Jack London juxtaposes age and youth throughout the text. Tom is an aging boxer who remembers his glory days and sees Sandel as the new version of him. Mostly, Tom views the world as unfair to the aging. He notes early on that “[H]e [is] an old un, and the world [does] not wag well with old uns” (5). Part of the problem for Tom, of course, is that his age comes with poverty. However, poverty merely exacerbates the wear and tear of life itself. Tom’s boxing past makes it particularly hard for him to get work. He’s too old to learn a trade and too tired out to win a fight or do the navy work (or other physical labor) for which he might otherwise have been suited.

Sandel, on the other hand, symbolizes “Youth, glorious Youth, rising exultant and invincible, supple of muscle and silken of skin, with heart and lungs that had never been tired and torn and that laughed at limitation of effort” (6). Tom himself used to be this embodiment of youth—a fighter who made his name by putting “the old uns” away (6). Sandel, as the young fighter, will be able to rise in the ranks the same way Tom did: by beating men like Tom, the old guard blocking the path to fame and riches.