Love Portrayal Of Jack London
Throughout the novel The Call of the Wild Buck is thrown into a vast amount of obstacles. Buck is a half Saint Bernard and Half Sheepdog who is stolen from a home in California. He was then sold as a sled dog in the arctic where he would begin his adventure. Buck undergoes many challenges that can be related to human beings. The two experiences that everyone goes through are love and death. According to Jack London in The Call of the Wild, love and death are portrayed as bitter, sweet, and deadly.
Buck is thrown into a brutal world where he fights to survive. Buck meets Curly, a Newfoundland. They become friends on their journey to the north. There was no warning, only a leap in like a flash, a metallic clip of teeth, a leap out equally swift, and Curly's face was ripped open from eye to jaw (London 44). After Buck’s friend Curly was killed, Buck vows to not have the same fate. Buck’s first encounter of losing his friend showed him how dangerous his journey will be, where love will leave a bitter feeling in the end.
As Buck’s journey continues, he gets a taste of how sweet and bitter death can be. Dogs and men answer the call of their savage natures and their terrifying environment in a violent, bloody, and continual struggle for survival (Mann 1). The harsh environment creates a sense of survival of the fittest. The men beat the dogs to keep them going to reach their destination. The dogs fight to stay alive and in some cases, fight to be dominant. Buck fights and kills Spitz, who was the lead the dog. Buck stood and looked on, the successful champion, the dominant primordial beast who had made his kill and found it good (London 99). After killing spitz, Buck assumes the lead position. This shows ho...
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Works Cited
London, Jack. The Call of the Wild and other stories. New York: Macmillan Company, 1903.
Woodward, Servanne. "The Nature of the Beast in Jack London's Fiction." Bestia 1 (May 1989): 61-66. Rpt. in Children's Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 108. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.
Tavernier-Courbin, Jacqueline. "Buck as Mythical Hero." "The Call of the Wild": A Naturalistic Response. New York, N.Y.: Twayne Publishers, 1994. 80-95. Rpt. In Children's Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 108. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.
Mann, John S. "The Theme of the Double in The Call of the Wild." The Markham Review 8 (Fall 1978): 1-5. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Paula Kepos. Vol. 39. Detroit: Gale Research, 1991. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.
Jack London whose birth name is John Griffin was known for his fiction adventurous novels. Although he was a sailor, gold prospector, rancher and served his country in the Army he still have yet served the time in the wilderness of Alaska. Jack London wrote ‘’The Call of the Wild’’ as if he lived it before. His words jump at you so viciously you had no choice to swallow, savor, and meditate on your life just like Chris McCandless. In the book ways of reading page 429 the dark knight of the soul by Richard E. Miller said that Jon Krakauer wrote about how Jack London actually persuade Chris McCandless that he could possibly escape the bonds of the corporatized world and reach a space of greater calm.
Buck undertook the mission of learning how to survive in the wild. Buck, a domesticated dog, was stolen and forced into the Klondike. He had to learn how to survive so he adapted by following the law of Club and Fang. He respected
Perkins, George B., and Barbara Perkins. "The Beast in the Jungle." The American Tradition in Literature (concise). 12th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009. 1148-1177. Print.
The novel, The Call of the Wild, follows a four-year-old mixed Saint Bernard and Scottish shepherd, named Buck. In the beginning of the story, Buck lives in the home of Judge Miller, located at Santa Clara Valley, California. In Santa Clara, Buck lives a luxurious life. At the time of the story, gold is discovered in the North. With this discovery, the value of large dogs like Buck escalated dramatically. The dog’s value was due most to their ability to haul heavy sleds through the abundant snow. Unfortunately, Judge Miller’s servant, Manuel steals Buck to sell him to a band of dog-nappers to pay for his accumulating gambling debts. The ring of thieves that bought Buck is gaining a secure banking by trading the dog to northern executives. Buck, who has had an easy life so far, does not adapt well to the terrain as the other canines do. Buck does not easily tolerate the confinement and mistreatment of his new authority. Buck’s gains the misconception, which then is an aide that any man with a club is a dominator and must be obeyed.
As can be seen, the critic Philo M. Blake, Jr.’s opinion of Jack London’s protagonists in the novel The Call of the Wild is not justified. Time and time again, from the incident at the bar, to winning the impossible bet, to risking his own life in the rushing rapids, Buck displayed noble qualities such as loyalty, bravery, and selflessness. In spite of rejecting the culture of civilization and being labeled a “beast” by many, Buck ideally reflects the spirit of true heroism through his courage, noble qualities, and exceptional
When Buck comes back to camp he finds the Yeehats have attacked and killed everyone and all the dogs. Buck then rages and kills the Yeehats with the realization afterwards that, “He had killed man the noblest game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang”(London 102). Buck has mentally adapted to the way of life and to the laws he learned. Such as the law of club and fang, once a dog is down that is the end of him and that dogs and men are savages. Buck transforms from a pampered house dog with a lavish life to a wolf with a mind of a leader and a mind of a hunter. His physical adaptations help him survive in this life he has been given and help satisfy his new self.Buck becomes a leader and a true wolf through his adaptations. In the end of the novel Buck finds a wolf pack and shows dominance he then sits down and joins the pack howling. And Buck “ran with them, side by side with the wild brother, yelping as he ran”(London ).Buck becomes one with the wild and changes from a pampered house pet in the beginning of the story to this wolf leader in the end. Buck becomes a legend. When he first met the wolf pack some tried to fight him but Buck won and they ended up accepting them as one of their own, as a wolf. Without all of the mental and physical adaptations Buck had he would not have gained their respect and been accepted as wolf, as a great leader and become this great
The final battle came when the dogs were chasing a snowshoe rabbit with Buck in the lead Spitz went out of his way to snatch the rabbit right before Buck was about to kill it. “Spitz left the pack and cut across a narrow neck of land… Buck did not know of this, and as he rounded the bend the frost wrath of a rabbit still flitting before him,he saw another ad larger frost wraith leap.” (London 41) Buck had no choice but to die or fight back at this point with no humans to intervene they along with other dogs known this was case early on. “At sound of this, the cry of life plunging down from life’s apex in the grip of death, the full pack at Buck’s heels raised a hell’s chorus of delight.”(London 41)
Buck was a dog that was stolen and sold on the search for gold.In the book Call of the Buck is challenged by his new life in the arctic darkness. Buck has to adapt to survive under the law of club and fang,while also moving up in rank and make peace with his instincts.
Call of the Wild is a book by the author Jack London about a dog who goes from being a tame, inside dog in California to a hard-working sled dog in Alaska. This happens because of him being a large dog, perfect for pulling sleds over the White Pass Trail.He is stolen from his loving owner and shipped to the almost Arctic land. The setting changes Buck in many ways, and his muscles get leaner as he learns to survive in the freezing, snowy land. He not only has to survive, but he has to compete with the other dogs for food and power.
Both main characters are forced to leave their families. Buck is sold by his owner’s gardener that has a gambling problem and “needs” the money. Salva is just a young boy enjoying his day at school when a terrible war breaks out in his village. They are both abandoned out in the wild with no familiar faces and they have to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Buck learns to trust in men, but when he is sold he knows that something is wrong with these strange men, and that he can not trust them. Buck turns into a primordial beast for the first time in the novel. Buck learns more and more through his journey about who he is and where he
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Hoggart, Simon. “Beauty and the beasts.” The Spectator. ProQuest, 31 July 2010. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.
Chris McCandless and Buck serve as examples of the archetype of the wild through their experiences of leaving where they feel most comfortable and answering the call of the wild. They show that each experience is inimitable because the wild is unique to every individual. For Buck, the wild is a place outside of civilization and his dependence on man, where the external threats of nature exist and he must prove himself as a true animal with instincts for survival. In McCandless' case, the place outside of civilization is actually an escape from his fears because the wild for him is in relationships, where the threat of intimacy exists and he must learn to trust others for happiness. This is because for each of us, the wild is what we fear, a place outside of our comfort zone and, as McCandless' experience shows, not necessarily a physical place. To render to the call of the wild we must leave everything that makes us feel protected, and we must make ourselves completely vulnerable to the wild. McCandless and Buck show that in order to successfully respond to the call of the wild we must relinquish control and drop our guards, until ultimately the fear subsides and we find peace with ourselves as well as with our environments.
Feast, James. "The Call Of The Wild." Magill’S Survey Of American Literature, Revised Edition (2006): 1-2. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
Jack London’s “The Call of The Wild” is about the life of a dog named Buck, during the Alaskan Gold Rush, and the trials he faces. Buck has no choice but to adapt and survive in his new surroundings in Alaska, compared to his life in California. Since Buck is in the time period of the Alaskan Gold Rush, he must learn to cooperate with each owner that acquires him. Buck learns to survive with his sled team and become a leader. One must adapt to one’s surroundings or one will perish.