Anna Mussmann's Reviews > Silver Chief: Dog of the North

Silver Chief by Jack O'Brien
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it was ok

Silver Chief is a pulpy volume of adventure fiction first published in 1933. The book has two protagonists. One is half dog and half wolf, a canine who grew up in the wild and who has learned to fear man. The other is a young officer in the Northwest Mounted Police with “a pleasant face and deep blue, steady eyes that smiled when he smiled or became dangerously black when he was angry.” The two become devoted allies and together accomplish the difficult feat of bringing a murderer to justice.

I picked this book up because I had recently finished Rosanne Parry’s middle grade novel A Wolf Called Wander and wanted to see whether a vintage book portrayed wolves differently. By golly, it does. Parry’s novel portrays wolves in a way that is strongly reminiscent of the “noble savage” fantasy. Her wolves are fierce but dignified, sacrificially loyal to their pack, and in-tune with their own traditions and code of conduct. Like other literary noble savages, they provide a critique of civilized man.

In contrast, O’Brien’s wolves are symbols of a wilderness that must be conquered by courageous Mounties. The wolf who leads Parry’s pack is a devoted father teaching his children to feed the family. The head wolf described by O’Brien is “more sinister looking than the rest” with “cruel, red-rimmed eyes bright with cunning and the lust to kill.” Ultimately, I think both authors push beyond the bounds of reality, although in different directions, in order to tell their stories.

This book is meant to be a portrayal of manly courage and resourcefulness. Unfortunately, it is constructed from clichés, and some of the clichés used by the author are offensively racist. The murderer who is brought to justice by the Mounty is described as “a mixture of French and Indian, and such a fusing of blood had developed a strain of cunning and cruelty that submerged any good qualities of either race.”

Some books are worth reading even if I do not share the author's values. However, in this book I felt the author's attitude about race permeated his story and made it a flop. He treats the “wanted” man as a worthless scumbag without convincing the reader to want him hanged. It is almost as if the guy's status as a "Breed" was enough to fit him firmly into the cliché of "villain-designed-specifically-to-showcase-the-hero's-blue-eyed-invincibility!" without any further authorial effort required. Because of that, there were several times in the story when I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for the villain.

This is not a book that worked for me.
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Reading Progress

Finished Reading
March 16, 2022 – Shelved

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