How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph) Shmoop has numbered the chapters continuously, but the book renumbers them in each Part.
Quote #4
White Fang, in the very nature of him, could never know anything about gods; at the best he could know only things that were beyond knowing - but the wonder and awe that he had of these man-animals in ways resembled what would be the wonder and awe of man at sight of some celestial creature, on a mountain top, hurling thunderbolts from either hand at an astonished world. (9.25)
Doesn't this feel like an expression of innocence? His wolf-y mind can never wrap its head around who and what we are. Instead of trying to figure it out, he just accepts it, the same way a child would when confronted with a complex topic (like God or nuclear war or why grown-ups still let bad things happen).
Quote #5
White Fang knew the law well: TO OPPRESS THE WEAK AND OBEY THE STRONG. (13.11)
Contrast this with earlier quotes for this theme, where White Fang's innocence seemed unstoppable. This is a pretty not-innocent thing to be thinking. And yet it's impressed so deeply into poor Fang's brain that London breaks out the all-caps to give it to us.
Quote #6
His outlook was bleak and materialistic. The world as he saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, a world in which caresses and affection and the bright sweetnesses of the spirit did not exist. (13.15)
Here comes the paradox. White Fang's outlook here feels pretty grim and not innocent. It's kill or be killed out there. And yet that attitude is very much in keeping with the natural world, which we might expect to be innocent—in a manner of speaking—since it's untainted by man. Which is it, Jack? Or are you asking the readers to make up their own mind, you sly devil?