb, the pathway to life: