The Call in The Call of the Wild

The Call in the Call of the Wild

1.     Brief Introduction of Jack London

 Jack London is called an American myth, a combination of personal myths he

created about himself and a national myth he represented in his life and work.

                                                 -------Abraham Rothberg

Jack London was born in the slums of San Francisco in 1876, illegitimate son of Flora Wellman(later London) and W.H.Chaney, who was an itinerant astrologer. He spent his adolescence as an oyster pirate, a seaman, a Yukon prospector and a tramp. These experiences give him a lifelong sympathy with the working class. In the cellar of society, London embraced two opposing methods of escape: individualism and socialism---the first an assertion of his strength and cunning for personal and material success, the second avowing mass strength and political revolution for social justice and the transformation of society. For a long time, he maintained the conflicting ideas side by side, but individualism gradually dominated the socialism and became his primary mode of belief and expression.

In 1899 the Atlantic Monthly published his first story, An Odyssey of the North. The Son of the Wolf, a volume of stories was published in 1900. The Call of the Wild made the bestseller list in 1903. A score of novels followed—The Sea Wolf, White Fang（1906）， Martin Eden(1909). In 1907, he published The Iron Heel, a remarkable anticipation of fascism, and considered to be his most important work.

Despite his enormous fortune, London’s last years, marked by excessive drinking, were full of despair. In 1916, at the age of forty, like his autobiographical hero, Martin Eden, Jack London committed suicide.

2.     Plot

Buck, a Saint Bernard-Shepherd dog, lived a cozy life at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller’s place. One day, one of thegardener’s helpers named Manuel stole Buck and sold him in order to pay a Chinese lottery debt. Buck was then shipped to the man in the red sweater, from whom he knew he stood no chance against a man with a club. Then Buck was shipped to Alaska and sold to a pair of French Canadians named François and Perrault for $300. They trained him as a sled dog and Buck quickly learnt to survive the tough conditions. During the trial life, he and Spitz, a vicious and pracised lead dog developed a rivalry. Eventually, he defeated Spitz and became the leader of the sled-dog team. At last, Buck was sold to ta man named Charles, his wife, Mercedes, and her brother, Hal, who knew nothing about sledding nor surviving in the Alaskan wilderness. As they journeyed on, they ran into John Thornton, an experienced outdoorsman who recognized Buck as a remarkable dog and was disgusted by the driver's beating of the dog. He cut him free from his traces and told the trio he was keeping him, much to Hal's displeasure. After some argument, the trio left and tried to cross the river, but as Thornton had warned, the ice gave way and the three fell into the river along with the neglected dogs and sled. As Thornton nursed Buck back to health, Buck came to love him and grew devoted to him and avenged him after knowing he was killed by a group of Yeehat indians. After realizing his old life is a thing of the past, Buck followed the wolf into the forest and answered the call of the wild.

3. The Call in the Call of the Wild

As far as I am concerned, there exist several calls in the call of the wild in the story that wake up the primordial instints in Buck’s body and I reduce all these to five aspects----the tough conditons of Northland, human’s greed, Buck’s love for Thornton, the competition of dominance and the most important the seed of primordial instincts in Buck. And I will analyse them one by one.

a)    the tough conditions of Northland

Buck has ever lived at a big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. Judge Miller’s place and before he became a sled-dog. There all the things he needed to do is to plunge into the swimming tank or go hunting with the Judge’s sons, escort Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles,on wintry nights lie at the Judge’s feet before the roaring library fire, carry the Judge’s grandsons on his back, or roll them in the grass, and guard their footsteps through wild adventures down to the fountain in the stable yard, and even beyond, where the paddocks were and the berry patches. He was the king—king over all creeping, crawling , flying things of Judge’s place, humans included.(Page22 para.2) From author’s depiction about Buck’s life in the warm Southland, we can easily see his cozy life. All the pictures he face are full of beauty and kindness, so there is no room for him to think about his inner natural instincts which never work in daily life. While when he is stolen and sold to the frozen lands of Yukon, Alaska, he has to learn to adjust to the fierce onditions of the trail life. Day after day, for days unending, Buck toiled in the traces. Always, they broke camp in the dark, and the first gray of dawn found them hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled off hehind them. And always they picthed camp after dark, eating their bit of fish, and crawling to sleep into the snow.(Page 36 para.4)  To die or not to die, he must make a choice, and definitely, he chooses the latter and decides to not only survive in the hostile Northland environment, but dominate the team. He has even lost the fastidiousness which had characterized his old life and he is not above taking what does not belong to him when hunger does compel him. These changes are the hints of his inner primordial instincts, even though not so strongly show, at least mark his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. Facing the tough climate, the fierce companies, there should not be mercy. He must master or be mastered, while to show mercy is a weakness. It is misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. The fierce outsider environment works as catalyst on his way to the fight, to dominate and eventually to walk into the forest.

b)    human’s greed

Who deprives Buck of his happy life in Judge’s Miller’s place? My answer will be the gardener’s helper Manuel, or rather human’s greed. It is Manuel who steals Buck from the house and sells it and makes the subsequent story happen. Mamuel has one besetting sin of playing Chinese lottery and in his gambling he has one besetting weakness, the faith in a system. (Also a mostly distinct mentality of human’s greed.) Playing a system requires money, while the wages of a gardener’s helper do not lap over the needs of a wife and numerous progeny. Then why will he comes up with the idear to steal and sell the dog to get the money to pay the gambling debt? Because people at that time need these heavy dogs with strong muscles by which to toil and furry coats to protect them from the frost to look for the yellow metal. In the beginning of the story we have been told that men ,groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland(Page21 para.1) In this Gilded Age, the stirring of old instincts drives men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things. This so-called human’s grees is nothing less than the prerequisite condition for the call of the wild in Buck.

c)     Buck’s love for Thornton

In the book, as I approach the appearance of Thornton, I feel a warm feeling from the context. It was beautiful spring weather…The sap wa rising in the pines. The willows and aspens were bursting out in young buds. Shrubs and vines were putting on fresh garbs of green. Crickets sang in the nights, and in the days all manner of creeping, crawling things rustled forth into the sun.(Page70 para.2 )It seems that something romantic will happen and the harsh life of trail will make an end. In some degree, Thornton is the man who safe Buck’s life from Charles, his wife, Mercedes, and her brother, Hal. And after that, he nurses Buck to health，which makes him come to love him and devote to him. Thornton has saved his life, which is something, but, further, he is an ideal master. Other men see to the welfare of their dogs from a sense of duty and business expediency, while Thrnton sees to the welfare of his as if they are his own children, because he can not help it. With Thornton, Buck for the first time fells a gennine passionate love which he has never experienced at Judge’s Miller’s place. For a long time, he does not like Thornton to get out of his sight. While in spite of this great love he bears Thornton, which seems to bespeak the soft civilization influence, the strain of the primitive, which the tough conditions of Northland has aroused in him, remianed alive and active, and this is why I think after Thornton’s death, Buck will avenge him and answer the call of the wild in the end. Besides Thornton, no one can hold him. It is just the deep love for Thornton as well as the deep despair of losing him make him climb up to the peak of expansion of primordial instincts. Therefore, Thornton plays a very important role in shaping Buck’s characteristics.

d)    the competition of dominance

Before Buck wins the mastership of the sled-dog team, he always has a rival named Spitz. At the very beginning, Spitz’s hehaviors has shocked Buck a lot and his laugh makes Buck hate him with a bitter and deathless hatred. Considering Buck as a dangerous rival, Spitz always seize every chance to show his teeth to Buck and even goes out of his way to bully him, striving constantly to start a fight that can end only in the death of one or the other. These certainly burn the dominant primordial beast in Buck and it has been strengthened by the fierce conditions, but it is a secret growth. Even though there exist bitter hatred between him and Spitz, he betrayed no impatience and shunned all offensive acts to wait for an appropriate time. When he is determined to fight with Spitz, he makes himself fully prepared. On the one hand, he destroys the solidarity of the team, making the other rebels into all kinds of petty misdemeanors. Then the old awe departs, all of them grow equal to challenging Spitz’s authority. On the other hand, he breaks down the discipline. Then he welcomes the death time, he fights with Spitz, the practised fighter, with his strength as well as his brain. At last, Buck defeats Spitz and becomes the successful champion to be the lead dog. This competion of dominance with Spitz shows the primordial instincts in Buck vivid and the last fight in death makes the story its climax, full of passion and excitement. The abstract concept is converted into something that we can see and we can touch, it is so real before our face that make ourselves feel the sense that we are participating in this fight.

e)     the seed of primordial instincts in Buck

       No matter what I have said above, they still belong to the external factors, quite important but not essential. The ultimate reason that leads Buck walk into the forest eventually is the internal factor, that the seed of primordial instincts in himself. Throughout the story, we can see many description of the sound in the night, it is a sound of the wild call. Deep in the forest, as often as he hears this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he feels compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it to plunge into the forest. Here and there Buck met Southland dogs, but in the main they were the wild wolf husky breed. Every night, regularly, at nine, at twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant, in which it was Buck’s delight to join.(Page 46 para.3) There are many sentences like this in the context, it is to some degree the reflection of Buck’s heart, the desire to revert. Even when he is with his beloved one, Thornton, he can not help thinking about the wild wolves listening with him and telling him the sounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing his actions, lying down to sleelp with him when he lay down. Buck has a quality that making for greatness, that is imagination, and this kind of imagination originates from his inner primordial instincts. It beckons him and each day mankind and the claims of mankind slip farther from him. When Thornton is still alive, his influence more or less presses the primordial instincts in Buck, while when he is killed, the instincts just flood out. He has nothing to care and can fully conform to his inner instincts.

4. Comment

At the end, as the story says, When the long winter nights come on and the wolves follow their meat into the lower valleys, he may be seen running at the head of the pack through the pale moonlight or glimmering borealis, leaping gigantic above his fellows, his great throat a bellow as he sings a song of the younger world,which is the song of the pack. To be frank, I was extremely attracted by the scene, when the last sentence vanished from my eyes, I can still perceive an echo of a song, a wild song which knocks up my dizzy mind that always cheerfully sink into the civilised world without questioning. A strong and handsome wolf presenting in my eyes, with infinite pride and power . I adore him from the bottom of my heart. From a very spoilt pet dog to a leading wolf, he transcends himself and the mighty nature. Just like the author, Jack London, in order to get rid of poverty, he made a great deal of efforts, as an oyster pirate, a seaman, a Yukon prospector and a tramp. Eventually he made himself famous and millionaire by writing, became a leading one in the field of literature. When I read the story, I feel Buck is a man instead of a dog, struggling with his fortune and conforming to the law of the nature. The Call of the Wild has three levels , the first and narrative one the story of a dog, Buck, who reverts to type, learns to survive in a wolf-like life, and eventually becames a wolf. The second, or biographical level, reveals what London himself lived and felt in climbing out of the abyss of poverty and deprivation to prestige as a writer and wealth. Buck was symbolically Jack London struggling for success and domination, learning the law of club and fang, and finally becomig the shaggy wolf rampant. The third level is political and philosophical, exemplifying the doctrines of social Darwinism in fictional form. From Buck, I see two kinds of personalities. On the one hand, in the story, Buck just represents all the human beings, which means that all of us have the nature to be a wolf when the environment is mature. On the other hand, we choose the civilization, we choose to keep away from the wild because our love for others, the love of others as well as fear hold most mankind from the war of all against all. Buck is the symbol of both living and death, both civilization and savage. Buck had no choice but to fight, to answer the call of the wild at that age. While now, in this sociey, I think we have adequate facts to convince ourselves that we should hold our instincts in heart, let them peacefully lie there.

5. Conclusion

       It is a real shame that this is the first time I read English edition of the Call of the Wild. And perhaps my point of view is limited to some degree. If possible, I think I will read it again this summer vocation to grasp a more profound understanding，about the story, the main character as well as the author Jack London.

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