Gönderi
This short novel is about a caveman, Big-Tooth, and his experiences roughly 100,000 years ago. He is a member of a tribe called the "Folk" (Völk?), whose members are evolutionarily between ape and man. The Fire People, an adjacent tribe, is an expansionist and technologically advanced group, having bows and arrows, fire, and a less ape-like facial structure.
A major theme of this book is that only the fittest and most evolutionary advanced tribe will succeed. Big-Tooth makes technological discoveries that allow him to better evade wild animals, such as saber-tooth tigers, as well as to gather resources more effectively. Only through Big-Tooth's learned ability to swim and to use wooden rafts does he escape danger. The Fire Peoples' physiological superiority (leading to technological superiority) leads to their dominance and near-total destruction of the Folk. Through their ethnocentric and group behaviors, they work together to launch an all-out missile and fire assault on the Folk's homelands. This assault was necessary because of their population increase. This reveals a key point about human history: the strongest in spirit and technology will militarily and territorially dominate weaker groups. The wars fought between the two would often happen because of population increase, thereby straining the carrying capacity of any given territory and creating a need for territorial expansion — expansion into other tribes' lands.
London also shows how the mixture of tribes leads to internal conflict. Red-Eye, a hairier, more aggressive, and more ape-like Folk member (although later revealed to be born of the more primitive Tree People), is feared throughout the tribe. Nobody likes his unseemly dominance, but no one has the strength to resist. Because the Folk is individualistic, there is no spectator-filled event where Red-Eye vies for dominance vis-a-vis Big-Tooth. Despite the lack of such a publicized conflict, there is a constant and blood-thirsty contest between the two, thereby disunifying the Folk even more. Sexual conflicts increase the tension when Red-Eye (a notorious wife killer) attempts to capture Big-Tooth's wife from him. Red-Eye is enamored with the more evolutionarily advanced Swift One because she was originally from the Fire People tribe. A great and ruthless struggle goes on between Big-Tooth and Red-Eye, with Big-Tooth eventually winning, but not without lifetime injuries to show for his marital battle. Does this scenario — aggressive and ruthless Red-Eye lustful for the noble, advanced Swift One — sound familiar to you? Perhaps modern commercials could give you a clue?
Overall, I appreciate London's incorporation of heredity into his novel. He makes it clear that the differences between the three tribes — Tree People, Folk, and Fire People in the worst-to-best order — are inescapable and passed down due to heredity. In the evolutionary environment of Man, the weak did not survive, simply because of the massive threats of predation and tribal warfare. Yet the Tree People of today are doing just fine, being subsidized by the welfare state — given free food, free housing, tens of thousands of "stimulus" money, and a nice monetary benefit for every child. When we apply London's principle to today, we get a genetic dystopia: the slow degradation of the initial, founding stock of the West; a gene pool that now produces takers instead of creators; and a state-sponsored intelligence-lowering machine for the pious virtue of Equality. O, how we truly our "at our wit's end".
·
96 views
Yorum yapabilmeniz için giriş yapmanız gerekmektedir.