36 pages • 1 hour read
Jack LondonThe Scarlet Plague
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1912A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Literary Context: The Scarlet Plague and Jack London’s Fiction
Jack London wrote The Scarlet Plague late in his career, just four years before his early death at the age of 40. London made his debut on the literary scene with novels about nature and the wilderness, often depicting the struggles of both humanity and animals in a hostile environment. The Call of the Wild (1902) brought London fame at the age of 27 with its tale of an intrepid sled dog in the Yukon. London’s subsequent fiction continued in this vein, including The Sea-Wolf (1904), White Fang (1906), and many short stories—works that drew on the author’s experiences as a sailor and a gold prospector in the Klondike.
Other works by London deal with science and technology through a speculative lens. This is true of early stories like “A Thousand Deaths,” in which a scientist tries to resurrect a dead body. These themes are expanded in the novel Before Adam (1907), the story of a man who dreams that he is an early hominid. As a result of such works, London is credited with helping develop science fiction in its modern form and is often placed in the “Radium Age” of sci-fi literature (1904-1933).
London’s most celebrated science fiction work is The Iron Heel (1908), a dystopian novel about a future fascist dictatorship in America and the socialist movement that opposes it. London explored similar themes in his subsequent fiction, often expressing his own socialist convictions via the dystopian genre. The Scarlet Plague (1912) encapsulated London’s main thematic interests to that date. It depicts humanity overwhelmed by a natural disaster, trying to adapt to it via science and grappling with its attendant social upheaval; it also has a subplot in which the working class avenges itself on the rich.
Like much of London’s fiction, The Scarlet Plague was written in relative haste and with a view to commercial success. It was first serialized in a magazine before being published in book form, and its themes reflect an era in which rampant social inequality, overcrowding, and public health were major concerns.
Geographical Context: The California Coastline as a Dystopian Backdrop
California experienced a cultural, economic, and population boom during Jack London’s lifetime. By 1900, people around the world saw the state as a land of endless promise, progress, and modernity. Thus, it is ironic that London chose the California coast as a backdrop of dystopian destruction, serving to underline The Scarlet Plague’s core theme of The Cyclical Nature of History and Civilization.
Anglo-American colonization of California was relatively recent in London’s era, but the region had experienced rapid growth due in part to the very thing that drew US settlers in the first place—the Gold Rush of the mid-19th century. Nevertheless, London implies that such prosperity could disappear in an instant due to The Impermanence of Humanity in the Face of Nature’s Power. In particular, the devastating 1906 earthquake in London’s native city of San Francisco may have served as dystopian inspiration for the book.
London uses real locations in the state as an integral part of the narrative. The beach at which Smith and his grandsons gather is located near the Cliff House, a tourist attraction on the San Francisco Bay. The campus of the University of California, Berkeley figures prominently in Smith’s embedded narrative, juxtaposed against the loss of knowledge and “culture” following the plague. Indeed, in London’s account, California has returned not just to a precolonial state but to a prehistoric state in which nature reigns supreme and humanity has mostly disappeared. After Smith found himself the sole survivor of the plague, he wandered through the California countryside, passing through Livermore Valley, San Joaquin Valley, Lake Temescal, and the former city of Oakland. This area of northern California is historically rich in agriculture, and Smith benefitted from the abundance of unharvested crops. This pastoral portion of the narrative shows a world returned to a pristine Eden by the plague, where landmarks like the Cliff House or the Del Monte Hotel have become mere reminders of the past or sources of preserved food.
By the end of the book, various California cities and towns (such as Los Angeles, Santa Rosa, and Palo Alto) have been reduced to small tribes of former residents, with their names recalling their origins (Los Angelitos, Santa Rosans, Palo Altans). Thus, London uses his native state as a microcosm for what could happen to civilization around the globe following a natural disaster.
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