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Part 2, Chapter 4
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in White Fang, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Struggle for Survival
Domestic Yearnings v. Natural Instinct
Nature v. Nurture
Mastery
Domestication
Mating and Parenthood
Summary
Analysis
After two days, the cub ventures out of the cave and kills the weasel's pup. His ambition to hunt grows, as do his hunting skills. He hunts for play, but a famine forces him to take his hunting more seriously. He ambitiously waits in a clearing, daring the hawk to swoop down for a fight, but it keeps circling in the sky above.
The young White Fang is surrounded by the prospect of death. Hunger threatens to take his life, as does the hawk that circles in the air above him. Surrounded by death, White Fang must fight for his life by hunting and being a bold and courageous animal.
Themes
The famine is broken when the she-wolf brings home a lynx kitten for the cub to eat. But this meat does not come without a cost. The lynx appears in the entrance of the cave and attacks the she-wolf.
Violence marks parenthood and the struggle for survival. The she-wolf kills so that her pup can eat, while the lynx intends to murder to avenge her kitten's death.
Themes
The cub comes to his mother's aid, biting into the lynx's leg. Together, they kill the lynx and devour her. The cub learns the law of meat: "EAT OR BE EATEN." Having become a skilled hunter and killer, he feels "very much alive."
