Although The Sea-Wolf first appeared as a novel toward the end of 1904, following its serialization in Century Magazine at the beginning of the year, it is a work which has strong connections with nineteenth-century maritime narratives whether fiction (Moby-Dick, 1865) or fact (Two Years Before the Mast, 1840). As in Herman Melville's classic novel, the main character is an obsessive individual who involves others in acts of self-destruction. Furthermore, Jack London's fictional account contains many factual elements paralleling the earlier maritime industrial aspects contained in Richard Henry Dana's nonfictional study. However, The Sea-Wolf is also a work anticipating several dominant themes within twentieth-century fiction, involving duality, gender crisis, sociopolitical critique, and an attempt to reconcile opposites that may not be entirely possible.

The novel begins with literary critic Humphrey Van Weyden leaving his philosopher friend Charley Furuseth, a devotee of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Although the opening sentence appears irrelevant, it is actually the key to the entire novel: “I scarcely know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth's credit.” After an accident on San Francisco's Bay Area ferry, Van Weyden finds himself in a nightmare situation where he experiences the consequences of his philosophical meditations. Rescued from drowning, he is taken aboard a sealing schooner, The Ghost, captained by the “abysmal brute” figure of Wolf Larsen.