The Call of the Wild
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The Call of the Wild book cover |
The Call of the Wild is a
novella by
American writer
Jack London. The plot concerns a
domesticated dog whose primordial instincts return as he works as a sled dog.
Published in 1903,
The Call of the Wild is London's most read book and considered one of his best. Because the
protagonist is a dog, it is often thought to be particularly suitable for children, but it is dark in tone and contains numerous scenes of cruelty and violence.
The hero,
Buck, is a 140 lb
St. Bernard/Scotch Shepherd (i.e.,
Collie) mix who is abducted from a comfortable life as the pet of a
judge in
California by a treacherous thief and sold to a trainer of
sled dogs. In a series of episodes, Buck is forced to survive and adapt to brutal and cruel conditions. He changes hands many times before he is eventually acquired by a kind and loving—but exploitative—owner, John Thornton. When Thornton is killed by "Yeehat Indians," Buck returns to the wild and becomes the
alpha male of a wolf pack. Images of death, cruelty, and
Darwinian struggle abound. Of the new world Buck enters, London writes "The salient thing of this other world seemed fear." (Such dark
themes are typical of Jack London's work, and he defended them in his essay "The Terrible and Tragic in Fiction.")
The following themes are evident in the book:
*
Adaptation*
Adventure*
Conflict*
Courage and
Determination*
Death*
Interdependence*
Independence*
Leadership*
Survival*
Nature's Unpredictability
The University of Pennsylvania's Online Books Page [
1] states that "Jack London's writing was censored in several European dictatorships in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1929, Italy banned all cheap editions of his
Call of the Wild, and Yugoslavia banned all his works as being 'too radical.' Some of London's works were also burned by the Nazis." (These regimes may have been reacting to Jack London's reputation as an outspoken
Socialist rather than to the content of the book, which, unlike some of his other novels, has no overt political message).
In 1960, critic
Maxwell Geismar called
The Call of the Wild "a beautiful prose poem." Editor
Franklin Walker said that it "belongs on a shelf with
Walden and
Huckleberry Finn".
E. L. Doctorow called it "a mordant parable... his masterpiece."
Several films based on the novel, or at least using elements from it including its title, have been produced; the best-known of these, emphasizing human over canine characters, is the
1935 version starring
Clark Gable and
Loretta Young. (Young reputedly became pregnant with Gable's child during
location shooting for this film.)
The tribe was Jack London's fictional creation. "There was no tribe of American Indians named Yeehats. London's decision to employ a fictitious tribe is consistent with Northland traditions, however, for it was common to hear tales of barbarous people living in remote and unexplored regions of the territory." (Dyer, 1997)
A few readers claim careful reading of the directions would place the final part of the book in the Northwest Territory in a wilderness valley called the
Nahane. The Nahane has a mystical reputation on its own. Among the tribes to migrate in the Nahane area is a tribe called the Tahitan among whose other names is K'Yehatine. (Bond 1993)
The main character in the book was based on a St. Bernard / Collie sled dog which belonged to Marshall Bond and his brother Louis. The Bonds were Jack London's landlords in Dawson during the Fall and Spring of 1897 - 1898 the main year of the Klondike Gold Rush. The London and Bond accounts record that the dog was used by Jack London to accomplish chores for the Bonds and other clients of London's. (Dyer, 1997)
Yasei no Sakebiアニメ野性のさけび, anime adaption consisting of 22 episodes based on the novel. [
2]
*Dyer, Daniel, 1997:
The Call of the Wild: Annotated and Illustrated, University of Oklahoma Press, ISBN 0806129204, note on line 2098 (Yeehats fictional)
*
Text of The Call of the Wild at Berkeley's Sunsite*
Free ebook of The Call of the Wild at
Project Gutenberg*
White Fang compared to The Call of the Wild - Literary analysis
*
Free audiobook from
LibriVox
