Call of The Wild

In The Call of the Wild

The main character is the dog Buck: the reader sees his transformation from a lazy and spoiled pet into a true leader and faithful friend of a person who is able to solve the most difficult tasks and be a thunderstorm for the enemy. The story does not have time to get bored and often changes the vector of development, it is about the fact that in a cruel world you need to accept the rules of the game, otherwise you will not survive.

The Author and His Work

Jack London is one of the few writers who wrote his work based on his own experience. His collections of short stories and novellas have a real context based on authentic events. The life of Jack London was not easy, especially the heyday of his career: he had to write not for the sake of pleasure, which, as he admitted, he did not experience at all (“Jack London”). It would be easier for him to dig a ditch, a pit, if the pay for such work was twice as long as a writing career.

The book is not simple, full of dramatic episodes, but it is easy to read, instantly captivates the reader with plot twists and turns. The protagonist of this work is a dog named Buck. On the pages of the book, we get acquainted with his difficult fate and the adventures that fell to his lot. This book is about survival in the conditions of the North, about how Buck’s moral concepts change during his life. It is about a struggle for dominance, a mysterious call that Buck faced. Also, about life among different masters: cruel and capable of sincere affection (Kenigsberg). The book describes balancing on the verge of life and death and the primitive laws of existence: the difficulties of working in a team, overcoming beatings, hunger, fatigue, cold, victories and defeats, losses and gains.

The Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild is a work that talks about an animal, in this case, a dog that feels and understands. Like it or not, but a dog is sometimes better than a person, it will not betray, is faithful, always there, cheers up and much, much more, which the one who is lucky enough to have such a friend will say. London writes about this to everyone in the second part of the story, and the first shows the reader how Buck has to survive, how he turns from a domestic animal into a wild beast, in which instincts wake up, which hears the call of the ancestors. Although the work was written in 1903, scientists only decades later announced that the history of its development is recorded in the DNA of each creature, which means that Jack London once again hit the nail on the head, everything is in our genes (London 67; Kenigsberg). The realism of London’s story only adds value to the piece over time. Not only it contains vivid and picturesque imagery but also certain scientific facts that become confirmed over time.

The Main Character’s Journey

The main character has entered a new world for himself. When necessary, he used ingenuity and cunning, listened to his inner instinct and allowed his strength to enter if necessary. The dog here does not speak humanly, the author knows his thoughts, thereby not making the story too childish. As one reads the book, it often becomes a shame for the dogs that have appeared and disappeared in Buck’s life (London 180). The ending hits the heart, but in the end, the story leaves a very deep impression, one begins to look at all dogs differently, whether domestic or stray, but the latter become very sorry, even stronger than before.

Conclusion

Jack London knows how to state everything in such a way that you can read without stopping until the very end. How colorfully he describes the beauties of the nature of the Clondike (at one time the writer himself traveled to get impressions, this place is located in the southwest of Canada, almost the border with Alaska), where a large number of gold miners gathered, how realistically he described all the events that happened with the main hero, in the role of which was a dog named Buck. The story turned out to be sad, cruel, pitiful; but such is life - a life where either survive or die, a life where the strongest and most cunning quickly adapt to any conditions, and the weak give up and disappear without a trace.

Works Cited

“Jack London”. Biography, 2014, https://www.biography.com/writer/jack-london.
Kenigsberg, Ben. ”‘The Call Of The Wild’ Review: Man’S Best Friend? Cartoon Dog”. The New York Times, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/movies/the-call-of-the-wild-review.html.
London, Jack. The Call Of The Wild. Scholastic, 2000.