Numerous memoirs and diaries remain from the men and women who toiled over the icy trail in that year. Their accounts of the journey between Skaguay and Dawson are the best source of what life was like on an expedition. Writings speak of rugged canyons, boldly ascending mountains, and projecting cliffs. Nature sought to put all those full of hope and prospects of glory to a formidable test of wills and strength. Certainly not all were successful. Travelers would pass a stretch of land known as "Dead Horse Trail," where animals and their unlucky owners had succumbed to hypothermia, starvation, or Indian attacks. The name of the trail is ironic. While horses were used by some, the dog was by far more ubiquitous. The most common breeds were the huskies (and their cross-breeds from the river country), stocky and gray with short, erect ears and thick coat, intelligent and majestic, and the malamute, an Alaska Indian dog crossed with the wolf and resembling the wolf in shape and size. They were mostly brownish-gray, friendly and easily led. In the Gold Rush Arctic, the dog was of paramount importance. Men could not cover the great distances involved, much less carry their food and equipment, on foot. As yet there were no machines, not even railroads. The problem with horses was that they were bogged down hopelessly by the snow and could not survive on fish, the most readily available food. Because of physical qualifications, adaptability, and its natural kinship to other creatures who were part of the sphere they occupied, the dog became the solution to the finding and mining of gold. Their integral role in the Gold Rush prompted London to anthropomorphize them in his writing. Some claim he does this to the point of absurdity, but there is little doubt he had good reason to see them as superhuman.
Buck: He is the main character, the protagonist of our story, part St. Bernard, part Scotch shepherd, a hero in his own search for freedom. Buck is the atypical domesticated dog in whom courses primal blood of the wild. He goes through many owners, and learns much about the ways of man and dogs. His transition and transformation from domesticated to savage is the premise of the novel. He is born to be a leader. Buck's great intelligence and determination to succeed mark him as superior to most of the humans in the story. We are meant to both fear and admire him.
Spitz: The original lead husky dog of the dogsled team and Buck's archrival, who is eventually killed by Buck in a fight for leadership. He is a bully who goes out of his way to punish any new dog who comes under his control. He cannot be a sympathetic character because of his unfounded ruthlessness. He seems to take pleasure in being savage without cause. Furthermore, he is willing to put himself above the good of the team, a sure sign that he must be exterminated for the sake of everyone.
Curly: A sweet Newfoundland dog, one of Buck's first companions after he has been kidnapped. She is unexpected killed for trying to make friendly advances toward another dog. She symbolizes the effect of the law of club and fang when she is punished for breaking the code of savage survival.
Dave: Another one of Buck's first companions, he is one of the most knowledgeable dogs on the team. Mostly aloof, new life springs into him the moment he is placed in a harness. Not only does he help teach Buck the procedures; he embodies the utter pride of the trail. His reluctant death indicates that the heart of all dogsled dogs resides in their completion of allotted tasks, and makes him a pitiful figure in the end.
Sol-leks: Another member of the team. Like Dave, he is aloof until attached to a sled. Buck accidentally approaches his blind side and receives a thorough lashing for his friendly advances. Sol-leks seals the law of club and fang in Buck's mind.
Billie: Another member of the team. He is good-natured and sweet, but can fight when the occasion demands it. He shows Buck how to make a bed in the snow. His death at the hands of Hal makes him a tragic figure.
Joe: Another member of the team, Billie's brother. They are polar opposites, as Joe is always snarling and defensive. Like Spitz, he serves as a contrast to the ideal dog because is spirited and strong but lacks the imagination and reasoning ability of Buck.
Pike: Another member of the team, often referred to as "the malingerer." He rarely gets up on time, and he will steal food and generally be very sneaky. Buck follows his example, and demonstrates that he is fit to survive in the Northland.
Dub: Another member of the team. He is an awkward blunderer who gets blamed for Buck's thievery.
Dolly: Another member of the team who goes mad after being bitten by wild huskies and is killed.
Skeet: A motherly Irish setter who belongs to John Thornton. She nurses Buck's wounds and engages him in play.
Nig: A huge black dog who belongs to John Thornton. He has laughing eyes and a good nature.
Lone wolf: The "wild brother" that Buck meets in the forest. He allows Buck to fully realize his desire to return to the wild, and helps him to join his pack.
Judge Miller: The original owner of Buck. We never see him, but the discussion that surrounds him paints him as sedate and prosperous, with a large family. He is the epitome of the civilized society which has managed to domesticate Buck.
Manuel: The gardener's helper on Judge Miller's estate. He kidnaps and sells Buck solely to fund his gambling habit. To Manuel, animals are clearly objects instead of living beings.
Saloon-keeper: The middleman who takes Buck out of Manuel's charge, who is also on the lookout for quick cash. He is thoroughly unable to deal with dogs in a reasonable manner: Buck is able to severely lacerate his hand. The saloon-keeper and Manuel might be seen as lesser people who are unable to credit dogs with having personality and intelligence.
Red sweater: Also known as the man with the club. He metes out discipline to all dogs that will be sold for sledding. Ruthless in his repeated beatings of unruly creatures such as Buck, he maintains composure and control. He does not beat out of cruelty, it seems. Rather, he looks to teach these dogs the lessons that will allow them to survive in this harsh environment. Buck never forgets the law of the club.
Francois: A Canadian Frenchman, the original dogsled driver. He is knowledgeable and understanding of his dogs, but still very strict with discipline. He is one of the strongest examples of a man who engages in a cooperative, working relationship with the dogs.
Perrault: The superior of Francois, an agent of the Canadian government. He is admired by Buck for his fearlessness in blazing their trail, disregarding the threat of ice that might break. He also engages in a working relationship with the team.
Hal: A young man of nineteen or twenty who purchases Buck and his team once they have used up their usefulness to the government. He has ambitions to find gold, but his incompetence and laziness are out of place in the harsh environment. He has no understanding of the dogs, and mistreats them terribly. His death is appropriately by his own hands, brought on by reckless stupidity.
Charles: The brother-in-law of Hal, a weak figure who does not say much. He basically follows Hal around and does what he is told.
Mercedes: Sister of Hal, wife of Charles. She is the only female character in the story, and does not speak well for the sex. She is exceedingly self-centered, and spends most of her time crying and complaining.
John Thornton: The man who rescues Buck from Hal's cruelty. He is by far the most admirable human character in the story, kind but full of the uncompromising strength that is necessary to survive on the trail. John is the ideal master because his nature is so dog-like. We can see him as Buck in human form. For his part Buck loves John to pieces, and is willing to do absolutely anything for him.
Pete, Hans: Partners of John's, who bring the raft to take him to Dawson and accompany him on the expedition for the lost mine. They whole-heartedly support John when it counts, laying down all their money for a bet that he makes. They admire Buck and favor him at times without expecting anything.
"Black" Burton: Man in bar who is picking a fight. When John Thornton steps in, Burton pushes him down and is rewarded with a large bite from Buck that tears his throat.
Matthewson: Man who bets John that Buck cannot pull a ton on the sled.
Jim O'Brien: Man who loans John the money to make the bet against Matthewson.
Yeehats: The group of Valley Indians that raids the camp of John Thornton and his companions and kills them. They are terrorized when Buck returns and kills the majority of them. They perpetuate legends about him.
The Gold Rush in the Yukon and Alaska has prompted the need for big, strong dogs who will be able to pull sleds over icy trails. Buck, a large animal living in the home of Judge Miller in Santa Clara, California, is exactly what the explorers want. He is an animal with human-like tendencies, intelligence, strength and dignity. Thus far he has enjoyed his civilized life with the occasional nature stroll or hunting trip. Manuel, a gardener's helper with a penchant for gambling and a need for money, manages to kidnap Buck and sell him on the black market. He is given to a saloon-keeper and transported via train to the Northland. Throughout the ordeal, Buck is kept in a cage and becomes increasingly angry. He manages to bite the saloon-keeper. By the time he arrives at his destination, he has worked himself into a rage.
The meeting with the Red Sweater and the painful encounters with his club push Buck into submission. He is not broken, but he knows better than to keep resisting, which can only result in more beatings. Once he is behaving correctly Buck, along with Dave and Curly, two other dogs, is sold to Francois and Perrault, two agents of the Canadian government. They must travel to Dawson, Alaska and then back to Skaguay. While in camp, Curly is killed for trying to make friendly advances to a husky. Buck understands that this is the law of club and fang which dominates the new life he is headed for. He resolves never to go down in that manner.
Buck and Dave join a preexisting dog team led by Spitz, a bullying husky dog. The trail work begins immediately. Buck learns fast from the other dogs. In time he starts to become more wild, losing the domesticity imposed upon him in the Judge's home. Tensions develop between him and Spitz. Buck is ready to be a leader, and looks to usurp Spitz's power. While hunting a rabbit one night, the two end up in a fight to the death. Buck achieves mastery. He will not be harnessed to the sled unless he takes the leader position. Even the appearance of a club does not faze him‹he has learned how to avoid that. When Francois allows him to take the position, it is triumphant because Buck no longer allows humans to completely decide his fate. They are equals. Buck begins to dream of an ancient world in which man and dog fought side by side to survive.
When the government work is done, the team is sold to an imbecilic threesome led by Hal, a young man who has no idea how to work with a dog team. In his eagerness to complete the trail, he terribly mistreats the dogs. His quiet brother-in-law Charles and weepy sister Mercedes do not help anything. Because Hal is incompetent, they run out of food quickly. The dogs are starving and overworked. One by one they start to die. The remnants pull into the camp of John Thornton. Buck will not rise when Hal wants to leave. After watching the cruel young man beat Buck repeatedly, John steps in and saves him by cutting him out of the harness. The rest of the team continues, but soon falls through the ice, thin because of the warmth.
Buck becomes the favorite pet of John, and he absolutely adores his master. Under John's influence, as well as the influence of Skeet and Nig, his two pets, Buck begins to heal, and regains some of the civility he lost on the trail. He does a number of miraculous things for John, saving his life twice and winning a bet that allows him to pay off all his debts. He cannot completely forget his visions of the primitive world, but he is happy at John's side. Along with Hans and Pete, John's partners, the dogs go on an expedition for a lost mine. The work on the trail, the daily hunting, are absolutely delightful for Buck. When the mine is found, there is no more work to be done, and Buck muses once more on the call that he hears nightly in the forest. Eventually he starts to sleep away from the camp. He embraces his instincts and wild tendencies, killing his own food and watching out for himself. Buck meets a wolf who befriends him, and is quite sad when he returns to the camp. This goes on for a while, until one day Buck returns to the camp to find everyone killed by the Yeehats, a Native American tribe. He flies into a rage at the death of beloved John, and kills all the men who do not run away from him. There is no more tie to mankind, so Buck returns to the forest and remains with a pack of wolves. He has heeded the call.
Chapter I: Into the Primitive
Summary:
Trouble is brewing in southern California. Gold has been discovered in the Arctic, and everyone is looking to cash in on the find by rushing to the Northland. Men are looking for big dogs strong enough to toil endlessly and withstand the bitter cold. Enter Buck, the main character of London's tale. He cannot read newspapers, and is unaware of the brewing trouble. He lives in the home of Judge Miller in Santa Clara Valley. The house is large and spacious, and the grounds beautifully laid out with orchards and gardens. For the four years of his life, Buck has lived here in splendor. Other dogs are present, but he considers himself to be at the very top of everyone, including humans. He is neither a house-dog nor a kennel dog. The whole realm belongs to him. He escorts the Judge's daughters on walks; he hunts with his sons, carries his grandchildren on his back. Buck is a mix of St. Bernard and Scotch shepherd. At only 140 pounds, he is not that large. However, the dignity of good living enables him to carry himself royally. Buck maintains himself through physical exercise. He enjoys having hardened muscles.
Unknown to Buck, he is danger. Manuel, a gardener's helper, has a love of gambling. Stupidly he has "faith" in a system, which means that he needs a great deal more money than his wages in order to support his habit along with wife and children. When the Judge and his sons are gone one night, Manuel leads Buck on what appears to be a walk. They arrive at a flag station where a man waits. Money changes hands, and Manuel ties a stout rope around Buck's neck. When the stranger tries to take the rope, Buck growls, and the rope tightens, cutting off his breath. He flies violently at the man, only to be choked repeatedly. Furious, Buck is thrown into the baggage car of a train. He has another struggle with the man (a saloon-keeper, as he tells conductor), who ends up with a mangled hand. Buck is being taken to San Francisco for his "fits." The conductor and the saloonkeeper speak about the money that has changed hands for this animal. After incessant choking, Buck is fitted with a brass collar and thrown into a cage. Throughout the night, he questions why he is here. His pride is wounded, and he wants the Judge to come for him.
The cage is switched to an express car that rides for two days to Seattle. Occasionally Buck is harassed by men who poke fun at him through his cage. He does not drink or eat, which exponentially augments his wrath. He vows that another rope will never be placed upon him. Soon he is faced with the man in the red sweater, who breaks him out of the crate. Anxious to assuage his fury, Buck leaps at him and is struck by a club, a horrible first-time experience. His madness knows no boundary, so each time he rushes he is beaten and bloodied. At last he can no longer rise. The red sweater genially tells him to mind his place, pats his head and provides him with meat and water. Buck is beaten, not broken. He has learned not to fight a club. Other dogs arrive, and undergo the same process. Buck respects the red sweater, but will not show affection. Men arrive who take the dogs away. A Canadian, Perrault, catches sight of Buck and believes he is one in a thousand. He purchases him, along with Curly, a good-natured Newfoundland. They go on a boat and are turned over to Francois, another swarthy French-Canadian. There are two other dogs, a white one who is treacherously friendly, and Dave, a disinterested dog if there ever was one. The boat ends its journey, and Buck is puzzled at the cold mushiness on the ground. It is his first snow.
Analysis:
The reader is immediately introduced to the major tension in London's tale‹the juxtaposition and interchanging of humans and animals. The first sentence of the chapter, "Buck did not read the newspapers," is ambiguous. It is also notable because it is repeated. This is extremely deliberate. Between the two instances where this sentence appears, the author seeks to toy with our conceptions of dogs and people. Initially reading, we would assume that the name refers to a person. Upon finding out that Buck is a dog, it only seems logical that he should not be literate. However, London plays with the concept of humanness when he describes Buck as a ruler, "king over all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller's place, humans included." Placing a dog above humans might seem laughable, but the author writes in such a simple, matter-of-fact tone that we are forced to take him seriously. He provides us with an account of Buck's relatives, much as one might do when introducing friends in the late nineteenth century. Buck lives the life of a "sated aristocrat," and he is egotistical as "country gentlemen" tend to be. He maintains a sleek figure through exercise, as many who are well-known and well-to-do might desire. Notice the class of society with which this dog is associated. It is not enough to equate Buck with people in general: the author desires to place him on a plane that will probably elevate this animal above most of his readers. The success of the entire tale depends on the audience's ability to both relate to Buck and to be in awe of him. By the time we read once more about Buck not being able to read newspapers, we are more ready to receive him as a human, and we feel a trifle surprised that such a regal, human-like creature is illiterate. Buck inspires human empathy because he has a strong sense of self.
The house from which Buck comes is manicured perfection. His existence is "sun-kissed." But right before the kidnapping, London takes care to include aspects of Buck that seem oddly at variance with his idyllic life. First of all, he is a mixed breed. The dignity of his world is slightly marred by his lack of pedigree. His love of exercise hardens his muscles, and "the cold-tubbing races, the love of water had been a tonic and a health preserver." This is no delicate creature who sits prettily. The other dogs, a Japanese pug and a Mexican hairless, are exotic, ornamental breeds, inadequate companions for a dog of Buck's strength and caliber. He much prefers to hunt and amble with the Judge's offspring. Buck's owner does not give him an opportunity to behave as nature would demand. We begin to wonder how happy Buck truly is in this environment. Perhaps he is better-suited to another life, even if he does not know it yet. Once he is ripped away from his former life, the royal fashion of Buck's carriage starts to wane as these cruder instincts for pain and toil begin to surface. His first encounters with the saloon-keeper are shockingly intense for a dog that has come from a loving environment. Buck even lacerates his hand, he who has most likely never harmed a human in his life. We admire his astute reasoning‹he knows the men are up to no good, but we are surprised at his quick turnaround. He slips too easily into the role of attacker to have been all that genteel in the first place.
One of the most remarkable traits of Buck is his control over his emotions. He experiences sensation and transforms it into cold, logical response. This is not to say that he acts without passion and fire; rather, his unbridled fury during confrontations illustrates a cogent life force flowing in his veins. At first, the reader observes an utter lack of analyzing on Buck's part: he does not think before he acts. This would be perhaps his most unhuman-like characteristic. Most of the time people reason, thinking first and acting later. The seeds of reason are taking root in Buck as he sits in the crate for two days and purposely does not eat or drink, in order to cultivate matchless violence. Unfortunately, this is effort spent in vain because it is not towards a feasible purpose. Buck's confrontation with the man in the red sweater is a turning point for him. At this moment he learns the lesson of primitive law. He is not broken, but "the facts of life took on a fiercer aspectŠhe faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused." The author succinctly summarizes the idea when he refers to Manuel's gambling problem: faith in a system makes damnation certain. In this world, the traditional system of justice, law and order is subverted, and a new system reigns through primitive rule. Humans are no longer friendly masters; they are either allies or enemies. The ruthlessness that has been exhibited thus far by men poses a slightly ironic question: can individuals who behave so barbarously be called humans? Dogs and people appear to have switched places. Francois is called a "half-breed" who Buck can only respect grudgingly (while he is also a half-breed, he would never say such). The dog who steals a piece of Buck's dinner is a sneaky "fellow." As the story continues, the line between men and dogs will get even more blurry. Buck is left in a place with landscape and weather that is utterly strange to him. He must rise up to the challenge if he is to survive.
Summary and Analysis of Chapter 2
Chapter II: The Law of Club and Fang
Summary:
Buck's first day on the Dyea beach is nightmarish. He feels disoriented, having been flung from civilization into confusion and chaos. He must always be working and alert among the "savages" who know only the law of "club and fang." Fighting is a constant looming threat. The good-natured Curly is killed simply for trying to make friendly advances towards a husky dog who is only half her size. The dog takes her down with efficient, quick technique. Once it is certain that Curly will not rise again, the rest of the dogs in the camp attack and kill her. Spitz, the lead dog of Buck's team, laughs. Buck hates him bitterly. He has learned that fair play does not exist, and he resolves that he will never go down. The first time he is harnessed to the sled, his dignity is hurt but he is "too wise to rebel." Dave, an experienced wheeler, nips at Buck whenever he is making mistakes. Spitz growls at him warningly from his front post. Buck learns quickly from these two dogs, and Francois is pleased.
Two more huskies, Billie and Joe, are added to the team. Brothers they are, but different as night and day. Billie's fault is his good nature, while Joe's downfall is perpetual sourness and snarling. Buck receives them as comrades. Dave ignores them, while Spitz thrashes about to demonstrate the hierarchy of the team. Soon another husky, Sol-leks, arrives. Like Dave, he is noncommittal and expects nothing from anyone. When Buck tries to sleep that night, he is unable to find warmth. After wandering around the camp, he decides to see how the team is making out. He comes across Billie buried in the snow, proceeds to make his own hole and fall asleep instantly. He wakes with soreness unlike any he has known. Buck is harking back to the lives of his ancestors. The two men are very glad to possess him. When the dogs are harnessed, Buck marvels at the change in Dave and Sol-leks. They are no longer passive, but ready to work. More dogs are added, and they all lose the look of unconcern as soon as they sled is moving. Buck is still learning fast, and the whip snaps less frequently.
Every night in camp, Buck is exhausted. He ravenously eats his ration of fish. Once dainty, he has lost all fastidiousness after he is robbed for eating slowly. He duplicates the actions of Pike, a new dog, by stealing a whole chunk of bacon. He is not caught. Buck's theft marks him as "fit to survive" in the Northland environment. Property and personal feelings can no longer be respected. He does things because it is easier to do them than to not do them. His development of heightened senses, callous muscles, and a hardened stomach is rapid. Buck has learned a new set of life skills, and they are instilling new life into him. He howls at the moon, and the ancient song flows because life is "a puppet thing."
Analysis:
The link between man and beast grows stronger; the distinctions are more blurry. The roles of humans and dogs become more or less equal in this chapter. Both are heading for the same place, albeit with different intentions. Buck is now part of a team, the group of dogs who pulls the sled. He must adapt quickly to the new life. These animals work together, better than any humans, to complete their allotted tasks. Buck learns how to pull and steer through punishment inflicted by the other dogs. He relies on lessons, not instinct. It is ironic that Francois attributes Buck's quick improvement to his grand teaching. He has no concept of the intricacy involved in the interactions of his dogs. The author is definitely mocking the inability of humans to see past themselves. Clearly Francois does not give the dogs enough credit. Nonetheless, the team atmosphere between the dogs extends to the men, and reveals a relationship of mutualism‹the men will not fulfill their goals without the dogs, and the dogs will not survive without caretakers or work to do. When in the traces, "they were alert and active, anxious that the work should go well, and fiercely irritable with whateverŠretarded that work." From this simple description we would have no idea whether we are hearing about the humans or the dogs. By this time, they are practically the same. Collectively they are called "savages," who are unlike the men and dogs who inhabit towns. London addresses this difference because he wishes to illustrate that those who live off the land, who explore and pioneer discoveries, are indeed a breed of their own, as different from one another as a poodle is to a St. Bernard.
Yet underlying the comradeship between humans and dogs, dogs and dogs, is the pervasive law of club and fang. This is the attitude of everyone for himself, and it threatens to destroy the concept of team. Curly's grisly death is purely symbolic of the inherent contradictions between teams and hierarchies. In this world, she is merely chastised for not realizing that within this group of beings with a common goal, there is a strict sense of etiquette that stems from differing statuses of the dogs. Leaders such as Spitz exist to keep everyone in check. The moment that this system is violated, such as when Curly attempts a gesture of friendliness, the dogs rise up as one to kill her, thereby expelling her from their society. Even the interference of humans with clubs and axes cannot stop what must be done. Once again, humans think they have control, but these dogs have more control and common sense than any man in the camps could comprehend. Buck's clear understanding of the dynamic indicates a desire to protect himself. Spitz's "laughter" at the terrible scene inspires Buck to dislike him. London is foreshadowing the eventual problems that the two will face in one another when the tension between them multiplies past the boiling point of their tempers.
Buck has been thrust into this world, but he belongs here. We know this because the author writes the perspective of Buck with an entirely matter-of-fact tone. We do not pity this dog, and we almost never will. Buck is more than capable of negotiating this harsh environment. He is constantly undergoing change, and he graciously receives lessons when he does not understand something. His powers of perception are paramount; Buck's most fascinating trait is his ability to learn from absolutely everything around him. Curly's untimely demise shows him that fair play does not exist in this world. When he is strapped into the harness, his dignity may be wounded but he is "too wise to rebel." The mention of dignity in this context is very tongue-in-cheek. Whether Buck is fully aware of it, any dignity he had is nearly gone. Dainty eating habits have turned into ravenous, growling gulps. He copies his teammates in making a sleeping area and in stealing food to supplement his meager rations. This last fact is especially significant because it illustrates the beginning of the death of Buck's morals. His theft marks him as "fit to survive" in this place. Observing the morals that played nicely into Southland life means he would "fail to prosper." The word "prosper" is a very deliberate choice. Normally associated with the acquisition of wealth and power, the diction demonstrates that Buck has ambition to succeed as much as possible. Still, Buck's overall character is still intact in the mind of the reader because he does not steal for joy, but to assuage the hunger pangs in his stomach. He is admirable because he will do what has to be done, and he does not fuss with a moral code that has no place in the Northland. Whether this is a development or a retrogression is ambiguous. But since life is a "puppet thing," one must behave as the environment and the situation demand, be he man or dog.
Summary and Analysis of Chapter 3
Chapter III: The Dominant Primordial Beast
Summary:
The beastly side of Buck's nature is growing stronger. It is a controlled, secret growth. He does not pick fights, even though the hatred himself and Spitz rages darkly. Sensing a rival, Spitz never fails to show his teeth at Buck. He is looking to start the fight that will end in one of their deaths. Buck resists his fury until Spitz takes over his nest one night. A fight breaks out. Francois discerns the cause of the argument, and cheers on Buck. Perrault breaks up the skirmish with a club. There are four of five starving huskies who have invaded the camp. They pounce on the food, crazed by its smell. The team has never seen such dogs. Gaunt skeletons with eyes and fangs. Everyone is fighting. Spitz treacherously attacks Buck from the side. The two men save the dogs, and try to save whatever food is left. The team takes flight into the forest, where they regroup to return to camp. All are terribly wounded, and the sled harness is a mess, having been chewed in various places. Nonetheless, the team sets out on the toughest part of the trail. Occasionally they break through the ice, and the dogs have to be thawed by a fire. Perrault is relentless. He cannot be daunted, and wants to clear the 400 miles to Dawson as soon as possible.
At first Buck's feet are in agony from the years of softened generations. Soon the feet harden and become used to the 40 miles the team covers daily. One of the dogs, Dolly, becomes mad and is killed. In the chaos Spitz attacks Buck, and is horribly punished. Everyone seems to know that the fight is drawing nearer. Buck wants it. He craves it because it is in his nature. Spitz fears the possible supremacy of Buck because he sense Buck's pride in the work. For his part Buck makes every effort to threaten the leadership. He interferes when Spitz disciplines other dogs. The solidarity of the group is destroyed as a mutinous faction rises against Spitz. The night finally arrives. After supper, the team spies a rabbit and sets off to chase it. Buck is in the lead. All of his old instincts are in full force. Spitz, cold and calculating, takes a different route to head off Buck before he can reach the rabbit. The clash progresses amongst blows to the shoulder, face, throat. Spitz is an experienced fighter, but Buck possesses imagination. He tricks his rival, and is able to break both forelegs. Spitz is beaten. Buck has "made his kill and found it good."
Analysis:
The insane deliberateness that comes to characterize Buck is the initial focal point of this chapter. Wildness, the "primordial beast," are growing within him, but secretly so. We are not given justifications as to why he is at first biding his time and avoiding all acts of aggression toward Spitz. However, we can assume that this careful consideration is part calculation for Buck and part artfulness for London. The audience is primed for the confrontation, but in the name of suspense, we must wait and watch in frustration as Buck shrugs off the attempts of Spitz to bully him. That Buck's self-control starts to break when Spitz occupies his sleeping nest is very telling. Baring teeth is one matter; but this is an active invasion of private space. Buck will not tolerate this. Their first fight is interrupted by a more pressing one with the wild huskies. The team concept comes back into practice as the dogs must unite to ward off a common enemy. Defense is completely up to them. Francois, Perrault and their human weapons do not prevent the wild animals from stealing most of their food and badly injuring the dogs. (As a brief aside, though, Perrault is commended by the omniscient narrator for his brave conduct in scouting for thinning ice on the trail. The only time humans can be complimented is when they indulge in labor that is as risky as that of the dog team.) During the fight, as Spitz treacherously attacks Buck from the side, we realize that Spitz is the biggest threat to the team because he puts his own interests before the team's in the most dire cases. We understand that he fears Buck, but we dislike him intensely anyway. Thus our hearts are cheering for Buck's eventual capture of the mastery.
The bitter blood between Buck and Spitz correlates to images and events that demonstrate the dissolution of solidarity. The ice that constitutes the trail is constantly breaking up unexpectedly. Dolly, one of the newer dogs, becomes rabid and turns on Buck, chasing him until she is axed in the head. London makes it certain that everything is shaky: the very ground under the team can literally fall out at any moment. Sentences are not long, but more short-clipped and impatient. The involvement of the rest of the team in the war for leadership is crucial. The human tendencies are very strong in these scenes. Buck is essentially a rebel clamoring for mutiny‹the pride of the trail has gripped him irretrievably and he is ready to take the success that belongs to him by nature. Smartly he manages to turn other dogs against Spitz by sticking up for them when they are threatened by him. Buck is truly a manipulative politician, so clever that Francois cannot catch him stirring up trouble, even though he knows that Buck is behind the squabbling of the team. The rabbit that acts as the excuse for the long-awaited showdown inspires in Buck "blood lust" and "the joy to kill." It is the first time that we observe Buck taking open pleasure in any kind of destruction. Civility has almost completely left him, and he is finally ready to take on Spitz. The tone of London's prose becomes more frantic as the two roll in the snow. In the end, it is Buck's utter humanity, in the form of intelligent imagination, that allows him to kill Spitz. The fact that he is on more of a human wavelength gives him an advantage over most other dogs. The death of Spitz gives Buck a sense of accomplishment and power.
Summary and Analysis of Chapter 4
Chapter IV: Who Has Won to Mastership
Summary:
Francois discovers that Spitz is missing and praises Buck. As the dogs are about to be harnessed, Buck trots up to the spot that Spitz occupied. Francois brings Sol-leks to the position of leader instead. Buck is furious and springs upon him. He will not let Francois harness the team. Francois retaliates by bringing in a heavy club. Bitterly snarling, but remembering his lesson at the hands of the man in the red sweater, Buck stays just out of reach. Both men try to catch him, but Buck will not relent. He wants the leadership. Finally Francois throws down the club, and makes a place for Buck in front. "Laughing," the victor takes his rightful place. Buck excels at leading, whipping the rest of the team into shape. They reach the goal of Skaguay in record time, thanks to their new leader. Francois and Perrault leave the team in the care of officials, a "Scotch half-breed," and pass out of Buck's life for good.
The work is now strictly toilsome, pulling the mail carts back over the trail to Dawson. Life is monotonous. Feeding time each day is a battle of quickness. Buck quickly achieves mastery over the other dogs. Memories of his California home are faded and dim‹more often he is visited by visions of an ancient life, his place with the first humans to appear on earth. In these dreams, Buck himself looks primitive. He is the constant companion of a man in the battle for survival. Dawson is reached, and the team reverses direction once again. The strength of the dogs is quickly waning. Dave becomes terribly ill, but refuses to stop pulling the sled. He will not be left behind by the driver who knows he is on his deathbed. During his final pull, he often falls and is caught in the traces of the sled. The next morning, Dave is too weak to rise. The team is driven ahead some ways, but they cannot ignore the gunshot that rings out. Buck and everyone else knows what has happened‹Dave is dead.
Analysis:
The fact that Buck's kill is lauded by Francois indicates the depth of understanding between man and dog. Even though he is the one who steers the sled, Francois recognizes and respects the hierarchical structure of the dog society, which is separate from the restraints imposed by humans. He proves this for sure when he succumbs to Buck and lets him take the lead position in the team lineup. Their scuffle can be viewed in terms of a face-off, not between a human and a beast, but between two equals. This is one of the high points of the novel; the element of control is slowly trickling from man to beast. Two men working together are no match for an intelligent dog with determination to reach his earlier goal of prosperity. The club, which is the most powerful weapon available to humans, no longer has an effect, for Buck has learned from the man in the red sweater, and we know that he never forgets a lesson. Therefore he "laughs triumphantly" as he trots up to the place where he belongs. In this moment Buck actually has more of a say in his fate, which is a remarkable improvement when we recall the manner in which he was kidnapped. He has transformed from a pawn into leader. Humans will not decide his position. His unrelenting attitude is completely justified to both himself and the reader: the law of club and fang is a law of survival. Regardless of a lack of experience, Buck has earned Spitz's place. He is referred to by Francois as "two devils," but with an enthusiastic, reverent tone. Just as Perrault was admired for his daring in blazing a trail, Buck is admired for his daring in willing to fight. It is on this point that man and beast converge most strongly. The working relationship can only be put into practice when there is mutual respect, and this relationship takes time to build. When the two Canadian officials are gone, the team is in the charge of Scotch "half-breeds." At one time Buck also saw Francois as a half-breed. But once he showed himself as a good partner to the team, he was never referred to in that manner again. When he cries over Buck before leaving the dogs, we see the extent to which humans and animals can bond. In this instance they are equal. Sometimes the reader gets the impression that the dogs are more important: whenever camp is set up, the dogs are always tended to first.
When the ownership of the dogs changes hands, Buck is able to achieve mastery rather quickly over dogs that he has just met. The role of a leader is not just a performance, but a lifestyle at this point. The memory of his California home does not inspire homesickness because it is a lifestyle to which he can never return, and he would never have the desire to do so. London collapses time in Buck's dreams of the ancient world and primitive man. The language in this part is layered, with many dependent, descriptive clauses that comprise lush, fluid sentences, to mimic the effect of Buck's mind sinking in and out of different layers of time. Buck takes great pleasure in helping the caveman keep a constant watch for danger. It is ironic that during sleep, the most restful part of the day, our main character is still toiling busily. Apparently this is how is he happiest‹his fondest dreams of paradise are to work faithfully and complete the task well. We see this illustrated most poignantly by the impending death of Dave. He may be weak and in horrible pain, but to remove him from the traces is to kill him before his time. The spirit and heart of all these dogs resides entirely in being useful. This is the closest they can come to the rugged, unpredictable existence that Buck dreams of by the fire. Dave "pleads" with his eyes to remain with the team. When death becomes too powerful to fight, Dave still howls mournfully for the loss of his position, which is indeed the loss of life. This undying dedication to the team rivals the devotion of humans to any task. London implies that the goal-oriented mind of the dogs is something that humans should try to emulate.
Summary and Analysis of Chapter 5
Chapter V: The Toil of Trace and Trail
Summary:
Arriving at Dawson for the second time, the dogs are in a wretched state. Along with the others, Buck has lost a lot of weight. They are all footsore, barely able to move. Months of constant toil have depleted strength and dissolved their muscle fibers. Their usefulness has been sapped, so they are sold to two men from the States, Charles and Hal. The callowness of Hal is evident in his belt that bristles with knives and cartridges. They look out of place for the expedition on which they are embarking. The camp is shoddy. There waits Mercedes, wife of Charles, sister of Hal. Buck watches apprehensively as they clumsily take down the camp, improperly rolling the tent. Two other men from a neighboring camp warn them that the sled is too heavy, but they will not listen. The team cannot move the sled. They are repeatedly whipped by Hal, as Mercedes cries over them. Buck does not like her, but tolerates her pleading pats. When the sled finally moves, items fall from the top. Raging at the unfair treatment, Buck leads the team in a run, scattering the belongings even further. Superfluous luxuries are removed amidst Mercedes's tears, and more dogs are added to the team. The journey begins.
Buck knows the team cannot depend on these people‹they do their work inefficiently and crudely. Too soon dog food becomes short, and underfeeding commences. The dogs need food, but these people do not know how to work dogs. Nor do they know how to work themselves. One by one dogs are dying. The men curse, and Mercedes cries. Their manhood and womanhood are not equal to this expedition for gold. They lack patience and constantly argue with one another. Mercedes has the additional crime of her soft sex: she insists on riding the sled. Her weight only weakens the team further. Buck moves through the snow as if in a nightmare. His glossy coat is matted with blood from the wounds Hal has inflicted with his club. His muscles are disintegrated. Buck's heart is still unbreakable. Poor Billie is killed with an ax when he fails to rise and pull the sled. The team knows this same fate can await them. The spring weather is beautiful, but no one can take notice of it. They all stagger into John Thornton's camp for a rest. John warns the travelers that the ice is thin, and the trail is likely to drop out at any moment. Hal refuses to listen, and calls the team to order. Only the merciless lashing of his whip can make any of them rise. But Buck remains on the ground. It is the first time he has failed. Hal takes up the club, but Buck will not move. He is too numb. Suddenly John Thornton springs upon Hal and drives him back, telling him that he will be killed if he hits Buck one more time. Hal tries to retaliate and gets his knuckles slashed for his troubles. John cuts Buck's traces, and the team proceeds. A quarter of a mile away, the ice breaks and the sled goes down, taking humans and dogs with it.
Analysis:
The entire chapter is a comment upon the "civilized" townsfolk who seek their fortune in gold along the trail. Sadly, dogs have to pay for the mistakes of ill-qualified masters. The team is already in a bad state, having sapped all of their strength reserves. Until now the author has portrayed the team, but mostly Buck, as larger than life and indestructible. Just as humans have weaknesses, London reminds us that dogs are not machines. Being animals does not entitle them to lesser treatment in any way. The new owners represent what might be seen as the greatest enemies of both the author and the audience. By this time we are supposed to have subscribed completely to London's anthropomorphic tendencies. He succeeds, because we feel outrage when the dogs are mistreated. When they are sold to Hal and his relatives, their decline is rapid and painful. These people are described as "manifestly out of place." The author writes about them disparagingly (Charles has "weak and watery eyes," Hal is "callow," and Mercedes "flutters") because they have no business intruding upon the domain of the pioneer breed. Unnamed characters smirk at them when they try to move the sled. Theirs is a dainty breed that cannot deal with work or hardship. Buck observes their awkward attempts at building and taking down the camp, and feels very anxious. He perceives the job as "slipshod," and his opinion is as good as any human one. This is a strange emotion for a being that has nerves of steel; however, we trust Buck's intuition and perception, and we are therefore nervous as soon as these three enter the picture. The weapons that Hal carries betray a reckless bullying nature that cannot make up for the fact that he has no idea what he is doing. This careless, dense family threatens the structure of working relationships between dogs and humans. Hal especially has absolutely no respect for the team. He whips them relentlessly, ignoring advice to lighten the sled and to give the dogs a rest. Thus they cannot respect or desire to please him‹the one chance Buck has to retaliate, he leads the team in a run to scatter the belongings of his cruel owners. Our heart goes out to him, still raging in spirit when he is so battered. This working relationship is bound to fail.
Mercedes is a problematic figure. The "privilege of her sex" is sarcastically noted several times. She insists on all things unreasonable: having a tent, riding the sled. She does not listen to reason, evidenced by the fact that when she is removed from the sled, she sits in the snow and cries like a child, until she gets her way. Her whimpering on behalf of the dogs cannot make up for the truth: that she is the most worthless person on this trip. Chauvinistic it seems, but to the author this is a masculine world in which she has even less of a place than her husband and brother. As the only female in the story, we must take her as a representation of how useless women are in the gold rush.
When Buck finally becomes jaded with the work, we know that the team is on its last legs. The wave of death looms up. The disintegration of the dogs in body and spirit corresponds to the death of the working relationship between man and beast. Whereas they formerly worked together, they are now at odds, sharing too little food and quarreling within themselves. These people lack the patience of the trail. If they take no pride in the work of travel, the reader cannot expect the dogs to do so. When Buck is steadily approaching rock bottom, he is no longer alert and vital. Rather he has become numb to sensation and his surroundings. The beautiful spring, normally a time of birth and regeneration, can make no impression upon his misery. His regal appearance has been tainted with blood, his spirit with mistreatment. Buck's failure to rise at John Thornton's camp is a frightening, terrible moment. It appears that his will to live has been crushed. We might speculate as to why the other dogs continue to go. They are followers as opposed to leaders. Buck's refusal to rise is a protest against tyranny, eloquent in its silence. No one can see this but John, which is why he is the appropriate savior, the one man who truly understands Buck's pain and places himself in danger to save him. The audience greatly appreciates John, and shamelessly cheers when Hal and his family die at the hands of their own stupidity. They had no right to be on the trail in the first place.
Summary and Analysis of Chapter 6
Chapter VI: For the Love of a Man
Summary:
Having frozen his feet that past December, John walks with a slight limp. The continuing warm weather removes this impediment. And Buck slowly wins back his strength. His muscles swell, and flesh returns to cover his bones. They loaf around with Skeet and Nig, two other dogs, as they await the raft that will carry them to Dawson. Skeet is motherly and nurses Buck's wounds during his convalescence. Nig is also quite friendly. The dogs manifest no jealousy towards Buck. He is welcomed into their frolicking games. The kindness of John extends to them. Passionate love for a human belongs to Buck for the first time ever. Besides being kind, John Thornton is the ideal master. His dogs are his children. John talks to them for long periods of time. He grasps Buck's head and rests his own upon it. But Buck does not seek these tokens of affection. He is content to adore from a distance. At times he fears to let John out of his sight, fearing that he will lose him as he has lost other masters.
Despite this great love, however, the "strain of the primitive" remains alive and active in Buck. He is a wild dog who sits by John Thornton's fire. He has no qualms about stealing from other camps, even though he leaves John's supplies alone. Buck gets into fights, and he fights shrewdly and with cunning. His lessons from Spitz are not forgotten. Time has passed more quickly for him that it has in actuality. Past primitiveness is linked with the present. Each day mankind slips further away and Buck roams the forest. Hans and Pete, partners of Thornton who arrive with the long-awaited raft, are inconsequential. John is the only human who matters. Buck's love compounds every day. Anything John wants him to do is done. At a bar, when his master gets in the middle of a fight, Buck nearly kills the instigator. In this way he seals his reputation in every camp in Alaska. When John falls into the rapids of a river, Buck aids Hans and Pete in rescuing him. Later that winter in Dawson, Buck wins a $1600 bet for his master by pulling a sled loaded with a thousand pounds of flour. All are astounded. John is offered money on the spot for Buck, but he will not sell.
Analysis:
A new world is brought forth in this chapter. We might define it as a subset of the Northland environment. Pioneers and adventurers are the inhabitants, but there is a genuine ambience of love and cooperation which is embodied in the relationship between John Thornton and Buck. Their connection goes beyond the work relationship that Buck had with Francois and Perrault. He only respected those men‹he did not wildly adore them. The reason is that John is "the ideal master," determined to reach his goals but heavily rooted in civilized humanity insofar as how he deals with people and with animals. John can be loved so madly by Buck because he is essentially Buck in human form. When he travels over the deadly river, nearly losing his life, or bets all of his savings on Buck's unproven ability to haul a ton of flour, he shows himself to be a bold risk-taker with a strong desire to succeed and prosper. Stepping between brawling men at the bar, or intervening to save rescue Buck from Hal's cruelty, John fairly copies Buck's earlier behavior when he stepped between Spitz and the underlings of the dog team. He is a man who is willing to sacrifice to uphold humane standards, which is why Buck responds in kind and saves his life several times. Under John's tutelage, Buck's horrible wounds heal, a process that parallels and symbolizes the regrowth of some of his earlier civility. He comes to look forward to gestures of affection, even though he will not actively seek them out. We are never told that such affection existed in Judge Miller's home‹it was quiet friendship. With John and Buck, it is love, pure and simple. Never have man and beast understood one another so well, and everyone can see this. When Buck has won the bet, winning regional fame, John is crying. Buck seizes John's hand as a sign of affection, and "the onlookers draw back to a respectful distance." This is a rare moment of emotion, and London intends that the reader will understand the depth of this love affair. As one might rely on a spouse, a sibling, or a dear friend, John has placed all his hopes and dreams on Buck, who is at the height of his participation in human culture.
It is crucial to remember, however, that the wonderful tasks Buck completes for John could not be executed nearly as well if he was not, at heart, a wild dog. Most of his happiest moments are when he is working for John, completing a difficult task and taking pride in the fact that he does it well. The lovable Skeet and Nig would not be able to fight or love as deeply as Buck does. Even in this world, a sheltered version of the life Buck has led while pulling the sled, the elements of control and power must come into play. In order for dogs to be as carefree and frolicking as Skeet and Nig, they must have the utter security which comes from being cared for at all times: from being subservient to man. Buck does not have this inner sense of security, evidenced by the fact that he fears John Thornton will pass out of his life. Thus he can never belong to this man. Having been more independent than the domesticated dogs for so long, he cannot simply revert to a state of subservience. London calls him "a wild dog who has come to sit by John's fire." Thornton holds him; "the rest of mankind is nothing." The image of Buck sitting by a fire does not convey a permanent place for him. He is unable to forget what he has learned, and hears faint sounds in the forest that beckon to him. Sitting by the fire should be a time of contentedness with his new life, but it is not. Challenge nourishes and sustains Buck. He is with John by choice, not necessity. Through his lush description of call which is stirring in Buck as he sits by the fire, the author implies that this situation will not last.
Summary and Analysis of Chapter 7
Chapter VII: The Sounding of the Call
Summary:
Winning the bet allows John to pay off his debts and to journey east with his partners for a fabled lost mine. Buck leads a team of seven dogs 70 miles up the Yukon. Food is hunted on the trail. John is a man unafraid of the wild. Buck is enormously delighted with this endless fishing and hunting, the wonderful days on the trail. Signs of death in the form of abandoned gear litter their paths. In the spring gold is found. There is nothing for the dogs to really do except muse by the fire. This lack of work causes Buck to remember his vision of the early man. In his mind he wanders in this early, undefined world. Fear is the most salient point with it. Buck and the man are always vigilant and searching. Akin to this vision is the call that Buck hears nightly in the forest. Eventually he is unable to sit still, night or day. The call becomes too much to resist, and one night Buck goes looking for it. He comes upon a timber wolf. After making each other understand that no harm is intended, they become friendly and run together through the forest. Stopping for water, Buck remembers John Thornton. Slowly he makes his way back to the camp, as his "wild brother" howls mournfully at his departure.
After two days in the camp, the call is too much to ignore. Buck begins sleeping away, staying out for days at a time. He delights in catching his food as he needs it, hunting and killing those who cannot fight against him. He is a thing that preys, and this is advertised in the way he carries himself. Only the splashes of brown and white on his muzzle and chest betray the fact that he is not a wolf. He is vibrant. Never has he been in such peak form. His instincts and reflexes are incredibly sharp. John and his partners know there has never been such a dog. When he leaves the camp, he transforms into a thing of the wild. One of his biggest triumphs is taking down a large moose by himself. Buck has developed the patience of the wild‹he waits four days for his prey to relent. Upon arriving back at the camp, Buck finds disaster. Everyone has been shot and killed with feathered arrows. The Yeehats are gleefully dancing around the wreckage. Buck growls ferociously and out of love for John Thornton loses his head. He rips open the throat of the chief, and keeps killing until the rest of the tribe runs away in terror. Buck sits by his master's body, and contemplates the ache in his heart. In spite of his sadness, there is pride‹he has conquered man, "the noblest game of all." And with John Thornton's death, there is nothing to hold him to mankind. When Buck hears a chorus of howls in the forest that night, he runs to wait for them The pack of wolves comes upon him. The boldest one strikes Buck and instantly has his neck broken. The rest descend, but Buck holds them off for half an hour. The wolves draw back, discomfited. One steps forward and whines softly. Buck recognizes his wild brother, and they touch noses. When the pack howls, Buck joins them. They embrace him in a half-friendly, half-savage manner. He runs with them into the woods.
After some years, the wolves of the valley are seen to have splashes of brown and white. Yeehats speak of a Ghost Dog that haunts the woods and slays the bravest hunter. One wolf returns to the valley each year. He howls once, mournfully, before rejoining his pack.
Analysis:
An understated, cliched catchphrase of the final chapter might be: "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." When something courses through your blood, you can only ignore it for so long. At the beginning, Buck is extremely happy. The ambling through the forest in search of the lost mine completely engages him. It is "boundless delight" to fish and hunt, truly living off the land. Until this time, all of Buck's food was prepackaged, purchased by his current master. The change is significant. Clearly Buck prefers to live by chance. Sometimes they go hungry, and other times they feast ravenously. The uncertainty does not bother him at all. Whereas London formerly spent time negatively describing the hunger pangs of the dogs, they are now somewhat glorious, the definitive proof that Buck is living in the wild. The sense of the surrounding atmosphere is incredibly heightened. For the first time the author spends time noting seasons and describing the trail on which they travel. Existing within nature, instead of in opposition to it, dresses everything else in a beautiful, exhilarating light.
But suddenly the light changes. Once gold is found, there is "little work to be done." The dogs spend most of their days musing by the fire. Buck's mind is taken over once again by the hairy, primitive man of the ancient world. The author provides the audience with an account of Buck's vision that is written entirely in past tense. Thus it reads like an actual memory. Reading this excerpt alone would convince us that the events had actually occurred. Buck and the audience are both confused. Where reality lies is no longer clear. It is almost as if Buck is schizophrenic and delusional. Indeed the dreams which haunt him are as pervasive as any insanity. We are told one key factor about this other world: "The salient thing seemed fear." The fantasies of all-night vigils and dangerous hunts alongside the caveman are what draw Buck away from the fire. It is not that he has merely learned how to live in a harsh environment; he craves and needs danger and insecurity in his life. His kidnapping from California was a blessing, his work on the trail a journey of self-discovery. In human terms, we can call it a midlife crisis. But the humanity which John was able to bring out in Buck begins to trickle away as soon as the work is done. Buck loves and respects him, but they cease to have as much of a connection when the gold is found because their goals and needs no longer overlap. Therefore we understand when Buck finally heeds the call in forest.
The land is "smiling" and the call is imperious. His run with the lone wolf brother is written in a calm, contented tone‹the author wants us to be as involved with the forest as Buck is. We are disappointed when he leaves his brother to return to the camp, pained by the wolf's mournful howling. When Buck starts staying away from the camp for days at a time, the sentences documenting his daily hunting and roaming are long and fluid, filled with immense detail. He is a killer, living alone and without aid. Once again Buck is mostly in control of his own fate. Mentally, physically and spiritually, he is at his pinnacle, living to the limit of all his capabilities, no fumbling or hesitation ever. The men realize this. It is important to note that they never try to stop Buck from leaving the camp. The killing of the moose is an excellent moment of triumph, but by far the most rewarding moment comes when Buck returns to the camp and realizes the disaster that has descended. The death of the one man who held Buck to mankind instantly destroys any shred of humanity left in this dog. Buck loses all control, and becomes murderously wild and untamed, the "Fiend incarnate." Capitalization and diction illustrate that he is nothing less than the Devil himself. He is motivated entirely by emotional instinct, and he has the cunning to secure victory. The large group of Yeehats, with all their weapons, stands no chance against him. It is almost laughable when they run away in fright. London is toying with our emotions. Our grief at the death of John passes quickly with Buck's realization: he has killed man, the noblest prey of all, and has done so with relative ease. There is nothing left except to join the pack and let the call lead him. Buck's initial defeat of the wolves earns respect and a place in the group. Their manner is "half-friendly, half-savage." Buck has at last found his place, restored his heritage, and we are happy for him. The last few paragraphs read as a postscript. London wants to convey that Buck survives and prospers in the environment. That he has offspring indicates that he will live on eternally, which would not have happened in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. His journey was well worth it
Chapter I: Into the Primitive
Important Themes: the equality of humans and dogs (Buck's human characteristics and his superior manners to some humans as examples); the survival of the fittest, with "fittest" described as the one who learns the quickest (the death of the dog who will not stop fighting the man in the read sweater as an example); the civilized Buck versus the savage world (Buck's initial dignity in the face of his kidnapping as an example).
Metaphors: dogs as humans; humans as dogs; the man in the red sweater becomes the top dog, to whom every animal must yield.
Irony: the dignity of Buck, a dog, in the face of human but crude figures such as Manuel and the saloon-keeper; Buck's fastidious nature, so out of place in a dog; the uselessness of all civilized teachings in the world of the wild.
Chapter II: The Law of Club and Fang
Important Themes: the law of club and fang, defined as learning how to avoid breaking the rules of the dog society so as to evade untimely death (Curly as an example); the importance of teamwork within the dogsled team (the manner in which dogs teach Buck to pull as an example); the working relationships between humans and dogs (Francois's interaction with the team as an example); the necessity of imposing a new moral system (Buck's theft of food as an example).
Metaphors: the team assumes the structure of a human society.
Irony: Francois thinks it is he who teaches Buck how to be a sled dog.
Chapter III: The Dominant Primordial Beast
Important Themes: the consequences of subverting authority within a team environment (the problems which occur when Buck manipulates the team onto his side as an example).
Metaphors: Spitz as a reigning champion and Buck as challenger; the team as biased bystanders.
Irony: Buck's most strong human tendencies (imagination, ability to collaborate and influence others) are what allow him to beat Spitz, driven mostly by instinct, in a fight that is one of nature's most savage customs.
Chapter IV: Who Has Won to Mastership
Important Themes: the work you do becomes your life; the responsibility of one team member to the rest of the team (Dave's reluctance to stop pulling the sled, even on his deathbed, as an example); a dog's ability to achieve mastery over humans (Francois placing Buck in the lead position as an example).
Metaphors: Buck as a shrewd, non-bargaining boss; Francois and Perrault as followers; the trail as a challenge, a living symbol pride won through toil.
Irony: Francois's subordination to Buck, which constitutes a role reversal of humans and dogs; the dog's view of trail completion as a goal‹they take on the goal of their human "masters."
Chapter V: The Toil of Trace and Trail
Important Themes: the danger in tempting forces of nature (the timely death of Hal and his family due to the ice break as an example); humans still have some power over dogs and can abuse them (Hal's ill-treatment of the team as an example).
Irony: Buck as a dog knows more than Hal‹he can sense his inexperience and worries about the care of the team even before anything has gone wrong.
Chapter VI: For the Love of a Man
Important Themes: the futility of trying to fight instinct (Buck's repeated temptation by the call as an example); endangering yourself breeds devotion (the fact that Buck's love for John is based on John's saving his life as an example).
Metaphors: Buck becomes John, and John becomes Buck; the instinct of Buck is embodied by a call in the forest.
Irony: the most happy existence Buck imagines is an uncertain, insecure one.
Chapter VII: The Sounding of the Call
Important Themes: the futility of fighting the call of nature (Buck's return to the wild as an example); the wild as a force of transformation (Buck's increased hunting abilities, in terms of other animals and in terms of humans, as examples).
Metaphors: Buck as a wild wolf.
Irony: Buck was not present during the attack on the camp. He might have saved everyone, but for him, John's death equals resolution and allows him to follow his heart
Plot Overview
Buck, a powerful dog, half St. Bernard and half sheepdog, lives on ’s estate in California’s Santa Clara Valley. He leads a comfortable life there, but it comes to an end when men discover gold in the Klondike region of Canada and a great demand arises for strong dogs to pull sleds. is kidnapped by a gardener on the Miller estate and sold to dog traders, who teach Buck to obey by beating him with a club and, subsequently, ship him north to the Klondike
Arriving in the chilly North, Buck is amazed by the cruelty he sees around him. As soon as another dog from his ship, , gets off the boat, a pack of huskies violently attacks and kills her. Watching her death, Buck vows never to let the same fate befall him. Buck becomes the property of and , two mail carriers working for the Canadian government, and begins to adjust to life as a sled dog. He recovers the instincts of his wild ancestors: he learns to fight, scavenge for food, and sleep beneath the snow on winter nights. At the same time, he develops a fierce rivalry with , the lead dog in the team. One of their fights is broken up when a pack of wild dogs invades the camp, but Buck begins to undercut Spitz’s authority, and eventually the two dogs become involved in a major fight. Buck kills Spitz and takes his place as the lead dog.
With Buck at the head of the team, Francois and Perrault’s sled makes record time. However, the men soon turn the team over to a mail carrier who forces the dogs to carry much heavier loads. In the midst of a particularly arduous trip, one of the dogs becomes ill, and eventually the driver has to shoot him. At the end of this journey, the dogs are exhausted, and the mail carrier sells them to a group of American gold hunters—, , and .
Buck’s new masters are inexperienced and out of place in the wilderness. They overload the sled, beat the dogs, and plan poorly. Halfway through their journey, they begin to run out of food. While the humans bicker, the dogs begin to starve, and the weaker animals soon die. Of an original team of fourteen, only five are still alive when they limp into ’s camp, still some distance from their destination. Thornton warns them that the ice over which they are traveling is melting and that they may fall through it. Hal dismisses these warnings and tries to get going immediately. The other dogs begin to move, but Buck refuses. When Hal begins to beat him, Thornton intervenes, knocking a knife from Hal’s hand and cutting Buck loose. Hal curses Thornton and starts the sled again, but before they have gone a quarter of a mile, the ice breaks open, swallowing both the humans and the dogs.
Thornton becomes Buck’s master, and Buck’s devotion to him is total. He saves Thornton from drowning in a river, attacks a man who tries to start a fight with Thornton in a bar, and, most remarkably, wins a $1,600 wager for his new master by pulling a sled carrying a thousand-pound load. But Buck’s love for Thornton is mixed with a growing attraction to the wild, and he feels as if he is being called away from civilization and into the wilderness. This feeling grows stronger when he accompanies Thornton and his friends in search of a lost mine hidden deep in the Canadian forest.
While the men search for gold, Buck ranges far afield, befriending wolves and hunting bears and moose. He always returns to Thornton in the end, until, one day, he comes back to camp to find that Yeehat Indians have attacked and killed his master. Buck attacks the Indians, killing several and scattering the rest, and then heads off into the wild, where he becomes the leader of a pack of wolves. He becomes a legendary figure, a Ghost Dog, fathering countless cubs and inspiring fear in the Yeehats—but every year he returns to the place where Thornton died, to mourn his master before returning to his life in the wild
Buck - A powerful dog, half St. Bernard and half sheepdog, who is stolen from a California estate and sold as a sled dog in the Arctic. gradually evolves from a pampered pet into a fierce, masterful animal, able to hold his own in the cruel, kill-or-be-killed world of the North. Though he loves his final master, , he feels the wild calling him away from civilization and longs to reconnect with the primitive roots of his species
John Thornton - Buck’s final master, a gold hunter experienced in the ways of the Klondike. Thornton saves Buck from death at the hands of , and Buck rewards Thornton with fierce loyalty. Thornton’s relationship to Buck is the ideal man-dog relationship: each guards the other’s back and is completely devoted to the other. The strength of their bond is enough to keep Buck from acting on the forces he feels are calling him into the wild.
Spitz - Buck’s archrival and the original leader of ’s dog team. is a fierce animal—a “devil-dog,” one man calls him—who is used to fighting with other dogs and winning. He meets his match in Buck, however, who is as strong as Spitz and possesses more cunning. Spitz is an amoral being who fights for survival with all of his might, disregarding what is right and wrong.
Francois - A French Canadian mail driver who buys Buck and adds him to his team. Francois is an experienced man, accustomed to life in the North, and he impresses Buck with his fairness and good sense.
Perrault - A French Canadian who, together with Francois, turns Buck into a sled dog for the Canadian government. Both and Francois speak in heavily accented English, which London distinguishes from the rest of the novel’s dialogue.
Hal - An American gold seeker, Hal comes to Canada with his sister, , and her husband, , in search of adventure and riches. The three buy Buck and his team and try to drive them, but their inexperience makes them terrible masters, as they run out of food during the journey and bicker among themselves. Hal and his companions are meant to represent the weakness of overcivilized men and to embody the man-dog relationship at its worst.
Mercedes - Charles’s wife and Hal’s sister. Mercedes is spoiled and pampered, and her unreasonable demands slow her, Hal, and Charles on their journey and contribute to its disastrous ending. Her civilized manner, however, contrasts that of her unprepared brother and husband in that she initially feels sympathetic for the worn-out sled team. Her behavior, London suggests, demonstrates how civilized women are unsuited for life in the wild, having been spoiled and babied by the men around them.
Charles - Hal’s brother-in-law and Mercedes’ husband. Charles shares their inexperience and folly.
Dave - A dog on Buck’s team. becomes ill on one of the team’s journeys but refuses to leave the harness, preferring to die pulling the sled. In his stubbornness at this task, Dave is an example of gritty determination.
Sol-leks - An older, more experienced dog on Buck’s team.
Curly - A friend of Buck’s, met on the journey to the North. ’s death, when she naively tries to be friendly to a husky, acts as a warning to Buck of the harshness and cruelty of his new home.
Judge Miller - Buck’s original master, the owner of a large estate in California’s Santa Clara Valley.
Manuel - A gardener’s helper on ’s estate. kidnaps Buck and sells him in order to pay off his gambling debts
Analysis of Major Characters
Buck
Although The Call of the Wild is told from the perspective of an anonymous third-person narrator, the events that are recounted are those that the dog experiences directly. As such, it is not unreasonable to call him the only fully developed character in the story. He is the only character whose past we know anything about, and London is careful to emphasize the human qualities of his protagonist, enabling us to empathize with the animal. Filtered through the third-person omniscience of the narrator, Buck comes across as far more than a creature of instinct, since he has a sense of wonder, shame, and justice. He also possesses a capacity for mystical experiences and for great, unselfish love, as his relationship to amply demonstrates. He may be a dog, but he is more human than many of the people around him
Buck’s story is cyclical: he is introduced as a pampered prince, and the story concludes with Buck as a veritable king of beasts. In between, Buck undergoes experiences that provide him with greater insight about the world. Buck begins as a spoiled regent, strutting proudly over his soft, sun-kissed domain, but he abruptly sees everything taken away from him. He is reduced to nothing, beaten and kicked and forced to pull sleds through the Canadian wilderness. This experience, though, far from destroying him, makes him stronger, and he wins back his kingdom—or rather, he wins a new kingdom, a wild one that better suits his true destiny as a wild animal. The Call of the Wild is, as its title suggests, a celebration of wildness, of primitive life, and even of savagery. Buck’s rise to greatness is not an easy path; it is a struggle, a course strewn with obstacles, from the long duel with his rival to the folly of , , and . But these obstacles, London indicates, are to be rejoiced in rather than avoided: life is ultimately a long struggle for mastery, and the greatest dogs (or men), the Bucks of the world, will always seek out struggles in order to prove their greatness. Thus, when Buck goes from being a moral, civilized pet to a fierce, bloodthirsty, violent wolf-dog, we are glad rather than shocked, because we know that he is fulfilling his highest -possible destiny.
John Thornton
The Call of the Wild is, first and foremost, the story of Buck’s gradual transformation from a tame beast into a wild animal. But even as the novel celebrates the life of a wild creature, it presents us with the character of John Thornton, whose connection to Buck suggests that there may be something good and natural in the human-dog relationship, despite its flaws. Thornton, a seasoned gold prospector, saves Buck from being beaten to death by the odious Hal and then becomes Buck’s master. From then on, a deep and abiding love blossoms between man and dog. Their relationship is a reciprocal one—Thornton saves Buck, and Buck later saves Thornton from drowning in a river. It is clear that Buck is more of a partner than a servant to the prospector. This mutual respect, we are assured, is characteristic of all Thornton’s relationships to dogs—every one of his animals bears an abiding love for him, which is returned in kind. Even as Buck is increasingly drawn to a life away from humanity, a life in the wild, his affection for Thornton keeps him from making the final break. Indeed, so strong is their bond that it is broken only when Thornton dies, and even then Buck makes an annual pilgrimage to his last master’s final resting place.
Buck is prone to visions of more primitive worlds, and sometimes he sees the humans around him as ancient men, wearing animal skins and living in caves or trees. In some of these visions, he is -running alongside these men, protecting them from the terrors of the night. His relationship to Thornton, the novel implies, is like these ancient man-dog connections; it is primitive rather than civilized, and so it remains strong even as Buck leaves the civilized world behind.
Hal, Charles, and Mercedes
These three can be analyzed in a group, because London never develops them beyond our initial impressions of them, which are strikingly similar: Hal and Charles are foolish and callow; Mercedes is spoiled and sentimental. Taken together, the trio serves as a vehicle through which London attacks the debilitating effects of human civilization and warns of how little use such civilization is in the wild. From their first appearance, Hal, Charles, and Mercedes are woefully out of place in the untamed North. Both Hal and Charles display “a callowness sheer and unutterable,” while Mercedes is spoiled and unreasonable—“it was her custom to be helpless,” London notes. As a group, the three have no experience in the wild, and, thus, they make mistake after mistake, overpacking the sled, allowing Mercedes to ride instead of walking, and miscalculating how much food they need for the journey to Dawson. When their mistakes become apparent, instead of taking action, they begin bickering and feuding, fighting over old grudges and trifles rather than dealing with the problems at hand.
The civilized world tolerates and even smiles on such absurdity, London suggests, but the wild has no such mercy. In the cold of the Klondike, incompetence is deadly, not only for the three foolish Americans but also for the team of dogs, for the humans’ poor planning has brought them to the brink of starvation. Hal, Charles, and Mercedes are weak and foolish figures, and their folly has its own reward—death in the icy waters of a northern river
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Indispensable Struggle for Mastery
The Call of the Wild is a story of transformation in which the old —the civilized, moral Buck—must adjust to the harsher realities of life in the frosty North, where survival is the only imperative. Kill or be killed is the only morality among the dogs of the Klondike, as Buck realizes from the moment he steps off the boat and watches the violent death of his friend . The wilderness is a cruel, uncaring world, where only the strong prosper. It is, one might say, a perfect Darwinian world, and London’s depiction of it owes much to Darwin, who proposed the theory of evolution to explain the development of life on Earth and envisioned a natural world defined by fierce competition for scarce resources. The term often used to describe Darwin’s theory, although he did not coin it, is “the survival of the fittest,” a phrase that describes Buck’s experience perfectly. In the old, warmer world, he might have sacrificed his life out of moral considerations; now, however, he abandons any such considerations in order to survive
But London is not content to make the struggle for survival the central theme of his novel; instead, his protagonist struggles toward a higher end, namely mastery. We see this struggle particularly in Buck’s conflict with , in his determination to become the lead dog on and ’s team, and, at the end of the novel, in the way that he battles his way to the leadership of the wolf pack. Buck does not merely want to survive; he wants to dominate—as do his rivals, dogs like Spitz. In this quest for domination, which is celebrated by London’s narrative, we can observe the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher of the late nineteenth century. Nietzsche’s worldview held that the world was composed of masters, those who possessed what he called “the will to power,” and slaves, those who did not possess this will. Nietzsche delighted in using animal metaphors, comparing masters to “birds of prey” and “blonde beasts” and comparing slaves to sheep and other herd animals. London’s Buck, with his indomitable strength and fierce desire for mastery, is a canine version of Nietzsche’s masterful men, his Napoleon Bonapartes and Julius Caesars. Buck is a savage creature, in a sense, and hardly a moral one, but London, like Nietzsche, expects us to applaud this ferocity. His novel suggests that there is no higher destiny for man or beast than to struggle, and win, in the battle for mastery.
The Power of Ancestral Memory and Primitive Instincts
When Buck enters the wild, he must learn countless lessons in order to survive, and he learns them well. But the novel suggests that his success in the frozen North is not merely a matter of learning the ways of the wild; rather, Buck gradually recovers primitive instincts and memories that his wild ancestors possessed, which have been buried as dogs have become civilized creatures. The technical term for what happens to Buck is atavism—the reappearance in a modern creature of traits that defined its remote forebears. London returns to this theme again and again, constantly reminding us that Buck is “retrogressing,” as the novel puts it, into a wilder way of life that all dogs once shared. “He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn,” we are told. “He linked the past with the present, and the eternity behind him throbbed through him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed as the tides and seasons swayed.” Buck even has occasional visions of this older world, when humans wore animal skins and lived in caves, and when wild dogs hunted their prey in the primeval forests. His connection to his ancestral identity is thus more than instinctual; it is mystical. The civilized world, which seems so strong, turns out to be nothing more than a thin veneer, which is quickly worn away to reveal the ancient instincts lying dormant underneath. Buck hears the call of the wild, and London implies that, in the right circumstances, we might hear it too.
The Laws of Civilization and of Wilderness
While the two lives that Buck leads stand in stark contrast to each other, this contrast does not go unchallenged throughout the novel. His life with is leisurely, calm, and unchallenging, while his transition to the wilderness shows him a life that is savage, frenetic, and demanding. While it would be tempting to assume that these two lives are polar opposites, events later in the novel show some ways in which both the wild and civilization have underlying social codes, hierarchies, and even laws. For example, the pack that Buck joins is not anarchic; the position of lead dog is coveted and given to the most powerful dog. The lead dog takes responsibility for group decisions and has a distinctive style of leadership; the main factor in the rivalry between Buck and Spitz is that Buck sides with the less popular, marginal dogs instead of the stronger ones. Buck, then, advocates the rights of a minority in the pack—a position that is strikingly similar to that of his original owner, the judge, who is the novel’s most prominent example of civilization.
The rules of the civilized and uncivilized worlds are, of course, extremely different—in the wild, many conflicts are resolved through bloody fights rather than through reasoned mediation. But the novel suggests that what is important in both worlds is to understand and abide by the rules which that world has set up, and it is only when those rules are broken that we see true savagery and disrespect for life. , , and Charles enter the wild with little understanding of the rules one must follow to become integrated and survive. Their inability to ration food correctly, their reliance upon their largely useless knife and gun, and their disregard for the dogs’ suffering all attest to laws of the wilderness that they misunderstand or choose to ignore. As a result, the wilderness institutes a natural consequence for their actions. Precisely because they do not heed the warnings that the wild provides via one of its residents, Thornton, they force the team over unstable ice and fall through to their deaths. The novel seems to say that the wild does not allow chaos or wanton behavior but instead institutes a strict social and natural order different from, but not inferior to, that of the civilized world.
The Membership of the Individual in the Group
When Buck arrives in the wild, his primordial instincts do not awaken immediately, and he requires a great deal of external help before he is suited to life there. Help arrives in realizations about the very different rules that govern the world outside of civilization, but also in the support of the pack of which he becomes a part. Two dogs in particular, and , after having established their seniority, instruct Buck in the intricacies of sled pulling. Furthermore, the group members take pride in their work, even though they are serving men. When they make trips in good time, they enterprise. congratulate themselves—they all participate in a common
At the same time, however, one of the most valued traits in the wilderness is individualism. If The Call of the Wild is a story about ultimately achieving mastery over a foreign, primal world, that mastery is achieved only through separation from the group and independent survival. Throughout much of the story, Buck is serving a master or a pack; even as a leader he is carrying out someone else’s commands and is responsible for the well-being of the group. In many ways, then, when John Thornton cuts Buck free from his harness, he is also beginning the process of Buck’s separation from a pack mentality. Although Buck continues to serve Thornton, his yearnings for a solitary life in the wild eventually overcome him.
The balance between individual and group is disrupted once more, however, toward the end of the novel, when Buck becomes the leader of a wolf pack. Although the pack is much different from the dog pack whose responsibility was to serve humans by pulling sleds, the message seems to be that, while encouraging the skills to survive on one’s own, the wild ultimately requires the cooperation of a group in order to ensure individual survival.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Violent Struggle
Life-and-death battles punctuate The Call of the Wild’s narrative, serving as reminders of the dangers of life in the Klondike, but more importantly as markers of Buck’s gradual integration into his new environment. When Buck first arrives in the north, he watches a friendly dog named Curly brutally killed by a husky. Soon, he finds himself in a rivalry with Spitz that ends with the two of them locked in single combat, a battle from which only Buck emerges alive. Having established himself as a dominant dog with this victory, Buck must continue to prove himself in battles with other creatures—with a bear, with a moose, and, finally, with humans. When Buck kills the Yeehat Indians who have killed John Thornton, he is fighting for his life against mankind for the first time, a sure sign of his final assimilation into the wild.
Visions
One of the themes of The Call of the Wild is “atavism,” or an animal’s (in this case, Buck’s) recovery of the instincts of his wild ancestors. For Buck, this recovery involves repeated visions of his primitive past, which usually occur late at night when he is lying alongside a campfire. He sees the men around him as primitive men, draped in furs and wary of the prehistoric dark around them, and then he has visions of himself as a primitive, wild creature, hunting his prey in the primeval forests. Each of these visions brings him closer to his destiny, which is the return to his ancestors’ ways and becoming a wild animal himself.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Mercedes’ Possessions
Mercedes loads the sled up with so many of her things that the dogs cannot possibly pull it; later, she herself gets on the sled, making the load even heavier. Her insistence on having all of her possessions with her emphasizes the difference between the wild, where the value of an object lies in its immediate usefulness, and civilization, where the value of an object lies in its ability to symbolize the wealth of its possessor. Material possessions and consumerism have no place in the wild, and it is at least partly Mercedes’ inability to recognize this fact that leads to her death when the overburdened sled falls through the ice.
Buck’s Traces
The significance of Buck’s traces—the straps that bind him to the rest of the team—changes as the plot develops. The novel initially charts his descent from his position as the monarch of Judge Miller’s place in civilization to a servile status in which it is his duty to pull the sled for humans. But as he becomes more a part of the wild, Buck begins to understand the hierarchy of the pack that pulls the sled, and he begins to gain authority over the pack. After his duel with Spitz, he is harnessed into the lead dog’s position; his harness now represents not servitude to the humans but leadership over the dogs. Finally, however, John Thornton cuts Buck free from his traces, an act that symbolizes his freedom from a world in which he serves humans. Now a companion to Thornton rather than a servant, Buck gradually begins to enter a world of individual survival in the wild.
Buck’s First Beatings with the Club; Curly’s Death
When Buck is kidnapped, he attempts to attack one of the men who has seized him, only to be beaten repeatedly with a club. This moment, when his fighting spirit is temporarily broken, along with the brutal killing of Curly by a group of vicious sled dogs, symbolizes Buck’s departure from the old, comfortable life of a pet in a warm climate, and his entrance into a new world where the only law is “the law of club and fang.”
Buck’s Attack on the Yeehats
In the closing chapters of the novel, Buck feels the call of life in the wild drawing him away from mankind, away from campfires and towns, and into the forest. The only thing that prevents him from going, that keeps him tied to the world of men, is his love for John Thornton. When the Yeehat Indians kill Thornton, Buck’s last tie to humanity is cut, and he becomes free to attack the Yeehats, killing a number of them. To attack a human being would once have been unthinkable for Buck, and his willingness to do so now symbolizes the fact that his transformation is complete—that he has truly embraced his wild nature
Important Quotations Explained
1. During the four years since his puppyhood he had lived the life of a sated aristocrat; he had a fine pride in himself, was even a trifle egotistical, as country gentlemen sometimes become because of their insular situation.
This quotation is from the beginning of Chapter I, “Into the Primitive,” and it defines ’s life before he is kidnapped and dragged into the harsh world of the Klondike. As a favored pet on ’s sprawling California estate, Buck lives like a king—or at least like an “aristocrat” or a “country gentleman,” as London describes him. In the civilized world, Buck is born to rule, only to be ripped from this environment and forced to fight for his survival. The story of The Call of the Wild is, in large part, the story of Buck’s climb back to the top after his early fall from grace. He loses one kind of lordship, the “insular” and “sated” lordship into which he is born, but he gains a more authentic kind of mastery in the wild, one that he wins by his own efforts rather than by an accident of birth
2. He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law, and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect and, while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused
This quotation is taken from late in Chapter I, “Into the Primitive,” just after has been beaten repeatedly by one of his kidnappers. Each time he is clubbed, Buck leaps up to attack again, until finally the man knocks him unconscious. This incident is Buck's introduction to a new way of life, vastly different from the pampered existence that he led in the Santa Clara Valley. There, civilized law, and civilized morality were the ruling forces—symbolized by the fact that his first master, , is a judge. In the wild, though, Buck comes to terms with “the reign of primitive law,” in which might makes right, and a man with a club (or a powerful dog) can do as he pleases to weaker creatures. In this scene, Buck is mastered by the man with the club, but he learns his lesson well and soon comes to master others.
3. And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down. . . . Thus, as token of what a puppet thing life is the ancient song surged through him and he came into his own again. . . .
This quote, taken from Chapter II, shows that as fights for survival in the harsh world of the Klondike, he relies increasingly on buried instincts that belonged to his wild forebears. The role of this atavistic development—“atavism” refers to the recovery by an animal of behaviors that belonged to its ancestors—points to one of the central themes of London’s novel, namely, the way that primitive instincts and urges persist beneath the veneer of civilization. Throw a soft, civilized creature (human or animal) into the wild, London suggests, and if he survives, he, like Buck, will come to depend on the same instincts that guided the life of his primitive ancestors. “The ancient song,” in his phrase, is only waiting for the right opportunity to emerge.
4. A pause seemed to fall. Every animal was motionless as though turned to stone. Only Spitz quivered and bristled as he staggered back and forth, snarling with horrible menace, as though to frighten off impending death. Then Buck sprang in and out; but while he was in, shoulder had at last squarely met shoulder. The dark circle became a dot on the moon-flooded snow as Spitz disappeared from view. Buck stood and looked on, the successful champion, the dominant primordial beast who had made his kill and found it good.
These words constitute the final paragraph in Chapter III, describing the climactic battle between and . The paragraph marks the moment that Buck comes into his own by vanquishing and killing his great rival, and then taking Spitz’s place as the team's lead dog. He has left his life as a pampered pet far behind—now he is “the successful champion . . . the dominant primordial beast.” Throughout the novel, London suggests that life in the wild is defined by a struggle for mastery, and the Buck-Spitz duel is the central example of this struggle, the moment when Buck establishes himself as a master of the kill-or-be-killed ethic of the wild
5. [Each] day mankind and the claims of mankind slipped farther from him. Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire, and to plunge into the forest. . . . But as often as he gained the soft unbroken earth and the green shade, the love of John Thornton drew him back to the fire again.
This quotation is from Chapter VI, “For the Love of a Man,” and it depicts the tension building within during his time with . Thornton is the ideal master, and his relationship with Buck represents a perfect partnership between man and dog. London tells us that this is the first time that Buck has truly loved a human being. Yet, at the same time, it is clear that Buck’s destiny lies in the wild, and so he is torn between the urges that pull him away from humanity and his intense loyalty to Thornton. That love, it becomes clear, is the only thing tying him to the world of men—which means that when Thornton is killed, there is nothing left to hold him, and he embraces his destiny as a wild creature.
