The Call of the Wild
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The Call of the Wild is a novella by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a domesticated dog whose primordial instincts return as he works as a sled dog.
Published in 1903, The Call of the Wild is London's most read book and considered one of his best. Because the protagonist is a dog, it is often thought to be particularly suitable for children, but it is dark in tone and contains numerous scenes of cruelty and violence.
Contents |
Plot
The hero, Buck, is a 140 lb St. Bernard/Scotch Shepherd (ie Collie) mix who is abducted by a treacherous thief and sold to a trainer of sled dogs. In a series of episodes, Buck is forced to survive and adapt to brutal and cruel conditions. He changes hands many times before he is eventually acquired by a kind and loving—but exploitative—owner, John Thornton. When Thornton is killed by "Yeehat Indians,"Template:Ref Buck returns to the wild and becomes the alpha male of a wolf pack. Images of death, cruelty, and Darwinian struggle abound. Of the new world Buck enters, London writes "The salient thing of this other world seemed fear." (Such dark themes are typical of Jack London's work, and he defended them in his essay "The Terrible and Tragic in Fiction.").
Themes from the book
The following themes are evident in the book:
- Adaptation
- Adventure
- Conflict
- Courage and Determination
- Death
- Interdependence
- Independence
- Leadership
- Survival
- Nature's Unpredictability
Critical reception
The University of Pennsylvania's Online Books Page [1] states that "Jack London's writing was censored in several European dictatorships in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1929, Italy banned all cheap editions of his Call of the Wild, and Yugoslavia banned all his works as being 'too radical.' Some of London's works were also burned by the Nazis." (These regimes may have been reacting to Jack London's reputation as an outspoken Socialist rather than to the content of the book, which, unlike some of his other novels, has no overt political message).
In 1960, critic Maxwell Geismar called The Call of the Wild "a beautiful prose poem." Editor Franklin Walker said that it "belongs on a shelf with Walden and Huckleberry Finn". E. L. Doctorow called it "a mordant parable... his masterpiece."
Notes
Template:Note The tribe was Jack London's fictional creation. "There was no tribe of American Indians named Yeehats. London's decision to employ a fictitious tribe is consistent with Northland traditions, however, for it was common to hear tales of barbarous people living in remote and unexplored regions of the territory." (Dyer, 1997)
References
- Dyer, Daniel, 1997: The Call of the Wild: Annotated and Illustrated, University of Oklahoma Press, ISBN 0806129204, note on line 2098 (Yeehats fictional)