The Sea Wolf

The Sea Wolf is an adventure novel written by Jack London and originally published in 1904.

Humphrey van Weyden is a literary critic who is aboard a ferry when it collides with another ship due to poor visibility in the snow and sinks. Luckily for Van Weyden, a seal hunting ship under Captain Wolf Larsen rescues him.

Captain Larsen is a brutal and imposing as well as intelligent character who rules his ship with an iron fist and terrorizes the crew.

During the course of the plot, the two characters are often in dialogue and their philosophical thoughts and ideas are totally opposite. While Van Weyden is concerned with doing the right and kind actions, Larson is only concerned with himself and his goals.

However, there are aspects of Larson that appeal to Van Weyden and, almost without realizing it, he will become stronger and tougher as he works on the Ghost, Captain Larson's ship...

"I scarcely know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth's credit. He kept a summer cottage in Mill Valley, under the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, and never occupied it except when he loafed through the winter mouths and read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer to rest his brain. When summer came on, he elected to sweat out a hot and dusty existence in the city and to toil incessantly."