The Book & the Movie: The Sea-Wolf | Jack London, 1904 / Michael Curtiz, 1941

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“Why, if there is anything in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world.
There is only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is demanding
to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs.
For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives.
Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn
life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents. Life?
Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging.
Nature spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a
thousand lives, and it’s life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left.”

Jack London, The Sea-Wolf, 1904

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“But, – and there it is, – we want to live and move, though we have no reason to, because it

happens that it is the nature of life to live and move, to want to live and move. If it were not

for this, life would be dead. It is because of this life that is in you that you dream of your

immortality.”

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“Wolf – tis what he is. He’s not blackhearted like some men. ‘Tis no heart he has at all.”

“At once he became an enigma. One side or the other of his nature was perfectly
comprehensible; but both sides together were bewildering.”

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“The eyes – and it was my destiny to know them well – were large and handsome, wide apart

as the true artist’s are wide, sheltering under a heavy brow and arched over by thick black

eyebrows. The eyes themselves were of that baffling protean gray which is never twice

 the same; which runs through many shades and colorings like intershot silk in sunshine;

which is gray, dark and light, and greenish gray, and sometimes of the clear azure of the

deep sea. They were eyes that masked the soul with a thousand guises, and that sometimes

opened, at rare moments, and allowed it to rush up as though it were about to fare forth

nakedly into the world on some wonderful adventure – eyes that could brood with the

 hopeless sombreness of leaden skies; that could snap and crackle points of fire like those

which sparkle from a whirling sword; that could grow chill as an arctic landscape, and yet

again, that could warm and soften and be all a-dance with love-lights, intense and

masculine, luring and compelling, which at the same time fascinate and dominate

women till they surrender in a gladness of joy and of relief and sacrifice.”

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“Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, for it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds of rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. The supply is too large.”

Jack London, The Sea-Wolf, 1904

“He was not immoral, but merely unmoral.”

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“I was jealous; therefore I loved.”

“She was timid and afraid, but she possessed courage. The flesh and the qualms of the flesh she was heir to, but the flesh bore heavily only on the flesh. And she was spirit, first and always  spirit, etherealized essence of life, calm as her calm eyes, and sure of permanence in the changing order of the universe.”

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“And after all, delight is the wage for living. Without delight living is a worthless act. To labor

at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead. He who delights the most lives the most,

and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to you and more gratifying than are

my facts to me.”

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“You have read Darwin,” I said. “But you read him misunderstandingly when you conclude that the struggle for existence sanctions your wanton destruction of life.” He shrugged his shoulders. ” You know you only mean that in relation to human life, for of the flesh and the fowl and the fish you destroy as much as I or any other man. And human life is in no wise different, though you feel it is and think that you reason why it is. Why should I be parsimonious with this life which is cheap and without value? There are more sailors than there are ships on the sea for them, more workers than there are factories or machines for them. Why, you who live on the land know that you house your poor people in the slums of cities and loose famine and pestilence upon them, and that there still remain more poor people, dying for want of a crust of bread and a bit of meat (which is life destroyed), than you know what to do with. Have you ever seen the London dockers fighting like wild beasts for a chance to work?”

Jack London, The Sea-Wolf, 1904

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 “The days and nights are all a wonder and a wild delight, and though I have little time from
my dreary work, I steal odd moments to gaze and gaze at the unending glory of what I never
dreamed the world possessed.”

“My mistake was in ever opening the books.”

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“The earth is full of brutality as the sea is full of motion. And some men
are made sick by one, and some by the other.”

“Surely there can be little in this world more awful than the spectacle of
a strong man in the moment when he is utterly weak and broken.”

Jack London, The Sea-Wolf, 1904

“Eternity is eternity, and though you die here and now you will go on living somewhere
else and hereafter. And it is all very beautiful, this shaking off of the flesh and soaring
of the imprisoned spirit.”

“After all, I thought, it is better and finer to love than to be loved, if it makes for something in
life so worth while that no one is not loath to die for it. I forgot my own life in the love of
another life; and yet, such is the paradox, I never wanted so much to live as right then when
I placed the least value upon my own life. I never had so much reason for living, was my
concluding thought…”

Jack London, The Sea-Wolf, 1904

The Sea Wolf (1941)
Director: Michael Curtiz
Writers: Jack London (novel), Robert Rossen (screen play)
Cinematography: Sol Polito
Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Ida Lupino, John Garfield

The first movie to have its world premiere on a ship: the luxury
liner “America” during a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Ida Lupino                      Ida  Lupino and Edward G. Robinson in The Sea Wolf, 1941

“I’ll have you know I do the swearing on this ship. If I need your assistance I’ll call you.”