36 pages • 1 hour read
The Scarlet Plague
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section discusses a pandemic, death and murder, suicide, gun violence, domestic violence, and hunting. The source text includes ableist and racist language, which this guide reproduces only in quotations.
An old man and a boy travel along a former railroad now fallen into disuse. They are James Howard Smith, whom his grandchildren call “Granser,” and his grandson Edwin, who herds goats with his brothers. They are both clad in animal skins, and Edwin listens intently to the surrounding environment with senses sharpened by life in the wilderness. Smith, by contrast, remembers a bygone civilization that he frequently talks about. After they encounter a large bear that disappears into the brush, Smith recalls the days when thousands of tourists from San Francisco would come to this very spot for pleasure seeking. The only bears then were in cages in the zoo, and people paid money to see them.
The mention of money (an unfamiliar concept to Edwin) leads Edwin to reach into his pouch and pull out a “battered and tarnished silver dollar” (20). Smith looks at the coin and discovers that it is from 2012—60 years ago. He recalls that as the year when “Morgan the Fifth was appointed President of the United States by the Board of Magnates” (20); it was also the year before the arrival of the Scarlet Death. Edwin says that he got the silver dollar from his brother Hoo-Hoo when they were “herdin’ goats down near San José last spring” (21).
As mealtime approaches, the conversation turns to food. Smith hopes that Hare-Lip (another of his grandsons) has caught some crabs. At that moment, Edwin catches sight of a rabbit, shoots it with his bow and arrow, and finishes the killing by knocking the animal’s head on a tree trunk; he hands it to Smith. When Smith remarks that he prefers crab—a “toothsome delicacy”—Edwin expresses impatience with his grandfather’s antiquated speech.
Smith and Edwin reach the coast and the encampment where the other grandsons await. Mussels and crabs are cooking on a fire, and Hoo-Hoo invites his grandfather to have some. When Smith tries to eat a rock mussel, it is too hot and painfully burns his mouth. The boys, filled with “the cruel humor of the savage” (25), laugh wildly at this. They proceed to cool the shellfish, and Smith reminds them that in his boyhood, elders were respected, not mocked. The boys decline to listen to Smith’s “babble,” and they continue their mockery of their grandfather by putting sand in his mussel and serving him an empty crab shell. At long last, when Smith is in tears, Hoo-Hoo serves Smith a proper fresh-cooked crab. Smelling the steaming crab meat, Smith’s mood changes to one of joy as he recalls how crabs with mayonnaise were served in restaurants 60 years ago.
After eating his fill, Smith stretches out before the sea and recalls the old days. San Francisco was then home to four million people, and airships filled the air at “two hundred miles an hour” (29). Suddenly, a group of goats, threatened by wolves, stampedes toward the humans. Hare-Lip hits the wolves with a slingshot, and they scatter. Smith reflects on the transience and cyclical nature of civilization. When he mentions the Scarlet Death, Hare-Lip demands to know the meaning of the word “scarlet.” Upon being told that it means “red,” he wonders why one would bother with such fancy vocabulary when “red” does just as well.
Gradually, details of the social history of the group come out in their conversation. Hare-Lip comes from the “Chauffeur Tribe”: His grandfather Bill was a chauffeur but married the widow of the millionaire magnate John Van Warden after the plague. Although Smith’s wife was a “hash-slinger” (waitress), Smith specifies that she was a “good woman” and that women were scarce in the period right after the plague.
While digging idly in the sand, the boys uncover a group of skeletons. Smith remarks that they were victims of the plague. The boys begin removing the skeletons’ teeth to string and wear, much to Smith’s disapproval: “You are true savages” (36). At length, Hare-Lip asks Smith to tell them about the Scarlet Death, warning him not to use any “funny lingo.”
Chapter 2 Summary
Smith begins his story by explaining that in his youth, San Francisco was home to “four millions.” When Edwin asks what “millions” means, Smith launches into an elaborate explanation of numbers using grains of sand, pebbles, fingers, teeth, and shells.
Smith was 27 years old when the plague came. He worked as a professor of English literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Food was plentiful but unequally shared, and Smith belonged to the “ruling class” while others toiled, their manual labor allowing the elite to live lives of comfort and luxury.
Smith explains how the plague came about. It was a result of germs smaller than the eye could see that lodged in the human bloodstream, multiplying and causing sickness and death. Gradually, scientists had come to understand some diseases and find ways to fight them. However, overpopulation, a byproduct of prosperity, made combatting contagious disease difficult.
As Smith continues to talk about germs, Hare-Lip gets up and threatens to leave if Smith doesn’t stay on topic. Smith begins to cry with dismay, but Edwin soothes his grandfather and placates Hare-Lip.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
In the first section of the book, London depicts an uncanny world. The pacing contributes to the effect, as London introduces the dystopian situation stealthily through an accumulation of detail in the narration and dialog, slowly rendering the familiar California setting as strange. For example, the abandoned railroad tracks serve as a subtle hint that the story takes place in a future in which technology has fallen into disuse. Likewise, London describes the animal skins worn by Smith and Edwin and the latter’s keen adaptation to life in the wilderness, implying a loss of contact, at least, with industrialized society. Smith’s reminiscences about an unidentified time in the past full of vacationers and, especially, Edwin’s unfamiliarity with money decisively indicate that the story is set in a dystopian future.
Dystopian literature was not nearly as common in London’s era as it has since become, and its premises departed sharply from the Western idea, widespread since the Enlightenment, that civilizational “progress” was inevitable. London instead asserts The Cyclical Nature of History and Civilization, emphasizing the deprivations of future life and its alien nature compared with the society that readers would have known. If, as London’s contemporaries would likely have assumed, “progress” meant continued urbanization and technological advancement, a world in which hunting and gathering are the norms would represent dramatic “decline.” London does not exactly critique this assumption, but he does suggest that pre-plague society was less utopian than many (including Smith) believed. His critique of the extreme wealth disparity that existed in this era pokes holes in the idea that progress (specifically, toward justice) is inevitable even before the novella moves into its description of societal collapse.
In fact, while London is unequivocal in labeling the boys as “savages”—a pejorative and often racialized term—and associating their cruelty with the environment in which they have grown up, other elements of the text challenge the idea that the societal collapse is wholly tragic. For instance, Edwin’s ease as a hunter and in repelling the bear illustrates The Resilience and Adaptability Required for Survival—traits that he might not have acquired in pre-plague society. Smith depends on Edwin’s intelligence about the wilderness for his own safety and survival just as Edwin benefits from Smith’s intelligence about the past; this dependence draws them closer together.
Nevertheless, much of the first section is concerned with setting up the tension between Smith and his grandsons, which mirrors the larger tension between human society and nature, assumed by London to be at odds. Smith likes recalling the past and expresses his recollections in poetic and scholarly language. However, he finds himself in an alien world, where his grandsons do not understand the things that he is talking about nor the language in which he expresses them. They show an irreverence toward him that would have been unthinkable in Smith’s world. The rest of the book will be an attempt to bridge the gap between Smith and the children, and thus between “civilization” and “barbarism” and between the past and present, in the hopes of finding a path to a better future.
The math lesson that Smith gives to the children in Chapter 2, which uses objects they are familiar with to introduce an unfamiliar concept, prefigures the role that he will fill throughout the embedded narrative. In this way, Smith continues to act as a teacher long after the plague destroyed his former way of life. Smith’s story, which will occupy the remainder of the book, is an extended demonstration of The Role of Storytelling in Preserving Knowledge.
Unlock all 36 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Jack London
